Game Control by Lionel Shriver Read Free Book Online Page A

planning had less to do with babies than with vehicles. In every organization she was juggling transport, half its fleet forever broken down. Eleanor hated cars; like telephones, computers and other people, they seemed determined to take advantage. While a Land Rover formally came with her job, she was constantly having to lend it back out. Today a botched backstreet abortion case had turned up in their Mathare North Clinic and hers was the only car available to drive the girl discreetly to Kenyatta Hospital for a D and C. As Director she might have refused, but Eleanor Merritt was not that kind of director. And she hardly wanted to admit to her brand-new staff that she was too frightened to drive to Mathare Valley by herself.
      As Eleanor turned into the slum, a billboard at its entrance advertised VACATIONAL TRAINING FOR YOUTH, like a promotion for holidays in the South Seas at the entrance of Dante's Inferno. Far off to the very horizon quilted cardboard and corrugated tin. The road was lined with purveyors, squatting beside piles of plastic shoes, sacks of dried beans, but these were the high-inventory salesmen. Between them, women balanced four potatoes into a pyramid, stacked five small onions, or fussily rearranged three limes that would not pile. Grimmest of the wares were the fish. Brown and curled, dried in the sun, their stacks resembled thin leather sandals more than food, or even, she thought reluctantly, shit on your shoe.
      ' Mzungu! Mzungu !' The Land Rover attracted attention, and the road had a surface like the moon, so in no time she could barely crawl, surrounded by whooping ragamuffins.
      It was curious, though: these kids seemed so good spirited, rolling cigarette-pack trucks on bottle-cap wheels, twirling Mercedes hubcaps on coat-hangers and throwing shrivelled banana skins at starving goats. On whatever cast-off crusts and sandal-fish they had reproduced a few cells, many of the older ones had grown fetching—the girls, superbly tall, who hid behind their hands; the boys, with taut, hairless chests and supple shoulders, who shot her sly, salacious grins she could not help but return. As Calvin would say: they were too dumb to be miserable. Her mind was developing an echo.
      Even names of hopeless enterprises were buoyant: 'Jolly Inn'; 'Golden Boy Shoeshine'; 'Joystick Hair Salon'. Mangled English worked a peculiar charm: 'Annie Beauty Saloon for Browdry'; 'Happy Valley Studio: Portrats, Photo Alburms, We also sell rekurds'. Transcribed as the words were heard, the phonetics suggested a larger perspective: that what was received was accepted.
      Finally the Land Rover had accumulated so many children that Eleanor ground to a halt. Delicate bips on the horn only drew more urchins to her bumper. She was about to park and proceed on foot when a boy of about sixteen loudly cleared the crowd and motioned her on. He escorted her up the hill.
      With the boy's help, she located the Mathare North Family Planning and Maternity Home, painted in bouncing baby blue, and even more cramped, gungy and obscure than she'd imagined. When she climbed out to thank him, he introduced himself as Peter and begged her to visit his house around the corner. She could not say no. Oh, Calvin, she implored silently. How learning that small word might transform me.
      She left the car keys at the clinic and apprehensively followed her new friend.
      'Don't be afraid,' he kept assuring her, though it was Peter who was shaking. When he led her into his room, he opened the window (a cardboard flap) and left the door (a sheet of tin) propped ajar, observing propriety. Still the room was black, and Peter lit a candle with, requiring dexterity with a glorified toothpick, one Kenyan match.
      The walls shone with glossy photos from Time and Newsweek— soccer players, motor scooters, skyscrapers—so that if it weren't for the glint between the cutouts of winebox cartons, Eleanor could easily imagine she was in the