John Goldbach - It Is an Honest Ghost

Kenneth ate a morsel and said, ‘Delicious!’

I took up the challenge and ate some, too, and blood exploded in my mouth.

‘It’s good. Bloody,’ I said, and everyone laughed. I swigged back some beer.

On the bus ride back from the Rift Valley, I received a text from MC Karen, asking me if I’d be available to meet around six. The cultural attaché of the Embassy of the United States of America, Aruna Jayaraman, had invited a group of us, with embossed invitations, to his home for a literary soireé, ‘Spreading the Words,’ to be given by some of the visiting American writers, for six-thirty p.m.

But we were flying out for Lamu the next afternoon and the prospect of hanging with MC Karen interested me more than another reading, so I texted Karen back saying I’d love to go to her studio. She wrote saying she’d pick me up in a car at the hotel at six and I said I’d be out front.

I told Boris I’d be skipping the event at the cultural attaché’s so as to hang out with MC Karen and he said, ‘Man, good choice.’

III

I paced out front of the hotel waiting for MC Karen. I was nervous and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Jason gave me his cell number, if for some reason I got lost or something. My abdomen hurt a little, a soreness incommensurate with the few sit-ups I’d done. The bus to the cultural attaché’s house left at five-thirty. Only a small group had been invited. MC Karen was late, like half an hour late, so I went to the restaurant and ordered a bottle of water and watched for her from the terrace.

She showed up a little after seven. I went to greet her and she emerged from the backseat of the car looking gorgeous, again in short-shorts and smiling, with her arms open to greet me, and I no longer cared about her lateness.

A few festivalgoers saw me get in the backseat of the car with MC Karen and I felt good; I felt excited.

‘I thought we’d have a beer or two,’ she said, ‘and meet up with Flora before we hit the studio.’

‘I’m game,’ I said.

We sat in the backseat, both facing forward, both smiling widely. The sun was bright but starting to set.

The car ride to Westlands took about twenty minutes and we got dropped off at a multi-floored plaza. I paid the driver. Inside, it seemed nearly abandoned, a small abandoned mall. We walked up a few flights of stairs to a food court, an abandoned food court, though one concession remained open, a small bar, with a limited selection: beer, wine coolers or Kenya Cane.

About a half dozen people sat on and around the food court tables. Flora saw us and greeted us right away.

We went up to the bar and I ordered a Tusker and MC Karen ordered the same and Flora opted for a wine cooler. I paid the bartender, who, other than being behind the bar, gave no indication of being a bartender. After he served us, he went and smoked and drank with people at another table.

I sat with the two women and they looked at me and smiled and chatted amongst themselves a little. Occasionally, I’d feel the eyes of others staring at me from nearby tables but I chose to ignore them; I was having a good time already, a passenger enjoying the night.

Karen lit a cigarette from her soft-pack of Sportsman cigarettes, a portrait of a bridled horse’s head in profile on the orange-and-white pack. She blew smoke at the ceiling and said, ‘Do you enjoy your Tusker?’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘It’s good.’

‘It’s good Kenyan beer,’ she said.

‘You don’t like beer?’ I said to Flora.

‘I do. But I’m drinking a wine cooler because I was beginning to get a bit of a Tusker-belly,’ she said, patting her slim stomach.

The group at the other table had a small stereo and JayZ’s The Black Album played.

‘We’ll drink here,’ said Karen, ‘then go to the studio, which isn’t far. But there’s a hip-hop group recording there now.’

‘Are they good?’ I said.

‘They’re okay,’ said Flora, making a face at Karen.

‘We don’t like them that much,’ said Karen. ‘They’re a little competitive.’

We finished our drinks and Karen hailed a car out front and we drove no more than five or six minutes and pulled up to a gate. Karen opened the padlocked gate with a small key, then we pulled into a large, empty dirt lot, the apartment building set back. I paid the driver. We walked to the building and from the lot it looked a little spooky, like it had been abandoned, paint peeling, scarred. We took the outdoor stairs up to an apartment and I didn’t see a soul till Karen opened a door onto a smoky living room, where six or seven guys sat in the dark save the glow of a tv set. Hip hop played on blown speakers.

Karen and Flora said hello and introduced me and we were all greeted coldly, especially me. One guy in the corner, in a toque, with dreadlocks and bad teeth, was openly hostile toward me, sneering at me when Karen said, ‘This is John.’

Somehow, I wanted to convey to this group of young men that I wasn’t a tourist trying to sleep with their women — MC Karen and DJ Flora were very good-looking, but I was here as a friend, enjoying their company. But then again I didn’t really care.

We went to another room that had been somewhat soundproofed with foam and egg cartons stapled to the walls and there was an old mattress up against a wall, too, and a microphone in a stand.

‘This is where we record vocals and instruments,’ said Karen, and she opened a door to the adjacent room and said, ‘And this is where we record and mix,’ and there was a small mixing board and cables running into the room through a circular hole in the wall, which had been stuffed with socks and T-shirts.

‘I’ll be back,’ said Karen and Flora and I were left standing in the room.

‘Cool studio,’ I said to Flora.

‘It works,’ she said. ‘But it’s annoying always sharing it.’

Karen returned and said. ‘They’re recording till at least midnight, so tonight doesn’t look good. Let’s smoke some ganja.’

We went out on the balcony, in the front of the apartment, and Karen produced a joint from her purse the size of a tampon. At first I refused the joint, thinking of Kenya’s strict drug laws, which I’d been warned about, and thinking about Boris — that is, how embarrassed I’d be if I got in trouble with respect to drugs. Besides, I’d observed that people of a certain generation who lived in the former Soviet Union, although nonjudgmental when it came to over — indulging in spirits, were, say, e.g., extremely judgmental when it came to marijuana. But when I passed on the grass, Flora and Karen looked at me disapprovingly, like I was uncool, so I smoked some.

Staring out onto the empty parking lot, the night sky, we talked and smoked.

‘When are you here till?’ asked Flora.

‘I leave on New Year’s Eve.’

‘Oh that’s soon,’ said Karen.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a short trip, all things considered.’

‘That’s too bad,’ she said.

‘I might be back next year this time, too. I’ll come back for the festival. And I’ll stay longer next time.’

‘That’s in a year,’ said MC Karen.

‘Yes, that’s not long,’ I said.

They both laughed.

Flora said, ‘In Nairobi, a year’s a long time.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘A lot happens in a year,’ said Flora. ‘Let’s go to a club,’ said MC Karen, and she called a car.

Erykah Badu’s M ama’s Gun played, ‘Penitentiary Philosophy,’ when we entered the packed, hot barroom. Karen cut a path through the crowd and got us a couple of seats at the bar. Flora saw a friend and went to talk to her. We sat on barstools and I shouted over the loud music, ‘Good job!’

When the chorus hit, MC Karen stood on the rung of her stool and sang along. I desperately wanted to kiss her and she could tell and laughed and sat back down and slapped me on the back. She lit a Sportsman.