“Too much vegan food!” Luvo counters. “We evolved these big, beautiful brains of ours thanks to our animal protein–eating ways! Too many self-righteous vegans.”

“Too many oblivious meat-eaters!” Nats retorts.

“Gasp,” Luvo says, like that, the whole word. “I’ll have you know I only eat lab grown, cruelty-free.”

“Guys!” Mel tries to interrupt. “I’m trying—”

“Too many drunk and feisty students at four p.m. on a Friday afternoon,” Nats says.

“Hey, we are not the bad guys here,” Zukiswa jumps in. She’s a third-year medical student, which means they’re always pestering her to test their party drugs or get them Adderall, to which she snarks that she doesn’t ask them for freebies. “How about gentrification? That’s the problem, this influx of hipster idiots,” she snarls at a white guy with arms full of old-fashioned tattoos and his long hair piled on his head. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, mustache-wad!”

Nats chips in, “Dude. I think that’s the owner of the restaurant. Or former owner.”

“Still a mustache-wad, babes,” Zuks mutters.

“There’s a new owner? Since when?” Luvo asks.

“It’s changed hands a couple of times,” Natalie reassures him. “Hang on. Is that the problem with Obs, the lack of internal consistency?”

“’S related,” Mel slurs. “Would you let me talk?”

She’s already quite drunk, Nats realizes, or it’s that dank cheese they smoked, stealthily and huddled up in Zukiswa’s room at Lilian Ngoyi res overlooking the Baxter theater, breathing out the window, because even though cannabis is technically legal, smoking in the university residences is definitely not.

“The problem . . . ,” Mel continues, compensating by overenunciating, “the problem with the previously artsy, boho-as-fuck suburb of Observatory, Cape Town, ZA, is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell the legitimate homeless from the barefoot anarcho-cryptocurrency-tranceheads who haven’t come down from AfrikaBurn yet.”

They sit with that for a second, and then Luvo sniffs. “I still maintain it’s the smell of urine.”

“Speaking of urine . . .” Mel raises her eyebrows, an effect lost behind her heart-shaped sunglasses.

“Oh no.” Zukiswa rubs at her shaved head. “I do not want to hear about your Tuesday man. You could not pay me enough, babes. For any of it. I don’t know how you guys do it.”

“That’s not the hard part,” Nats teases.

“I don’t want to hear about the hard parts either!” She covers her ears. “La-la-la-la, I can’t hear you.”

“No, man.” Luvo elbows her gently. “She means Nats’s big acting job.”

“Please. They’re all acting jobs, even the radio commercials,” Nats says.

“Ohhhhhhh.” Zukiswa leans forward on her elbows on the table. “Yeah, that I want to hear about. Tell me everything, dahling. And I do mean everything. All the dirt.”

Nats shrugs. “What do you want to know?”

“Can you get me a gig?” Luvo says, batting his lashes.