Chapter Thirteen

This November was approximately three months SonOfMan returned from National Service. Unable to secure an immediate white collar job, he had gone back to work with DVI Ltd, in order to start offsetting the loan from his commission. He was lying down with down-weighing thoughts this sunny morning, when something seized him like seizure; Athena Press Limited had not responded a jot to the contract they made since the four months he paid at once the whole amount to cover his book publication, why? Could it be he was just a brilliant thing, presenting his work in a nigh perfect state, that there was no need to touch it? Therefore removing the necessity of sending the edited work for his approval? Then what of the page proofs that equally needed his approval? Could it be they dimed it fit to believe he had accepted however their experts had done it already? And thus waited for the last stage of printing at the 6th month?

Could it be this, could it be that? Gawd, he was about to suffer depression!

But he was suffering it already. This was pure miasma of depression, yeah. He knew that the depressed individual had to experience ups and downs, twists and turns of feelings. And, of course, he wouldn’t wait for somebody to tell him he had gone through what it was to experience a wave of sadness. Perhaps, he was suffering from serious depression. His condition had apparently become well characterized by over whelming sadness willy-nilly he believed it. And he had been in full declination, having loss of pleasure in everyday activity, and his loss of appetite for food had worsened.

Maybe bipolar disorder should really receive his trepidation. Didn’t traits of his illness, from all indications, include severe mood swings that vacillated between depression and mania bipolar? Omni, he couldn’t even survive the thought only—because he would ask his sceptic self now, have you been haunted by thoughts of suicide? No!

No, but he had to see an expert; a diagnosis was going to be needed. Sure.

SonOfMan was about to get out of the bed when the sound from his handset jerked him round back to the bed. He picked it there it lay over the bed.

(Do you mind? You don’t deserve my sympathy at all… when you can’t be manly enough and face the reality about someone you call your fiancée!) A lady’s voice rebuked just like that.

SonOfMan flushed—this strange gossiper had a lot of intolerable nerve! He waited.

(WyiWorri, your name really?)

He noticed she said that name as if words she had seen in English language, but, well, he let himself keep his head. “Could very well be… what?”

(Sounds kind of clodhopper, who it never worries that bad women send good men to early graves.)

“Horrible lecture… thanks anyway.”

(No trouble…) she welcomed his compliment like that, but continued cattily the next moment. (If the dumb dick has eyes for something deep and strong, except what comes decorated and glittering, he’d have spotted easily all that glitters are not gold. I’m not going to help him out anymore.) Now her voice lowered confidentially; (I was in fools-paradise in the game of love once myself, and I feel for you.)

“Horrible…”

(Then get your weakling legs into action in a hurry, before the doomful rain splashes on your face unavoidably.)

“Hurry? No girl; you watch before you leap. Maybe if you’ve not figured out the way I see you, you’re a snoopy gossiper of horrible clandestine system. You’re the kill potentially; you might not be the save you’re portraying.”

(Clandestine system? Sounds like men of intelligence. Don’t bother tracing the caller, sweetheart; I’ll walk in to you if you want to see me.)

“Good,” he sounded like a hypocritical predator. “I want to see you.”

(When your manliness sweeps into action, I swear, I’ll come for you to see me.)

“You’ve given me the challenge… so what again?”

(Mister Wyi, the door is now shut right on your betrothal, even though you’re piteously unaware. There might not be any sense in giving a chance. They had their marriage engagement last night with a male witness from her relatives, and what I’m painstakingly portraying is a price I had to pay for feeling for someone that if I don’t help, would suffer the inconsolable shock I’d been to.)

Now, this matter was a curious paradox. “They?”

(Him and your fiancée.)

“Him?”

(Double-chief, of course)

“Look, now, you can see me and talk to me.”

(Sweetheart, not right this time.)

“Damn you; get your meddlesome arse down here I am!”

(Uh-uh, Mister Wyi, I said I’d walk to you when your ball of suckers eventually starts acting manly… when pretty balls have summoned gut, maybe… but not right this moment you only made a decision.)

“Then, I swear, I’ll come for you wherever you hide and make these cranky calls…”

She put off the line on him.

SonOfMan stood there staring the set he held in his hand. When he stared a pretty long time, he brought it near his face and scrolled out the numbers to the one that carried the name ‘My Angel’ and pressed the ‘send’ button. The device told him there was urgent need to buff up his account, and he mused out to it that she was the first in his family and friends list and so however little credit would do this call.

Then on the spur of the moment he confronted MyAngel with the piece of information as good as to speak out of turn.

At first she didn’t believe him when he told her. Now he added real grimly; “Never you mind how I know, Dumebi. After all, it’s only yesterday, but I’ll prove it to you if you want.”

(I want you to prove it!) she shouted, sounding like a badly disappointed friend.

“Don’t worry I will, and I’ll tell you the name of the witness,” he said snootily, but then waited a moment he had to continue plaintively. “Dumebi, what’s really happening around your love for me?” It was a painful question, anyway. The line was quiet. He could hear her struggling to control some emotion, like swearing under her breath. It was uncalled for, but he liked it that way. He liked her to be so damned smart and he would flog her conscience. After all, it was gravely mischievous for one to send somebody to market with a bag of salt, and send a rain-maker after him—she was cruelly having his head put under the knife without being prodded.

(Just tell me one thing, WyiWorri.) She finally kept a cool head.

“Shoot.”

(How would you find out?)

“Don’t conclude that nobody’s seeing you, just because you don’t see anybody looking at you; a too right nosy-perker told me. You know good-looking men like me have a lot of admirers; we call them potential lovers, while women know them as secret rivals… you know, green snake on green grass. They’re mostly fallen idols, and this particular helpful honey partner called the turn right on the nose.”

(The helpful honey partner got a name, WyiWorri?)

“No, not this anonymous one. They’re always very careful to even disguise their voice; trust me, this could even be a guy?”

(A guy?)

He felt her frown come over the line, and a laugh trickled out his chest. “Uh-uh, definitely not your witness; he wouldn’t betray you so quick, though that’s what you really deserve… a damned crook like you are to me in this love game.”

(Damn you, WyiWorri! I…)

“You nothing… what’s really happening upon your love for me, was the question?”

(That question is too offensive to ask, and too inconsequential to answer, WyiWorri.)

“Get your damn fucking mouth answering…”

He was talking, but she cut the line just the taunted way the first lady did. Was the reality staring in his face? He stared at the device emptily. Then the blank space was filling in gradually. Aye, agonizingly slow. But the cover was coming off the picture. There was a little more sense to it now, and like he vowed to the first lady, he would go for her, find and prove it to himself at least.

Yeah, to himself and maybe to Prince Williams.

The next moment, he recharged, called and told Prince Williams.

(You didn’t recognize the voice?)

“But I’ve just said that!” SonOfMan couldn’t help pushing out an irritable tone. “No, I did not recognize the voice.”

(Hey, don’t get riled at me!) Prince Williams cautioned. (I just don’t want you to go off half-cooked, that’s all.)

It infuriated SonOfMan that Prince Williams was ready to take MyAngel’s side. “I’m not asking you, chum, or anybody to go off half-cooked with me here. Keep taking side with her, I don’t care. Myself, I’m, sure, following up this lead.”

(When something happens, don’t do anything, just think. WyiWorri, think first!” Prince Williams yelled.

“Gawd, I think… have been thinking… and to follow up this lead is what I think out, Prince Williams!” SonOfMan snapped back.

(Might be a crank,) Prince Williams said; (that snoopy lady caller, understand?)

“No, not a bit,” SonOfMan insisted. “I may not know who it was, but it didn’t have the characteristics of a cranky caller in an exacting sense. She sounded real and obliging… and sympathetic. I believe what she has been trying to say.”

(You’ve got no proof that such level of betrayal or marital union was going to take place,) Prince Williams stayed on it. (This could be half-cooked jerk that winds up with egg on your face all over, man.)

“Let it be, chum, let it damned winds up with egg on my face, you get man, I’ll follow this lead.” He cut his line.