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was wipe dew off second-hand cars in a lot in Kenilworth. I’ve worked at a crystal shop, I’ve worked at a kennel, I’ve taken tickets at a movie house, I’ve raked leaves out the driveway and into piles on the lawn outside a spa, and still, nothing’s ever been worse than selling Golden Products door to door with my dad. That was the first and I had to do it in the school holidays and—with the way stuff turned out for him and me—sometimes I worry that experience might’ve killed off my work ethic forever.
    I tried three places that day.
    A cool-looking bar right in the village, right in the heart there with the cobblestones and the gaslights, but they’d already found somebody. The library, but it turned out they were looking for someone who’d actually studied librarianship—apparently that’s a thing, it takes a couple of years and you have to do it at a university. A beauty place that was looking for someone to answer the phone and make bookings, but they told me they wanted a woman. They actually thought I was joking when I went in and asked.
    And ja, sure, it was only three places—but I let it get to me that they all said no.
    I felt betrayed, and what I did about it is I went back to the bar that couldn’t give me a job and I nearly, nearly went in—probably just to order a line of shots and bomb myself out that way.
    But then across the road, at this new place that called itself The Juicery and that had a sign out front saying MINDFUL BUCKWHEAT PANCAKES R32 , I saw a waiter with blond dreadlocks and fisherman pants walk out from the entrance and go set up an umbrella at a table on the street.
    Bingo
.
    It took a while—I had to order some really expensive coffee—but in the end the guy with the dreadlocks told me about his guy, Bruno, apparently he was the man around Muizenberg and everyone bought from him. He lived in a run-down hotel on the road out to St James—I couldn’t miss it—and I could tell the guys at the door that Carl sent me.
    “Are you Carl?” I asked him.
    “No. I’m Kris,” he said, and we shook hands.
    I left the place and I went away down the street. I had my eyes on my feet but my feet were stepping surely. I didn’t feel any doubt in my mind, and I walked up to the bridge and I crossed Atlantic Road
    Passing people but not really seeing them, I was already wondering what I’d go for if Bruno gave me a choice
    And then all of a sudden there it was—
    It felt like I’d bumped into the sight and it’d winded me—
    This weird piece of industria in the middle of town, it looked like a junkyard but it had government buildings right nearby and flats rising up all around, high flats with balconies full of potted ferns and laundry
    And what kind of junkyard had such awesome shit in it?
    I saw an entire carousel, listing badly, so the horses on one side were kneeling on the ground, I saw little rocket ships for kids to sit inside, the kind that come alive when you put coins in, I saw pieces of track that must’ve been for a rollercoaster, I saw plastic sheets covering other strange shapes, they flapped in the breeze but they were tied and weighted down with bricks, I saw a pile of rusty bumper cars. And then I saw the sign, hanging in front of a little workshop in the back corner of the plot:
    HELLUVA RIDES—FINEST RESTORATION AND MAINTINANCE
    It was the kind of late autumn afternoon that’d make you swear that’s what the weather was like in heaven, always. Where the sun seems like a quality of the air and everything looks polished with amber, and I was looking at the place—it didn’t look like it belonged, it looked like where kids got taken in the Land of Broken Dreams—and I’ve always been drawn to places like that, who knows why, but I’ve always loved it when places are so sad they actually go beyond it, they sort of cross over to being noble.
    I felt like I was getting some kind of message and I made a deal with myself.
    I was only allowed to go find