Episode 19: The Rich, The Poor, The Miserable Love.

ENJOY the CONTINUATION!

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“Thou shalt not kill; neither shalt thou commit adultery; neither shalt thou steal; neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor; neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife; neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbour’s,” said a preacher on Mummy Angela’s radio. I reached for the radio and flicked its power off; it wasn’t that appealing to listen to talks of neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife when one was lying next to one.

No human is entirely trustworthy. I’ve seen holy men corrupted by the outline of nipples beneath light gowns, and instead of saying “devil is a liar,” they say “devil is a lawyer.” And I’ve seen bad men, complicated beyond the concept of redemption, saved by love. Anybody can come out and declare who he is. That is who he thinks he is, not necessarily who he really is. We do not know ourselves; you do not know you can’t be corrupted by excesses until you’re given a seat of power; can’t be consumed by the love of sex until you lay with a stripper. People change from time to time though, genuinely. And I swear to God, I never thought I could lie unclad with Mummy Angela in my lifetime, in her room, comfortably, wanting more. How could I have ever imagined that? Indeed, I did not know myself.

There is a quiet voice in every man. You can’t hear it when you’re young. And you’d even be lucky to be aware that such voice exists at all, because that is when you start to look for it by opening your inner ears and finally come in contact with your real self, free from the doctrines of religion, fear of hell, and wishes of flesh. You hear what you truly want; it’s not very likely you hear it accurately though; but I tell you, people that heard it are millionaires today. They know what they truly want in life and are passionately immersed in its pursuit; some are pastors now, some are prostitutes, some are teachers, some are bank robbers, some are artistes, some are embezzling countries’ monies. Whoever they are, wherever they are; they are where they want to be and although may not be in the society’s good definitions, they are fulfilled and do not regret what they do.

Who was I? I guess I was a cheerful giver, and even though I did not have money, I gave what I had to someone who desperately needed it.

“Mummy Angela, we didn’t use condom,” I mumbled to the head on my chest.
“Hum?”
“Condom, we didn’t use any,” I repeated.
“Ah… don’t worry, I no get disease.”
“Hugh… I’m not talking about that.”
“But wha… oookay, don’t worry, I no go carry belle for you.”

She said that tiredly, or should I have said lazily? And that scared me more. I had supplied enough liquid to build a duplex in that semi-aquatic ecosystem of hers and it wouldn’t just dry off, would it?

“But how can you be so sure you won’t? Please, I don’t—I don’t just—”
“Relax, I no go make that kind mistake… again.”

That “again” came as an echo behind a loud assertion, quietest but deepest. Her hands moved lazily about my face, neck and down to my chest and she seemed very calm against my phobia of Mary-like complication.

“Okay, if you say so,” I growled.

She rose off my chest to a sitting position and then looked at me in furrowed brows. I thought she was going to hammer on her assertion that I shouldn’t be scared of some pregnancy issue but she only asked if I wanted some ointment rubbed on my shoulder.

“Ah, no, I doubt I want any liniment on this shoulder now, I still think there’s a fracture the doctors didn’t see there. It’s so sore.”

She lurched out of bed, dragging my attention after her posterior architecture which was almost like that of Nicki Minaj’s if not that hers sagged like an overloaded trunk of some hardy country car.

“Make I soak corn flakes for you? Abi you no go take your drugs?” she asked as she bounced towards her provision trolley.

I begged her to come back to bed and ignore the corn flakes for a moment; I was slain in my genital’s coup d’état and I had to hug the demise. Will you stop your condemnation of my personality now? I thought I said I was a cheerful giver.

We were in the middle of this carnivorous intimacy when there came this light knock on the door and someone announced, “Mama Angela, your husband don come o.”

I never knew I could lose my erection that quickly. Her husband don come?

“Your husband?” I asked through writhing lips.

She looked at me briefly in gaping mouth but no response. At that moment, I was supposed to be jumping up and down in confusion but I only groped about fruitlessly for my shorts and singlet, it was like I was destined to be beaten to death that week and there was no escaping it. I stood behind Mummy Angela at the door, showering in sudden perspiration, what were we to expect?

“Who?” Mummy Angela asked in her best pretentious way of sounding like she was not bemused.

Then the informer woman at the other side of the door said, “The man wey dey sell meat to you. He dey outside o. Make he stay abi make he dey go?”

Holy crap! The man who sells beef? Ah, God punish that stupid woman! How scared she made me! Mummy Angela hissed reproachfully before she yelled that she was not buying beef.

“Your husband?” I still repeated the question again, well, I never saw her with any man before; it had always been her daughter and her.
“Na wetin surprise me be that sef, which husband?”

I decided not to poke more around it; it could portray me as jealous of seeing someone else but me playing that role in her life. Whoever Angela’s father was or how he came to be an absent father was none of my business.

I ate the corn flakes after all and we resumed to our intimacy, which during the midnight we stopped and discussed random topics. She was a broken woman, lashed by her youthful exuberance. I was a beaten man, tortured by love. And together, what were we? It took me some time to figure it out though; we were generous neighbors.

I saw nobody from the school; they must have tried calling but not getting through. None of them knew I was kidnapped, I suspected. After retrieving my network lines and buying a new phone, I sought Phillips out.

He operated a betting outlet at Abule Egba. When I got there, I looked opposite to see Mummy Angela’s mother but there were more than two shops there, selling imported fishes. I wouldn’t know who among them Angela’s grandmamma was. If Angela had not returned home, perhaps, I would’ve seen her there, identifiable with my charitable neighbor’s mother.

When Phillips saw me, he didn’t look surprised but his face creased up, and even though I greeted him, he didn’t answer. And it wasn’t long that I got there when he took the back door and the boy working for him told me he had gone out, when I asked. I waited, waited and waited but my old friend did not return. I asked if I could get his number, the boy gave me. I collected the boy’s number too and tipped him. One thing about young boys, all you need to do is include some money tipping and they’ll include “yes sir” in their vocabulary of talking to you.

I was the first to call Aunt Arike and although she was somehow angry at me; she still kind of felt happy to receive my call. She told me she had led some staff members from the school to pass sympathetic time with me but they found a locked door. She said they waited for an hour before they returned to the school and I had murmured, “Not the bastards’ lucky day.”

“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
“Ade, did you just call them bastards?”
“Yes I did, I’ll not pretend to like them. You said I’m the only friend you have there, you didn’t ask about mine. You’re the only friend I also have, and it’s not just that the school’s other members of the staff aren’t my friends, I dislike them too. Don’t ever bring them to where I live again, they’ll start spreading it in the school that I live in a medieval cesspool. I don’t want that.”
“Medieval what did you call it?”
“Medieval cesspool, that’s what someone called my room recently.”
“Oh my…”

I joined her laughter when she wasn’t stopping, I guess I loved that she laughed. I realized how cruel I’ve been to her, avoiding her, indifferent to her thrusts. It was high time I engaged her too, I concluded.

“You know what,” I told her, “I’m resuming to school on Monday and I’m also thinking about passing this weekend with you.”

Her laughter faded off slowly and even though I waited long enough, she didn’t speak. I imagined what expression would be on her face, I really couldn’t tell.

“Hello?”
“Yes?”
“Okay, I thought… so, I’ll come tomorrow, Friday. I’ll leave on Sunday, unless of course you’re not in the mood to let me eat one of your memorable delicacies again.”
Right then, she responded somewhat hesitantly, “It’s okay… it’s okay, you can come. It’s just strange that you… you know… forget it, come.”
“All right then, tomorrow. And… don’t be surprised to see some new plasters on me. I had another accident on a motorcycle last week. I’m healthy now anyways, except for my left shoulder which is still sore somehow. I can lift things with the hand though but it’s kind of sore.”
“The dislocation?”
“Yes, that.”
“Have you got it checked up?”
“Yes, I was told it’s just some muscular reaction to the pressure or so, nothing alarming.”
“All right then, tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorr—wait, when’s the exam beginning?”
“Next week.”
“Next week? This coming week?”
“Yes, Wednesday.”
“Huh… all right, tomorrow.”

I was a liar! I was consistently telling myself it was a matter of time before I forgot Toro totally, that the chapter was closed and I had moved on but I was only lying to myself. I was a kitten that hadn’t eaten, I was bitten and beaten. It’s some funny script God had written, got me involved in cheating and I refused to realize that my ruin was greeting. It was not befitting and I was self-pitying.

After I got off a call with my mum, I went out to my usual field to pretend I was watching the youngsters play football, when I was instead crying tearlessly. At my self-prosecutions, I was not accepting any blame. Aunt Arike, Mary, Kevin, Phillips and everybody made my guilt list except myself. I blamed them for my woes just like Kevin had blamed me for his. When I slept that day, I had a dream that Toro died and Kevin came again, chasing me all about the streets with a shotgun in his hand.

Aunt Arike’s apartment wasn’t much of a domicile for extensive description but she lived in a far more civilized manner with upgraded facilities than I did. While she had a bedroom separately from a living room, I lived in a single room that a critic had described as a medieval cesspool. Kevin was a stupid guy; really, out of all the things he could’ve called my room, medieval cesspool? A room, which I’ve spent a lot of money on when Toro was coming for the first time? What if he had seen it in its previous state?

Aunt Arike lived in a two bedroom flat with a tiny kitchen, tiled floor, pop ceiling, pattern-painted walls in ash and white, a long couch facing a Plasma TV bolted to the wall, no centre table but three wooden stools, a single bathroom and toilet flanked at both sides by the doors to the two rooms in the house. Her room was rugged white despite the tiled floor, a very thick and succulent texture, extremely neat. There was a vanity table and all sorts of women stuffs but no wall photograph or poster except the one of hers, very young in a school uniform, gummed to the right upper corner of the make-up glass. The second room only had a table in it, for iron-pressing of dresses I observed, nothing else save a lot of shoes racked up at a corner in a scruffy mound. She had a lot of books too, mostly novels.

What I paid attention to mostly was her bed. It crossed my mind that that was where we would be doing it over the weekend. That night, we watched TV till 11pm after leaning over semo and fish-saddled vegetable soup on doubled stools before the couch; she had neither a dining table nor dining room. After she packed the plates away, I took my drugs and she watched me. Then without any conversation, we sat back side by side, my own right leg on a stool and we watched some STV program which my mind was far from. When it got very late, with the prayers of a nearby church on vigil disrupting whatever sinful imaginations I imagined us imagining. She went into her room and returned with a white towel.

“Go shower up,” she said.

The “shower up” reverberated in my mind a hundred times. Such tradition of showering before sleeping was largely attributed to readiness of intercourse in my part of the world, and every second which passed left me more restless than I was found. I also brushed with the toothbrush and paste she provided; I concluded she didn’t want to be licking fragments of vegetables in my mouth while we kissed. When I got into her room though, she went on her knees and waved me over.

“Let’s pray,” she said.

I was like, pray? Pray because we want to have sex?

“I’m a Muslim, I don’t pray like that,” said I.
“I know you’re a Muslim but this is my house, my rules, so, let’s pray.”
“Okay o, there’s kuku God.” I knelt opposite her and placed my face in the bed.
“Father Lord Jesus Christ we thank you, we worship you and glorify your holy name tonight for you’re the savior of our kind; you’re our father and our Lord; you’re our redeemer and the author of our faith and fate. Accept our thanks in Jesus name. Thanks for keeping us safe today from the troubles of the world, from the temptations of the flesh. Our father Our Lord we call on you tonight as we lay our weak bodies to rest, protect us from the snares of the night. Shield us from the hands of the devil.”

I said Amen every now and then.

“Protect us.”
“Amen”

I said the Amen until the “we spill the blood of Jesus,” which she said thrice and I was like, are we Romans now? I opened my eyes and looked at her, said no further amen.

“In Jesus mighty name we pray.”
“Amen. Amen. Amen in Jesus name,” so she said alone.

We rose.

“I read before I sleep, that’s my lamp’s desk by the right, so you sleep by the left,” she announced.
“Okay.”

And lay we were on the bed, I, fantasizing and watching her through the corners of my eyes but she, flipping through the pages of a novel, A Time to Kill by John Grisham. I lay calm still, waited, anticipated, longed and hoped she would throw the damn book away and face the real issue but she didn’t till I fell asleep myself and when I woke up again; it was 4:30am, one of the best time periods for undecorated intimacy with tingles of warmth and butterflies, when mating would be like a hot bath in winter. I approached her and guess what, of course I should’ve known what she would do when she said “we thank you for keeping us from the temptations of the flesh” in her pesky little prayer; she turned me down, said she was menstruating, and even if she was not, I shouldn’t take her for some slut I could come to anytime I feel horny. I was speechlessly speechless! I felt naked, like, what the hell!

At some point, I don’t remember when, I left the bed and went to her living room to switch on the TV and watch NatGeo. It wasn’t long after that when I heard cocks crowing and mosques singing the calls to prayer. It was dawn. It was Saturday. She appeared in her night gown with two cups of tea in a tray, which after she placed on a stool before me, said we had to pray.

“I’m not praying,” I told her bluntly.
“Why?”
“I’m a child of the devil.”
She giggled then. “I’m sorry for what I said the other time. I’m like that sometimes. I push people away. Just take me and change me, I’m your doll now.”

She knelt and placed her head by my thighs, murmured and murmured till I heard Amen and she rose, grabbing a cup as she sat beside me.

“It is café au lait, you will like it.”

I hesitated for a while till she grabbed it herself and extended it to me.

“You have to go to your house now,” said she, after I had my first sip.
“What?”
“I said you need to go to your house now. We’re attending a wedding at Ikorodu and you hadn’t dressed for a party, so you’ll go and dress, white preferably, we’ll leave by 10 o’ clock.”
“Ah, okay. How many of us are going?”
“How many of us? Just you and me.”
“Ikorodu is far.”
“Ah—ah, far as how? It’s not far.”

Eventually, we changed the plan. We went to my place together after she bathed and dressed up. I bathed at her place and dressed up at mine, and together, we set out for Ikorodu and got there at exactly 2:22pm and it was perfect; people were just moving down to the event centre from the church. We were lucky to secure seats at a front table, close to the stage, even though the guests with the prescribed type of outfit were supposed to take those front tables. Nobody challenged us; so, no qualms. We were served, entertained and respected. We danced and had a real nice time. There was no need to be angry again, she wasn’t going to menstruate forever. Sex could wait.

I left the place on Sunday morning, getting just light kisses on my right and left cheeks. Menstrual flows have never been nice to any longing gentleman anyway; I just got my own bite of the natural dismay. Monday came and I found myself back in school, Big Victor not back from his travel. From 7:45am when I got to the school till 1:12pm, I couldn’t have a time to myself but rather receiving sympathizing members of the staff, queuing up. I knew some would have wished I was dead though. While they came, I hoped to see Mary, maybe the atmosphere of sympathy would dispel prior brouhaha but she didn’t come until 3:15pm when I was finally alone and preparing to leave.

She stood before me looking lively instead of being gloomy. And for quite a while, we just looked, I heaving back against the seat, hands on lap, right on left.

“You’re back now?” she finally asked, and I nodded.
“Thank God,” she said. “I was worried about you. It must have been a very gross accident, but thank God your face is still there, not slashed by some opened metal.”
“Yeah, thank God,” I muttered.
“Oh, and your voice is still there too, thank God.”

I looked at her. I really would never know why someone of her age could be so moderately offensive.

“Yes, I’m good, thank you.”
“I would have asked for how exactly it happened but I guess it’ll be gross to discuss. So, I’ll just… everything happens for reasons in life, and right now, I wish you’re a reborn man.”

I shrugged speechlessly, not really knowing what I should’ve said. She surged forward and sat slowly, placing both her hands on my table and we looked at each other speechlessly more. I knew what was on her mind; she wanted to talk about the question papers but was reluctant, thinking it could seem inhumane, placing that before me during my health crisis.

“Speak up, I’m listening,” I said, and then she sighed and smiled.
“No, really, I just came to check on you, and… you know, sympathize like others, although I’m not messed up like them, why’s the melodrama? You’re alive and… what else matters?”
“Yes, that’s true. I’m alive, thank God.”
“The exam is beginning in two days, are you aware?”

Didn’t I say I knew why she came?

“Yes, and I have a lot to put in place now. Tasks have stacked up on my table and I don’t even know where to begin, you know… stuffs to submit at the Ministry.”

“If I can help, I’ll gladly do. With anything.”
“Of course! Why not? I’ll call on you if situation demands, thank you.”
“Adebayo”
“Yes?”
“I learnt you’re still in charge of the question papers.”

Hmmm… and then I sighed. Question papers! What else could have mattered to her if not that? I was not going to yield to her but there was no use in saying no just to listen to threats again.

“I’ll make photocopies tomorrow and give you everything,” I said.

Silence…

“So, you’re going to give me?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow.”
She smiled widely. “I wish…”

Another long silence…

“Okay, tomorrow then?” she stood, looking like she was going to cry and had to leave at once.
She was at the door already when she came back in and told me in low pitch, “Benedicta doesn’t know about the accident. Her parents came around and warned the school not to let her. So, you shouldn’t, in case you… you understand?”

I nodded slowly, and then she left.

So, she knew? She indeed knew. How would she have not known anyway? Adebayo and Benedicta’s sister were returning from Adebayo’s hometown but crashed into the woods, breaking a lot of bones in the girl and Adebayo, barely escaping death. Who wouldn’t know? In fact, I doubted Benedicta wouldn’t have known, unless they kept the real version of the story from the staff; they were never reported to be capable of reticence.

I wasn’t aware that I desperately longed to hear from Toro, even though I lied to myself that I would finally let go, using her once said aphorism to back my cynicism; dating her is like playing with a sword, and indeed, if I don’t wanna bleed more than I already did, I have to let go of her. Idly, I would check my emails, my phone log and my Facebook notifications, not really knowing what I was looking for, but what else could I have been looking for if not a message from her, telling me she loves me and hopes to see me again soon? It was stupid but not foolish, or should I have said it was foolish but not stupid? Whatever it was, or should be, I was hungry to hear from her and I didn’t admit it; I was stupid.

I dialed Phillips’ number but I aborted it before it could ring. He wouldn’t answer the call; I knew it. So I called his boy assistant and asked him to give the phone to his boss after he responded in affirmative to the question of if he was around.

“Phillips,” the time for Mr. was past, “please 7:31 PM don’t hang up on me, it’s Adebayo. I have a problem and I know it’s only—”

The call was ended. I sighed heavily. Phillips was really done with me, wasn’t he? I sent a text instead.

“I’m not asking you as Mr. Adebayo, I’m asking as an old friend who messed up and is ready to make amends. I need your help. I slept with Mary and she taped it. Now she’s saying I must give her the copies of all the question papers for the forthcoming exam starting tomorrow or else watch the video go viral online. Maybe she’s bluffing, maybe she’s not, but since she’s desperate enough to have taped it, I think she’s serious but I’m not going to give her the questions anyway. What should I do?”

I had sent it before I even remembered I should have abbreviated the words to save space. I saw like five notifications of receipt popped up one after the other. He hated me for sure, but he evidently did not hate me as much as he loved me. I’ve always been lucky to be loved by friends like that.

I sat at the table like that for a long while; school had closed and students had temporarily returned to their dormitories. I was still seated, looking blankly at nothing. Songs were humming in my head, Schumann’s Arabeske of 1839; the way Toro had played it. I finally reached a conclusion about Toro, I suspected she might still be unconscious or disallowed from using a phone, but I surely wasn’t going to be held away from reaching out to her, I was going to email her and I would not send a text, I would send a song, sung in my voice, recorded at a studio, just like Kevin had done with the apology song. People change their phones from time to time and sometimes their numbers, but not their emails. And I was sure whatever crap they had or were willing to put in Toro’s head so as to hate me; she would understand accident happens and that’s no one’s call.

Throughout the night, I looked for the song I could revamp, I found none. I didn’t have time to converse with Mummy Angela that night, we just said hello when we came across each other at the passage. The following day, immediately after the long break with my hands buried in the papers, I finally assessed the time-table that the Vice Principal Academics had made and I was reviewing it, angry that she couldn’t ever do anything right since I knew her; Phillips entered and I was like… Oh my God!

He pulled back the chair before me and sat.

“I saw your messages,” he said, picked out a cigarette from the pack in his breast pocket and lighted it. I never saw him smoke before though. “Sorry, I’m no more a teacher here, I can do as I like, isn’t that one of the perks of being free?”
“Of course, one of the perks of being self-employed.” I was still surprised to see him.
He leaned forward and picked the time-table before me, looked at it, blew the smoke at it and dropped it back. “You really can’t stop, can you?” he mumbled.

Wasn’t that exactly what Toro said when Mary sent the sex tape to her? I shushed him to silence, stood up and beckoned him to follow me outside. I was sure they were listening; I couldn’t risk it.

“What can I do?” I asked as soon as we found a spot to talk.
“What recorder did she use?” he asked.
“Recorder?”
“I mean, what did she use to record it, a phone or a camera?”
“I don’t know. A camcorder perhaps, a laptop or her phone, I can’t say.”
“So, she wants the question papers?”
“Aye, and I can’t give those to her.”
“But… why not?”
“Why not? It’s improper! She’s not supposed to make me her puppet. I’m her teacher.”
“But you’re her puppet. You’ve always been her puppet.”
“I’m not. I’ll never be.”
“I won’t prove my rightness, whatever you say, yadda yadda yadda yes, you must give her what she wants, that’s all I know.”
“I can’t. I don’t want to. It’s not just about this exam. After the exam, she’ll still have some other things she wants and she’ll always threaten me with that video. I have to get that leverage away from her.”
“You don’t have a choice. And by the way, it’s her father’s school. Whether there’s leverage or not, she’ll always want you to do something for her. And if you don’t yield, she can easily get leverage, something more brutal perhaps.”
“So, you’re saying we should let her continue determining who stays and who gets sacked here, hum?”

Silence…

“Do you care for a—”
“No, you know I don’t smoke.”
“I didn’t too, but now I do.”

Silence…

“Phillips, I know you’re still angry at me but you came to aid me anyway… again! You didn’t come all the way from Abule Egba to tell me I have to give her what she wants. You came here because you know Mary is a problem for this school and we must do something about it.”
He laughed. “Now you talk funny too. I came here because Mary is a problem for this school? What concerns me about what or who is a problem for your school? Fuck the school! For all I care, it can burn down to the ground! It’d not move me a little bit.”

Silence…

“Let’s just say I came here to help you deal with your problem, eh? To deal with Mary for your sake, not for the school’s sake, do you get that?”

I nodded.

“Okay, good. You have a plan yet?”
“Yes, I want to sneak into their house down street, comb her room for her laptop and probably her camcorder. If I can get the leverage off her grasp, I can deal with her like any other student.”
“I see you’ve already drawn up your battle plan.”
“Yes, for what they’re worth, and I’m open to your counsel, I’m not so daft to not know what I don’t know.”
“So, that’s it?”
“Yes, if I can get the laptop and the—”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I mean, the office, she listens to everything, is that not so?”
“Yes, some tech guy listens for her, I don’t know where. They don’t know that I know though.”
“You think so?”
“Huh, I’m not sure.”
“Well, that aside, what makes you so sure that her laptop isn’t in the hostel but the house? And even if it’s where you think it is, how do you plan to get into the house?”
“I have a key. She gave it to me so that I could go there to wait for her some weekend like that. I’ll just go there now and tell the gatekeeper I was taking something for her.”
“And you think it’ll be that easy? I don’t think she’s too stupid to not have considered the possibility of what we’re planning now, knowing that you have a key.”
“She does have a flair for the theatrical but she’s not that smart. And since I already told her I’ll give her the papers today, she’ll not be expecting a foul play.”
He scoffed. “I doubt that. Well, okay, what about her phone?”
“It should be with her, in the hostel.”
“Get the phone, I’ll get her laptop. Where’s the key?”
“But… what will you tell the gatekeeper?”
“Who said anything about the gatekeeper?”
“Phillips, you do know the…”
“What?”
“Nothing. Thanks for helping me.”
“I’m not helping Mr. Adebayo, a dumbass I once knew here, I’m helping an old friend who messed up and is ready to make amends.”

I smiled.

“What happened between us, that night, the—”
“Don’t talk about it, ever. I know what really happened already, everything.”
“Okay, thanks, Phillips, thanks. I wish things didn’t… errh, I hope this works out.”
“It will. If it doesn’t, we’ll give her the question papers. Not every battle can be won, being alive after the fight matters most.”
“Yeah.”
“I still don't believe you could've slept with that girl though.”
“I don't want to talk about it now.”
“Whatever. It's not like I'm judging you anyway.”

Phillips followed me back to the office to collect the key and we talked about irrelevant stuffs like the new videos of Nigerian music artistes before he finally left. I put the smoking cigarette he left on my table out immediately and reached for the air freshener. I wouldn’t want the chatterboxes to have a new topic; Mr. Adebayo is smoking now, the accident must have tampered with his brain.

I sat back at my table, looked over the time-table briefly, it was perfect and I would have to have it sent back to the VPA. I stretched out my left hand and rotated it slowly, the soreness was speedily vanishing at the glenoid cavity. I looked about the office searchingly; very aware that planted somewhere was a bug, picking every cough and laughter, every sigh and fart. I closed my eyes then, perhaps I should give them a poem for the afternoon.

I said loudly enough to be clearly heard:

“Up onto the overturned keel
“Clamber, with a heart of steel.
“Cold is the ocean’s spray
“And your death is on its way.”

I heard it from Rollo in a TV series called Vikings; quite relevant a thing to say to my stalkers. Mary would come to ask for the papers soon, I realized I had to leave the office ASAP. Cold is the ocean's spray and her death is on its way.

....to be Continued!