Free I Heart Beat by Edyth; Bulbring Page A

there sometimes when everywhere else is closed and they need one for the road. Which reminds him … and he and Candy hit the road.
    I tell Grummer I need to wash my hair (review my research) and she asks me what time Toffie’s coming. We can all go together in her car when he arrives. I tell Grummer I’m meeting Toffie at the pubbingrill and Grummer titch-tiches and says it’s just not good enough; they never did things like that in her day.
    So I get Toffie on his cellphone — correction: my cellphone — and I tell him he has to be my date for the skop; otherwise Grummer will be miffed. And her cross face is not going to get her skipping up the aisle.
    Toffie doesn’t play nice. He’s still cheesed off at me for trying to confiscate his (my) cellphone and kick him off the project. “Nonono, Beat. No can do. You’re the boss. It would be like … like too familiar. What would the rest of the staff think,” he says and then he wets himself laughing. I tell him he’s fired and he must come at seven o’clock. Precisely 5:00 p.m. GMT.
    Toffie’s having too much fun to stop. “Jis, Beat, you’re forward. Don’t you know it’s the boy who has to ask the girl on the date? You must like me a lot, hey? Come on, say it.”
    I say nothing. Not even “it”.
    I hear him sigh. He says if I can’t give him romance, then he’ll take my cash. He says he’ll see me at a quarter past seven after I use Mom’s credit card and buy him 200 rands’ worth of airtime.
    I know Dr Simon Fridjohn’s going to be worth every last cent. I know it, ’cos I’ve done my research.

Chapter 16
    IT’S AMAZING WHAT you can find out when you email trusting institutions about job references. Dr Simon Fridjohn is sixty-one years old. He went to school at Bishops in Cape Town and did a science degree in the same city at Yoo Cee Tee, where he played tennis and hockey. He then took a veterinary degree and has been running a practice just outside the village for the past twenty years. He’s unmarried and reads biographies of famous animals in his free time.
    There’s a photo of him on his school website with his life creed: “Simple Simon says, if you treat animals like people, they will behave like them.”
    He looks a bit young for sixty-one, but I suspect it’s his old school photo.
    Grummer knocks on my door and says it’s nearly time to go. I brush my teeth four times and put the red dress on over a pair of jeans (black) and pull on a long T-shirt (black).
    Grummer’s done her hair. She put hot rollers in and then sprayed her curls so her hair’s like a crash helmet. I tell her she looks lovely. She looks at me and sighs.
    Toffie arrives and tells Grummer he likes her hairdo. He looks at me and laughs. “You sure clean up nice, Boss,” he says and winks.
    The green light on the robot outside the pubbingrill is on. Not that anyone needs telling that the place is open. People are on the pavement, inside the bar and standing around a fire in the back courtyard. Me and Grummer go outside ’cos she says she can’t bear the cigarette smoke. Toffie follows and sticks to me like a leech. The dancing hasn’t started and everyone’s drinking and eating steaks and boerewors rolls. The smell of the sausage makes me feel sick and I go back inside.
    I wonder how we’re ever going to find Dr Simon Fridjohn. I check out the photo that Toffie took on his ticket-selling rounds: Dr Fridjohn’s standing in his surgery, hugging a big, hairy dog. Or the dog’s hugging him; I’m not sure. I can spot a rather freaky smile from under the dog’s armpit. It’s not a lot to go on.
    I feel panicked. If I fail with Dr Simon Fridjohn I have to eat a double steak burger. That’s the deal I made with my two and only friends back home. And they want a five-minute video clip of me doing it. The