The Eternal Audience of One by Rémy Ngamije

Author:Rémy Ngamije
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781928337966
Publisher: Jacana Media

XVIII

Facts, once they are so confirmed, do not need human faith to sustain them. They simply are. The only option left to a person is whether to live in deliberate ignorance of them or not. Facts do not need a group of friends out in Cape Town to feed their egos or to make them feel better. They only demand that the group decides what they will do when they are faced with them.

Here is the first fact.

Outside Avec there is a line of club-goers waiting to enter. Some shiver from the excitement of entering Avec from the first time. Some are regulars. When the baseline of a song reverberates through the walls the pulses of those on the outside thump a little faster with desperation to be on the dance floor. There is a wiggling of hips and tap-tap-tapping of feet on the pavement. Since it is late and the club’s hottest hours are approaching, the line to get inside Avec snakes from the door and around the corner into Long Street. Shapely legs, framed between figure-hugging skirts and dresses, and high heels step forward inch by inch like a flamboyance of flamingoes performing a choreographed dance on a lake surface. Ill-fitting loafers, unpolished brogues, and an assortment of high-top sneakers scuff the sidewalk or break into impromptu dancing when a familiar tune is heard. At the back, the line grows longer as more people turn up. At the front of the line people are trickled past the red rope controlled by three pale, giant bouncers in black. One is seated by the door on a high bar stool; the other two have planted themselves on either side of the entrance. They pay more attention to the posteriors of passing women than they do to the identification cards handed to them. The one sitting down is Romeo. The shark smile which serrates his face when a trio of women with stilt-high heels approach is hungry. He lifts the rope. They approach and hug him and exchange words before they enter Avec, making the short climb to the hostess’s desk.

The next group approaches for judgement. They are five male twenty-somethings, fashionably dressed in the way that anyone with enough money looks trendy when they simply purchase everything the mannequin is wearing. They are dismissed with a flick of his head. It is not clear what criteria they have failed to meet. The dismissed group attempts to lodge an appeal. Romeo looks at them impassively. He waves them away and calls the next group. The rejected now stand in the way of prospective entrants. Romeo looks at the two towers next to the door. One of them unfolds his arms. The group moves off. When they are further away the one who did the objecting shouts out, “Fuck you, Romeo! Racist faggot!”

Romeo shrugs. He turns his attention back to the supplicants before him – three women – who satisfy some internal admission criteria. Two of the women hug him, and then introduce the third.

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