“I grew up in Pinetown. You know what happened last week, in the street where I lived? A baby girl, four months old, was killed by a rat. Killed. By a rat.”

Gabe looked suitably horrified.

“The city refuses to collect the trash so the bloody rats are everywhere. They say the shack dwellers are ‘illegals’ and not entitled to services. As if we choose to live that way. Well, it’s not happening to my child. No way. I’m getting out.”

By pooling his money with Dia, Gabe was at last able to afford to move out of his single room. Together the two men rented a minuscule two-bedroom apartment downtown. It was a shoe box, but it felt like the Ritz.

“You know what we should do?” Gabe emerged from his first hot shower in a year and a half to find Dia watching cricket on their secondhand TV. “We should go into business for ourselves, in Pinetown. That’s the problem in South Africa. There are shantytowns and mansions, but nothing in between. Low-cost, cooperative housing my friend. It’s the future.”

Dia nodded absently. “Fine. But you know what we should do first?”

“What?”

“Get laid.”

Gabe hadn’t had a woman since Ruby. Alcohol had deadened his libido. Since he gave up drinking, he’d begun, slowly, to notice women again. But he was too poor, and too exhausted, to spare much thought for dating. Cruising the bars of the Victoria and Albert Waterfront with Dia, watching the girls in their miniskirts and heels dolled up for a night out, Gabe felt like a tortoise emerging from hibernation. His first few attempts to chat up women were met with blunt rejection.

Gabe couldn’t understand it. He’d always found flirting so easy.

“It’s because you’re with me,” Dia told him. “Women don’t trust a white guy who hangs out with a native.”

“A native?” Gabe laughed. “Come on, Dia. Apartheid’s been over for years.”

Dia raised an eyebrow. “Really? Where have you been the past two years, brother? In a cave?”

He was right. Glancing around, Gabe saw that none of the groups hanging around the Waterfront were of mixed race. Whites and blacks might frequent the same stores and bars, but they each stuck with their own. Gabe thought of his ancestor Jamie McGregor and his lifelong friendship with Banda, a native revolutionary. A hundred and fifty years had passed since those days. But how much has really changed?

Happily, Dia was not in the mood for philosophizing. “Check out that honey standing by the fountain.” He pointed out a tall, slender black girl in tight jeans and a sequined vest. When she looked up and saw him staring, she smiled.

Dia grinned at Gabe. “You’re on your own, my friend. Don’t wait up.”

The black girl’s name was Lefu. Less than a year later, Dia married her.

“Quit complaining,” Dia told Gabe as he taped up the last of his boxes. He and Lefu were moving into their own place a few blocks away. “Now your crazy white women can make as much noise as they like through the walls.”

Gabe would miss Dia. But it was true, he could use the privacy. It hadn’t taken him long to rediscover his magic touch when it came to women. Cape Town, he quickly learned, was a mecca for Eastern European models. Girls flocked to join the hot new agencies-Faces, Infinity, Max, Outlaws-taking advantage of South Africa’s year-round sunshine and perfect photographic conditions. Gabe McGregor made it his personal mission-more like his Christian duty-to ensure that the poor things didn’t get too homesick.

“I’m providing a free service,” he told an envious Dia and disapproving Lefu as yet another Amazonian Czech breezed out of the apartment in hot pants. “Someone has to make the poor loves feel welcome.”

Now that Gabe had finally been promoted to foreman, he was working shorter hours and earning good money. He’d already repaid Angus Frazer and everyone who’d loaned him money for his appeal. On his thirty-fourth birthday, he put in a call to Marshall Gresham. Marshall had been released from Wormwood Scrubs the previous Christmas and was now living in splendor in a spanking-new mansion outside Basildon.

Marshall said: “I thought you’d done a runner.”

It was a joke, but Gabe was horrified.

“I would never do that. It took me a wee bit longer than I expected to raise the money, that’s all. But I’ve got it, every penny. Where should I send the check?”

“Nowhere.”

Gabe was confused.

Marshall said: “I told you five years ago, didn’t I? That money’s an investment. What I want to know is when are you going to get off your lazy Scottish arse and start a new company?”

Gabe tried not to show how touched he was.

“Even after what happened? You’d still trust me?”

“’Course I trust you, you wanker. Just don’t take on any more dodgy partners.”

“Ah. About partners.”

Gabe told Marshall about Dia and their plans to develop low-income housing close to the impoverished Pinetown and Kennedy Road areas. Marshall was skeptical.

“Your plan sounds fine. But I don’t understand why you need this black fella. What does he bring to the party?”

“He grew up in Pinetown. He knows the area far better than I do. Plus, ninety-eight percent of the population in these dumps is black. I need a black face on the team if I’m going to get the locals to trust me.”

Gabe didn’t add that Dia’s friendship meant more to him than any business. That even if it meant returning Marshall’s investment, he would never leave Dia in the lurch. Luckily he didn’t have to.

“Fine. You know what you’re doing. Call me once you’ve doubled my money.”

Gabe laughed. “I will.”

He was back in business.

Gabe and Dia called their new company Phoenix, because it had risen from the ashes of their old lives.

At first, everyone thought they were crazy. Fellow developers laughed in Gabe’s face when he told him Phoenix’s business plan.

“You’re out of your mind. None of the shack dwellers can afford a home. And anyone who can afford one isn’t going to want to live within twenty miles of those areas.”

Others went even further.

“You go home at night, the kaffirs’ll torch the place. Those shantytown kids have got nothing better to do. Who d’you think’s going to insure you in Pinetown?”

As it turned out, insurance was a problem. None of the blue-chip firms would give Phoenix the time of day. Just when Gabe was starting to give up hope, Lefu came to the rescue, introducing Dia to a boyfriend of one of her cousins who worked for an all-black building insurance agency in Johannesburg.

“The premiums are high.” Dia handed Gabe the quote.

“High?” Gabe read the number and felt faint. “This guy must have been high when he came up with this rate. Tell him we’ll pay half.”

“Gabe.”

“All right, two-thirds.”

“Gabriel.”

“What?”

“It’s our only option. He’s doing this as a favor to Lefu. As a friend.”

“With friends like him, who needs enemies?” Gabe grumbled.

They paid the full rate.

By the end of their first year, Phoenix was 700,000 rand in the red. They had built thirty small, simple prefab houses with running water and electricity and sold none. Gabe lost fifteen pounds and took up smoking. Dia, with one baby at home and a second on the way, remained inexplicably upbeat.

“They’ll sell. I’m working on it. Give me time.”

Gabe had worked out a financial model for shared ownership that he knew a number of the shanty families could afford. The problem was that none of them believed it.

“You have to understand,” Dia explained. “These people have been lied to by white men their entire lives. Many of them think it was white doctors who first spread AIDS here.”

“But that’s ridiculous.”

“Not to them. They think you’re trying to steal their money. The idea that they could afford a home-never mind a home with water and a roof that doesn’t leak-it’s totally alien to them. You may as well tell them you’ve found a way for them to live forever, or that you can turn horse manure into gold.”