‘Prof’s light is never on. Do you think there could be some reason—some scientific reason for him putting the lights off?’ Desire asked with a yawn.
‘Let’s talk common sense. You mean you’ve been meeting someone in a dark room, day in day out, doing what? And you’re looking for science? Are you alright?’
‘We just talk. We talk about books, politics, everything,’ Desire said in a low voice.
‘Just talk? Books?’ Remilekun chuckled and winked before standing up to place the empty bowl in her hand on a table.
‘Yes, just talk,’ she replied with a straight face, recalling her time alone with Prof, and how the grandfather clock always signalled a departure once it struck 12. Prof would stop talking at the chime of the clock. He would clear his voice, change into the drawl of a bored, underpaid actor who forgot his cue.
‘Eh… I think you should be on your way, uhn?’ he would say, and she would walk towards the door.
Remilekun stood up from her side of the bedroom and came to sit on Desire’s bed. She placed her hand on Desire’s left shoulder.
‘I was here last night waiting for you until I fell asleep, just like it has been some six or seven nights now, and you are here talking nonsense. Don’t you think there’s a problem here?’ Her voice was now lower than when she had started out.
‘I think it’s… it’s… it’s…’ But even then, words failed her. She could not describe what it was.
Remilekun finished the description. ‘It is a fetish. You have dark-room fetish. That’s all. It is man-in-the-dark-room fetish.
Haven’t you heard that some people are attracted to shit?’ She paused to exhale, and then added, ‘Your visit to see that mad Prof in the dark is the same. It is like shit-fetish. I don’t know who is mad, you or him. I am certain of one thing though; there is madness between you two.’
‘Attraction to shit is called coprophilia! And it’s an entirely different thing. Anyway, you can’t understand.’
‘I can’t understand what? See, if you people want to fuck, just do it. No need for all this darkroom preparations. Okay, okay. Some people like sex in the dark though.’ she laughed, ‘Oh, please, take candles the next time and pretend it’s romantic.’
Desire shook her head and Remilekun squalled, flapping her legs.
Desire thought of her last visit. She recalled how she had walked down the stairs listening to the jangling of metal as he fastened the locks and retreated into the dark. She wanted to tell Remilekun how she always felt a strong urge to light up the room and look into his face and speak the first words that entered her head when her stomach would turn. Instead, she would move her childlike frame to the edge of the chair, fold her hands below her abdomen and lean forward to press them down. These were the times she swung herself back and forth and let his voice bounce off around the room, imagining them as echoes in an empty hall; and if he changed his position so that there was a slight and brief brush of his skin against hers, her heart flipped and the silence that prevailed in the room became almost suffocating until he exhaled.
Desire reclined on the bed, moving her hands about as if she was again in Prof’s room, feeling for the wooden arms of the chair. She could again feel him bent beside her as he handed her his phone, the tepid air escaping his nostrils to tickle her skin, until capsules of sweat hurried down her armpits and teased forks down her back.
‘You sit in the dark with a man, and you tell me you’re just talking. Talking about what? The size of his prison-wilted penis?’ Remilekun stood up from the bed to remove a towel from the hanger and walked towards the bathroom laughing, ‘Let me go and shower, I will return to this.’
Desire tossed and turned on the bed, the thoughts in her head flirting between Prof and the assignments she was yet to do, and suddenly, she remembered Ireti. She had not seen much of him campaigning around school lately.
Remilekun stepped out of the bathroom cutting into her thoughts, and picked up the conversation as though there had been no break.
‘Hear yourself, Desire, you just talk with a man who has stayed in the prison for how many years without seeing a woman… just talk?’
‘Yes, just talk.’
‘It is okay if you don’t want to tell me you met this bobo who is shagging you every night. But, if it’s really that psycho man you’re going to meet, please, stop. It is madness!’ Remilekun threw her hands in the air, before she turned to Desire, jutting her chin forward. She took a deep breath and dabbed some perfume behind her ears; yelping and contorting her face as the alcohol waters stung broken skin. ‘See, you’re the one who is always asking for scientific proof, but I have it as an unreliable scientific proof. Here it is; when men stay too long in prison without sex, they develop a wilted penis syndrome. They may leave their before-prison wife to marry one with no knowledge of their sexual performance and some just never have sex with a woman again. They claim asexuality or spirituality. You get?’
Now dressed, Remilekun walked to the door, then swung around suddenly and said, ‘I’ll greet Mumsie for you. See you tomorrow.’
‘Are you sure you’re going to your mother’s house, the way you’re pancaking your face with this much powder?’
‘And where else would I go?’ Remilekun went to the curtain and the sun’s light swept the room with brightness.
Desire smiled and looked up, so they faced one another directly, ‘Okay, greet your mum.’ She then sat up on the bed and turned to the cupboard that housed everything they were ashamed to leave about the room or felt too lazy to pack properly.
Remilekun took the half-used toilet roll in the cupboard and made a display of pushing it into an already full handbag. Seeing that as an opportunity to get back at her, Desire, asked, ‘Are you stopping over at a shitting or semen wiping competition?’
Without looking up from the bag, Remilekun concentrated on the task of pushing the tissue into the bag. In the process an object popped out and dropped from the bag.
‘What’s that? Are you sick?’
‘It’s multivitamins!’ Remilekun snapped and picked up the pack of pills in a hurry. She tucked it into her bag
‘Hmmm. The doctor!’ Desire said. ‘I think someone is going h-o-m-e,’ Desire said with a giggle.
‘I am going home, okay?’
‘Yes, you’re going home.’
Remilekun muttered a few inaudible words at her and Desire laughed at the way her upper lip formed a spear.
From the way her friend’s nerves jumped at every word, she knew the visit was to see Mr. America; a name she used for a lover who she operated a “you-see-me-you-see-me-not” relationship with.
Mr. America shuttled between Ghana and Kenya, yet returned to Nigeria, speaking in muddled American slang and British cuss words, interjecting every sentence with, ‘In abroad—’ He travelled out of the country for a few months and when he returned, he phoned Remilekun for nights out. ‘Be careful,’ Desire then raised her voice a notch higher, ‘at home.’
Desire had made it plain to her friend several times that she didn’t like Mr. America. But Remilekun appeared to follow the logic of a popular Fuji artist who sang that, “The one whom I was ridiculed for is the one I will eventually marry.”
Mr. America was a man who loved to have a good time but Remilekun took him too seriously. He once told Remilekun on their first date that if she ever got pregnant by him, he would punch out the foetus, or if she succeeded in giving birth to the baby, he would cut it up and sell it for blood ritual, as he needed to find out if indeed people made charms from the body parts of a baby. He then told her it was a joke.
In the course of their relationship, Remilekun had gotten pregnant by him but never told him. She had cried on Desire’s shoulder every night until she asked if Desire could accompany her to a clinic “to remove it.”
As Remilekun stepped out of the house, she looked back and said, ‘Should my mum call, spin a story.’
Indeed, the day after Remilekun left the house, Mama T sent someone to the house at noon. She wanted to know why Remilekun had not come home in two months, especially with the lecturers ready to strike. Desire lied, saying Remilekun was involved in scientific research that involved turning phones off on campus.
‘Actually, she has been sleeping in school now for some days.’
The lies came so easily, and the errand lady went on about how much Mama T always talked about how Desire had changed Remilekun’s life and how God would repay her and bless her with a big future.
‘I’ll kill this girl for making me lie to Mama T,’ Desire swore under her breath.
And then the thought of what could happen if Remilekun failed to return came to mind. Remilekun had never slept at her boyfriend’s houses before. Perhaps, a little late night, now and then, but with Mr. America she sometimes packed like she was going on a holiday. Desire wondered how she would explain Remilekun’s disappearance if she became a victim of the kidnapping which was becoming rampant in the city, or became involved in some accident along the expressway. As the thought crossed her mind again, Desire dialled the phone number Remilekun asked her to call if there was an emergency. She could not get through. She wondered if she should call Mama T. Despite Remilekun’s request, the thought niggled at her.
She tapped three digits on her phone and stopped. She remembered how Remilekun had returned to the door long after she had said goodbye, popped only her head into the room and said, ‘You don’t have to call my mother.’ She repeated this three times. Desire had nodded in response. There was some sort of unspoken rule between them. When it was time, Remilekun would return to recount the night’s adventures, such as an ex she ran into and who she went to this-and-that-place with, between laughs and excited screams. It wasn’t the first time this sort of thing would happen. She always returned.