A. Barrett - Blackass

‘What message?’ Obata’s voice and face, insouciant and deadpan, gave nothing away. Furo hadn’t expected anything else, nothing better than cowardice and denial from a man who bullied those in his power, who only raised his voice to those who couldn’t fight back, and who gossiped with underlings in the open. Furo was sure it was Obata who had sent the message, for who else could it be; and he didn’t doubt this conjecture enough to waste his time proving it. Besides, it didn’t matter any more. ‘You can deny it all you want,’ Furo now responded. ‘But I just wanted to tell you that you’re right. I’m not Furo Wariboko.’ At this confession, Obata and Iquo locked wide-eyed glances, and Furo turned away to leave them to their chewing of that bone.

Entering his office, Furo found nothing changed, yet everything appeared different. Lifeless, drab: like the soul had flown from the place. In the light of new ambition, the cosy office was exposed as a dingy jail. Furo set about clearing all traces of his sojourn in the first office he’d called his own. He gathered the printed documents that strewed his desk and ripped them up, tore out the notepad sheets he had jotted on and crumpled them up, emptied the trash can into a plastic bag and stuffed that in his travelling bag, replaced the books he had taken down from the bookshelf to read, and all through this methodical cleanup he brooked no nostalgia, allowed no regret, he felt nothing but excitement about his resolution to spend his last days in Lagos in Tosin’s bed. By the time she knocked on the door, he had made up his mind against confiding his plans to her. Instead, he said, after taking her hand and drawing her inside:

‘I want to kiss you.’

‘What?’

‘I said—’

‘I heard you the first time.’

‘Can I?’

‘No.’

‘Tosin—’

‘No.’

‘What are you afraid of?’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘No one will enter. I’ll lock the door.’

‘I said no.’

‘Don’t you like me any more?’

‘I’m not answering that.’

‘Please, just one kiss.’

‘Stop it. This isn’t the time for that.’

‘What about tonight? We can go to your sister’s house. I’ll spend the weekend.’

‘You’re being insulting.’

For a man accustomed to getting his way, a woman’s refusal is a flapping flag on the ramparts of a besieged fortress. Thus Tosin’s resistance only made her more desirable to Furo. Each time she puckered her lips in no, it took all of his control to obey her. He wanted to close the gap between them. He wanted to crush her mouth beneath his, to suck the pureness from her lips, to thrust his tongue into her goodness, her decency, her refusal to be corrupted.

Tosin took a step backwards and crossed her arms over her chest, this movement forcing Furo back from the brink. When she spoke, the sharpness of her tone punctured the fabric of his parachuting illusions. ‘I have to go back to work. What was it you wanted to tell me?’

That he was going to give her the gift of his final days in Lagos. It was straightforward. It should have been. She liked him, she had told him so. He didn’t understand what was wrong. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong, Tosin?’

The flash he caught in her eyes cleared his confusion. It was a simmering blend of disappointment and distress. No one had ever looked at him that way before. Not since he changed.

Tosin was dangerous.

She saw through his whiteness to the man he was.

For a kiss, a weekend fling, she wanted a better person than he was willing to be.

It was time to leave.

‘I’m sorry,’ Furo said. ‘I got carried away.’ He spun around, walked to the desk, picked up the laptop bag, then returned to her side and held it out to her. ‘I wanted to return this. I don’t need it any more.’ Tosin reached for the empty bag, and the tension between them grew, but it was the wrong kind. Furo knew this was the end of him and her. There was nothing else he owed her, nothing he wanted from her. Except that he had no money for the journey back to Syreeta.

‘I also wanted to borrow some money,’ he said. ‘Two thousand naira, if you can spare it. I have to go out to get something and I don’t have enough on me.’

‘My purse is downstairs,’ Tosin said. She moved towards the door, placed her hand on the knob, and then turned to face him. ‘You just want what you want. It’s only about you.’ When Furo said nothing, she walked out and closed the door.

Minutes later, he left the building.

In his office, arranged on the desk, a Zinox laptop, a Toyota key, a Haba! ID card, a pack of business cards, and a note that said: Thank you for everything.

It was late evening when Syreeta walked through the front door with a load of shopping bags. She kicked the door shut, dumped the bags on the kitchen floor, flicked the light switch, and then spun around as Furo said from the darkened parlour, ‘There’s no light.’ A relieved sigh rushed out the kitchen doorway ahead of her. ‘You frightened me!’ she said as she reached the settee, and then she bent down, brushed Furo’s forehead with her cold lips, and sank down beside him. ‘Why are you home early? I didn’t see your car outside. And I called you this morning but you didn’t pick up. I have some news to tell you. Why are you home early?’

Furo said, ‘I also have some good news for you.’

‘You first,’ Syreeta said.

‘I have a new job. It’s in Abuja. They’ll pay me six hundred thousand!’

In the darkness, Furo couldn’t see the expression on Syreeta’s face, but he heard her sharp intake of air. And then she said in a small voice, ‘In Abuja?’

Furo leaned closer. ‘What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy for me?’

‘I am. Of course I am. You should earn what you’re worth.’ She seemed to swallow the rest of her words. ‘When are you leaving?’ she said at last.

‘Sunday,’ Furo replied. ‘I start work on Monday.’

Silence stretched rubber band-like between them. With a sudden movement, Syreeta broke it. ‘Congrats,’ she said. She started to rise from the settee, but Furo flung out his arm and found her wrist. She fell back into the seat.

‘You haven’t told me your own news,’ he said.

‘I’m pregnant.’

A drum began to beat in Furo’s head. Oh no , it said, not now. The same words over and over, diastole and systole in the pumping rhythm of life.

‘And yes, it’s yours,’ Syreeta said.

Oh no.

‘I want to keep it.’

Not now.

‘I’m keeping it.’ She stood up from the settee and whisked into the bedroom.

And now? Furo asked himself, looking around in the darkness.

Syreeta had him trapped. She might have planned this, or maybe she didn’t and the pregnancy just happened, but either way, she had him where she wanted him. Rooted in her life. Implanted in her womb. Sprouting a life he would have no control over. A child was a mistake he couldn’t make. For many reasons, but above all for the same reason he had left his family behind. Suffer alone and die alone. Strike a path through life without worrying who stands in the way of your blind blows. On this island of existence, the survivor is the man who understands he is trapped. Syreeta, for all her uses, was another trap.

Furo knew the reason Syreeta had picked him up on that second day of his awakening. Perhaps he had always known. Lagos big girl, with her sugar daddy and her snazzy jeep and her apartment in Lekki, but missing the white man to give her entry into the mixed-race babies club. Why else had she fed him, fucked him, pampered him, if not for the reason she now carried in her womb? She was a grasper who had stretched out her hand in help, so how could he expect there to be no catch to her giving? Despite her slips into compassion, Syreeta was successful at her lifestyle exactly because she focused on what she got out of it. In spite of the fondness she bore him, she was tough enough to endure the moral itches and emotional blows of her fancy prostitution, her Tuesdays-only concubinage. Regardless of his complicity in her condition, the Syreetas of this world could withstand its knocks without changing themselves into something else. The hardness of intention was stuck deep within them, within her. And so she knew what she wanted all along. Same as he had always known what he wanted from her. A roof over his head, food to hold in his belly, human comfort to ease his loneliness, and some money to borrow. Nothing he couldn’t pay back. Nothing she couldn’t give. But what she wanted in return, what she was demanding, this pound of baby flesh, he couldn’t, no, wouldn’t give.