Julie Iromuanya: Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

Gladys returned just then, elbowing her way through the room with one child strapped to her back and another wrapped around her leg. The baby in Emeka’s lap was asleep now. “Good,” Gladys said. She began to reach for the girl, but Emeka stopped her.

“Let me help, dear.”

Job watched in silent disgust as Emeka carefully rose, making a show of his gentleness with his precious daughter. He kissed her forehead and cheeks multiple times, twirled his fingers through the tangles of her hair, and smoothed out the creases of her shrunken onesie. Emeka and Gladys marched toward the back room, where Job could already imagine the scene: Emeka laying the girl on the bed, the mother placing a kiss on her forehead. Just as they reentered the room, Emeka forcefully smacked Gladys’s rear. She feigned protest, a chuckle caught in an exclamation. Then she told him she needed milk. Like a soldier ready for battle, Emeka, armed with his shoes in one hand and his wallet in the other, headed for the door. Job followed.

Night overtook them. Normally, they fought over who would drive. That day, Job didn’t have it in him. Walking to the car, Job dreaded the overstuffed seats piled with the children’s toys. After a short series of protests, the Audi started. It climbed the curb, toeing the pavement in a way that reminded Job of the way Emeka walked: forcefully, with all the weight bearing as far down as possible on his heels. They started through the night, hot wind blowing through the windows like stale breath, stopping once they reached a gas station.

In the curt, overenunciated English Emeka used with Americans, he ordered the attendant to fill his car with plus unleaded fuel. “I do not want any of the impurities,” he explained. Then he burst forward in his long strides. Emeka bought the milk, a small bunch of lollipops for his daughters, and a pack of mints for Gladys. Job bought two bottles of Heineken.

Just as they returned to the car, they could see the attendant slouched in his seat against the poles. A messy streak of dirty water still cut across the windshield, and the gas meter on the pump showed that he had fueled the car with regular unleaded. Emeka’s jaw tightened. In unrepentant disdain, the attendant turned his nose up and watched them. His mouth widened into a smile, revealing clean, straight teeth. It was a surprise hidden in his dirt-streaked, sun-browned face. Where the collar of his blue work shirt pulled away from his neck, a pink band of skin was exposed. He was the same trash that Job had recognized in Cheryl that morning. It filled him with disgust that inched toward rage.

“This is not what my friend ordered.” Surely there would be no charge for the fuel. “This is not plus unleaded.”

“Excuse me?” the attendant asked.

“Do you not speak English?” Job asked, his voice rising.

“Come again?”

There was no crowd, just the three men, surrounded only by the rusted pillars that held the tarp over the gas pumps. Inside the convenience store, another man leaned heavily against his palm, staring blankly into the television screen.

“Thank you, my good man,” Emeka said to the attendant. He stood between the two. “This is exactly what I ordered.”

“No, this is regular unleaded.”

“What are you talking about? I ordered regular unleaded. The man is correct.”

The attendant nodded warily as Emeka’s declamations grew in gusto.

“Job, my friend, you are not hearing well.”

Job understood. He said no more.

Emeka paid the attendant the money. Then, like an afterthought, he gave him a hefty tip. “Thank you, my good man,” Emeka said again.

In the car, Emeka sat up straight in the driver’s seat, as proud as if he had won some war. Bright spots of headlights left a dazzling glare on the windshield.

Job fumed with rage. “Way-o Americans. There was no need to give him a tip.”

“Job, must you shame yourself wherever you go?” Emeka turned on the radio. A scratchy horn announced the beginning of a jazz song.

They turned onto a narrow road. Weeds snapped across the beams of light. Job gazed out the window. He did not want to play Emeka’s games of diplomacy. He had been an accomplice many times, but today needed to be different. It was the arrogance in the man’s action. How easy it would have been for him to simply fill the tank properly, just as it would have been easy for those men to expose Cheryl for the fraud she was.

And Job knew Emeka. He was just the way Job imagined Samuel would have been, if he had lived, if he had reached America instead of Job, like their father had planned. Perhaps it was Samuel’s arrogance that had killed him in the end, not any bullet. Perhaps in some strange way this was why Job had remained friends with Emeka all these years. After all, he reminded himself, he had not, in nearly a year, been able to admit to Emeka that he had flunked out of school. He could not be Emeka’s joke to Gladys over dinner. He could not be the joke of his hometown in Nigeria. He could not be his mother’s pity and his father’s failure. Because of this, Job and Emeka still met in the student union lounge several times a month to discuss their classes. “You have made your point.”

Emeka whistled with the song’s horn section and tapped his palm on the steering wheel in time with the drums. “So, you say this American woman asked to blow job you?” Emeka asked.

A small smile widened on Job’s lips. “I’m not lying.”

Emeka pulled a finger along his mustache. “Hey! American woman!” The familiar joviality had returned. “What did you say when she offered?”

Job laughed heartily. “You know the answer.”

Emeka turned to him. “You said yes, no?”

Job fell back in his seat. “I am a man.” After a pause, he added, “Of course I said yes.”

“Where did you take her?”

Job had not thought so far ahead. “I took her behind the car.” He paused. “She insisted.”

“Hmm.” Emeka sighed. “Me, no thanks.” He turned his head swiftly from side to side.

It was Job’s turn to react with shock. “What is wrong with your head?” Job asked. “An American, tall-legged blonde.”

“Only a fool would combine his business with his pleasures.” Emeka spat out the side of the window. “Have I not taught you well? America is for business. Marry, bury, and retire in Nigeria.” They had just pulled into his driveway, the gravel crunching under the car’s tires.

Inside, the house was silent and still, each child asleep and King Sunny Adé at rest. Gladys received the milk. “What has taken you so long, oh?”

“My wife, Job has been looking for trouble,” he said. With a small wink in Job’s direction, he added, “First he begins by harassing the store clerk. You see, if it had not been for me, World War III would begin today.”

Job sulked. “Your husband is a United Nations peacekeeper.”

Gladys smirked but said nothing. Instead, she poured some milk into a pot and set it to boil on the stove.

When he had her full attention, Emeka continued. “My dear, you will never imagine the disgusting ideas in this man’s head.”

Gladys drained a tin of Ovaltine into the boiling pot. She stirred slowly.

“Imagine, sleeping with an American whore,” Emeka said.

“Eh?” Gladys turned a startled gaze in Job’s direction that sank into deeper and deeper levels of disgust.

“Yes, Job,” Emeka said. He spoke evenly, like Brokaw reporting the news. “Tell my wife about how you took the whore behind a car.”

It was as if Gladys was staring into a pot of urine and feces. Job withered under her glare. He could not call Emeka a liar in front of his own wife, yet he had no words for himself. What could he say in his defense?