“So how’s the guy from the elevator?” Elizabeth asked.

Marea looked confused.

“Elevator? At your flat?” Elizabeth tried again. “Potential soul mate?”

“Oh yeah. Okay.” Marea remembered. “Married. Long distance relationship, she works in Cape Town.”

When Marea pitched up at Elizabeth’s office with two burgers for lunch, she noticed the queen of hearts was no longer hanging from her friend’s ear and suspected as much. “Too bad,” she said.

“He wasn’t really my type. Too conservative. I think he even goes to church. Would have been a disaster.” She took a bite of her burger. “And you and the dog man?”

“The dog man is actually the boxing man,” Elizabeth said.

Marea set the burger down and pushed back one of her orange braids. Today orange was the theme: long orange braids, orange dress with a huge red belt pulled tight at her waist, orange fishnets and her clunky black boots. “See? Dogs, boxing… you two are perfect together, next he’ll be loving Italian food and I’ll have to go searching for a bridesmaid dress.”

Elizabeth smiled. “He took me to an Italian restaurant!”

“That’s it then! Sounds like a match made in heaven. I love him already. When do I meet him?”

“Maybe we could do a double date.”

“And who do I get? Things are looking bleak on that front. Barren. A desert. I’m dying of thirst.”

“I heard Zakes and the nurse split up. Maybe I could invite him…”

“Mr Man? You know I’m over him. So over him.” Marea shook her head. “Nope. Done.”

Elizabeth kept quiet and sipped her milkshake. She knew Marea better than Marea apparently knew herself. Marea was not over Zakes, far from it. “We’ll just do casual. Like bowling, I saw an ad for a bowling place over in Randburg. It will just be friends going out, nothing else. Not even a date really. Just a chance for my friends to get to know Realeboga.”

Marea considered it. “Yeah okay, only because I want to meet Mr Dogman. You know I can’t bowl right?”

“Who can? It’s for fun. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”

*****

Marea left and Elizabeth got back to work on her column. She was listening to the tape of an interview she did with Gimba Kwabizani, the current IBA heavyweight champion. He was still going on about how he wanted to fight Kabelo “Hitman” Matlho. Elizabeth had tried to find Kabelo Matlho but he seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. That’d been sort of the theme of his career in any case, out of the dark he appeared, on a fluke he got to fight the titleholder. And another fluke and he won the belt and then he disappeared forever. He’d had a few amateur fights before the title fight but no one had footage of them. Then out of nowhere he appeared to fight the South African heavyweight champion. He won and his manager, Felix Jaconelli, managed to line up a chance for the IBF belt. He won that too, took the purse, and disappeared. Never fought again. Seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. All very mysterious.

Elizabeth tried to get him through Felix Jaconelli, his manager, but he wouldn’t take her calls. His PA always said he was out of the business and knows nothing about the whereabouts of Kabelo Matlho. In interviews with other journalists, when he was pushed, he liked to brag that the Hitman could beat any heavyweight boxer in the world, any time. Elizabeth wanted him to prove it. But it was a dead end. Still Kwabizani had a point, he couldn’t be considered the real SA heavyweight champ without beating the Hitman. But it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. Elizabeth tried to taunt the Hitman and Felix through her column but it didn’t seem to be working.

The mystery of what happened to the Hitman haunted Elizabeth though. Why would a boxer at the top of his game just stop? In 200, South Africa was loved by the world over the new Rainbow Nation, and here was a powerful, black boxer who could have made a huge international name for himself but instead chooses to disappear. It was crazy and for some reason Elizabeth couldn’t let the mystery go. If she couldn’t find him, she’d irritate him enough to come out of retirement she hoped.

She added the headline to her column-Is the Hitman a Chicken?- to her column and sent it off to her editor. Then she packed up her laptop and headed to collect Chompie for dog school.

*****

Elizabeth arrived just in time for class. She smiled when she saw Realeboga and Bessie waiting for them outside in the parking lot. Elizabeth opened the car door to let the impatient Chompie out and he took off for his beloved Bessie. She locked up the car and went to Realeboga. It was the first time they’d seen each other since dinner on Saturday. In the end, she couldn’t have worried about him expecting her to go to bed with him on the first date. He never even mentioned it, he took her straight home after showing her his gym. The perfect gentleman as she should have expected. Which was good because the way Elizabeth had been feeling, she might have easily jumped into bed with him if he’d offered, the attraction was that strong.

“Hi Elizabeth,” he said then took her in his arms and kissed her. And there was the spark of yearning again. “How was your day?”

“Good, better seeing you now,” she said smiling. “Busy day at work.”

“Do you ever see that EB Diseko?”

“Um… yeah, sometimes. Why?”

“I just don’t get this who Hitman obsession he’s got. Why can’t he leave the guy alone? Even Kwabizani. Why can’t he just accept he’s the champ and move on? I think it’s nonsense.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Elizabeth didn’t want to fight with Realeboga about boxing. She didn’t want to fight with him about anything actually.

***

Tell us what you think: Do you think there is something in Realeboga that might come up and really disappoint or even hurt Elizabeth?