Kwaito Love Page 5

  “No, I want to know. What’s going on? I thought we had a great time the afternoon at the restaurant and the other day. I felt something and I thought you did too. I can’t stop thinking about you. You can’t just ignore that. At least I know I can’t.”

  “I just think it’s not going to work and we might as well end it now before . . . Well, before . . . we go too far.” Mpho didn’t want to say before she fell in love with him because she was pretty sure she already had.

  “No, that’s not good enough. Why? Why end something that started so well? I don’t get it. I told you I’m fine with waiting; I don’t care that you’re a virgin, I really don’t. It was just a bit of a shock. Actually, I’m kind of impressed. I’ve never met someone so focused. I thought a beautiful woman like you would have had men chasing after you night and day. I was surprised, that’s all. But I’m over it now. It’s no big deal. I’m actually happy you have your goals and you stick to them. We’re the same that way.”

  He smiled and Mpho could feel her defences lowering. God, he was handsome! It was as if light radiated from his face when he smiled. She’d never known anyone else with a smile like Thabang Modise’s. Compounding that, he was close enough for her to smell his aftershave. What was in that stuff? Some kind of mesmerising chemical that pushed women to say and do things they had no intention to?

  Mpho turned her head away from him and took two gasps of fresh air, trying to rid the synapses in her brain of the aftershave and get her mind back on track. “I’m just too busy with school for all of this. I have the show in less than three weeks. I can’t do this now . . . okay? Can’t you understand that? Can’t you respect that?”

  Thabang seemed to relax. “Yes, I can respect that. I know it’s very important to you and I certainly don’t want to mess that up. Actually, that’s part of why I’m so glad to see you. I need the services of a fashion designer. One of our artists, the jazz singer Chloe Adams, has been invited to a gig in Norway. She needs a dress and I immediately thought of you.”

  “Well, I’m not actually a fashion designer yet.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got style.” Thabang made an exaggerated display of looking at her clothes. She was wearing a long black woollen dress with a leather sash at her waist and matching leather boots. “You look beautiful. This is what I want Chloe to look like.”

  Mpho couldn’t help but be excited at the chance of making a dress for an international jazz singer. “Yeah . . . okay. So how do we do this?”

  “Could you come by my office today? Maybe around lunchtime? I’ll get Chloe there so that you two can talk.”

  Mpho remembered she’d promised Marika to help her go clothes shopping at lunch. “How about a bit later, about two?”

  “That sounds fine.” Thabang handed her an expensive-looking engraved business card. “The physical address is on the back. We’re in Auckland Park.”

  “Okay, see you then.”

  Only when Mpho was down the road and she could hear Thabang speaking with his mother did she finally exhale. She could do this, she told herself. She could be professional. She could go to his office and see his artist and design a dress. This was part of what she would do as a fashion designer. It didn’t mean they were together, it didn’t mean she would still hold on to her dreams of being with Thabang. That’s not what it meant, it was only business. Business. But still she wondered why she was so excited and why she couldn’t stop feeling his hand on her shoulder where he had touched her while they were talking.

  * * *

  Marika came out of the dressing room and for a moment Mpho didn’t recognise her. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “You look like a supermodel.”

  Her friend was wearing narrow-legged Levis tucked into high-heeled leather boots and a low-cut light-blue T-shirt with a camel-coloured short leather jacket. Her blonde hair was let loose from the usual band that held it back from her face and it draped over her shoulders.

  Marika said shyly, “I look pretty good, heh?”

  “You look incredible. Ishmael is going to go wild when he sees you. God, I can’t believe how great you look! You have got to get rid of all of those Rustenburg farm clothes! This is definitely the look for you. Every hot guy in Joburg is going to be running after you.”

  “Except the ones running after you,” Marika joked. She was looking at herself in the full-length mirror and smiling at her reflection. Mpho could see her gain confidence as she moved back and forth. That’s what Mpho found so magical about clothes. They helped people to see who they could be. The right clothes gave a person confidence, and with confidence every problem became a challenge that only needed a little effort to overcome.

  Marika sat down on the leather-covered bench next to Mpho. “I told Ishmael I wanted to wait to get married.”

  “So what did he say?”

  “He said fine, as long as he can meet my family. He just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t realise that as soon as he meets them, they’ll take me away. I know that.” The Marika of a few moments ago was slipping away.

  Mpho grabbed her friend by the hand and pulled her back to the mirror. “Look at that young woman.” Marika hesitantly raised her eyes. “That woman is not a child. She can make her own decisions. If you love an Indian man, then your parents must just accept that. I mean, this is the new South Africa; I don’t even think it’s legal to have those kinds of thoughts anymore. They could go to jail.”

  Marika laughed. “Maybe . . .”

  “I’m sure of it. You love Ishmael and he adores you, and one day you’ll get married. Your family will just have to get used to it, no matter what their issues are.”

  “Okay . . . yes . . . You’re right. With this new me, I think I can do it. I think I can tell them the truth. I might even tell them I don’t want to be an accountant.”

  “Now you’re on the right track,” Mpho encouraged her friend. Her cellphone rang and she looked down. It was an SMS from Thabang: Are you coming?

  She checked the time and it was a quarter to two. “Oh damn, I’m late!”

  “Late for what?”

  “Meeting Thabang.”

  “I thought you said it was over.”

  Mpho was frantically gathering up her handbag and backpack. “It is over. I’m just meeting him in his office; it’s business. I need to run. Buy everything you’re wearing! You look fantastic. I’ll call you later!”

  Mpho ran out of the shop and into the mall. She weaved and dodged through the meandering hordes and managed to get a taxi as soon as she stepped out of the front doors. She checked her phone for the time. She’d be about fifteen minutes late if the taxi driver knew how to drive.

  “Listen, I have an extra twenty rand if you can get me there as fast as possible.”

  “No problem,” the taxi man said.

  He must have really wanted that extra money because for most of the trip Mpho kept her eyes closed. Red traffic lights and hesitant pedestrians were no obstacles for this driver. He knew shortcuts she didn’t even know existed. She nearly fell out of the taxi in relief just to be alive once they arrived. After paying him and making her way up to the top floor in the lift, she realised she would end up being only ten minutes late. Still very unprofessional. She felt terrible about that.

  The doors opened to walls of windows, stainless-steel fixtures and red-and-blue geometric print carpeting. It was an office that screamed success: new, young, funky success. A young Xhosa woman with a helpful face sat at the reception desk. “Are you Ms Kgosiemang?”

  Mpho hesitated. She wasn’t usually referred to as Ms Kgosiemang. “Yes . . . yes, I am.”

  “Mr Modise is waiting for you. You can go through. His office is the last door on the left.”

  Mpho headed down the passage. She could hear music coming from some of the doors. She wondered if the recording studios were here as well. She knocked on the heavy oak door at the end. “Tsena!” she heard from behind it.

  She opened and found Thabang and a woman sitting on
sofas in the corner of the spacious office.

  “Oh, Mpho, you’re here,” Thabang said, coming towards her. He took her hand and led her to the woman. “Chloe, this is the talented young fashion designer I told you about, Mpho Kgosiemang.”

  “Lovely to meet you,” Chloe Adams said in a deep, rich tenor.

  Mpho could see that the singer cared little for clothes. She wore a plain black skirt and a black T-shirt with a red jacket over it. Her hair was plaited into thin corn rows Mpho suspected were more for convenience than looks. She was large, but not fat. Somewhere under the bulky clothes a curvaceous figure was hidden. Mpho already had some ideas of where to go for a dress to pull that sensual woman out of her shell of clothes.

  “I have to attend to a few things with my secretary. I’ll leave you two alone to talk,” Thabang said and left the office.

  The women sat back on the sofas. It was a corner of the office with two walls of windows looking out over Joburg.

  “Gosh, this is beautiful. I doubt I’d get any work done in an office like this,” Mpho said.

  “I thought the same thing the first time I came here. So, Thabang says that you two are dating,” Chloe said.

  Mpho was taken aback. Are two dates considered dating nowadays? She was annoyed that Thabang could be so free with information about her. “Well, I don’t know if I’d say that,” she said.

  “Why? He’s beautiful, both inside and out. You caught one of the good ones.”

  “People only let us see the side they want us to know. Most people are very complex, and Thabang is no exception.” Mpho didn’t like the way the conversation was going, she could feel herself getting angry at this man’s assumptions about them, so she quickly changed the subject. “Well, then, what are you thinking of for the dress?”

  “As you’ve probably noticed, I don’t have much of a clue when it comes to fashion. Mostly I just try to look tidy. I was hoping you’d be able to help. I want to look chic and maybe a bit sexy . . . If that’s possible.”

  Mpho laughed. “That definitely is possible. Okay, yeah, I think I have some ideas.” She took out a few drawings that she’d brought with and explained how they could be adapted to get the effect that might work for Chloe: smooth, sexy, jazzy. She also had some fabric samples in her bag. They soon agreed on what to do for the dress and Mpho took out her tape measure and wrote down Chloe’s measurements. “By when do you need the dress?”

  “Not until the month after next, actually. I thought Thabang was in a bit of a hurry when he called me this morning, but this is my first international gig so I thought he knew better.”

  Two months, Mpho thought. Now she knew what this was all about. It was not about a dress or a fashion-challenged jazz singer – this was about Thabang getting her to his office.

  He walked back through the door just as Mpho’s annoyance came to a boil. Chloe stood up. “Okay then, thanks, Thabang. Ke a sepela. I need to get across town; I’m meeting up with the band for a rehearsal. Mpho, fantastic to meet you. Can’t wait to see the dress.”

  She left and Mpho finished packing up her bags, determined not to give Thabang a chance to move the meeting from business to personal.

  “Sounds like the meeting was productive.” He reached for the tape measure on the table, trying to help Mpho pack her things.

  “I’ll get that myself,” Mpho said curtly.

  Thabang raised his hands jokingly. “Okay, sorry. What happened here?”

  Mpho put her bags on the sofa and then looked up. “What happened is that I was brought here under false pretences.”

  “False pretences? I don’t understand.”

  “The event isn’t for two months, so why did you need me here today?”

  “Okay . . . okay . . . You’re right. I wanted to see you and you’ve been dodging me. I was looking for an excuse.”

  “I’ve been avoiding you for a reason and that reason has just been confirmed. I don’t like the way you do things. Jakes told me more about the band and his problems with you and you’re right, he’s not keen on me seeing you. Also, quite frankly, I don’t like the kind of games you play. I told you this morning that I’m preparing for the graduate fashion show. This whole meeting could have happened after that. But no, Thabang must have what Thabang wants! I don’t like the way you do things, Mr Modise. If you’re not honest about something as straightforward as a business meeting, how can I expect you to be honest about anything else?”

  Mpho was furious by the time she finished. Thabang was selfish and controlling. He’d manipulated Jakes and Bongani, maybe he even manipulated Mr Habib – and now he was trying to do the same with her.

  “No, Mpho, you’ve got it all wrong,” Thabang started to explain. “Yes, maybe it was manipulative, because I did want to see you. Like I told you in the morning, you’re all I think about. I couldn’t come up with any other excuse to meet with you, so then I remembered Chloe’s gig. I just needed something, anything to get you here. It’s as simple as that. I was desperate to spend time with you.”

  “That’s just it! I told you I am in over my head with work and yet you think I should just drop everything for you. I told you I can’t be with you now. What part of that didn’t you get?” Mpho picked up her bags and started heading towards the door.

  Thabang grabbed her shoulders to stop her. And even though Mpho knew she shouldn’t, even though she was furious at him for all that he’d done, she let him pull her to him. Her body betrayed her with its excitement as his lips touched hers. The currents that raced through her were lies, she told herself. The weakness washing over her was just an illusion. But as he kissed her, time stopped and her brain ceased to fight.

  Her heart was victorious for seconds that felt like hours. For those moments only the two of them mattered. Jakes was gone. Dresses for jazz divas faded to nothing. Manipulative recording producers and takeaway workers with fashion design dreams were all unimportant bits and pieces in scenes far away. Instead it was just two bodies, two hearts. Feelings and yearnings were all that filled the room, and for those precious seconds everything felt in its rightful place.

  But once Mpho pushed away from him the scene shifted. Now all the problems and obstacles between them, fortified with the anger which took up the place it thought it deserved, lined up at the front of Mpho’s mind. She stood back and took a deep breath.

  “No,” she whispered to the emotions and they slipped away, chastised for their disobedience. And louder, so that Thabang could hear her clearly, she said, “No. I can’t do this. Not now, not ever. You have no respect for my work, and that means you have no respect for me. You are sneaky and manipulative and will go to any lengths to get what you want. I could never care about someone like that. Never.” She headed for the door.

  Thabang watched her, his face showing the pain her words were causing him. “I know you also felt what I did just now. That was no lie. I might have lied to get you here, but there is no way what we are feeling could be a lie. I care about you and I do respect you, despite what you think. You don’t know me at all if that’s what you think of me.”

  Mpho turned around, her face hard and her words even harder, ignoring the damage she was causing. “I know enough about you to know I never want to see you again.” Her whole body was shaking but she managed to get down the passage and into the lift before the tears came.

  Chapter 6

  6

  Two days passed since the meeting at Mmino Productions. Though Mpho left the office confused about her feelings, as time passed she became more resolved in her decision. This time Thabang would not get what he wanted. She would teach him a lesson. It was not okay to manipulate people and steal from them.

  She was still furious and that fury sparked energy in her. Within two days she finished two pieces: the outfit with trousers and the short shweshwe cocktail dress. She was happy with them, though they still needed a few final touches. The evening gown made from Annabella’s fabric was another story.

  Everything
that could go wrong did. The piece of leather she wanted to use for the bodice was too short. She’d been searching for something else, traipsing from one second-hand clothing shop to another but she couldn’t find anything. The drape on the skirt was not working. Because the fabric was so soft and supple, the Chinese collar was not staying up. Mpho had been fighting with it for days.

  There were ten students preparing for the graduate fashion show. The sewing lab was open twenty-four hours a day now, since all of them were under pressure to get their pieces done in time. Though Mpho was struggling, some were worse off than her. At the work station across from hers, Piet January’s designs were in a mess. From the day they’d started the programme, he hadn’t deviated from his obsession with the American West. He had been working on a two-piece with a vest and chaps for more than a month. Now he was frantically trying to come up with his other two designs.

  “I am in serious shit, Mpho,” Piet said, looking up at her from behind the sewing machine. “Nothing is working here.”

  “Maybe you need to get some fresh air. Think about something else. Did you sleep here last night?”

  “Yeah . . . Can you believe it?” The door opened and Piet turned. “Eish! It’s the witch. Watch out.”

  Mpho looked across the room and saw their lecturer and the organiser of the graduate show, Clara Bennet, coming their way. Ms Bennet liked sleek and sharp designs; Coco Chanel was her idol. She never liked anything Mpho did, and with Piet it was even worse.

  “Are you the only two in here?” the lecturer asked. Her nose levelled a fraction higher as if their designs gave off a stench she could only barely tolerate.

  “Yes,” Mpho answered since Piet had gone back to his drawings as if his life depended on it.

  Ms Bennet stood with her hands on her hips, staring at Mpho’s two-piece and the short cocktail dress. “So this is what you have?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” Mpho answered in a small voice.

  “Well, you seem determined to stick to your style, I’ll give you that. The question remains, will anyone ever be interested in them?” She fingered the cloth of Mpho’s evening gown that laid spread out on her cutting table. Mpho had taken the skirt apart yet again in an effort to get the drape exactly as she wanted it. “A shame what you’ve done to this beautiful fabric.”