Chapter 2

I WAS LOST in limbo, renting out rooms in the house my parents left for me to college students while I occupied the outside room to keep the cash flow when Rob came back to town, he helped get back on my feet. After my rehabilitation he helped me reconnected with my friends, and we started making music again and somehow we became the most recommended Jazz Band in the Province.
Before Rob came back to town, the last time I saw Rob was when I was in Grade 11, the year I was caught with his bags of weed that he sold to kids at my school. It was the incidence that got me disqualified, and gave my father a heart attack. Rob blamed himself for my fathers death and me getting disqualified as much as I blamed myself, but there was nothing we could do to fix the past.
Later that year Rob just left town without telling anyone only to find out the police were looking for him. Apparently, he was involved in a heist that went wrong and the police came to my house and asked my mother if they can take me in for questioning, but I didn't know anything. My mother looked at me with a broken heart that day, like I was not myself anymore and that is when I understood why my parents never liked him. He was a troublemaker, and I usually tagged along with him.
After interrogation I realised Rob was very discreet especially about how he always had so much money, but I never took him for the heist type. I remember one broke summer during my foster days; we went to the Lephalale Sports Club. After the exhausting dives and drags in the blue pool, we were very hungry. I watched Rob enter the local supermarket and walked out with a bunch of snacks he didnt even pay for. It was the first supermarket in our town, located next to Video World back then videos tapes were a blessing, before the Block Buster days; those times most supermarkets did not have surveillance, which made it a lot easier for Rob to just walk out with whatever he wanted.
Now the supermarket area was reconstructed, which was a flexible shopping complex with a flamed grilled chicken Restaurant at the far end, getting more customers than the Chinese foods Restaurant next door, called The Great Wall restaurant. And what used to be Video World was an antique shop, where I sold my Maxwell guitar.
Rob stole it back for me; which was why his return was a blessing to me, because things got better from me. We started off sharing a two-bedroom flat at the stylish homey Bossier Court accommodation building which were a home for probably a quarter of the miners who were brought on contract to build a second Coal Mine Power Station in our town. It came to a point where he insisted on paying the rent for the both of us.
When I asked him where he gets all his money, he told me about crypto currency, something about Bit coins and commodities; in short, he was a trader and he was pretty damn good at it. He said trading was why he could buy himself a Saxophone and a classic Toyota corolla which was authorized to transport people anywhere around town; it also serviced the car and paid the driver, he said. Every time when we'd come back from rehearsal, Rob would show me all his trades that he opened in the morning which were always in profits, and then he would say dinner is on him because he was craving pizza. It was just like back in the foster home days, when my brother would look out for me, excluding the days we got in trouble together. What topped it up was that he always knew how to inspire me.