There were only a few patrons when we arrived at the Good Life Nite Club and Bar. It was a ramshackle place with a small circular dance floor illuminated by blue and red lights. The air reeked of cigarettes and stale alcohol. The loud music made the furniture vibrate.
We found a place to sit at one of the tables in the drinking area. As we squeezed our way between the other tables one or two customers saluted Ashiki, whose exuberance made it clear the bar was his lair.
Two waiters hurried towards us when we took our seats, arguing for the right to serve us. Ashiki and I ignored their squabble. Presently Ashiki called out to a waitress, a tall bony woman. She beamed a coquettish smile as she approached.
“What will my husband and his friend drink today?”
“I’ll divorce you if you’ve forgotten what I drink,” Ashiki warned her.
“No vex-o, my husband. But wetin your yellow friend go like?”
“I want you,” I said.
“Otio! My husband here is jealous-o,” she said, pointing to Ashiki.
“If I can’t have you then I’ll take a Sprite,” I said.
“Ah, but Sprite be drink for women-o. And children,” she retorted.
“He’ll take a Guinness stout,” Ashiki told her.
“That is more better,” she said, ignoring my protest that I was already too intoxicated to drink more of the Irish brew.
We had just started our third round of drinks when two women drew out chairs and joined our table. One of them reeked of perfume too lavishly sprayed. They kissed Ashiki’s forehead, then began to upbraid him for failing to turn up the day he promised to treat them to drinks.
“I was out of town on assignment,” he said languidly.
“Lie!” shouted one of the women. She was skinny and toothy and chewed gum in a coarse, showy way.
“It’s true,” Ashiki insisted. “I was in Port Harcourt for a seminar on tariff structures.”
“Tariff wetin?” asked the woman in pidgin.
“Structures. You may ask my colleague.”
“Your friend whom you have not introduced,” the other woman chastised Ashiki. She wore a light-green fichu.
Turning to me, she said, “I’m Emilia. She is Violet.”
“Ogugua,” I said, nodding slightly. Emilia’s hair, parted in the middle, made her seem at once comely and domestic. She looked faintly familiar, but my mind was too blurred. I wanted to acknowledge Violet, but her eyes were cold.
“Yes, Ashiki was away in Port Harcourt,” I confirmed.
Violet glanced sternly at me. “You too be journalist, abi?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you be liar.”
“Because I’m a journalist?”
“Yes. You journalists have sugar mouth but no truth inside.”
Emilia cast her a contemptuous look. “You can’t call the man a liar when you don’t even know him.”
“Who says?” asked Violet in a raised voice.
“I say!” replied Emilia.
“Who born you?”
“You’re crazy, Violet. That’s your problem.”
“Who crazy? Na you be crazy! You and your mama and your papa be crazy!”
“Enough, girls!” Ashiki broke in. “We want to drink in peace, please! Keep quiet. Or leave us alone.”
“You should talk to Emilia,” said Violet. “She . . .”
“Shut up!” Ashiki snapped, frustrating her attempt to sneak in the last word. She rose and went to join two other men.
“I didn’t mean to spoil your evening,” Emilia apologized to Ashiki and me.
“It’s okay,” said Ashiki.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.
“I’ll understand if you want me to leave too.”
“No.” Ashiki placed a hand on her arm. “I need to talk to you.”
When he told her the news of his sister and niece, she began to sob, asking questions through her tears. Ashiki’s eyes too swelled with tears. He dropped his head in his cupped hands and began to shake.
“Take it easy, Ashiki,” I said, but he was already crying and fleeing in the direction of the men’s toilet. I followed him. The stench of stale urine, sour vomit and unflushed waste overpowered his grief. He hurried back to the crowded bar, passed our table, and went out into the crisp air of the streets. He turned around and seemed surprised that I had followed him outside.
“I’m all right,” he said once we were out in the dark street. “Go and keep Emilia company.”
“I don’t think she’ll die of loneliness.”
“I hope not. You know, she reminds me of my sister. Not so much in looks as in the way she speaks. Exactly the way my sister spoke. It makes it seem somehow incestuous, the lust I feel for her.”
“You’ve slept with Emilia?” I asked a little too excitedly.
“Almost. The first day I came here Emilia and I talked for a long, long time, over many drinks. I asked her to come home with me. Of course, I was planning to ravish her. But by the time she had got undressed I was already snoring. I woke up early in the morning and saw her still naked, sleeping beside me. Strangely, I didn’t have a desire to make love. Instead, I felt the shame of a man waking up to the sight of his naked sister. I covered her body with a sheet. From that day on, I came to look upon her as my absent sister. Some days I would come here simply out of a need to see her—or to see my real sister through her.”
A brief silence fell between us, then Ashiki said, “Take good care of Emilia. I’m going to take Violet home with me. I can’t face the night alone.”
I returned to our table. Emilia sat composed, gazing at her glass of gin and tonic. She gave me a long smile. I took my seat and leaned towards her so that my arms touched hers. “Ashiki has left,” I said.
“I know. With Violet. He told me.” She paused, then added, “I hope she is good to him. Death is not a small thing.”
We sipped our drinks. After a moment I asked, “Do you want to dance?”
“No. Let’s sit and talk.”
“I don’t have much to say,” I said. “I don’t know you that well.”
“All the more reason to talk. So we can know each other better.” She gave me a shimmering smile.
“I like your smile.” The compliment sounded awkward, gauche.
“What do you like about it?”
“It’s the kind of smile you associate with temptresses in films. But yours is real.”
“How do you know?”
“I can tell.”
“Was Shakespeare wrong, then?”
“Shakespeare?” I had not expected Shakespeare to enter the talk.
“Didn’t he write that there was no art to find the mind’s construction on the face?”
“He did,” I said. “But he obviously didn’t have the privilege of meeting you. He might have known better had he seen your smile.”
“Oh, stop. You dangerous flatterer.”
For a moment we remained silent. Then I asked, “Do you like Shakespeare?”
“I taught his plays.”
“You were a teacher?” I was embarrassed to hear the surprise in my voice.
She nodded. “For almost four years. History, Geography and Literature.”
“Did you like teaching?
“I enjoyed teaching History the most. Literature was more demanding. Geography was a chore.”
“Why did you leave teaching?”
“It’s a long story. And not a story you tell in a noisy bar.” She looked gently into my eyes. “My flat is around the corner. If you come with me, I will make you some coffee.”
Her flat was a tasteful play of white and black. White walls, a black two-seater sofa made of fine leather, two white poufs with Arabic patterns, a black dressing table on which stood an ornate Indian vase containing fresh hibiscus flowers. Around the vase, bottles of perfumes, powders, lipsticks, nail polishes were arranged in a way that suggested a desire for symmetry and order. On one wall, just above the table, hung a black-and-white photograph of herself, taken when she was much younger. The picture’s background was delicately darkened, so that her smiling face seemed poised to break through the glass in the frame. Her kitchen, to the left as one entered the room, was meticulously clean, like a decorative unit, not a place where cooking was done.
The covers on her bed were smooth, as though unslept in.
She made two cups of coffee and we sat on the sofa drinking and talking. I told her about my mother who had died when I was only four.
“Do you remember much about her?”
“Not alive, no. I remember her body draped in an immaculate white shroud, and my father telling me she was dressed like that because she was going on a special journey.”
“You must miss her a lot.”
“I was too young to realize I had lost her. But I have moments of extreme guilt.”
“Because you didn’t mourn her?”
“No, because I caused her death. My parents wanted a child desperately, but my mother did not conceive for several years. Eventually, she became pregnant with me. By my father’s account, I was so heavy my mother was certain she had twins in her womb. I was born five weeks early. By then her legs had become very swollen, her hips so painful she could not walk. She collapsed as soon as I was born, and stayed in bed with a fever for months. The drugs she was given didn’t help much. She never quite recovered.”
“Who told you all this?” Emilia asked.
“My father.”
“He shouldn’t have,” she said in disgust.
“He only wanted me to know how much my mother loved me. I had come at a high cost.”
We both fell silent. Relaxed now, and exhausted by my emotional time with Ashiki, I rested my head against the back of the sofa and yawned.
“You’re welcome to spend the night here,” Emilia said, “if you promise to be on good behavior.”
“Where will I sleep?”
“In the bed.”
“And you?”
“In the bed, too. It can comfortably take two.”
“We’ll both sleep in the same bed and you expect me to be on good behavior?”
“Haven’t you ever shared a bed with a woman without making trouble?”
“Actually, no.”
“There’s always a first time.” Her expression was serious, but I retained a faint little hope.
“Excuse me while I change into my night things.”
She turned her back to me and pulled her blouse over her head. I glimpsed her breast, firm, its nipple black. My crotch bulged and I swallowed hard. She threw a see-through gown over her head, pulled off her skirt, then her white underwear. She casually turned towards me. I saw the dark triangle between her thighs, and a raw lusty craving rose inside me.
“Do you mind if I play some music?”
She pressed the play button on her cassette player. The rueful lyrics of a song in street pidgin filled the room. They spoke of the troubles of a woman caught in the trap of prostitution:
Yellow sissy dey for corner-o
Put ’im hand for jaw
wetin de cause am-o?
Na money palaver . . .
“Have you ever been in love?” I asked her.
She sighed, “I will tell you my story someday.”
“Will you let me publish it?”
She said perhaps, on condition that her name was changed and no picture of her appeared.
We lay down on the bed and spent the rest of the night in talk and dozing.
When her dock showed 6:30 I announced it was time for me to leave. She went with me to the door. Smiling, she placed her hands on my cheeks, cupping my face. I shut my eyes a moment before her lips touched mine, opening my lips. The heat of her tongue made my knees buckle, but softly she drew away.
Just then I recalled where it was, several months before, that I had first seen her.
“Have you ever been to a party at Honorable Reuben Ata’s home?”
“Quite often,” she said. “I go there with Peter Stramulous. Why?”
“I think that’s where I first saw you.”
Her eyes lit up. “Weren’t you the man Chief Amanka had a go at?”
I nodded. “He would have been sorry if he had touched me,” I said. “I was ready to thrash him.”
“It would have been quite a sight. Not to mention the scandal. ‘Reporter in do-or-die fight with minister.’’’
“Do for me, die for him,” I said with a laugh. Then, after a pause: “You move in powerful circles, don’t you? Tell me, where is this Stramulous from? Greece, Switzerland, Lebanon?”
“All or none of the above. I either don’t know or I’m not saying. Take your pick.” She stroked my face. “When next we meet, call me Iyese. That’s my real name.”
“And Emilia?”
“That’s for my customers. You’re a friend.”
She kissed me again. Oh, my body boiled all over.