Zoo City - By Lauren Beukes Page 0,1

He only ever calls me "my love" in Lingala, which makes it easier to disregard. "You making breakfast?"

"Deliveries," I shrug.

"Anything interesting today?" He loves hearing about the things people lose.

"Set of keys. The widow ring."

"Ah, yes. The crazy lady."

"Mrs Luditsky."

"That's right," Benoît says, and repeats himself: "Crazy lady."

"Hustle, my friend. I have to get going."

Benoît pulls a face. "It's so early."

"I'm not kidding."

"All right, all right." He uncocoons himself from the bed, plucks his jeans from the floor and yanks on an old protest t-shirt inherited from Central Methodist's clothing drive.

I fish Mrs Luditsky's ring out of the plastic cup of Jik it's been soaking in overnight to get rid of the clinging eau de drain, and rinse it under a sputtering tap. Platinum with a constellation of sapphires and a narrow grey band running through the centre, only slightly scratched. Even with Sloth's help, it took three hours to find the damn thing.

As soon as I touch it, I feel the tug – the connection running away from me like a thread, stronger when I focus on it. Sloth tightens his grip on my shoulder, his claws digging into my collarbone.

"Easy, tiger," I wince. Maybe it would have been easier to have a tiger. As if any of us gets a choice.

Benoît is already dressed, the Mongoose looping impatient figure eights around his ankles.

"See you later, then?" he says, as I shoo him out the door.

"Maybe." I smile in spite of myself. But when he moves to kiss me, Sloth bats him away with a proprietary arm.

"I don't know who is worse," Benoît complains, ducking. "You, or that monkey."

"Definitely me," I say, locking the door behind him.

The blackened walls of Elysium Heights' stairwell still carry a whiff of the Undertow, like polyester burning in a microwave. The stairway is mummified in yellow police tape and a charm against evidence-tampering, as if the cops are ever going to come back and investigate. A dead zoo in Zoo City is low priority even on a good day. Most of the residents have been forced to use the fire-escape to bypass this floor. But there are faster ways to the ground. I have a talent not just for finding lost things, but shortcuts too.

I duck into number 615, abandoned ever since the fire tore through here, and scramble down through the hole in the floor that drops into 526, which has been gutted by scrap rats who ripped out the floorboards, the pipes, the fittings – anything that could be sold for a hit.

Speaking of which, there is a junkie passed out in the doorway, some dirty furry thing nested against his chest, breathing fast and shallow. My slops crunch on the brittle glitter of a broken lightbulb as I step over him. In my day we smoked crack, or mandrax if you were really trashy. I cross over the walkway that connects to Aurum Place and a functional staircase. Or not so functional. The moment I swing open the double doors to the stairwell and utter darkness, it becomes obvious where the junkie got the bulb.

"Well, isn't this romantic?"

Sloth grunts in response.

"Yeah, you say that now, but remember, I'm taking you with me if I fall," I say, stepping into the darkness.

Sloth drives me like a Zinzi motorbike, his claws clenching, left, right, down, down, down for two storeys to where the bulbs are still intact. It won't be long until they too find a new life as tik pipes, but isn't that the way of the slums? Even the stuff that's nailed down gets repurposed.

After the claustrophobia of the stairwell, it's a relief to hit the street. It's still relatively quiet this early in the morning. A municipal street-cleaning truck chugs up ahead, blasting the tarmac with a sheet of water to wash away the transgressions of the night. One of the transgressions in question dances back to avoid being sprayed, nearly stepping on the scruffy Sparrow hopping around between her high heels.

Seeing me, she pulls her denim jacket closed over her naked breasts, too quickly for me to figure out if they're hormone-induced or magic. As we pass, I can feel the filmy cling of a dozen strands of lost things from the boygirl, like brushing against the tendrils of an anemone. I try not to look. But I pick up blurred impressions anyway, like an out-of-focus photograph. I get snatches of a gold cigarette case, or maybe it's a business-card holder, a mostly empty plastic bankie of brown