The bitterly cold hall was dark, with only the stage lights on. The lights were focused on the podium as James Bassey, the new soul sensation strummed his guitar, pulling the hearts of the many girls on the front row with it. They were wide eyed, animated versions of themselves. These were the girls who would scream wildly and try to jump on the stage at a louder show. I held my denim jacket closer. James went on, song after song, heartbreak to new love and we drank it all in. The man was in flow, and the audience thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. A large crowd dispersed from the Aztech Arcum that night onto the road. Taxi drivers filled their taxis within seconds of arriving there, as the crowd surged impatiently into any available cab. I realized it would be next to impossible to find a taxi. So I just stood there, painfully shy and aware that I had nothing else to do but stand. I fiddled in my bag for my phone. I would immerse myself in it until I could get a taxi without rushing madly for one like an irritated bull, and be stripped of all dignity. Such was my situation on the day I met Ebuka. He slowed his Toyota corolla to a stop just in front of me. He was strapped to the driver’s seat and leaned toward the passenger window just as he slid down the glass. ‘Hello. Can I drop you off somewhere?’ His deep, rumbling voice hit me at the same time his perfume did. But I maintained my cool outside. I was not one to get excited over a boy, or show it. And I would statutorily decline all such requests except that it was going on 10pm and my mom would be taut. I could see no way else out of this crowded mess and the man seemed like a good person, not to mention his voice. ‘I’m headed to Agip estate. Thank you’ I said with pursed lips to show him that it didn’t matter that I was letting him pick me up, I was still not one of those girls you could just easily pick up because you thought you were fine (even though it must have been impossible for him to make out my lip pursing in the semi dark parking lot, and, in all honesty, the man was fine.)
We talked about the concert on the way because he spoke up first and although I said Agip junction would be fine, he insisted on entering my street. I don’t know whether it was the smoothness of his conversation or that he seemed quite an affectionate man, but when he asked to have my number I decided not to be difficult. ‘My name is Ama’ I said as I came down from the vehicle, of course because he asked. We started stiff, dry conversations on Whatsapp at first, which rapidly became more fun the more I loosened up. He was a banker who had studied engineering, and still had a love for art. But we would talk about which leave-in conditioner worked best for my stubborn hair, and he would tease me about my shrinkage too. But he loved my photography, and he seemed to dwell on each photo, deep in thought or appreciation, then he would ask questions about how I captured the subject. I took up photography after my time in the university studying biochemistry. I had opened a successful photography blog, and here and there, I shared my thoughts on the local music scene as well.
And so time passed on us. It was easy to fall for this man. He was genuinely passionate, and kind. When he asked me to date him, it seemed the natural consequence of all those late night calls and endless texting. I said yes. We got tired of meeting up at Aroma, a fine restaurant within Agip estate where I lived. He didn’t want to meet anywhere else, given that he really didn’t like noisy places. So, inadvertently, one day he picked me up after work, we got ice cream from Aroma, and he drove me to his house in D-line.
He had rented out a simple 1-bedroom apartment and cleaned it up nicely. The sitting room was painted grey, and two frames hung from one side of the room. We would have many memories in this apartment, of kissing and hugging, and hearty laughter, but things were not destined to stay the same.
I wanted to know everything there was to know about my lover, but he seemed cagey. He did not allow me in his bedroom because he said it was not yet time. I could not very well remove my clothes and demand his copulation. So, even though the grayish evening darkness of dusk presented opportunity many times in that sitting room, and my skin sizzled with the electricity of pleasure just beyond reach, I held the passion in. What I did not know, however, was enough to fill an ocean. I look back on it and wonder how I could be so dense. It was not love that blinded me. It was wanting a perfect love so much and for so long that my heart almost physically ached. It was the fluidity of his chatter, the wiggle of his face, the beauty of his voice when he laughed. It was a plethora of unnameable things, but it was not love. I will not blame it on love. If I was not swept by his fine display, I would have been calm enough to ask more questions about him, and insist on getting answers. I would have had the time to discover that he was engaged to be married in a month, that he cared nothing for me, and it was not because of my wit that he laughed with me, nor was it that he even ever truly laughed with me. I will never be able to understand it. Perhaps it was fate, or destiny, but everything led to that evening.
Wednesday evening came with clouds. The tufts of suspended rainfall had gathered around the city like an army laying ambush in the open. Ebuka picked me up after work. Somewhere on the vain timeline of Instagram on the previous night, as I thumbed my phone half asleep, I came upon a photography account. Half wanting to sleep, half curious about the work of this young professional, I proceeded to explore his profile. The sleep was wiped from my eyes in a flash. The photos hit me like a heavy shapeless club thrown by an expert club-throwing caveman. I sat up, desperate to believe the easier story, that I had mistaken his face for another. But the captions and hashtags and congratulatory comments were there to mop all doubt. His fiancé looked radiant, and her smile meant nothing else to me except pure derision. She must have been laughing at me for thinking for so long that I had a man. Her happiness disgusted me, and his corroborating smile was like a rainfall of knives, under which I lay, without even an umbrella. I must have lay there, looking at the bright screen, unseeing, making muffled sounds of agony for hours, before I drifted off to sleep exhausted. I had no idea how to even confront him. The time was 3:04am when I slept.
There was some traffic building up at waterlines junction. Some people were already walking briskly down, some breaking into a run because of the impending rain. ‘How was work today?’ I asked. My own photography was doing good. I had finally started making some money from it; my parents were no longer abrasive about it. ‘Same same’ he said. He was focused on the road so I could shamelessly stare at the sharpness of his jaw. I wanted to break that jaw with a hammer. Or slowly saw it off with a chainsaw. James Bassey was playing on the car stereo. The traffic constipated me. I could not hold it anymore. ‘You’re engaged to be married in a month you shameless bastard!’ It surprised me that I didn’t raise my voice. His face turned ashen. ‘Baby..’ he said. As we turned right into Aba road, the hovering clouds broke. The road was free, so instinctively he stepped on the gas. Rage filled my throat like escaping volcanic lava. ‘Why the hell did you lead me on? And keep me on a leash like this? What did I ever do to you? Tell me!’ Straightaway I saw my fists fly toward his face. I had no control over them. He raised his hand to protect his face. The rain, after such a dramatic gathering of clouds, was a dismal performance that promptly slowed to a quiet sleet. ’I swear to you on my grandfather’s grave, I will find Cynthia and tell her everything. Everything!’
Then darkness covered his eyes. We turned into D-line when we got to garrison junction. I was shaking with rage now. It was pouring out of me, all of it. ‘Let me out! Let me out right now! I wanna go home!’ I did not recognize my voice. It was disconnected, coarse and high pitched. Ebuka said nothing. He was calm as a lake. Deeper into D-line, we drove into a dark street. It must have been quiet and empty, but I didn’t notice that just yet. Then it happened. He timed it perfectly. In a deft motion I saw his right hand tear away from the steering toward me. I saw the glint of metal before I felt a sharp pain in my throat. Alarmed, my hands fled to my throat, cradling it. Blood poured from the wound into my hands. He parked the corolla in the darkness and stabbed my throat again with the camping knife in his bunch of keys before calmly opening my door and shoving me out. The sand on the street was wet from the rain. It was cold outside. I watched him drive away into the darkness. It didn’t cross my mind that I would die that day.
I reached for my phone with one hand and called my dad. Then I realized I wouldn’t be able to speak. I sent a short text with my location, saying I was dying. Someone shouted and ran to me from across the road. I felt them throw some cloth around my neck, apply pressure on it and carry me off the wet ground, running to a hospital. I thought of that cold hall, at the concert in which I met him. I thought of James Bassey, serenading the girls in the front row. I thought of my parents, in a panic trying to get to me. I wondered whether Ebuka and his future wife would play some James Bassey at their wedding reception, and whether his wife would ever learn of me. Then I died. And it was funny that my last thought was about a woman I never met, dancing with my murderer. I died as they reached the hospital. The white light from fluorescent bulbs was the last thing I saw, and it was beautiful.
Erewari 