A. Barrett - Blackass

‘Where are you?’

‘I can’t hear — I’m in a club.’

‘With Bola?’ Furo announced with the clairvoyance of jealousy, and Syreeta’s loud laughter only enraged him further. Her laughter fizzled out as she caught the whiplash of menace in his answering silence, and when she said in a cautious tone, ‘You know his name?’ Furo swatted aside her question with his own:

‘Are you with him?’

A teasing note slithered into her voice as she retorted, ‘Are you jealous?’

‘Just answer me!’

‘No,’ she said, and through the percussive music he caught her sniff of derision. ‘The weekends are for his wives.’ She paused. ‘I only see him on Tuesdays.’

‘But you go out every weekend.’

‘I go clubbing with friends. I thought you knew that.’

‘Friends?’

‘My friends,’ she said sharply. Then she relented. ‘Anyway, Baby’s here.’

‘How come you’ve never invited me?’

‘But I have. Think well. The day rain fell.’

‘I don’t remember.’

Her sigh retained its force over the distance. ‘Why are we discussing this now?’

‘You’re too busy to talk to me?’

‘Come on, Furo.’

‘ Don’t call me Furo! ’

He, too, was shocked by his yell.

Syreeta spoke. ‘Something’s wrong. I’m leaving right now. I’m coming home.’

‘No, no, don’t. I’m sorry I shouted at you. You can stay.’

‘Thank you, lord and master,’ Syreeta said with a strained laugh. The bass of a hip-hop tune filled the interlude. ‘But I’ll come back early, tomorrow morning. I’ll take you out. We’ll go watch a movie. Would you like that?’

‘I guess,’ Furo said. ‘Sorry again I shouted at you.’

‘That’s OK. You’re just a big baby. My—’ Her words got drowned out as a male voice shouted above the partying noises, Oi, Sy, get off the bleedin’ phone , and then she said hurriedly, ‘I have to go now, see you tomorrow,’ and ended the call.

The first time Furo’s phone rang on Saturday, it was Tosin calling. Syreeta was in the bathroom, she was preparing to take him out to get a pizza and catch a movie, and so, despite Tosin’s hints about the freeness of her day, he kept the conversation brief. On the drive to City Mall, his phone rang a second time. ‘Aren’t you answering?’ Syreeta asked, and after he replied that he didn’t know the number therefore it must be work so it could wait till Monday, Syreeta turned the radio volume back up. His phone continued to ring in the restaurant, and in the time between departure from La Pizza and arrival at The Galleria, a trip of twenty minutes, it rang four more times, all of the calls from the same number that had pestered him during his meal. While Syreeta bought tickets for a showing of The Avengers , Furo stood in line for popcorn and sodas. In the dim theatre, as they walked up the aisle, his phone rang once more. Hurrying down a middle row to the accompaniment of irate shushes from nearby moviegoers, Furo arrived at the velvet-padded wall, sank into a seat and, after thrusting the popcorn buckets at Syreeta, he finally gave in to the caller’s doggedness by switching off his phone.

‘You should call that person back, it must be important,’ Syreeta whispered as the movie started.

On the drive back to Oniru Estate, while waiting at a red light on Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue, Furo was startled by a pained moan from Syreeta, who, when he looked, was doubled over the steering wheel but straightened up as soon as the amber flashed. After the Honda darted forwards, she responded to his queries by saying it was her period and she had forgotten to buy tampons and so would make a stop at a pharmacy in The Palms. ‘I’ll be quick, wait here for me,’ she told him after she parked, and leaving the engine running and the air conditioning blowing, she set off for the Rubik’s Cube building of the mall. When Furo lost track of her pink blouse in the rainbow crowd that swarmed the mall’s entrance, he took out his phone and powered it on. The start-up tone was interrupted by the beep of an incoming message and, tapping the keypad with cold sweaty fingers, he saw that the SMS was indeed from the same number that had been SOS-ing him. As he read and reread the words, ‘ I know who you are & I’ll tell everyone the truth soon, just wait and see! ’ the suspicion he had been suppressing ever since his pizza breakfast was ruined by the persistent ringing rose from his belly in seafood-smelling waves of nausea.

The message was clear. No doubt about it, someone had found out the truth about him. Thirty green blinks of the dashboard clock were all Furo could bear of the eternity of suspense, and in that time he cursed Obata, he ruled out Tosin, absolved Arinze and dismissed Headstrong, so in the end, with his heart beating in his fingertips, he took up the phone, dialled the malignant number, and was still waiting for it to ring when a female android voice uttered into his ear, ‘ The number you have dialled is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later. The number you have dialled is unavailable … ’ He dialled again and again, all the while hoping the automated response was the usual falsehood from network providers to conceal their shoddy service, but at last, on sighting Syreeta in the distance, he gave up trying and accepted that his fate was that of a crying child whose mother couldn’t sleep. No rest for him until he cut off all ties with his former life.

Monday night in bed, during a lover’s quarrel over nothing, Syreeta said to Furo, ‘Why are you such a big dictator?’ to which he replied smirking, ‘Because you’re a small country.’

They laughed together.

Night, Tuesday, alone at home, sprawled on his back in Syreeta’s bed, surrounded by the ghosts of her woman smell, a book — Are You Ready to Succeed? — clutched in his hands, eyes smarting from the friction of reading, Furo looked up and sighed, ‘Igoni.’

He had been thinking of her lately.

On Wednesday morning, Headstrong drove Furo and Arinze to the airport in Arinze’s Mercedes jeep, and when they arrived at MMA2, after alighting with his pigskin suitcase, Arinze told Headstrong, ‘Head straight back to the office and hand over my key to Tosin.’ The sternness in Arinze’s voice caught Furo’s attention as he lifted out his borrowed carpetbag, and the driver’s response, in a grovelling tone, ‘Yes, sir — journey mercies, sir,’ made him wonder what he was missing in the exchange. Then Arinze led the way into the bustling terminal, where long lines of people waited at the airline counters, and Furo nodded yes at his boss’s suggestion that they check in at separate counters to halve the chances of both missing the flight due to encounters with glitchy computers or bungling personnel. Before parting they agreed to meet afterwards in the departure lounge. Furo joined a queue, and after long minutes of watching in fuming silence as cowards in front of him yielded to incursions by bullies from behind, he got his chance at the counter. He handed his passport to the neckscarved ticketing agent, who shot him a searching look and stared down at the passport, but looked up again at his face, and then called over a colleague, a man. Furo’s cheek muscles suffered to uphold his mask of unconcern as the two agents consulted in whispers while glancing from the passport to him, and at last the male agent laughed, gave Furo a cheery thumbs-up, and walked away shaking his head. After checking Furo in, the woman passed him his passport and boarding pass before saying by way of apology:

‘I’ve never seen a white man with a Nigerian name before.’

Furo passed through immigration without incident, without so much as a curious glance from the bored-looking female officer who thumbed through his passport, and without the body scanner detecting his metal buckle. A male officer, green-bereted and rubber-gloved, noticed the buckle while conducting a body search of the spread-eagled Furo, and then told him in a listless tone that he should have removed it, but when Furo apologised and dropped his hands to his belt, the man waved him through. Smiling with relief at this casual confirmation that he had passed all the tests, that his passport was authentic and so was he, the passport holder, Furo strode to the conveyor belt, picked up his property, and after putting his shoes back on, he ambled off in search of Arinze, whose waving hand he shortly spotted from a seat row beside their boarding gate.