A. Barrett - Blackass

‘Hey you,’ she said to Furo. She stared at him as if expecting to be recognised.

Her appearance was too striking for him to have forgotten, so he was sure they hadn’t, and yet he asked, ‘Have we met before?’

‘We have,’ she said. ‘You’re Furo.’

At that name, Furo’s heart leapt like a flame. He dug his heels into the ground in an effort to keep his face from breaking into expression. In a controlled voice, a voice that barely shook, he said, ‘I think you’ve made a mistake,’ and turned away in a show of indifference.

‘I haven’t,’ the woman said. Her tone was dismissive with confidence. ‘We met a few weeks ago at The Palms. I bought you a drink, a chocolate milkshake. It’s me, Igoni.’

Furo remembered. He remembered Igoni. He remembered their meeting at The Palms, and their chat in the cafe, and the favour he had asked that Igoni refused. He remembered talking to Syreeta after Igoni left, and then going home with her. He remembered everything about that night, and the next morning, and every day that had passed between then and now. Such as who had bought him a milkshake. And this woman, this Igoni, wasn’t that man.

Not any more.

Furo felt like laughing and crying.

It had happened to Igoni, too.

Somewhere, in some way, it was always happening to someone.

‘I remember you,’ Furo said at last. He stared at Igoni’s breasts. ‘You look different.’

‘I know,’ Igoni said with a throaty laugh. And then, glancing at Tosin, she added, ‘Let me not keep you. I just wanted to reintroduce myself.’ She opened her clutch purse and drew out a complimentary card, which she handed to Furo. ‘We should meet up soon. Please call me.’

‘Sure,’ Furo said. ‘Bye.’

As Igoni walked away, Furo listened to her fading footfalls, thinking at the same time about what to tell Tosin, how to explain away that nuisance of a name. He was more worried by what Tosin thought than he was curious about Igoni, though he wondered even now about how she handled her transformation. He felt less threatened by the appearance of Igoni than by Tosin’s overhearing of his old name. She and he were in this together, and maybe someday, when he was better settled into his new life, he might call her up just for the sake of finding out what sort of blackassness was hidden under her skirt. But for now, Tosin had to be answered.

When Furo spoke, his tone was affronted. ‘Some of these Lagos girls are so bold you won’t believe it. That one approached me in the mall and started chatting me up. I had to give her a fake name to get rid of her.’ He paused, watched Tosin’s face, and saw the dawning of comprehension. ‘That’s what I use Furo for — to protect myself from people like that Igoni.’

On his late return to find Furo waiting for him, Kasumu accepted the carton of books with profuse apologies — so sorry to have kept you waiting, I had no idea my order would be delivered by a white man, he said, his words slurring between belches — and he offered to make amends by buying dinner for Furo and his girlfriend. Furo corrected him about the nature of his relationship with Tosin, to which Kasumu responded with insinuating laughter. At Furo’s refusal of a meal, and then a drink, even one drink, Kasumu raised his hands in surrender before escorting Furo and Tosin to the car with his matchmaking arms draped around their shoulders and his beery hiccups clearing mosquitoes from their path. After Headstrong unlocked the car and Tosin climbed in, Kasumu grabbed Furo’s wrist and dragged him away from the open door, then crowded him against an electrical pole and with frantic whispers offered him the directorship of his NGO for motherless children. The salary and perks would be better than whatever Furo got as a delivery boy, assured Kasumu, and, but of course, everything was negotiable based on his success with attracting donations from all those white people who believed anything they were sold by one of their own. ‘What do you say?’ Kasumu ended, peering into Furo’s face.

‘No thanks,’ and freeing himself from the hand that gripped his elbow, Furo jumped into the car, slammed the door, and told Headstrong, ‘Go, go, go!’

Night had fallen during their wait to deliver the books. Good enough reason, Furo told Tosin, to cancel her plan of dropping off in Lekki to catch a taxi the rest of the way to her sister’s house in Ajah. And so, despite Tosin’s objections that it was too much trouble, Furo instructed Headstrong to drive on past the turning into Oniru Estate. The weekend traffic to Ajah held them up for several hours, and it was almost eleven o’clock when they arrived at their destination in a moonless neighbourhood where the temporary power cut was approaching three months long. After bidding goodnight to Headstrong, Tosin alighted from the car, followed by Furo, who escorted her through the sea-bottom darkness all the way to the front gate before saying:

‘Lest I forget, you can book my flight under Furo Wariboko.’

‘All right,’ Tosin replied in a tone that sounded preoccupied, and Furo was about to ask what she was thinking when she pre-empted him with the question, ‘Do you want to come in?’

During their conversation while waiting for Kasumu, Tosin had told him that the house she was going to was her older sister’s, who along with her husband and their toddler son had travelled to Dubai on vacation, and so she would be alone. She didn’t like being alone, she said, especially in a house without electricity. That was when it crossed Furo’s mind that he could, if he wanted, spend the night with Tosin. But did he want to?

‘I do,’ Furo said.

It was the weekend. Knowing Syreeta, she wouldn’t be home, but he would keep to the rules she had enforced on him. He would call her to say he wasn’t returning tonight.

There was only Headstrong to get rid of.

Staring at Tosin through the gloom, Furo said, ‘What about Headstrong?’

Tosin caught his meaning. ‘He can leave. You can stay the night.’

But the First Lady, Arinze’s warning, Haba! property. He had forgotten about that. It was getting too complicated. The more he had to strategise, the less he felt like starting this romance. Besides, under and beneath all, he wasn’t ready to show his black buttocks to anyone.

Furo said, ‘Arinze warned me not to let Headstrong keep the car overnight. I can give him money to take a taxi home, but I can’t drive. If he parks here, how do I move it tomorrow?’ Tosin was silent long enough for him to make up his mind, and when she said at last, ‘Do you really want to stay?’ he voiced his decision: ‘Of course I do. But maybe not tonight.’

The drive to Lekki was swift. It was minutes to midnight when Headstrong eased the First Lady into its usual parking spot in Oniru Estate. While Furo waited by the roadside for Headstrong to lock up, he looked around to confirm that Syreeta’s Honda was missing among those parked. Headstrong approached, and as Furo held out his hand for the car key, the driver said, ‘I think you know Tosin likes you.’

‘Goodnight,’ Furo responded, and they parted, back on good terms.

Upon entering the house, Furo headed straight to his bedroom, dumped his laptop bag on the bed, and was shedding his clothes when the lights blinked out. Standing in the dark with his trousers in his hand, the deep silence before the storm of generators stirred in him a bitter loneliness, so he reached for his phone, and suppressing his misgivings about the line he was about to cross, he dialled Syreeta’s number. The ringing was cut off by a blast of dancehall music. ‘Hello, hello,’ he said without getting a response, and then he raised his voice to a shout, ‘ Syreeta! ’

Her cheerful tones broke through the din. ‘Hey sweetie, are you home?’