Kalu stumbled back into his flat with his head still reeling, his key unsteady in the lock, the door swinging like a loose jawbone. The corners were buzzing in the dark. He fumbled his hand against a wall until he found the light switch and hit it, making the bulbs crackle before they popped into brightness.
The whole place felt wrong without Aima, unfamiliar, half-orphaned. His stomach was uneasy, clenching and twisting—he couldn’t tell if he wanted to vomit or needed to eat. When was the last time he had even eaten? Sometime the afternoon before? A salmon wrap from the neighborhood cafe with a green juice. Before he’d taken his love to the airport and given up on her. Kalu slumped into an armchair and let his spine sink into the upholstery. Maybe it could swallow him. His stomach did a particularly unpleasant twist, sidetracking his mind—I should eat something, he thought, then held on to the thought ferociously, grateful for its clarity. A decision. Something to do.
The fridge had leftovers in it, jollof and beans, cold soup, and a green packet of moi moi. His mother insisted on sending food over with her chef all the time, as if he or Aima didn’t know how to cook. By the time things started cracking apart with Aima, she had decided that his mother was doing it to poke at her, to say in quiet honey-coated ways that Aima didn’t even know how to take care of her son. Kalu had tried to convince her that his mother wasn’t thinking that, wasn’t saying it in carefully layered Tupperware containers filled with fried rice and chicken stew, but Aima wouldn’t listen. At some point, she wouldn’t even touch the food herself, leaving it for Kalu. “After all,” she said, “you’re the one she’s making it for, not me.” Mealtimes became strained and Kalu started eating out more, grabbing quick bites on the go. The evenings when they’d sit at the table together faded out of their calendar, and Kalu kept moving, kept avoiding until she was gone.
Plantain. He could fry plantain. Yes. A decision.
But first, something to drink. He opened a cabinet and poured himself a water glass full of vodka, then pulled out a bunch of plantains from his pantry. They were still firm and yellow, only a few brown patches forming on the skin, not too soft yet. He and Aima used to argue about this all the time. She wanted them overripe, almost like mush, soaking up oil when fried. Disgusting. One more thing he wouldn’t have to deal with anymore. Overripe, oversweet, almost spoiled. Maybe their love was like that, just spoiling from being kept on a shelf for too long. Kalu chopped off the ends, squeezing that bit of raw plantain into his mouth and chewing, washing it down with vodka as he skinned the rest of it, cutting it into diagonal slices.
The one thing Aima had converted him to was frying them in coconut oil instead of groundnut oil and using as little as possible, so he poured out a restrained puddle in the middle of the frying pan and watched it, hovering his palm over the spreading clearness until he could feel the heat on his skin. When the oil was hot enough, before it started smoking, he slid in the slices, whipping his fingers back as they sizzled, avoiding the splatter. He watched the slices turn golden with a detached concentration, emptying his mind of everything else except the changing color on their flesh, the creases of the paper towels he was folding to soak up the oil when they were done, the smooth ceramic of the dinner plate as he brought it down from the shelf.
If he thought about each step, then he wouldn’t think about the night, or about the man he’d thrown to the floor, or about Ahmed’s face close to his, his breath like a breeze. That last image intruded, forcing its way into his kitchen, reflecting off the steel countertops. Kalu shook his head, emptied and refilled his glass, then pierced the pieces of plantain with a golden fork, part of a set Aima had insisted on buying. The oil hissed as he flipped the slices, and Kalu tried not to think about the girl at the party. If he thought about her, then he’d have to think of all the other girls, the ones he didn’t know, the ones Ahmed had thrown so callously in his face. And if he thought about that, if he let all that potential pain and fear and horror creep into his head, Kalu was fairly sure that he would go mad. Had he even saved the one girl? Had he even done anything worth doing? Once they threw him out of the room, what had happened? Everything must have continued; he was nothing, just a hiccup in the night, a speed bump that they crushed down into the rest of the road. He strained the plantain out from the oil, emptying the slices onto the paper towels, then grinding pink sea salt over them. Another of Aima’s stamps on his life. It was strange to have a life that was his, just his now, no longer shared. The hurt was like a monster wave frozen in the moment before it crested and breaks, just waiting and threatening with its shadow.
Kalu ate the plantain while it was still hot, standing up in the kitchen with his hip against the counter and the oil searing his tongue. He tossed the plate into the sink when he was done, hard enough that it chipped off a corner, and turned off the kitchen light, grabbing the bottle of vodka as he stalked into the bedroom. He was getting angry again and he didn’t know why. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since Aima had left. Left, can you imagine? Thrown away all their years together as if it was nothing. He pulled out his phone and texted her best friend, Ijendu.
Did Aima land safely?
He’d thought Aima would have texted him herself when she arrived but if she didn’t want to, that was her problem. At least someone would tell her that he was asking around, since she had gone and turned them into strangers, relying on secondhand news. He wasn’t expecting Ijendu to reply—it was almost two in the morning—but his phone vibrated almost immediately.
Go to sleep, Kalu. Aima is fine.
Kalu looked at his phone and thought about the empty kingdom that was their bed. I can’t sleep, he replied. Why are you awake?
I was talking to her.
So she had texted Ijendu but didn’t want to text him. The pain that lanced through his chest was fine-tuned and sharp, a precise laser. Maybe talking through Ijendu was the best way to talk to her. Tell her I miss her.
He could see the bubble that showed she was typing, but Ijendu’s reply was slow to come.
No.
Please. Kalu paused, then sent another text. Come over. I fried plantain. Maybe they could hang out. Maybe she’d tell him more, like what Aima had said, how she was feeling, if she really hated him, why she didn’t even look back when she walked away. He almost added the truth, that he didn’t want to be lonely, but that seemed too much, too desperate.
Ijendu didn’t text back for long minutes. Kalu left the bedroom and wandered into the living room, then sat on his couch staring at his phone screen, sipping from the bottle and touching the screen occasionally to stop it from falling asleep. Ijendu probably thought he was hitting on her, trying to get her over so he could get her into bed. As if he’d be that stupid, to try it with his girlfriend’s best friend. His ex-girlfriend’s best friend. He wanted to text again, to clarify, but then he imagined—what if she did come over, what if she wrapped her arms around him and said she was so sorry this was happening, that he didn’t deserve any of it. What if, because he couldn’t sleep, she agreed to cuddle for a little bit, just as a friend, just hold him small so he wouldn’t feel alone in the empty kingdom. What if, when they were in bed, their bodies just found each other, maybe in what started as an embrace of comfort, but the heat of their skin and his brokenhearted breath and, and, and. His phone buzzed and he looked at the text from her. It wasn’t insulting him, like he’d half expected. In fact, Ijendu sounded like Aima, just tired of his nonsense.
Go to sleep, Kalu, she’d said.
Rage flared up through his chest. Kalu hissed and threw his phone before he knew what he was doing, his arm uncoiling with all his force. It smashed against the wall with an ominous crunch, but Kalu couldn’t bring himself to care. He toppled over to lie on the couch, his feet dangling off the edge. The rooms of the flat were too quiet, just the hum of the air conditioner crawling against the walls. His head felt clouded and clashing. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands into them, as if he could squash them, pop them like rotten grapes. In the blackness behind his eyelids, he saw Ahmed in that same room where they’d kept their childhood secrets; except they weren’t children anymore, they were grown, they were now, and Ahmed’s whipcord body was pressed over Kalu’s, his hand crushed between them, skin stretched against skin. Kalu ripped his hands from his face with a growl and leapt to his feet.
This flat was going to drive him mad either with Ahmed or Aima or that girl, they were all going to take turns haunting him, he could already feel it. And if they were showing up like this when he was awake, then how could he even risk falling asleep? Kalu wasn’t in the mood to find out. He was exhausted, so tired that the bones of his face ached, but he couldn’t stay there and go gradually mad. He had to get out, go somewhere, so he grabbed the bottle and his keys, cash still in his pockets, and he left, with no direction, no destination, chased by ghosts of alive people.
There had been a brief moment outside his building when Kalu paused, wondering if he should take his car and go for a drive, but then he turned away and continued on foot. There was a way he wanted to disappear into the night, into the city. Become the nobody he felt like. The security guards looked at him curiously as he left through the pedestrian gate, surprised to see him without his car, just walking out wearing slippers, vodka bottle dangling from his fingers. Usually, Kalu would smile through his car window and exchange a few words, pleasant and empty, but this time his face was set and struggling, so they murmured quiet greetings and let him pass without anything more.
It was an unnatural time of the night to be out on foot. Kalu could feel their concern like an oil slick against his back, but he ignored it and walked down the road under sputtering streetlights. He kept like this for a while, meaningless turns until he was walking by one of the main roads and he heard the trains roaring overhead. He looked up as the wave of noise washed over him, rumbling vibrations scraping through the air. When was the last time he’d been on the train?
Kalu turned and walked toward the nearest station. He didn’t have any tokens, so he fed hundred-naira notes into the token machine and a handful of them clattered out, stamped round steel with serrated edges. He counted out three and pocketed the rest, then dropped the fare into the slot and pushed through the turnstile. The station attendant watched him from behind a pane of greasy plastic, eating shawarma as his bloodshot eyes slid over Kalu and his too-expensive-to-be-here clothes. Kalu could feel the stare; it felt like everyone had been staring at him all day, and he could feel their eyes as surely as touches; they were intrusive and uncomfortable, and he wanted it to stop. He had a moment of imagining himself snapping, screaming and circling nothing, shouting for everyone to stop looking at him. What kind of madness. It was probably my imagination, he thought, skirting a haggard man sitting on the floor fixing shoes with deft fingers. The client waited on a nearby stool, his big toe poking out from the hole in his socks. They both glanced at Kalu, then back at the shoe and its flapping sole. No one is interested, Kalu told himself, as he tried to ignore the moment of their looks. No one cares. You’re not that important. He unscrewed the cap of the bottle and took a long burning drink. It was like an eraser, wide swathes of hot numbness spreading through him.
The platform for the train heading to the lowland was halfway empty, an odd populace dispersed and waiting. There was a woman with about five Ghana Must Go bags gathered tightly around her legs, as if she was afraid someone would try to snatch one of them away. The bags were swollen, though, so full that Kalu wondered how she could carry them all herself, let alone how a thief could expect to get far with that kind of weight. The sleeves of the woman’s blouse were folded back, showing her corded arms, small scars scattered all over them. Kalu didn’t dare look at her very long; there was a strange and desperate sharpness in the air around her. He went to lean against a pillar, fatigue weaving into his body as he tried to ignore the acrid smell of urine from its base.
Three young boys were jostling in a corner of the platform, half-playing, half-angry, a seesaw unsure of which side it should settle on. They were a tangle of brown limbs and loud voices; everyone else on the platform was ignoring them, giving them a bubble of space to wrestle themselves out in, unravel one another in aggressive intimacy. A series of beeps sounded out over the loudspeaker, signaling that the train was approaching the station. Kalu stood back from the draft of hot air as it pulled in, graffiti swirling over its metal. The doors chimed and jerked open, and he and the rest of the odd nighttime populace entered the train cars.
It was cleaner than he expected, than he remembered. The scarred woman blocked the doorway with one of her bags, heaving the others in one after the other—either she was stronger than she looked or the bags weren’t as heavy as Kalu had thought. The doors complained as they tried to close a few times before she moved the last one into the car and sat with the bags crowded around her, a loyal flock. Kalu made his way to the other end of the car and stood in a corner, sipping and leaning against a pole as the train left the station, rocking gently from side to side. A garbled announcement came over the speaker in pidgin, amputated with static. No one paid attention to it.
The train stopped at the next station, but no one entered or left the car Kalu was in. Three stations later, the woman blocked the door again and lifted her bags out of the train, shoving them onto the platform. Kalu wondered who she was and what the bags had been carrying, which train she was transferring to as she sat with her load and became smaller and smaller in the distance. The train car smelled like crayfish and sickly sweet Ribena in a sticky patch under his slipper. He scraped it against an edge, and the door between train cars opened, the three boys from the platform spilling in, quieter now. They seemed tired, pouring into seats next to one another, their bodies at ease with their own nearness. It made Kalu think of Ahmed again, the easy closeness of childhood, how it was stretched and fraying now. The train braked and shuddered to a stop. A young man got on, his shirt carelessly buttoned, chest gleaming briefly under the weak bulbs of the train car. There was something familiar about him, but Kalu was hyperaware of how heavy stares could be, and he didn’t want to weigh this stranger with one of his. He looked at the floor instead and tried to sneak quick looks when he thought the man wouldn’t be able to see, but his eyes were clumsy, and when he glanced up, the stranger was staring straight at him. Kalu wrenched his gaze away, but it was too late.
The man walked down the length of the train car, holding on to the poles for balance as the floor bucked beneath their feet. He stopped a few seats away from Kalu before speaking.
“I know you,” he said.
Kalu didn’t look up. He wasn’t supposed to be recognizable; he was trying to be invisible and he didn’t want any wahala. “I doubt,” he answered. “It must be another person.”
The stranger snapped his fingers. “You’re that madman from the party in the highland.”
That made Kalu snap his head up. “What?”
“Yes, the one who jumped on the pastor.”
Distracted, Kalu frowned even as he studied the man’s face, trying to place him. The bottle in his hand was nearly empty. “Pastor?”
The stranger leaned in. “Is it that you’re still drunk? Or high?” He pulled back and clicked his tongue. “Stupid of you to be on this train if that’s the case. Heading in the wrong direction sef.”
It felt like a dream, like a warped wonderland mistake, this whole conversation. The man laughed at Kalu’s confusion.
“You’re surprised I recognized you without your mask? It’s not that hard.”
He smiled and the memory clicked into Kalu’s head—that smile, a hand passing a glass to him, the bartender from the party. His eyes widened and the bartender laughed again.
“You’ve remembered,” he said.
It was strange, how he’d seemed like a boy at the party, young and innocent, and Kalu had pitied him. But now, in the train, his whole body was arranged differently, flush with confidence, comfortable in the early morning strangeness of the moving metal worm. Did he look taller? Older? How had he morphed like this? The train took a turn and Kalu stumbled, off balance, while the bartender merely swayed, his body rippling, his hand wrapped around the pole, his eyes on Kalu.
“You no dey fear,” the man noted. “Walking around by yourself, on the train? You get liver die.”
“Why should I be afraid?”
“After what you did?” He whistled. “If I were you, I would be inside my house with soldiers outside the door.” Kalu blinked and the bartender looked at him, then made a low sound of surprise. “Oh, you don’t know yet.”
“I don’t know what?” Kalu felt thickened, slow, stupid. None of this was making sense.
The man took a step closer and lowered his voice. “Did you think nothing was going to happen to you after you tried to beat up a whole pastor? A whole Daddy O upon that?”
It took Kalu a few seconds. “Okinosho?!”
The bartender hit him on the arm. “Shut up!” He looked around the train. “Of all people, you should be careful saying his name.”
It wasn’t possible. The man in the room couldn’t have been Okinosho. Not the most powerful religious leader in the city. Kalu laughed. It was impossible. Everyone knew Okinosho was a power-drunk charlatan, everyone except his millions of followers around the world. He was too rich, too dangerous, too big. He couldn’t have been the man in the room.
The bartender watched Kalu laugh and pity crossed his face. “You’re really mad,” he said. “Chai. It’s a pity he’s going to kill you.”
Kalu’s laughter cut off. “He’s going to what?”
The train was slowing. The bartender turned toward the doors. “He’s put out an offer. As soon as he left the party. Whoever brings him your body, or if it’s too heavy, just your head is okay. Twenty million naira.” He looked Kalu over. “I won’t tell anyone I saw you, but it’s better you go back to your house, I’m warning you. Twenty million is a lot of money. It’s only a matter of time before they find you.”
“Wait,” Kalu said, as the train pulled to a stop. “Who told you all of this?” He tried to grab the man’s sleeve but the doors opened and the bartender twisted away from him.
“Hapụ m aka, dead man. It’s bad luck.” He dusted his shirt, standing on the platform as the doors started to close and Kalu stared, frozen, too shocked to move. A brief softness passed over the man’s face. “God protect you,” he added, shaking his head as he turned away.
“Wait!” The train began to move and Kalu ran down the car, searching through the windows as he shouted. “Wait! How do you know!”
The bartender was walking away, then a tall man stepped out of the shadows and greeted him. Kalu watched as they shared a quick embrace, as the station light caught the milky white of Thursday’s eye, as Thursday draped an arm around the other man’s shoulders and they walked away. The train plunged into a tunnel, throwing Kalu into darkness. His heart was erratic, thudding, terrified.
He had attacked Okinosho.
The bartender was right, he needed to get home, get to safety. He needed to talk to Ahmed. Kalu patted down his pockets, searching for his phone, his pulse doubling once he realized he’d left home without it. Shit, shit, shit. He forced himself to breathe, looking around the car. No one on this train is going to kill you, he told himself. Just get home.
Run.
He downed the rest of the bottle and tossed it to the floor. As soon as the doors opened, he dashed out of the train and tore through the station. There was a row of taxis parked outside, the drivers asleep, their feet hanging out of the windows, seats reclined. Kalu banged on the bonnet of the nearest one.
“Bros! Wake up!”
The driver startled awake and started to curse immediately, but Kalu had pulled out thousand-naira bills from his pocket and shoved them in the man’s face. “Highland. Now now.” The driver paused for a negligible second before he nodded, took the money, and started the car, sleep draining away. Kalu entered the back seat and lay on it. No one could see him if he was flat like this, pressed against the questionable upholstery, lying like an already dead man. He was more drunk than he’d realized; the ceiling of the car was rolling. He closed his eyes and was surprised when his body started shutting down, dripping into a doze. The bartender was probably lying. Probably just wanted to see him piss himself, be that scared. Everything was probably fine. He’d call Ahmed and see if Okinosho was really even a client at the party.
He gave the driver some more money when they reached his compound, prompting shocked thanks from the man, then Kalu stumbled up the stairs and through his front door. His phone was lying on the floor under the dent in the wall from when he’d thrown it. The screen was a web of fine cracks, and it stayed black even when Kalu tried to turn it on. He groaned and went to the bedroom, plugging it in next to the bed. Maybe it was just dead and he could use it after it charged. He had time now that he was home and safe and the bartender was probably lying and everything would be fine once he got to talk to Ahmed.
Kalu lay on the bed and passed out.
The dreams started frantic, a heap of Ghana Must Go bags burying Kalu, vodka pouring into his eyes, garbled train announcements in Hausa. The dream images trailed into nothingness, then burst up later, pictures of the girl at the party, her body trembling.
Kalu woke up with a gasp, shudders quaking through his bones, sweat in the pool of his neck. Hours had dripped past and it was morning, the next day lumbering slowly through his windows. He sat up and looked for his phone. It had fallen from the bedside table and his fingers scrabbled against the carpet to pick it up. The screen lit up underneath the web of cracks and Kalu sighed with relief as he called Ahmed from speed dial. Ahmed would be awake by now; the party would be over. He could ask him what happened to the girl and Ahmed would tell him the bartender’s story was a lie, that Okinosho wasn’t even at the party, that the man in the room had been a nobody. Kalu could go to Ahmed’s house and let Thursday make yam and eggs, and they would eat it in the dining room and play Obongjayar’s latest album while they smoked and the day would continue and the night would be just a dream, a dream that didn’t mean anything, something stuck in the darkness where it belonged.
His head was splitting open. When he dialed, Ahmed’s phone rang for so long that Kalu thought he wasn’t going to pick up his call. But then it went through and the sounds Kalu heard were cloyed, muffled.
“Hello?” Kalu said, his voice hoarse with dawn. “Ahmed? Are you there?”
Someone laughed as if from a distance. A man. Kalu knew it was not Ahmed; he knew his friend’s voice too well. The laugh was low, intimate, flirting. Kalu ended the call quickly. His stomach was churning again, sick with apprehension, and his shirt was sticking to his skin.
“Fuck,” he said, dropping the phone and putting his head in his hands. Why was there a man there? Why had that laugh—no. No, he was asking stupid questions and he knew it. He lay back down on the sofa and stared at the ceiling.
So. Ahmed was with a man.
Kalu exhaled and tried to decide what to do next, if he should call back, why the thought of his friend with another—with a man—was making him sicker to the stomach than the vodka had. The whole night on the train didn’t seem real. Maybe he hadn’t even seen the bartender. Maybe it was a hallucination. Especially the part about Thursday picking the bartender up? That was definitely some kind of dream. Everything was fine. No one was coming to find him in his house.
Kalu went back to sleep.