Chapter 3 - The Tender

PART 3: THE TENDER

The burgundy suit was armour and they both knew it, Thandeka and the mirror.

She did the buttons slowly. Locs down. The good earrings. And from the back of the drawer, the perfume she saved for war — amber and something darker, warm as a struck match. On audit nights she wore nothing but soap, because Patience couldn't afford a signature. Thandeka Mokoena could. Thandeka Mokoena was going to walk into that building through the front entrance, in daylight, wearing her own name, and the building was simply going to have to cope.

Mapule straightened her collar in the Kyalami parking lot like a corner woman sending out a boxer.

"Logs, complaint file, pricing deck." She held the folder against Thandeka's chest until she took it. "And sisi — whatever else is in that building that you're not telling me about. Handle it."

Thandeka didn't ask what she meant. Mapule didn't say. Eleven years of friendship is its own kind of log book.

The 14th-floor boardroom looked different in daylight. Smaller. The long table just a table, the glass just glass, the city below just traffic. She stood at the head of it where the screen glowed with her company's name and did not look at the chairman's chair.

Sandile Khumalo chaired the panel the way some men drive luxury cars — less transport, more announcement.

"Let's not waste the committee's time," he opened, fanning the complaint file like a winning hand. "Four service failures in nine weeks. This is the supplier asking us for three more years."

"Every complaint in that file corresponds to a supervisor log signed off the same night," Thandeka said. "The work was done. I'll table the logs."