Free Zoo City by Lauren Beukes Page B

concierge service. We do what the job requires. For Mr Huron we have escorted musicians on tours and facilitated deals, most recently with a German distributor, where we accompanied the artist to Berlin."
       "Sounds more like A&R than 'procurements'."
       "Before this, we smuggled a shipment of seventeenthcentury crucifixes out of Spain in a container packed with ceramic tiles."
       "Really?"
       "Maybe. Maybe I am lying to get you excited. How would you check?"
       She presses her finger to the doorbell. The door is a dark heavy wood with a stained glass rosary window. Inside the house, a chime trills and echoes. A moment later, the door swings open, revealing a woman in a cardinalred pantsuit and a blonde bob. She seems delighted to see us, smiling like she's had a sunbeam shoved down her throat. "Oh, wow, hey. You're super early. Odi's just finishing up something."
       "Carmen is one of Mr Huron's protégés," Marabou says in answer to my raised eyebrow.
       "Oh yaa, sorry," Carmen says, giving me a flash of white teeth. 'Are you, like, media?"
       "Not anymore."
       She loses interest instantly, although her sunbeam wavers only briefly. "Well, come on in. If you want to head out to the patio, I'll bring you guys some tea."
       She turns and clatters away on a pair of shiny red platform heels, leading us through a house that seems too fusty for such a bright and cool young thing to be breezing through. Faded Persian carpets laid over wooden floors mute the clop of Carmen's shoes. The furniture is overbearing, heavy teaks and yellowwood railway sleepers. Sloth hugs me tighter, and I catch a snatch of a rank mineral smell, like week-old vase water.
       We pass a dining room where the yellowwood table has places set for twelve under a huge chandelier that resembles a wedding cake turned upside-down. Lethargic dust motes swirl in sunlight that has managed to penetrate the choke of ivy and leaded glass. Someone has left a scattering of chocolate raisins to fossilise under the table.
       "Did Mr Huron just move in?"
       "Oh no, he's been here for ages and ages," Carmen says. "I know what you're thinking, though. Like, it's not very rock'n'roll."
       "You know, that is exactly what I was thinking."
       "I know, right? It weirded me out at first, when I came to audition? But it's part of Odi's philosophy? 'Cos it's actually about the music."
       "As opposed to?"
       "The image. The glitz. The glamour. All that interference."
       The passage is lined with framed plaques and awards, gold records, platinum records, SAMA and MTV and Kora certificates, with names familiar even to a music heathen like me. JumpFish. Detective Wolf. Assegai. Keleketla. Moro. Zakes Tsukudu. Lily Nobomvu. iJusi. Noxx. The
    dates read 1981, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1995,
And then a jump to 2003, 2004, 2005. 2008. "What's with the hiatus?" "Mr Huron has other business interests," Marabou says.
       "And he was sick," Carmen chips in. "But don't worry, he's almost, like, totally over it now."
       We pass a study, set up with a video edit suite, surrounded by bookshelves lined with files and weird bric-à-brac. And then the passage ends abruptly in an authentically retro lounge with glass doors opening onto a bright patio overlooking the swimming pool. There is a hanging egg chair and a heavy silver coffee-table, only slightly scratched, hemmed in by low-rise chocolate brown leather couches. Two tall, slim speakers, designed to be fuck-off low-key, pump out syrupy R&B.
       "Here we are," Carmen says, pushing open the glass doors onto the pool-side patio. She stoops to brush leaves off the cushions on the fussy ironwork chairs arranged around a matching table under a vine trellis. The very pretty view looks over and up at the koppie, which is covered in scrub brush and succulent aloes. There is a low bunker-style building with glass sliding doors across the way at the foot of the hill. Definitely