A. Barrett - Love Is Power, or Something Like That - Stories

To the sound track of nostalgia, he drove across the road, through the gate of my hotel, and stopped in front of the lobby, where we agreed he would pick me up the next day at seven.

“Communication Tools in Leadership” was a topic I planned to finish in three hours, but my seminar ran on for five and a half hours. This time it wasn’t my fault: many of the club members couldn’t spell words younger than they — Tumblr, hacktivist, phish — so I had to teach some basic Web lingo. Several times during the seminar I calmed myself with the thought of the handsome fee I would collect at the end, and the bargirl with pretty feet, the move I intended to make on her tonight.

The class dispersed at nine minutes to six, and I walked the short distance to my hotel. I got to my room to find that there was no power, and I needed hot water for my shower, so I spent another hour in the hotel manager’s office trying to convince him to switch on the generator, which he finally agreed to. I was on my knees in the bathtub shaving my buttocks when my room phone rang. I rinsed off and hurried out of the bathroom to pick the call. The receptionist announced Babasegun.

“Send him up,” I said, then dropped the receiver, crossed to the room door to unlock it, and tiptoed into the bathroom, dripping soapsuds.

When I re-emerged, he was sitting in a straight-backed chair in front of the TV, which showed Al Jazeera. A redhead with a British accent was talking about Israel in a war correspondent’s voice, and spread out behind her, a polite distance away, kept in line by an unseen cordon, was a crowd of chanting, gesticulating Arabs.

“Israel has bombed Gaza again,” Babasegun said.

“No politics, I need to relax — had a long day,” I said. “Beer plus a woman is all I want.”

I picked up my boxer shorts from the heap of clothes on the bed. I put them on and dropped my towel. My skin lotion and antiperspirant roll-on were beside the TV on the fridge. I asked Babasegun to toss the lotion.

He rose from the chair, reached for the lotion, glanced at me. “Only women and sissies rub cream.” He underhanded the lotion bottle to me, an amused expression on his war-mask face.

I ignored his bait, which I found offensive, too familiar too soon. I put on my chinos trousers, drew on my white linen short-sleeves, then walked to the fridge, picked up the roll-on, and smeared my armpits. While I snapped the buttons on my shirt closed, he walked toward the door.

The Saab stood alone in the hotel parking lot. Without a word we entered, Babasegun started the engine, drove through the hotel gateway, and swung the car right. I turned to him in surprise. This was the road into town.

“Are we going somewhere else?”

“Yes,” he said, eyes on the road.

“What about Wunmi? I wanted to talk to her today!”

“Don’t worry, there’s time for that. But first you need to see more of my town.”

The new place had an open-sided pavilion in front, where we sat. At the back was a long building from which poured cheering voices and TV football commentary. The bartender that emerged at Babasegun’s shout was a pudgy, sweating man. He frowned at us in greeting, acknowledged Babasegun’s order with a grunt. He brought the beers and glasses but forgot the bottle opener. It took him twenty minutes to return with that, by which time we had discovered that the glasses were crusted with dried beer foam. Babasegun spoke roughly to him about his bad service. He picked up the glasses and stomped away.

“The idiot is watching football,” Babasegun said. “It’s Man United and Chelsea today. That’s why everyone’s inside, that’s why he’s behaving like that.”

“Sorry, not a big fan of football,” I said.

“Me too — can’t stand it. If I had remembered the match was today we would have gone to a bar that has no TV.”

“It’s okay here,” I said. “As long as he brings us clean glasses.”

“The problem is, he won’t return for the next hour. Do you mind drinking from the bottle? Or should I go and get the glasses?”

His car key and mobile phone were on the table. “Watch these for me, some of the people who come here are thieves.” Then he left.

Beside the front steps of the pavilion a suya mallam stood over a basin of blazing coals. Smoke swirled about his face, rose from the roasting meat, a cloud of aroma. I called him over and ordered some suya. “With plenty of onions and pepper,” I said as he walked away. I watched him baste the skewered meat with groundnut oil, then place it on the wire grille. Oil dripped from the meat, coals burst into flame. After a few minutes he removed the meat from the grille and sliced it up, flapping his fingers now and again. He sprinkled the meat with ginger-and-chili powder, garnished it with sliced onions and diced tomato, then packed it in newspaper. He approached the table and placed the wrap before me, then strode away, counting my money.

Babasegun’s phone rang.

The first two times, I sat back and enjoyed the music. The third time I reached over, picked it up, looked at the screen. The caller was “JK.”

Babasegun arrived with the glasses as the phone rang for the seventh time. He frowned at the screen. He filled his glass to the brim with beer and took a long drink, smacked his lips and licked foam off them, then poured a refill.

“Who’s JK?” I asked.

He froze with his hand around the Trophy bottle and stared at me, face searching for an expression. Releasing his grip, he raised the hand to rub his mouth. Then his gaze moved past my face, over my shoulder, into the distance, from where his voice came.

“Joke,” he said. “Her name is Joke.”

She was persistent, this Joke. Every time she called, he cut the phone off. He talked about his wife, who was a small-goods trader; about his three sons, who were his world entire; about his university days, when he had high hopes he would one day hold a better job than what he was now stuck with. The phone kept ringing: his monologue was interrupted by short bursts of Tupac’s rap. One line, repeated over and over. Somebody wake me I’m dreaming.

I was preparing to complain when he rose, snatched the phone off the table and said, “A moment, please,” in a fierce, breathless voice, then marched off.

He strolled back nearly a quarter of an hour later. I said: “I finished the suya. It’s best while it’s hot. I couldn’t just sit here and let a good thing go to waste.”

He stopped in front of his chair, gazed at me, then squeezed closed one eyelid and pushed out his lips in a pout. “Okay. But I’ll get you back!” He bent down and grasped his kneecaps, then fell back into the chair with a groan. He stretched his legs under the table and his foot struck mine.

“What’s going on between you and Joke?”

His neck stiffened. “None of your business!”

I shrugged, looked away, raised my glass and sipped.

“I don’t like talking about it,” he said.

Staring at the tabletop, I ran my fuck-you finger around the rim of my glass.

“She’s my student,” he said with a sigh. “We’ve been seeing each other for two years now, but I’m trying to end it. She doesn’t want to stop.”

“Your student! Interesting. What class is she in?”

“Senior Secondary Two.”

“How old?”

“Sixteen.”

“You lucky dog!”

A smile softened his face. “She’s a bad girl, don’t let her age fool you,” he said.

“So why do you want to end it?”