To take a second chance as Victor’s fiancée? No way!
Fuming at this thought, Kambi frowned as she got out of the taxi. Her jaw tightened, as did her chest. After all the pain and embarrassment he had caused her, she couldn’t for the life of her imagine herself as Victor’s fiancée – again. Not for all the oil wells in the Niger Delta!
It didn’t matter that he had recently dumped her maid of dishonour – with whom he had eloped on their wedding day. Kambi couldn’t care enough to sympathise with them, especially with all the deadlines she had to meet.
She dragged her luggage to the beautiful gate of the Obudu Mountain Resort – her temporary place of refuge. Certainly, Victor wouldn’t stalk her up here. Or so she hoped, although, considering social media doesn’t allow people much privacy, he could probably find her anywhere. But she imagined that he wouldn’t go through the trouble of trailing her to a remote part of Cross River State. Again, she was happy that she wouldn’t have to spend her days and nights at the Love 100.5 FM radio station over the next couple of weeks, presenting boring programmes and reading (or editing) depressing news items. How wonderful life would be if she could just focus on completing her collection of poetry, due for submission in two weeks. Kambi looked at her watch and sighed. In a few hours, the skies would draw their curtains. And her agent would call her to find out how her writing was going.
Completing the manuscript would bring her one step closer to her ultimate goal – to be a published author, not just a performance poet.
She raised her chin as the first lines of a poem rang in her head.
Kissing the granite-like features of that face …
She paused.
Not the face of the uniformed guard at the gatepost,
Not the face of the nomad,
leading a herd of cattle up the hill.
Kambi shook her head like a hen shaking flies off its comb. She would have to wait until she was settled into her room. Then, she could write a poem.
For now, Kambi took in the attractions of the haven. The mountain was teeming with blogging material. From her experience, photographs helped readers connect more to her poems. This holiday was also a chance to mix work and play. Just what she had been looking for – an opportunity to escape from her chaotic life to the serenity of the Obudu Mountain Resort.
And what a tranquil, even romantic, place this was! Kambi gasped with admiration as she clicked away with her camera. Dragging her luggage past the gatepost, she photographed the sculpted cow’s head, the frothing natural spring and the bright-green hills beyond. Every fibre of her being was suffused with the giddiness she felt each time she had seen commercials of the Obudu Mountain Resort on television.
A cable car conveyed her from the tropical base of the mountain up into the more temperate mountaintop. For the entire four-kilometre journey, she looked up and down at the sparkly streams criss-crossing the gorges, at the wafting clouds, and at the flowers. She breathed in the clean mountain air and decided that this trip would be more fun than she had imagined. But fun in a quiet way, which was exactly what she needed.
A travel poem about my arrival.
“How high?” Kambi asked the cable car operator. “How high is this plateau?”
She inhaled the aroma of wet grass. Rushing streams flowed around the looming slopes of the Obudu plateau and cascaded down rough black rocks. Swiftly, they flowed onto the shallow gutters that lined the narrow curve up the fog-blanketed plateau.
“About 1,600 metres above sea level,” the cable car driver replied as they approached the reception.
Another downward glance revealed a steel-coloured giant anaconda on the grassy plateau. Clicking away with her camera, she gasped at the impressive gorges draped with undergrowth, trees and plants, and the endless S-shaped road that slithered up the mountain.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The scenery was enthralling enough to erase remnants of the haunting memories of Victor’s betrayal. What a shattering experience that had been. She’d felt as though her confidence had been smashed against a wall. And, for a long time, all she had written were poems about life’s complexities, forgiveness and self-preservation. She hadn’t been able to trust her muse. In order to unlock more of her creative juices, she had sneaked out of Port Harcourt that morning before the first light of dawn appeared.
The sudden stop of the cable car caused her to jerk out of her reverie.
She picked up her luggage, thanked the cable operator – whose cap bore the insignia of the last mountain race competition – and stepped out into the reception.
A mask glared at her from the wall. Kambi had an eye for art. Victor had quarrelled with her over that (and most of her interests). He had such horrible taste in art, why had she agreed to marry him in the first place? She took photographs of a carving of a slouching old man leaning solemnly on a walking stick. The carving tilted slightly to the side of a bronze cow. Kambi clicked away.
“Welcome,” the receptionist said, as she leaned on the marble counter. “Is this your first time here?”
Kambi nodded and read the tag on the receptionist’s white cotton long-sleeved shirt – ‘Mina’.
Mina stared at Kambi, as did some of the chatty men who sat on the sofa, and those who milled around the door. Kambi adjusted her jacket and caught a pair of eyes peering at her over the top of an opened Saturday Guardian newspaper. It was another Saturday!
Her phone beeped. A text message from her agent. Kambi’s heart pounded faster as she responded to the message. There was real trouble: a new deadline!
Kambi wondered if everyone knew of her misfortunes. Why else were they staring? It crossed her mind that people often stared at her unashamedly. She had a small waist which she tried to conceal but to no avail. Stripper-girl figure, her friend Kaycee usually joked. Whenever she wore a belt on a long, fitted shirt and pencil jeans, she got stares, like the ones she was receiving now. Once, she had been at a book reading where she spent time discussing Rudyard Kipling’s If with a popular poet. She had stormed out because the man kept staring at her breasts. Now, she forgot all about her agent and her mind flitted to the staring people. Why were they staring at her this time?
Flushed with embarrassment, she almost didn’t hear the receptionist when she spoke.
“Nice scarf,” the receptionist said, grinning. She was pointing to Kambi’s turquoise scarf.
Kambi touched the cloth around her neck. She smiled shyly, her eyes registering surprise. It had been a gift from her mother. “Thank you,” she said.
Kambi ran her finger down the laminated list and pointed to the chalet.
“It’s not occupied at the moment,” Mina said. Kambi filled in a form and looked out of the window.
Oh my God! It’s him. It’s Hunky Beba. She gasped and stared with her mouth open at the tall, broad-chested mixed-race man who had once fought off hoodlums and saved her from what could have been a life-threatening attack. But that was six years ago, and Kambi wondered whether to go out and say hello or to let it pass. She chose the latter.
Every time Kambi remembered that night in her first year at the university – that night when she had been waylaid along a lonely lane on her way back from a poetry performance, after she had tripped on a stump and fallen, she wondered where Hunky Beba had come from. She had asked him, in the course of their close friendship, and he’d said, “Heaven!” Later, she learned that he was an alumnus who was at the university to process his transcript. He needed to stay on campus for a few more days because the records officers were still processing his documents.
Kambi had thought of Hunky Beba as an angel. Before he went for his masters they had spent some time together. She began to admire his smile, his eyes, his calm demeanour, his intelligence, and experience. She loved the way he treated her with respect. But she had felt so overwhelmed by emotions that she decided to end the warm friendship that they had built. She had always been the cautious kind – choosing her priorities carefully. He, too, had said he was afraid of getting hurt. Orchestrating fights and quarrels: these were her strategies for discouraging him. Once, she had turned down his invitation to accompany him to a dinner party to meet some good friends of his. It was the only way she knew how to protect herself from emotional hurt – shielding herself from love. Back then, the thought of commitment made her feel stifled, as though strong hands were gripping her throat and blocking her windpipe. Then, she was young and naïve.
Now, there was the new deadline for the submission of her poetry collection to her agent, and she just couldn’t handle another distraction.
“Quite an attractive man, isn’t he?”
“Who?” Kambi replied, feigning ignorance. One look at him sent shivers down her spine.
Mina raised her chin towards the window where the man was standing, staring into the sky.
Handing Kambi a sheaf of papers, Mina smiled and said, “Please sign here.”
“Oh!” Kambi said with a wide smile. She signed the forms.
“No need to be shy. My half-brother has been alone a long time,” Mina chattered as she pointed the remote control at the mute television in the corner. “It’s good to know pretty women still find him attractive. Do you want me to hook you up?”
Bad idea. She took in Mina’s oval-shaped, dark-complexioned face. Mina was a pretty girl, but she shared only one feature with Beba – the pink, plump lips. Kambi was surprised; she hadn’t known he had half-siblings. She knew he was from Cross River state; she had also learned about his time as a Peace Corps volunteer, and that he had a degree in metallurgical engineering, but she hadn’t managed to learn much about his family.
“That’s really nice of you,” Kambi said. “But no. Thanks all the same.” Kambi smiled, remembering all she had done to keep from falling for him …
Mina sucked her teeth.
Kambi smiled and reasoned that Mina was probably an adventurous twenty-something-year-old. And, although Kambi was 24, she couldn’t imagine playing love hunter.
Lately, she had been taking herself too seriously. It had taken a failed engagement, exhaustion, and a lot of cajoling from her agent for her to take a holiday. Last night, before she slept, she had decided to do something out of character: to sneak out before daylight for this trip she had been secretly planning. Her family would be furious with her.
Waiting for her keys, Kambi shivered slightly in her jacket and jeans. She looked out of the window again and he was gone. She breathed a sigh of relief. Had she made the right decision?
“Ready,” Mina asked as she gave Kambi a bunch of keys. “Let me show you to your chalet.”
Kambi wondered if she would run into him in the course of her stay at the resort. Was he on holiday as well? These and many other questions troubled her thoughts. Somehow, she managed to brush them aside as the double-glass doors slid open. Mina dragged her suitcase through the door and Kambi followed. A light breeze blew in their faces. A row of colourful flags billowed in the wind. A flush of relief filled Kambi and she felt unfettered, like a bird released from a cage. As they walked, Kambi counted the flags. And, when she counted the 20th flag, she took another photo and watched her steps fall in line with Mina’s.
Just then, her phone beeped. A text message had come in from an unknown number.
I KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.