Chinedu Ogoke - Under Fire

“This Olivia you mentioned, she’s throwing a party too?”

“Yes. It’s like hers on another day.... Nothing’s gonna stop me from dancing with either Lara, Cynthia or Ijeoma, tomorrow. If possible, all three of them. It’s like they’re the big three.” Olivia’s name didn’t enter in this one now. Yunusa reminded him of the omission, pulling another stick. “She, too. But, it’s like these three stick together always.”

“Why I don’t like partying here,” Imoni said, “is, you get hooked on it like drug, and the sacrifice and suffering involved.”

Both Aham and Yunusa agreed with him. “Like hanging around in the academic area, begging people to take you to party venues. And worse, on your way back, because everyone just disappears without telling the other person. Aham, like the numerous times it happened to us last semester.”

Mickey was casual in his response. “It’s like, it depends on your connection, any way. Okay, do you expect a guy like me to experience such a thing? When, already, guys are offering their cars? Aha, I remember, that guy who came here with that blue Golf car has even promised to take me along. But I may disappoint him.” He paused for a while, then continued. “Nothing in this world will stop me from coming with a car next semester. What am I saying? It might even be this semester.” That must be the Golf? Yunusa said. “No. The Ford. It’s like my friend, Ed, will bring his, too. He had a Corolla in mind, but it’s like he’s changed to Ford. He won the bet on who would adjust. Kinda uniform. Haven’t you met him before?”

“Who?” Imoni asked.

“Ed.”

The name, before now, had never been heard, he was told. “Don’t you know him? The guy I walked off with after that lecture? Really? We’re always together. It’s like he should be the most handsome boy currently on campus. Much more handsome than even myself.” The others nodded. “It’s like, he’s being begged to enter for Mr. Unimaid. No need saying it, it’s like he’s won already. Will be competing against himself. Check out his well modelled physique, sex appeal, rich voice and diction, everything. The girls scream for him every where he goes. I envy him. Gets more attention than even me, with all my attributes. I will bring him for you guys to see. It’s like there are guys now on this campus. Everything is changing. Unlike it used to be, guys say.”

What fallacy, Aham screamed. A campus was like any other society. Universal, with people coming and going. So, how could he be saying that? He could see things himself, Mickey said. There was silence for a while, but Mickey was routed by good music. He stood up to dance, but the music suddenly stopped, followed by the announcer’s voice. “Fuck! It’s FM.”

“Yea,” Yunusa said.

The music came up again. “These fucking presenters. How can you tune to FM.? It’s like I have the track in a cassette. I’ll get it tomorrow.”

Need he worry? Yunusa asked. Imoni had it in one of his collections. “Really?” Mickey asked. “What a guy.”

Imoni was smiling as he went to fetch them. He came back with five cassettes. “God!” Mickey exclaimed. “Maxell, and chrome! This is gold! And you lock them up?”

There had been nothing to generate the music, Imoni said. The musical set just arrived. “The room had one of the best collections in school,” Yunusa added to what Imoni was saying. “So many before. People take them, they don’t return them, some guys simply steal them. People turn off their sets, open our door and scream ‘Volume!’”

“Phew. What’s this collection like?” Imoni called out names. “Can’t believe this.” He inserted a cassette. “What? Perfect production.” He turned the music set on, too loud. He removed that without moderation, and inserted another, nodding. “I’m taking this one to the party tonight.”

Imoni showed understanding, but pleaded with him to try not to lose it. The music was so loud, Mickey had to carry his voice above it. “We’re going to have an overhaul here. This rug is super, I tell you, but we have to change it, or even try to acquire the next room, and put it there. This tape isn’t bad, especially with its dub system and continuous play, but it has to give way to something superior. With disc, remote, all.” He smiled. “Then a colour teevee, video game and recorder sets. The walls,” he turned, “will be given their own treatment... then not just anybody will be admitted here. And no ugly girl will come here.... You know I’ve not come to school yet. Just came to check my result, and that was it.” He went to retrieve the cassette.

“You can replace it with this one.”

“Okay.” He did so, and it started to play. “All of them. Well, I’ll catch ya.”

He was opening the door.

He was leaving his pack behind, Yunusa said, displaying the packet. Mickey asked him to keep it. He had over fifty in a bag. He would give him some more the next day. Lest he forgot, Ed was coming with him the following day, eight.

“We’re always around,” Aham promised him.

The door banged noisily after him. “What do you make of this guy?” Yunusa asked later.

“A perfume guy, actually,” Aham said. “But he isn’t a fake. He’s rich. But he talks too much. Ya, ya, ya.”

“About himself especially. Partying, flamboyance, of oppression, wealth and all that mean all the world to him. I wonder if his kind can ever sit down to research.”

“Never.”

“And he’s not the traditional ruler’s son we thought he was. But he’s still rich. There’s no doubt about that.”

“But why does he think so much of Salaudeen, Lara, Audu, Cynthia and the rest? You get the impression he’s bigger than those guys, and the next minute you start thinking he’s no way up their wrung.”

Yunusa went and reduced the volume of the music. “Even this Cynthia, Lara, Olivia and Ijeoma, too. Why should any sane person think anything worthy of them?”

“People do,” Aham said. “If not, why are they so prominent here? I rarely see those girls but I hear about them more often than my own name occurs to me. And, if you haven’t seen them, you take them for ancient Roman goddesses.”

Yunusa laughed. “This Mickey is a fresher here, but has gotten to know a lot of the so-called big guys. Well, he’s a good mixer and don’t they say that birds of same feathers flock together? For instance, that guy who came here with Iyke...”

“Modesty.”

“Where is he?”

“I saw him and Iyke picking some girls in the academic area,” Imoni told him.

“They were at the new complex, too,” Aham said. “In less than two, three hours, not less than ten girls had ridden in that car. I don’t know weather they have turned the car into a campus kabu kabu.”

They were all laughing. “Iyke is restless,” Yunusa said. “Any time you see him, there must be a girl beside him. But, there is this remarkable thing about him, he can’t really be identified with a particular girl.”

“You guys say the Golf belongs to Ime, while the Tipo is Iyke’s?” Imoni asked.

“That’s the picture,” Yunusa said. “It will be clarified eventually.”

“And, if I may ask again, do you think this Mickey will come around if he brings these things he’s just mentioned?”

Yunusa replied again. “He may and he may not. He’s down-to earth, the way I see him. But we may then be seeing the last of him, then, like that Modesty. You know I was watching his eyes. I wasn’t comfortable with the way he was looking at the room.”

“But, there is this observation. I may be proved wrong, any way. This guy said yesterday he had a Golf and a Fiat Tipo. Now, the second car isn’t a Tipo, but a Ford.”

“I thought so, too,” Aham said.