Zoo City

Zinzi wakes up after a night of doing drugs, drinking, and having sex with the drug dealer from Counter Rev. She kicks him out. Sloth, angry at Zinzi’s behavior, refuses to leave his cupboard. When Zinzi comes near him, he scratches her cheek with his claws: “I think I’ve been here before. Rock fucking bottom” (273).

Zinzi goes to a meeting for addicts, and the meeting is joined by visitors from Haven including Naisenya. Naisenya tells Zinzi that this is where Songweza met Jabu. He suddenly disappeared, which Naisenya finds suspicious.

Armed with this information, Zinzi calls Songweza, who tells her that after their latest album drops, she and S’bu plan to split up and go solo. Odi says Jabu was cheating on her. Zinzi asks Song if she’s back on her medication, and Song says she’s taking something new: “Misty-pisty-something-something” (277). Zinzi tells Song to call if she needs help. Because Song seems out of it, Zinzi asks to speak to her brother or Des. Song says Des is gone and puts Arno on the line instead. Arno says that Des and Mrs. Luthuli left for the funeral of a cousin who hung himself, probably because he had AIDS. Zinzi asks Arno to find out what medication Song is taking, and he reads the label: Midazolam. Zinzi tells him that if something happens, he should call her before he calls Odi. And then call the cops.

The next day, Zinzi visits Odi’s and observes that his “black tumor” is “thicker and squirmier than ever” (280). She confronts Odi with her suspicions: Odi has been sleeping with Songweza as well as smuggling drugs through his club. She asks him if drug smuggling was what got him in trouble at Bass Station, and she suggests that Odi may have had Ronaldo and Jabu killed. She threatens to report him to her “friend,” Inspector Tshabhala, unless she is paid. When Odi asks if Zinzi is frightened that he’ll take a hit out on her, she tells him she has nothing left to lose. She collects her payment and leaves.

With the money from Odi, Zinzi finally pays off her debt to Vuyo. She sets up an auto-reply to anyone who has responded to her phishing emails, letting them know they have been scammed. She leaves Gio’s email as the contact for any questions or concerns. One email is undeliverable; it comes from “no-one” and reads, “I danced until my feet broke off. Until my shoes turned red with blood. I always wanted to be a girl in a storybook” (288).

Zinzi starts to wonder about the cryptic messages she has been receiving, so she takes her laptop to a local print shop and has them printed out. When she removes the pages from the bag, Sloth reacts strongly, trying to bat the pages out of her hand before running away. She wonders if it’s bad muti and if the pages are possessed.

Zinzi douses the pages with the concoction she received from Ndebele as well as a drop of Sloth’s blood. When she lights them on fire, flames leap up, and although Zinzi beats them down with her jacket, she chokes on the smoke. She has another vision and sees a series of images, including rolling sand dunes; a headless king, wearing the same T-shirt that Odi wore when they last met, who says “take me to your spider den” (290); circling birds, a scene from Soylent Green, and a barbed-wire fence with a sign that says trespassers will be “mutilated”; a broken fingernail near the word “Kotze,” which is stenciled on the curb; a shopping trolley full of plastic forks that catches on fire; and a torrent of feathers with red globs of flesh on their ends.