SEVENTEEN

At the departure gate, they waited for the same plane that had just left for Kano to return, deplane passengers, refuel, and get cleaned in order to fly back to Kano. “Danfo in the sky!” said a kufi-wearing man sitting next to Nigel and Angie. Nigel chuckled. “Yeah, the Nigerian factor.”

When they’d returned the night before, Nigel had given Angie his flat and gone to be with Regina in her dorm room, where she’d waved her open return ticket in Nigel’s face and assured him that if he stayed too long in Kano, she’d be back in Baltimore by the time he returned.

“Are you worried?” Angie now asked Nigel.

“Not yet.”

“She doesn’t think there’s something between us, does she?”

Nigel shrugged. “She doesn’t know what to think. I tried to explain, but it’s not like all this makes a lot of sense.”

“She had to know what Ella meant to you.” Angie wanted to say, She has you. Ella is dead. What’s she worried about?

“I’m not going to Kano with Ella.”

Embarrassed, Angie turned her face away from his. She stared out the massive picture window at the airbus humming on the tarmac, gleaming green letters on its side spelling out Nigeria Airways. She hadn’t slept much the night before. Lying in Nigel’s bed, alone, as the hours of insomnia piled up, she’d become more and more anxious. With this trip, she’d get to complete a goal Ella had wanted to accomplish. But why was she so nervous? Wasn’t that what her whole life had been about these past four years?

She turned back to face him. “Do you think about what might’ve happened if you and Ella had gotten to go to Kano together, like you planned?”

He looked out the giant window as if searching for words on the runway. “I like to think I would’ve convinced her to come back home with me.” He looked over at Angie. “But who knows?”

“I think you would have,” she said. “I think you two would still be together right now.”

Nigel smiled. “It’s a nice thought.”

Angie was relieved to see him smile. It was so rare.

When a voice over the PA system finally announced boarding, in a scratchy and unclear garble, everyone rose and ran in a stampede to the departure door.

“Why are they running?” she asked.

Nigel rose. “To get seats on the plane.”

She rose too. “There are no seat assignments?”

“First come, first served.” He grabbed their bags. “I usually fly British Airways when I travel in Africa, but intra-country travel usually means flying on the national airline.” He took her hand. “Needless to say, this one is run like the rest of Nigerian government.”

They ran and made their way through the thicket of people clogging the entryway, and onto the tarmac. The throng of bodies pushed them along and up the metal stairs of the plane. Inside the cabin, people shoved giant bags and tied-up boxes into the overhead compartment. Several seats were saved with passengers’ possessions, staked out for travel companions. They walked toward the back of the plane, found two seats together. He offered her the window.

As the plane lifted off and roared through the sky, Angie felt she was finally honoring her sister’s memory in a real way. She looked over at Nigel and a new wave of gratitude engulfed her.

When the plane reached a cruising altitude, a few passengers pulled out their own food, making the cabin smell like a meat parlor. The flight attendants, stylish young Nigerian women in chic green skirts and white blouses, served drinks. A veiled woman reached out, grabbed a flight attendant’s arm. “Heat up this soup for me now, dearie,” said the woman as she handed over a greasy paper bag. Angie thought about the difference between now and just two weeks ago, when she was on the plane en route to Nigeria. It was astonishing how different everything was now, how different she was. It had only been fourteen days and yet she felt she’d outrun that old Angie, finally left her behind for good back in Lagos. That Angie was lost to her.

When turbulence hit, she squeezed Nigel’s arm and he patted her thigh reassuringly. The pilot spoke to the control tower, his voice caught on the loudspeaker, “I have one hundred and twelve souls on board, including six crew,” he said. The choppiness subsided and right away, Angie relaxed. Try as she might she couldn’t keep her eyes open. As she nodded out, bobbing and catching herself, Nigel gently guided her head to his shoulder, and she slept for the rest of the flight. When the plane made its harsh landing—a hard, bumpy touchdown, she abruptly awoke to a brief shock of desire between her legs, which startled her. Everyone was clapping loudly. “Thanks be to Allah!” yelled one man.

“Thanks be to the goddamn pilot,” said Nigel.

Angie laughed. It felt so good to open her mouth wide and do that.

An hour later, Nigel sat beside Angie in a battered Datsun as the driver cruised along a major road of modern Kano, with its numerous banks and low-slung businesses. As they approached the Old City, before them stood a tall, reddish-brown wall winding its way in a circular path, stretching for miles. It reached so high that when Angie craned her neck to look up, she couldn’t see the top from her backseat view.

Nigel whistled. “Brother, how tall is that wall?”

“Twelve miles long and more that fifty feet high,” said the driver. His name was Emeka, their de facto tour guide. “In the local language, we call it the badala.”

As they got closer to the wall, it dominated the view from their windows. Angie felt slightly claustrophobic, as though moving through an endless tunnel.

“How old is it?” she asked.

“This wall was built in the fifteenth century,” said Emeka. “But the original one was built in the twelfth century. Inside is the Old City of Kano.”

She stared at the structure, couldn’t fathom anything that old still standing. “What was the whole purpose of the wall?” she asked. “I mean, why build an entire wall around a city?”

“To protect the people of Kano from invaders of course.”

“Ah, the first gated communities,” said Nigel. “Who knew?”

“People are supposed to protect you,” said Angie. “Not walls.”

“It is not so much for protection now,” explained Emeka. “It’s now where the majority of Hausa Muslims live. And the southern Christians mostly live in the Sabon Gari, the new city.”

As they drove ahead, a mountain came into view, framing the sky like a huge humpbacked camel, its tan beauty stark in contrast to the dark, crumbling wall.

“That’s Dala Hill,” noted Emeka.

“Is it hard to climb?” she asked.

“Not at all. There are steps. And at the top, quite a view.”

“Wow, I’d love to climb it!” said Angie, excited to be a tourist.

“We can do that in the morning,” said Nigel. The driver turned to navigate a tiny alleyway, causing the mountainous hill to disappear. Soon they pulled up to the small hotel he’d suggested. The late-afternoon heat hit Angie with force as she stepped out of the car. “Feels like it’s a hundred degrees,” she said.

“You are coming from Lagos,” said Emeka. “We are much closer to the Sahara here, so the weather is hotter. But you’ve come at a good time. The rain helps. Just this morning we had thunderstorms.”

Out front, a man sat atop a gold Vespa moped. Nigel began chatting with him about the motorbike, kept saying how cool it was.

“You can rent it, my broda,” said the man. “I am Bola. I will give you a good price.”

“I just might do that,” said Nigel. “Later, man.”

Angie’s room was sparse, but charming. She had a low-lying bed on a wood frame, a porcelain sink with its own mirror and to her delight, a tiny balcony. She opened the shutters and was greeted with a distant call to prayer. She leaned out and saw a few people walking along a street, the women veiled. A motorcycle taxi with two men riding together sped by. Gone was the frenetic pace of Lagos. She liked the contrast.

Angie lay across her bed. Her body hummed. The shock of desire she’d experienced on the plane was back. She’d never felt this before, a kind of rogue turn-on. She’d had only one real boyfriend in her life, and sex had been pretty good. With Romare hovering above, she could rouse desire, sure, but this was something else, like a little beast in her belly, coiled and waiting, making her restless, sweaty.

She undressed, stepped into the white rectangular tub and turned on the shower nozzle. She was grateful for the cold water. As she soaped her body, she ran her hands over her hips and belly, her breasts. She’d hoped to fill out by coming to Nigeria, had hoped that all the rice and stews would have their way with her, and she’d add a few well-placed pounds. She’d always longed for more voluptuousness, always wished she’d been a “brick house,” like the woman The Commodores sang about. But her sick days at Funke’s had thwarted that plan.

She put on the tie-dyed caftan that had been Ella’s and headed to the slim lobby, waited for Nigel.

He stopped when he saw her, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. “You look nice.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, the coiled beast heavy inside.

They walked to a Lebanese restaurant just up the road. The place was charming, with a giant thatched roof supported by bamboo poles and wooden tables adorned with coconut shells holding bougainvillea flowers. Straw covered the floor, except for a large, shiny square set aside for dancing, its disco ball glowing overhead. A DJ played highlife music. The place was filled with many foreign businessmen and southern Nigerians, their broad noses distinguishing them from the long-nosed northerners and Lebanese waiters.

She and Nigel ordered their meals from clever menus pasted to sticks. The place made her think of an episode of Gilligan’s Island—when the crew members transformed a portion of the island into a nightclub for Thurston and Lovey. The waiter brought Nigel stout and her, palm wine. She found herself liking the tangy wine right away, not like back in Brenda’s bedroom. She sipped slowly. Thinking of Brenda made her feel jealous that she’d gotten to have a fling with Nigel, and the animal inside uncoiled, rose up a bit, its seductive tongue licking her nerve endings, teasing her with longing. She was ashamed of herself and drank more, hoping to drown the beast. Nigel ordered. “Give us a smorgasbord,” he told the waiter. “A little bit of everything.”

He took a swig of lager. “So tell me what things are like back home. What’s the big D up to these days?”

Angie shifted in her seat, feeling she’d been asked a trick question. Did he want to know what she’d been up to? How do you say, not a damn thing?

“It’s different from back in the day, that’s for sure,” she offered.

“Oh, I could see that when I left,” he said. “Crack killing off our young brothers. That shit is nothing like what we were dealing with.”

“And now, the whole AIDS thing.” She shook her head. “I mean, never mind Rock Hudson. All those folks who shot up? Now they have to worry about getting the virus.”

Neither of them said the obvious—that that could’ve been Ella’s fate had she lived.

“It’s on the continent too, unfortunately,” said Nigel. He took another swig. “Mostly in East African countries. Uganda is getting hit hard. They call it the ‘slim’ disease. And back in Nairobi, damn near every prostitute is infected, which makes Regina’s charges absurd. Like I’d even touch one of those women.”

Angie looked out at the couples on the dance floor. She didn’t want to hear Regina’s name.

“It’s wild, isn’t it, that one disease can reach across continents?” continued Nigel. He burped lightly. “When I got back to Africa four years ago, nobody was talking about AIDS. It was all secrecy and denial. Now, the World Health Organization is trying to play catch-up.”

Angie turned up her glass of palm wine, finished it off. “Let’s not talk about death and dying right now, OK?”

Nigel nodded his understanding, followed her gaze to the dance floor as music blared from the speakers. Angie twisted her torso as the DJ shifted to a new tune.

“Sonny Ade! I love him!” Nigel rose and held out his hand to her.

“I can’t dance like that,” she insisted as he pulled her onto the shiny square. They joined others and right away Nigel started doing the highlife—hip-swinging, rhythmic moves, hands out in front, palms spread.

“I can’t do it,” she said to Nigel.

“I’ll show you,” he said, gyrating just so—slow and sensuous. She mimicked him, pushing her butt out and rocking it up and down.

“That’s it,” Nigel whispered in her ear. A chill tumbled down her neck. She had a memory flash of Ella dancing to Bob Marley, recalled the thrill of seeing her sister move like that.

“That’s it!” he repeated. “You got it.”

They danced through two songs, and the whole time she watched the muscles in his neck move, the way his chest pushed against his shirt, straining the buttons, the way he threw back his head and chuckled. When they returned to their table, exhausted and thirsty, both gulped down fresh drinks waiting for them. She was tipsy by the time their food arrived—an array of exotic Middle Eastern choices that reminded her of the food in East Seven Mile eateries back home: grilled shish kabobs, garlic-laced salad, creamy hummus, baba ganouje, and spicy cabbage leaves. She ate greedily, thrilled to be away from the extreme choices of Nigerian cuisine—bland and gooey or searing hot and tasteless. They dipped their pita breads into each other’s plates, fed one another forkfuls of spicy delicious chicken, licked their fingers. Their empty plates were whisked away and the two shared diamond-shaped baklavas, the attar syrup a delight to Angie’s sweet tooth. They followed dessert with cups of dark, strong Lebanese coffee, looking on as the dance floor swelled with bodies.

Afterward, Nigel leaned back, lit a cigarette; she watched his cheeks suck in, then balloon out, watched his eyes squint. She was full, but not satiated. She watched him more, transfixed. She felt her desire rising, tried to calm herself with deep breaths. At last he tossed the butt to the straw floor and mashed it with his foot.

“We should get back,” he said. “The guy at the front desk said it’s best to see Dala Hill early, before the sun gets treacherous. Or before it rains. You never know what to expect.”

They walked side by side, Nigel’s strong arm around her; the feel of his lightly damp skin against her arm was almost unbearable. I’m out of my mind, she thought.

At the hotel, they made their way down the hall. She was so full and leaned her weight against him; he guided her to her room. After she opened the door, she grabbed his arm and tried to pull him inside. He resisted, and the force of his resistance pushed her closer, so close she stood on tiptoe and landed a kiss on his lips. A quick one, a dusting. She felt his hesitation, felt him freeze before he gently pushed her away, held her at arm’s length.

“Whoa, girl! What are you doing?”

She wasn’t listening, tried to move in again, kiss him. Just one kiss she thought. Just one.

He gripped her wrists. “Angie, no. We can’t. Hear me? We absolutely cannot. No.”

“Don’t say no to me.”

He looked at her with those hazy eyes. “Listen, you’ve had too much to drink. Get some sleep, OK?”

He turned, walked back down the dark hall. She watched him leave, then slammed her door, grabbed the loose dress with both hands and pulled it over her head, flung it across the room. She peeled out of her underwear and lay across the bed, breeze from the open window blowing across her naked body. She imagined Nigel undressing, crawling into his own hotel bed. She shoved the pillow between her legs and gripped tight. A mere brush of her fingers against her nipples, and she was crying out in release. Right away, she fell into a drunken slumber.