A Story

Hey hey! Long long time….It’s great to be back, especially because you’re still here!

In case you’re wondering, I have been busy for good reason and also for the sake of being busy. All the while, writing has been on my mind as usual, but mostly only on my mind.

Anyway, I hope you are drinking life to the lees. And thank you sooo much for being here!

Here’s A Story.

A Story

I didn’t make your wife want to leave you.

I didn’t ask for the stories she told me, or for her to come to brunch makeup free and show me the purple under her left eye. She said it was your fist.

It doesn’t seem like you Kuku to lose your fist on a beautiful woman’s face. For a moment I worried your wife wasn’t being truthful. After all, she’s a professional—trained to cry on cue and say fantastical things with a straight face. I wondered if you morphed into a monster over time or if the you that was my friend was only a well cast mask.

I offered to call you, to see if something in my voice would remind you of who you once were. But your wife asked me not to. She didn’t want you to know she came to me.

I called you the day after anyway but you didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to call since it had been so long and talking to you would have been awkward. But I couldn’t sleep after meeting with Tinu, seeing her so shrunken and defeated, far from all her cover girl magic.

Do you remember the first day you saw her in person? You wouldn’t let us rest. You went on and on during lunch about how much more elegant she was in real life, how genuine and soft spoken. Do you remember Mama Ai’s place where we used to eat lunch? Abacha topped with cubed onions, akwukwo anara, deep fried mackerel and ugba on the side. You, me and Emeka. It was a tired shack in a makeshift parking lot and we called it ‘Image is Nothing’ because it didn’t look as good as the food tasted. Mama Ai had The Peacocks’ Abiriwa on repeat on her silver and rust radio until you—Yoruba as you are—were able to botch the lyrics of most of the songs in tune. I can count on one hand the number of times we missed going there for lunch until the February when you set out to get Tinu after you met her at the MasterCard conference. You told us that you knew you would marry her someday.

‘You, Kunle. You’ll marry Sexy Margaret! Ok oh’. Emeka rolled his eyes in a semi circle like he used to, and we both laughed at you. Tinu played Sexy Margaret on Second Chances which aired every Thursday on NTA.

You laughed at you too.

*****

You came to my place the day before you proposed to your wife. It was Eid so we did not go to work. It was hot, NEPA had taken the light, so we sat in the balcony, drinking cold beer-and-Sprite and overlooking the intersection where Ojukwu Street and Kigali Lane crisscrossed. As usual, traffic dragged on in a bottleneck. Hawkers shouted their wares—Agege bread, Ewa agonyi, boiled groundnuts, plantain chips—their voices competing fiercely with the shouting bus conductors hanging dangerously from open buses, honking horns and the musical melee from the small establishments that littered the streets.

You showed me the ring you got her and it was blinding.

‘My goodness! It’s perfect’ I threw my arms around you. ‘Congratulations!’.

‘Thank you, Ify’ You smiled proudly as you closed and tucked the cute red velvet box away. But your eyes managed not to smile and I caught a glimpse of something you were trying to hide.

‘Ol boy, don’t tell me you’re moving around Lagos with that diamond in your pocket! Are you playing?’

‘My car is parked in front of Okonkwo’s. I should be safe in your building na’. You smiled again and took a greedy gulp of your beer-and-Sprite. But your eyes stayed the same, stoic.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Am I OK? Is my head bleeding?’ You touched your head and looked at your hand foolishly.

‘Stop it joo. Something just seems off with you. You haven’t even yabbed me since you got here. You’re taking an hour to down a small bottle of beer. I don’t know, Kuku.’

‘I told you that I am proposing to Tinu tomorrow. I am almost a fiancé and I need to start controlling my foul mouth around decent women’ You cackled your little infectious cackle and clasped your hands together in mock prayer.

‘Nonsense boy! You’d better not change o’.

But it must have been too late, because you had already started changing. Slowly. You ordered your shirts online from T&M and no longer roamed Ogbete with me, looking for deals; your traditional two-pieces went from usually slightly rumpled to dry-cleaned. Even your hair was not spared your new found intensity, with your edges carved sharp and deep. You hardly made it to lunch with I and Emeka at Image Is Nothing. You had to have your lunches with Tinu. When I asked you to bring her, you said that Abacha is an acquired taste so she might not be at ease eating there. It made sense. But it didn’t make sense that you were too busy to hang out on most Friday nights, except for the single one at the start of your relationship with Tinu when you brought her to meet us at Toscana. You were right, she was more beautiful in person—her make up was subtle and unnecessary, every strand of her hair was carefully braided in gold ombre and she wore rings on all her well manicured piano fingers. And her figure managed to make a simple T-shirt and denim look like a celebration. There was something delicate and polite about her which I didn’t expect; it seemed earnest and uppity at the same time and it didn’t make sense.

*****

I hardly saw you after the night of your engagement.

You worked in IT and soon enough, your unit completed its move to the new E-business office building across the street, so I could no longer saunter over to your desk to chitchat when I got bored. Your text messages got fewer and fewer and with less and less words. Soon enough, you didn’t take my calls or even bother to return them. When I complained, Emeka said you probably needed space from us to bond properly with Tinu.

Every now and again, I’d see you at a work function and if our eyes met, you’d smile at me generously like your old self. And it made me wonder if it was right for me to have called the unspoken, obvious thing we shared friendship for a little too long. I would ruminate on those times you drove me home; all the times we spent together in snail-paced traffic with Shina Peters or Adele or even Phyno. How I became used to you. How deep conversations with you were as easy as banter. How foolish and insistently you would root for ManCity. How you would argue preposterously that Adele was a better singer than Celine Dion. Now, all of it was dissolving and fast and I was trying to hold on to it—whatever it was—but I didn’t know how.

*****

You decided to wed in London.

I got an email invitation sent to the office email group. We hadn’t seen each other or spoken in two months, but I called you immediately I got it. And you answered almost immediately.

‘Ol boy, I got your IV. Congratulations!’

“Oh Ifeyiwa. Thank you’. You sounded proper, even cold. Nothing like the boy who held my weave while I puked outside Club Q that first time we went there. You cleaned the corners of my mouth too and laughed at me through it all.

‘Ifeyinwa kwa! You mean Ify?’

‘Sorry Ify’ you cackled a little, just like your old self.

“Kuku, what’s happening? How come I’m getting this in an email with everyone else? You don’t even talk to me anymore. Did I do something?”

There was an hour long twenty second silence, heavy as ceramic tiles.

‘Ify, it’s nothing. Trust me’

“It’s not nothing! It can’t be nothing! Don’t insult my intelligence. You showed me her ring before you proposed, but I get a group email with your IV!’

‘I’m sorry Ify.’ Your voice broke off for some seconds’ I don’t really know how to say this’.

‘Just open your mouth and talk’

‘God. Ok. Tinu isn’t really comfortable with our being friends. I told her there’s nothing but she feels like there’s something going on between….’

I didn’t hear the rest of what you said. I don’t know the feeling that swept over me, I’d never felt it before. Your words sucked out all the air, and my heart wanted out of my body. I managed to mutter ‘OK’ before ending the call.

You didn’t call back, even though I was sure you would. Minutes, then hours, then days, nothing. You let me go just like that.

Those days were hard. I’d lie awake in the pitch black, rereading our messages, blaming Tinu for stealing you. When I’d lost enough sleep talking to myself about you, I started to tell anyone who cared to listen how worried I was over you marrying a control freak.

Emeka bought a ticket to London for your wedding. He was going to be your best man, so I stopped talking to him. It hurt that Tinu let you remain friends with him and not with me.

It didn’t help that your wife was popular so your fairytale wedding pictures were splashed so wide online that there was hardly a safe nook. There is one picture I can’t forget—you and your wife, airbrushed, side by side, grinning with your perfect teeth. Her bouquet of fuchsia peonies and white lilies matched your silly boutonniere. But there was still that thing I’d seen in your eyes when you showed me her ring, that thing you tried to but couldn’t hide from me.

*****

I didn’t make your wife want to leave you.

Even if I tried, what makes you think I could have succeeded?

2 years came and went and I was OK. You were still there in the peripheries of my mind but you didn’t rob me of sleep. Whole weeks went by without my thinking of you. Every now and again, you’d post something on Facebook, or the radio would play an old Adele or Train and you would shift to the fore of my mind. A wave of sadness would wash over me but it would be a quick wash, rinsed and wringed out almost immediately. And you’d always go back to the peripheries of my mind where you belong.

I was surprised when Tinu asked me to brunch out of the blue. I nearly didn’t go but then again, I couldn’t stop wondering why she would want me to come to brunch. We never had any conversations beyond the forced niceties at Toscana almost 3 years ago now.

When she sat across the table from me at Café Araba on the Sunday afternoon we met up, I was surprised to see how shrunken and defeated she seemed, all her glamour seemingly squeezed out. She was makeup free and when she took off her oversized sunglasses, I saw the purple under her left eye; she said it was your fist. It doesn’t seem like you to lose your fist on a woman’s face, but I don’t know you anymore.

When she told me all you put her through, I offered to call you, but she didn’t want you to know she came to me. She said she needed to see me because you call my name in your sleep sometimes. She wanted to know if you and I were cheating on her. She promised she wasn’t angry, only looking for answers. Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine and for a moment, I worried your wife wasn’t being truthful. After all, she is trained to cry on cue and say fantastical things with a straight face.

I told her I hadn’t seen or spoken to you in 2 years, but she pressed on digging for answers.

So I told her a story that should have been true.

It was about a night we spent together two days before you flew to London for your wedding.

In the story, you turn up spitting drunk at my door, downcast, asking to talk. You say you love me, always have, and that you would call off the wedding if I said I love you too. You say that Tinu was only beautiful and that it would never be enough. In the story, I’m the good guy so I know that you’re saying things you don’t mean because you’re drunk and foolish. I tell you that you don’t mean the things you said, I rub your back while you throw up and I and give you Panadol. I am the good guy, so I can’t let you drive home to save your life. You sleep on my couch. But I wake up in the middle of the night wrapped in your arms and even though I try, it’s too cozy to think properly. I told your wife that it was the first and only time.

She didn’t interrupt me. When I was done, she thanked me for my honesty. Then she tucked her bruised eye back into her oversized sunglasses, and masterfully wielding her fork and knife, finished up her Yamarita, left some money at on the table and strutted away without saying goodbye.

Something in me wanted to run after her and tell her that the story I just told of the night with you only happened in my head, in different iterations. But I’m not the good guy so I didn’t run after Tinu. I let her go like you let me go.

I called you the next day and you didn’t answer—except in cryptic Facebook posts.