The story…
No one goes swimming in shark-infested waters unless the beach is too hot for the feet. Yet, Felicia had told me that was exactly why she was undertaking such dangers.
“The world out there is unpredictable, at least in here I only need to avoid the snapping hungry jaws,” she said above the haze of her cigarette and I had stared into my drink as if expecting some answers will jump out of the golden liquid.
“You are moody today,” she finally remarked on my continued silence. I quickly gulped everything in my glass as if that were a reply - the size of the glass stopped me or I would have swallowed it along with the liquor that had momentarily set my intestines on fire. I masterfully ignored the sensation that was spreading from my belly to my shoulders.
“Am I?”, I asked her.
“Yes, less chatty. Your usual humour is missing too or do you want to fuck first?”, she asked reaching for my zip.
I stayed her hand with a gaze, and smiled though I wasn’t feeling like it and the smile stopped only where I felt it on my face. The conversation I had started this night had turned sour in my mouth like the beans my roommate had made me ate that morning.
“Why are we doing this?” I asked finally.
She stood up, this girl whose name could have been Nkeiruka or Chinwe or Amarachi. She did look like an Amarachi - the Grace of God - it would have made perfect sense considering the way her sure steps and swinging hips could hold one’s eyes like life itself depended on it.
“I need you more than you can ever understand” she told me.
“But I don’t want to hurt you,” she continued, “though I think letting you go now will only hurt you more”.
Felicia should have been a Philosophy student like me or a surgeon. The way she cuts through mazes of issues is just simply amazing.
I stood up and went to her, wrapping my hand around her waist and resting my head on her shoulders.
“I just felt a little hopeless about all this,” I said. I was afraid I would offend her but I was more afraid my silence would do more harm. “I wish I can help you end all this,” I added.
She turned me around and looked into my eyes. There was no light in the room; that was how we liked it. But a shop across the street with a ‘Pharmacy’ sign hanging over its front and which sold almost everything else besides medicines casts some light through the window and blurred my vision.
“You never considered if I wanted all this to end or not?” she asked. I could feel the hurt building in her voice from the beginning of the question and in the tightness with which she held my hand.
I probably never had, not directly at least because I was afraid of the answer she would give. She lives in her world and she ruled it; having devised how to get through each day.
“This is not about whether I am jealous or not, but are you truly happy with all this?”, I returned as an answer, answering her question with another.
Felicia’s hand climbed to my back and I buried my face in her bosom. It smelled of Mandy and the lemon fragrance of Sure, I could see nothing now but my own thoughts.
Flash back…
We had met by an accident a year ago. I had just been sent out of a lecturer’s office where I had spent the best part of a school day pleading with him to give me more time to buy a textbook which he threatened would be his CA mark. I knew he was lying, the textbook would make up more than half of my chances of passing. I was in my second year, we know these things.
I had gone on my knees explaining all my financial woes - some of which were made up while in his office - but he eventually threw me out.
I was still seated at his doorstep clinging to a vanishing hope that he might either come out to call me back in or more likely that I could continue to beg him whenever he came out of his office.
A whiff of her perfume, which I later recognised as Mandy caught my attention and snatched me out of my thoughts as she sauntered past casting a dismissive look at me before heading into the lecturer’s office. I knew what she was the moment I saw her wig, heavy makeup and the eyes that tell the world to bring on their worst.
