"It's in the drains," I said, flatly.

"I thought we'd already established that."

"I hate the drains." Call it the contempt of familiarity. You'd be surprised how many lost things migrate to the drains.

"Well pardon me, Little Miss Hygiene," Mrs Luditsky snapped, although the impact was diminished by her inability to twitch a facial muscle. "Do you want the job or not?"

Of course I did. Which is how I got a look-in to Mrs Luditsky's purse for a R500 deposit. Another R500 to be paid on delivery. And how I found myself shin-deep in shit in the stormwater drains beneath Killarney Mall. Not actual shit, at least, because the sewage runs through a different system, but years of musty rainwater and trash and rot and dead rats and used condoms make up their own signature fragrance.

I swear I can still detect a hint of it underneath the bleach. Was it worth it for R1000? Not even close. But the problem with being mashavi is that it's not so much a job as a vocation. You don't get to choose the ghosts that attach themselves to you. Or the things they bring with them.

I drop off a set of keys at the Talk-Talk phone shop, or rather the small flat above the shuttered store. The owner is Cameroonian and so grateful to be able to open up shop this morning that he promises me a discount on airtime as a bonus. A toddler dressed in a pink fluffy bear suit peeks out between his legs and reaches for them with pudgy grasping fingers. The same one, I'm guessing, who was chewing on the keys in her pram before gleefully tossing them into the rush-hour traffic. That's worth fifty bucks. And it's more in line with my usual hustle. In my experience, the Mrs Luditskys of the world are few and far between.

I walk up on Empire through Parktown past the old Johannesburg College of Education, attracting a few aggressive hoots from passing cars. I give them the finger. Not my fault if they're so cloistered in suburbia that they don't get to see zoos. At least Killarney isn't a gated community. Yet.