10 DAYS - Episode 11
Captain Attah
Nameless girl isn’t in the sitting room watching Telemundo, neither is she in the bedroom or any of the other rooms. I search the kitchen and all the closets and still don’t find her. I go out back in search of her and more than think of screaming her name, but there’s just no name to scream. I sigh and get back into the house. I check the wardrobe where all of her clothes had been neatly folded. They’re gone. I glance at the bedside stool where she’d left her handbag. That too is gone.
“Now what the heck is this?”
You don’t get to change girls like baby diapers and expect not to encounter an evil spirit.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Well, every day, they say, is for the thief and one day for the owner of the house?
“Who is the thief and who’s the owner of this house, huh?”
It makes no sense speaking to oneself so I shut up, moreover, all the questions feel like fucking rhetoric. I don’t even need the small voice in my head, which has been restless as of late, to reply them. The words of my father arrest me and I think of nemesis. Truly it does catch up on the evil ones. But am I evil, or better put, have I been evil?
Why don’t you ask Edisemi?
This is senseless!
Just where did nameless chic disappear to while I was away?
You don’t expect her to be bored while you catch some fun. By the way, she’d need some money to get real good fun. Why don’t you check your drawer?
With a sinking heart I move towards the adjoining drawer. The key is just there in the keyhole, where it never used to be. I'd left it under the pillow, and even that can’t be found on the bed.
“I am finished.”
Truly, I am. The money I’d left in the drawer is gone. Bundles of hundred thousand-naira notes – ten in all, neatly stacked – all gone without an explanatory note. I presume it’d anger me if she’d left such note but there should be some explanation for this evil, even if it’s something as silly as ‘I’M SORRY.’ My chest gains extra weight. It weighs me down, so I plop into the huge bed and let anger consume me. It’s no nice feeling. It feels like stacking your heart with C4s till there’s no space left for one more and then waiting for the right time to hit it with the electric charge and BOOM!
I jerk out of the bed and pace around the room, not convinced she’s left my house with a million naira. How do you explain losing a million naira to pussy? I mean, how do you tell a friend over a glass of whiskey that you purchased a black pussy for a million naira? Pussy that some broke guy on a bad market night had purchased for a thousand naira and some other guy, or guys, was getting for free. This is no pussy made of gold. It’s pure black flesh that gets lubricated with use!
There’s no trace of the chic in the house. I step out of the house again and look from the porch to the gate, hoping to distinct the sole-mark of her slippers from the millions of sole-marks stamped on the sand, only I’d forgotten that the whole compound was paved last year. There’s even no security guy at the gate to ask when she stepped out of the compound.
Accept it man, she’s gone with your cash. These sluts are…
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
I get back into the house. Turn on the TV and browse randomly through the channel list. Nothing interests me.
It occurs to me now that I’ve been wasteful with my resources. I calculate the cost of all the items I’d purchased in the period of one month. It rounds off to five million naira, almost my three-months income. I do a quick maths. The previous month, I’d purchased up to twenty items of real value for five million; this month, I’ve lost a million to pussy. This leaves me with four million, which as it stands is just an imaginary figure. I get five million in three months, the one for the last three months have been lavished. I’ve made a million, eight hundred thousand this month and a million is gone for a very useless item. Just how many items would what I have left purchase me, and how long will it solve my pressing needs? I’m broke, niggah!
I surprise myself by thinking of repentance and church, and even deliverance. Yes, you don’t encounter an evil spirit and hope to be unmarked for doom.
But she’s just a thief and not a spirit. A spirit wouldn’t part with a million naira.
That’s faulty logic, but something to hold on to. Maybe church is not the solution. That was an extreme thought brought about by the current situation. Logically reasoning, a wife is the only solution. If it takes a million naira to purchase a wife (which is, pussy for a lifetime) and the same one million naira to purchase a pussy for two nights and one chooses to be economical, one must go for a wife.
“Njideka it is!”
I get a bottle of whiskey and pour myself a glass in a bid to cheer myself up. Gone is gone and best forgotten, but I look at the selfie and decide to save the picture. If not for the purpose of going about shoving it in people’s faces and asking if they’d somehow seen someone that looked like her, it’d be for memory preservation. Some lesson to show to the boy I’d someday have.
I take a gulp of my drink, recline in the sofa and try to blank out my thoughts. I almost succeed until a more urgent thought dives in. I sit up straight and produce my phone. I’ve got to call Butch over and have an important discussion with him before shit hits the roof.
___
Butch arrives fifteen minutes past three in the afternoon, as against the 2pm arrival time we’d agreed upon. There’s a wary look on his face that jolts my heart. I’m left wondering if by chance Edisemi had contacted him before me. Butch is known to give credence to a lady’s side of the story than he’d a guy, especially on matters that hints at domestic abuse. I grit my teeth at the word. How can you invite a guy over to plug you up for the night and then say the next morning that he’d raped you? Women!
“Whiskey or beer?” I ask as he settles into one of the wing chairs in the lounge, knowing he’d always pick beer. This is one of our dry jokes.
“Whiskey for you, beer for me.”
I fetch his beer from the fridge in the dinning and on my way back, pick up my glass and bottle of whisky from the sitting room. My hands are full and so is my head. I’m thinking of a weightless way to communicate to Butch that I’d slept with Edisemi. Some way to make it seem like a mistake done in the tensest of environment. I’m also wondering if it’d be nice playing Potiphar’s wife – feeding Butch a tale of how the state he’d left his girl had left her sex-starved and desperate to get sex from the closest person. In a way, this makes sense. Edisemi hadn’t enjoyed the sex. In fact, she hadn’t needed it. She’d called me just so she can blackmail me. But why would she want to do that?
“Frosty Heineken, suited for the weather.” I drop the bottle on a glass stool in a clang.
“Lukewarm whiskey, hot in the chest. Your death, man.”
We both laugh. I settle into my chair, glad that the atmosphere is warm. It’s same old Butch with very little worry in his life, not until lately though. The look I’d seen on his face is completely gone now and replacing it is one of enjoyment. Yes, a very cold bottle of beer on a blazing-hot day can do a lot to a man.
We drink in silence for a long time, conversing with our different thoughts. I grow more convinced that Edisemi had bad intentions and should be punished. Bad intentions asides, which nice girl would call up her man’s best man for sex? Butch wasn’t wrong to feel insecure about their relationship after all. Imagine her insulting me this morning for doing something she’d asked me to do. Something that’d given the pussy enough time to make away with my million naira. She must be punished. A fire burns in my chest and I cannot place the cause – whiskey or anger.
I clear my throat. Butch snaps back from whatever world he’d travelled to and flashes me a knowing smile.
“You can’t just call me over for a drink, Captain. I knew that like I know my dick.”
“You don’t know anything, man.”
“Really?”
Butch shifts out of his chair a little and sits straight. It’s almost like he’s perching on the edge of the chair. He’s taking my cue. My straight face and inability to laugh at his witty dick remark is beginning to pass across a message. He’s taking the message. I want him to hold it tight like the rope of life.
“Just how terrible can Edisemi be?” I ask him, finishing the drink in my glass and setting it back on the stool.
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you think you’ve seen the worst of Edisemi?”
Butch appears to recline into his head. “I know she’s got a couple of flaws. We all have flaws, and I like to think that there’s a certain level of flaw every human must possess. It becomes critical and worth working on when yours exceed this level.”
“Edisemi’s level?”
“It’s slightly above. You know me, for a woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, slightly above is not good at all.”
“Hence the plan, right?”
“Exactly. But you have to understand that this plan is not all about exposure. It seeks to correct as well. Captain, I value humility a lot. If every of Edisemi’s flaws are exposed to her and she can accept them all, embrace them and starts actively working on them to be a better person, even if not for me, but for herself, I’d be satisfied. She’s a wonderful person, but…”
“But what?”
“Oboy, what is this nau, are we having a court session here?”
“Forgive me if it feels like that. I just don’t know how best to share this news with you?”
“What news?”
“Another bottle for you?” I point at his almost empty bottle of beer.
He shakes his head but I leave to get it. I need the break if he doesn’t need it. I don't know if I’ve flopped it. At some point, I’d felt like I’d almost slipped in the leash into the dog’s head and had it under my control. If only he hadn’t resisted in the end. I’ve never been good at telling lies. I pray this one comes through.
I find Butch’s bottle and glass empty when I return with his fresh bottle. I feel good inside. I’ve succeeded in putting him on edge, or whatever it is for this situation, and he won’t rest until he gets the whole gist.
“So, what is the news?”
“I bet nothing is news under the sun.”
“That’s figurative, unless you mean I’m the sun.”
I hold his gaze and nod my head. He shifts further out of this chair, making his position on the chair precarious. If the wingchair didn’t have some balance by itself, it would’ve toppled over and spilled him. I shift out of mine so that our faces are as close as those of Salsa dancers.
“Is it about Edisemi?” He asks me.
I nod my head and he lets his eyes fall. I bet he understands that it’s going to be something disastrous.
“Has she called you yet?”
“Yes.” He says and my heart sinks. I don’t let my anxiety show.
“What did she tell you?”
“I didn’t pick the call.”
I manage not to exhale a sigh of relief. I think this is what people use to justify that there’s God. I nod my head sideways instead.
“If I choose to be blunt, I’d call Edisemi a slut but I’ve known her a little and because you’ve loved her for a very long time and you’re my man, I’ll say she’s a shameless bitch.”
“That’s worse than a slut. What did she do?”
“Butch, how would you feel if you caught me and Edisemi in bed?”
Butch’s mouth becomes the big ‘O’ of shock as understanding dawns on him. He gets out of his chair slowly, picks up his glass of beer, empties it into his waiting mouth, fills the cup and paces the lounge with it. He does these with the daze of a sleepwalker and I feel pity for him. I’m however grateful for his understanding capacity. He’s saved me a lot of explanation.
He swirls all of a sudden and marches towards me.
“You didn’t give in, did you?”
“Would I be telling you if I did?”
He stares at me sadly and nods his head. The look is quite strange and unreadable. I can’t tell if he believes me or not but I maintain my angry-dismayed expression. He settles back in his chair and shifts it closer to me. My heart does a somersault. Is he going to question me now?
“The plan is unravelling, man. I was not wrong to have plotted it.”
Now what the hell is he saying?
I nod my head like I’m sharing his thoughts, whereas I’ve drifted back to where I started this morning. I want to ask Butch if he can open his koro-koro eyes and purchase a pussy with a million naira for a period of two nights. It’s very unlikely for him. Does he even have such money? Well, he could. Who’d have thought back in school that Butch was from a wealthy family if he hadn’t entered senior school in style? I sometimes think his work as a pauper’s job but dude had gotten a contract with Access Bank and one big hotel like that. I even heard his name is a big name in exhibition centres. I’m always deceived by his lack of a personal apartment and ride.
“Are you still with me?” He shakes my shoulder.
“Oh, what?”
“You’re still shaken from what happened between you two? When did this even happen?”
“Yeah, man. It happened last night, it was almost a fight. She wouldn’t let me leave. I had to push her and all what to make my way out. She was swimming in tears, I bet she doesn’t know how to cope with rejection.”
“It’s a pity.”
“I don’t know, but I feel you should either leave her or get back to her. I mean, I don’t want to see another ugly thing she’s capable of doing.”
“Don’t worry, man. Things are under control. I’ll meet with her.”
“Whatever you wish, you’re the boss. Somehow I wish you can give your plan an extension.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“We should also work on how to get me Njideka.”
Butch rolls back in his chair and laughs hard. I don’t find anything funny in the suggestion, but if it tickles his fancy, so be it. Moreover, now that I’ve turned the table on Edisemi, I’m all too glad to leave it that way and march on to other important matters, like…
I get out my phone and browse up the picture of me and nameless chic.
“Look at this.” I shove it in Butch’s face just as he’s getting himself back together.
“Njideka, right?”
“Same thing I thought that made me have her in my room.”
“What, it’s not her?”
“Not her at all. This chic is Calabar and I got her from you know where.”
He smiles at the recollection. I’d taken Butch to the Razzmatazz Club on many a stripers night but dude had constantly disappointed me by ordering a beer and refusing a lap dance. I mean, this is a dungeon to bare and satisfy your desires. A place with plentiful spirits, music, girls on sexy lingerie, girls without pants on, girls without bras on, girls who don't care how and where you touch them, girls acrobatically spreading on poles that will get your rod hard. Butch just liked to be a Jew.
“But she isn’t one of the girls.” I add.
“How’d you know that?”
“She came to watch. She bought herself a fucking drink.”
Butch finishes his drink and gets to his feet. He looks good to go – no staggering, no careless talking. I’d be surprised if he displayed any of these. He’s a strong head and no rookie in the beer drinking business. I shake his hand and lead him to the door.
“Edisemi will try to tell me otherwise. I hope she doesn’t complicate the matter.”
“Whatever, man. You deal with it like the boss you are and get me Njideka. She’s my destiny.”
He gives me a curt nod and shows me his back. I wonder what he meant by his last statement and it dawns on me that my man would still give Edisemi a fair hearing. Fucking asshole and chief weakling! I’m angry all over again and don’t feel like anything is settled. Maybe my world is really caving in on me.
©Storyestate
Image Credit:
brothaonline.com
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😘😘😘
Nawa o for Captain... Looking out for Edisemi's side of the story
ReplyDeleteYes, bro. Just stay tuned. Thanks for reading
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