Ннеди Окорафор - Lagos Noir

Mr. Adewale stirs. He sits up, still complaining of a headache. Mrs. Adewale sighs, goes to the bathroom, opens the medicine cabinet, and takes out some pills. “Here, dear,” she says, offering him more than he needs. He throws them back quickly, almost chocking on one before he stands up and waddles over to the window. “Careful,” she calls, guessing that the reason he races out has something to do with what he must have spotted his neighbors doing outside. But she has better things to do than fuss over him. She must dress for tonight and find out what that girl Cecilia is up to.

Cecilia is downstairs chopping plantains and wondering when Tinuke might reappear. She’s never seen so much anger on a child’s face. She heats her oil and starts frying the perfectly sliced yellow circles of which she is most proud, using a fork to turn them when they are golden. By next week, God willing, she’ll have other maids working for her. And all she’ll do is fry plantains and polish silver. But then, what is she thinking? If all goes according to plan, she’ll never have to work again. She forgets about Tinuke until she hears someone shouting and runs out to see what’s happening. Master is racing down the stairs, shirt undone. He opens the sliding doors that lead to the pool, and there is Tinuke, dressed in a red bikini, smoking.

“Tinuke!” Cecilia calls out in warning, seeing that the girl is wearing headphones and her eyes are closed. The father cannot abide cigarettes.

Seemingly unaware of who has just arrived, Tinuke dips a foot into the deep end and nonchalantly splashes water. Try me , she’s thinking, just try me , as her father rushes toward her.

“What are you wearing?” he shouts, snatching roughly at the strap of her bikini top. Tinuke’s hand moves as if to cover the exposed breast, only to lash out instead, striking him hard across his neck. Cecilia sees it all. One leg goes up, the other follows, and then he falls, banging his head on the concrete as he lands. For one uncertain moment, the head lolls back over the edge of the pool, and the shoulders follow, and then with a rapid whoosh and a half-hearted splash, all of him slips in and under. Tinuke throws the butt of her cigarette into the water after him. She waits for a minute, then another. Then she screams for help.

Onikan

When the traffic inches forward, I watch as the wheel cover on the car ahead of me moves, jutting out ever so slightly and spinning almost independently of the wheel. For a brief moment, I imagine it flying off, cutting through my windscreen, and slicing my head down the middle. I hold onto that image, thinking it would be an interesting way to die. I only wonder if it would be painless, if I’d be dead before I realized what happened.

I imagine that the last thing I would see is the wheel cover hurtling through the air, and that I’d be shocked and fascinated by the horror of it, not knowing that it was coming for me. Would I die immediately, or would my head, split in two in the last moments of consciousness, recognize that my eyes were seeing from farther apart than usual?

The traffic is starting to build up. I knew it would if I left work this late, but my attempt to leave at five p.m. on the dot was thwarted when my boss dropped a folder on my desk at a quarter to five and sat on my table. I hated it when he did that. What was it about me that made him feel comfortable enough to plop himself on my desk? And why did he like these last-minute tasks so much? I was convinced he did it on purpose, deriving some sort of satisfaction from making me stay back. Knowing that, unlike my colleagues, I wouldn’t try to convince him to let me turn it in in the morning.

So, at 6:33 p.m. I find myself pulling into the traffic in front of the marina next to the governor’s residence. Sometimes I want to park my car and just go sit by the sea. But these government dunderheads have put up fences around the parks and waterfront. And besides, there’s nowhere to park. I miss water. I miss sitting on the sand at Bar Beach with the smell and smoke of Igbo teasing me as the boys on the beach smoke joints. They filled the ocean with sand to build their Atlantic City, can you imagine that? These government people won’t let us have anything, even moments of quiet.

But what’s the point of getting angry in a city like Lagos, where everything tries to drive you up the wall? You will just kill yourself for nothing, as my boss likes to say. Though I shouldn’t be quoting that motherfucker because I’m pissed. But again, what’s the point of getting angry? It’s not like I can easily find a new job if I quit this one.

“Ashewo, o je lo gba driver. Who gave you car?”

I don’t even realize these words are directed at me until the yellow taxi pulls up so close to my car that I could lean over the passenger’s side and touch his wrinkling, tribal-marked face if I wanted to. I watch him gesture about my driving skills for a few more seconds.

“All you small, small girls with the car your aristo sugar daddy bought you.”

I roll up the windows and turn on the AC. I stare at the dents and the chipped yellow paint of his old Toyota. I can see him laughing and gesturing at me intermittently, even as he drives forward. I still don’t know what I have done to annoy this man. When the car ahead of me moves, I drive till I draw up to the yellow taxi and swerve my car into his. I hear the screech of tires as the car behind stops short of my bumper, but I barely pay attention. I watch the taxi driver’s jaw drop then begin to move furiously as he curses at me. I turn my music up. He is still struggling with his door when the car behind me reverses and pulls out into the next lane. I turn the wheel, reverse, and drive off. In my rearview mirror, I watch as the gray-bearded man continues to struggle with his car door.

Stephanie is at my door — not at the gate, at the door. I hand my car key to the guard, making a mental note to scold him for letting her in. He should know better than to let anyone enter without my permission.

“The mechanic will come and pick up the car early in the morning. Don’t wake me,” I say to him.

Since I started working at the microfinance bank two years ago, Stephanie and I have only had a reason to talk twice: the two times my boss wanted me to request a bribe from applicants before he approved their loans. I’d gone to her both times because she was in HR. Both conversations went the same way.

I’d say, “This isn’t a part of my job description, and I thought I should report Kaz to HR because I don’t want to do this.”

Her laugh, like a bird’s shrill caw, was loud and sharp. It sounded like a weird mating call. “Tola, everybody does it. Just explain to the applicant that it will speed up the process.”

Both times I caved and, without protest, kept the N50,000 my boss left on my table the morning after he approved the loans. The money was useful, anyway. There’s no point getting angry or acting stupid here in Lagos.

“Sorry I showed up at your door like this,” Stephanie says. She is staring at me in a way that lets me know I have my resting-bitch face on again.

“It’s okay,” I reply, even though we both know it’s not. I open the door to my apartment. “I have a pet, so don’t scream.”

“Because of a dog?” She laughs nervously as she walks in. I turn on the light and she lets out a half-scream before composing herself. She giggles again and moves closer to the wall opposite the glass cage.

“It’s in a cage,” I say. I imagine that the dead mouse in there probably made Lucy look scarier. “She’s slow these days; I don’t know why she hasn’t had her breakfast.”