I spent the afternoon driving around aimlessly. Early evening, I stopped by a street vendor not too far from Festac to pick up Queenie’s favourite snacks; perm dodo and suya. I got there early knowing soon queues would form.
I nodded watching the vendor’s fast hands chop onions, season and salt the partially cooked strips of meat. He hummed to himself; the only dent on his perfect black skin was a pock mark between his eyes. His eyes were red, as if from worry, maybe they were always that way and I was noticing for the first time. His nose was broken and his white vest had spots of food. I felt an unexpected kindred connection. He moved his wiry, agile body effortlessly. I said “You’re here every evening?”
“Three evenings a week, I do other things too sir.” He answered laughing; as though being underestimated was a common mistake people made.
I asked him what kind of other things? He chuckled, telling me he was a survivor.
To my surprise, I started talking. That was how I came up with the second part of my plan, plotting with a stranger, a street vendor I had never had a proper conversation with before.
I rang General Akhatar when I got home, but he was away in Abuja and not due back till the following afternoon. Heaviness slowed me down. Sitting in my big, white house with its servant quarters I felt like a poor man. Then I was angry. Angry at myself for doing a terrible thing you cannot erase, angry at meritocracy and the way it infected your system as a young man, angry happiness eluded me. No matter what I did, it danced away because of one night. One mistake. Something else nagged, making me furious. I couldn’t remember who had introduced me to the General, how we had met. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself reaching back into that moment, grabbing it like a rolled up piece of paper, then tossing it away.
I knew Felicia would be due home from the shop, her car tyres whispering as she eased in through the tall, black gates.
I found Queenie on her bed, awake, looking young and wise all at once. She stood to attention, laughing in her bright pyjamas after noticing the plate of suya and dodo in my hands. She told me she had known I bought suya, that mummy would be angry if she caught us with food upstairs. We traded secretive smiles before eating. Just for an instant, I nearly folded; a father sharing dinner with his child is a beautiful, uncomplicated thing. Not on this occasion. The smell of onions in suya hung in the air; our hands were greased and peppered from the meat, a last supper for two fraudulent disciples.
That night I could not sleep. I sat up in my double bed picking holes through the time line of my life with a toothpick. I heard Felicia’s steps approach my room. I knew they were hers, soft, as though she was walking through sand. They have always been that way. I knew she stood there listening, her eardrums prickled to detect every sound, sensing something, a feeling things would change again. She was breathing through the door and through a war only couples fought, bruised but still human. Now we wanted to show each other our bruises and say look what you have done. Can you see it there? Here? There? Okay, make it go away, do magic.
Now I stood on the other side, my fingers splayed against the door, listening like her. Wanting. I was a mystery to my wife; one day she had opened her eyes and not recognised me. We stayed that way for a while, listening to our breaths warming a wooden door, knowing each other through body movements we couldn’t see. I remembered then how she used to burn herself by candle light, poring over old books that horded unfulfilled dreams. I wondered whether what I’d done to our marriage felt like a massive burn chafing against her clothes when she moved. Then, the handle turned, neither of us knowing which one had opened the door.
She
Stood
There.
Looking like the mother of unborn children, like the girl who deserved so much more than some shack of a shop. I picked her up, and did something I missed doing. I drew shapes on her body; half moons on her buttocks, in the lined crevices of her shoulder blades, tiny snail-shaped creatures of regret pulsing down the line of her back. A paper fan I coloured purple with the heat from my finger over her labia. I tongued the sweat at the base of her spine into a whirlpool, left hand prints on her thighs, and made murals for her out of her skin. I made love to my wife, the shaking of the bed sounded better than any music. The sweet sticky scent of her would be trapped in my nostrils for the entirety of my earthly life; the walls between us fell down. Her body curled around me. I swam inside her repeatedly, attempting to halve her in two: one to leave behind, one to take away.
In the morning, I reluctantly received a call from Ben Okafor.
He informed me that a source had revealed General Akhatar has been killed in a coup d’etat along with the President on their trip back from Abuja. It was lead by my old friend Obi Ekebe and did I have any comments?
My blood chilled. I replaced the receiver. Okafor would go ahead and write the expose in the Trumpet. If I stayed, I was a dead man either way. Finished. Obi and I had been friends once. We had trained together, killed together.
But by the following evening, I planned to be unrecognisable as a common street beggar, a new man with a fresh passport hidden in my inside pocket.
Intermission
An insistent knock sounded on the door. I opened it to find two uniformed policemen, one with a gut, the other trim and ginger-haired. Their expressions were unreadable. My bad news radar went off.
I said, “Yes?”
“I’m Sergeant Molden,” said the shorter of the two. “This is Sergeant Murdoch.” He indicated to his flame haired partner. “May we come in?”
I stepped back to make room for their entrance in my narrow hallway. Molden spoke first in a choppy fashion, each word seeming to stand alone. “Do you know the whereabouts of your neighbour, the elderly lady?”
“Mrs Harris?”
“Whatever she calls herself,” Murdoch piped in. “Nobody actually knows her real name.”
“I haven’t seen her for days. Why? What’s happened?” Fear fluttered my hand to my throat.
“She’s disappeared; we need to ask her some questions.”
“I don’t understand. Is she in trouble?”
Molden rearranged his impatient expression and explained slowly, “It’s urgent that we speak to her. If you hear anything, contact us. Have any of your things gone missing?” he asked.
Still shocked, on instinct I didn’t mention the incident with the brass head.
“No.” We were all standing in my living room, spare pieces of a chess game.
“And you’re sure you have no idea where she is or could be?” Murdoch asked.
“No, of course not, she was my neighbour not my mother.”
“We won’t keep you.” Molden turned to the door “We’ll be talking to more people on this street at some point, it’s a serious matter. If you do hear or see anything please let us know.” He held a card out to me I looked at in horror before taking it as if he’d handed me rabies. From behind my curtains I watched them get into a blue Ford car and drive off.
Really! I walked back to the centre of the room as though on stilts. Mad butterflies, I thought back to our conversation at the park. A mad butterfly had told me something true after all. She was an escape artist. I couldn’t help myself; I collapsed to the floor laughing. Several days later, I picked up a free City Lights newspaper from the train. There was a small feature on Mrs Harris. Wanted for benefit fraud, she had been assuming the identities of dead people for years. Stealing thousands from taxpayers, she had successfully been giving the police nationwide the slip for decades.