Blackass

BLACKASS

On Thursday, 21 June, Syreeta gave Furo an old phone that she no longer used, and after she loaded it with airtime, she made a call to someone she knew at the passport office in Ikoyi. A new passport would cost nine thousand naira and take three months to process, but through her contact it would take three days and cost seventeen thousand. Furo didn’t have the money, and he said so in a voice shocked into loudness after hearing Syreeta say into the phone, ‘We’ll come tomorrow,’ but she shushed him with a finger pressed to her lips, then muffled the phone against her chest and whispered to him, ‘At least see the man first, get the application form.’ Furo shut up in agreement, and on Friday morning she drove him to the passport office, parked the car by the gate, and handed him an unsealed envelope. ‘That’s twenty thousand,’ she said, and when his outpourings of gratitude had dragged on too long, she interrupted, ‘Go on. The man is waiting.’

The arrangement was for Furo to wait by the flagpole at the passport office entrance until Syreeta’s contact came to fetch him. Easy instructions to follow: so easy that Furo dreaded the difficulties that must arise. It seemed to him imprudent, provoking — a clear-cut case of trouble dey sleep, yanga go wake am — to walk into the lair of immigration officials and stand under the Nigerian flag. But the previous day, after the set-up phone call, when he disclosed his misgivings to Syreeta, she had laughed them off. Her confidence only served to bolster his doubts, which grew even bigger after he got down from the car and watched her drive off to her appointment at the beauty salon. But he had no time to dwell on his superstitions, as his appearance had caused a tidal wave of excitement in the horde of informal agents, the hustlers, young men and the odd woman who rushed about offering help to everyone who approached. When this crowd fell on him with their frenzied cawing, their begging stares and smarmy smirks, he hurried forwards with his hands guarding his pockets and his lowered head shaking no until he entered the gate of the passport office, through which none of the hustlers ventured. After he halted beside the flagpole, he placed the call. ‘It’s Syreeta’s friend. I’m here, under the flag,’ he said into the phone, and the man grunted in acknowledgement, then ended the call. Furo glanced around, searching for a face that matched that voice. The man’s number was stored in the phone as Passport Man. Furo had asked Syreeta for his real name, but she didn’t know it and neither did her friend who had recommended his services to her. For safety from sting operations and disgruntled customers, Furo supposed. Another reason to worry.

The passport office comprised two long rows of office blocks whose patios were sealed off by wrought-iron bars. Immigration officials in khaki uniforms marched down the patios and into the open doorways of the front office block, through which Furo could see desks and queues of people. A man, a uniformed officer, emerged from one of the doorways. After staring in Furo’s direction for meaningful seconds, he lifted his nametag from around his neck, stowed it in his trouser pocket, and started forwards. Though he looked younger than Furo had imagined from the voice on the telephone, he had to be Passport Man. This was confirmed when he called out from several paces away, ‘Wariboko?’ At Furo’s nod he showed no emotion, and on reaching his side, he said, ‘Come with me.’ He led Furo out through the front gate, and after calling over a sly-faced man from the throng of informal agents, he told Furo, ‘Go with him.’

Furo trailed the agent to a plywood shack by the fence of the passport office. On the shack’s doorstep a pass-my-neighbour generator coughed out fumes, which, over time, had blackened the front wall. The cramped, smoke-darkened interior held a laminating machine, an inkjet printer, a bulky photocopier, an electronic binder, and a desktop computer atop an old rickety table. The agent stopped at the table, selected a sheet from the papers strewn across it, then pulled a biro from his pocket and bent down in preparedness to write. With a frown of concentration on his upturned face, he asked Furo his surname.

‘Wariboko,’ Furo answered.

‘Abeg spell it for me.’

Furo extended his hand for the biro. ‘Let me write it.’

‘No,’ said the agent. ‘Just spell.’

Furo spelled out his surname, and after the next question, his first name, too.

‘What is your place of birth?’

‘Port Harcourt.’

‘Spell Harcourt. I have forget how many Rs.’

With a groan that didn’t pass his lips, Furo did as asked.

‘What is your date of birth?’

‘Six, May, 1979.’

‘You’re a male,’ the agent stated, and ticked that section. Glancing up, he asked, ‘Do you know your state of origin?’

‘Rivers,’ Furo said.

‘What of your local government area?’

Furo had had enough. ‘I can read,’ he said curtly. ‘Let me fill the form myself.’

The agent straightened up as if his back was cramped, then met Furo’s gaze and said: ‘Don’t worry, oga, relax yourself. This nah my work, I know what I am doing. The smallest mistake can spoil your passport finish. Let me handle everything so your money will not waste.’ He bent again over the table. ‘Oya, talk now, what is your local government?’

‘Akuku Toru,’ Furo replied in a resigned voice. He understood now that the agent knew his job indeed. For Furo, it was too much effort to resist the haggling etiquette of jobbery.

‘I know that one spelling,’ the agent responded, and wrote it out before asking, ‘What is the name of your guarantor?’

Furo stared in puzzlement. ‘What do you mean by guarantor?’

In a voice of gloating, the agent said, ‘See what I was saying! That’s why I’m doing the form for you. Nah small things like this wey fit scatter your application.’ He waited for Furo to stew in his ignorance a few more seconds before he explained: ‘A guarantor is somebody who will guarantee you’re Nigerian. No be just anybody o, it must be an adult who has a good job. But no worry yourself, leave am to me, I go take care of that.’

After the agent finished filling in the form, he inserted the single sheet into a cardboard folder and handed it to Furo with the words, ‘Give this to your man.’ Drawing closer to Furo, he said in a tone of instruction: ‘During your interview, if perchance they ask you for the name of your guarantor, tell them it is Joseph. And if they ask you for his workplace, you can tell them anything. Better you say he’s a civil servant.’

‘What about his surname?’

‘Don’t worry about that one.’

‘Are you sure?’

The agent laughed. ‘You’re still doubting me? But I done tell you sey this nah my work.’

‘If you say so,’ Furo muttered, and made as if to leave. The agent cleared his throat, and when Furo glanced back at him, he hardened his face into a grin and spoke in a coaxing tone, ‘Ah, oga, you want go just like that? You no get anything for your boy?’ Furo pulled out his wallet, and as he flipped it open, the agent added, ‘I’m not charging you o, but you’re a big oga, oyibo man like you.’ He plucked the two hundred banknote from Furo’s fingers. ‘God bless you, sir! In case of next time, if you want to do new passport, or even yellow card or international driving licence, just come straight to me. I will handle everything for you for a better price. Why not take my number? You can save it as Passport Deji. The spelling is D-E-J-I.’

Passport Man was finishing a cigarette under the flag. As Furo arrived, he flicked away the butt, took the folder from Furo with his left hand and thrust out his right, then raised his eyebrows with a meaning that was unmistakable. Furo counted out three thousand naira from the envelope and handed over the rest. Passport Man thumbed through the thousand-naira banknotes, pulled out two, slipped them into Furo’s folder, and shoved the envelope into the same pocket he had put his nametag in. Then he said in a sharp tone, ‘Walk behind me. When I stop, you stop.’

He led Furo through a doorway in the first office block. By the front wall of the room a cluster of people were seated on wooden benches, and across from them was a desk at which presided a female immigration officer. A man wearing a rumpled French suit sat before her in a straight-backed chair with his hands stuck together between his knees and his shoulders hunched forwards, and whenever she addressed him he nodded his halo of hair before uttering a response. The occasional Yoruba phrase floated to Furo where he stood just inside the doorway. Finally the woman closed the man’s folder and slid it across to him, and as the chair creaked under his rising, Passport Man raised a hand and hurried forwards, Furo following. The woman’s eyes caught Furo’s face and stuck to it. But she looked down when his folder landed on her desk. ‘Special,’ Passport Man said in his rusted voice, and then backed away, leaving Furo feeling exposed. He hadn’t foreseen that he would be left alone to face an official armed with a system.

The woman raised both hands to adjust her beret, after which she drew Furo’s folder closer with one hand and dropped the other under the desk, as if to scratch an itch. She indicated the empty chair with her chin, and after Furo sat down, she pinched open the folder, bent forwards to eye the contents, then pulled open a drawer and tipped the folder into it. When she replaced the folder on the desk and flipped it open, the money was gone.

‘Kedu aha gi?’

‘Excuse me?’ Furo said. He smiled in apology. ‘I don’t speak Igbo.’

‘I don’t speak Kalabari,’ the woman retorted, ‘but I doubt you do either.’ Picking up a red pen, she asked in a churlish tone, ‘What are your names?’ Her following questions all came from the form in the sequence Furo remembered, but she stopped before arriving at the question he feared the most, about his guarantor. While she wrote on the form Furo watched her hand — corded with veins, hard nails covered with chipped brown polish — as it guided the pecks and scratches of the pen. She finished writing, closed the folder, spun it across to Furo, and said, ‘Dalu.’ Goodbye.

He rose from the chair and turned around to see Passport Man beckoning from the doorway. By this time it was clear to Furo that the process was moving along much more smoothly than he’d expected. The bribe-sharing, the queue-jumping, the fact non-checking, and the customer-handling were as efficient as any system whose design was alimentary: in through the mouth and straight out the anus. He was no more than a bite of food for a subverted system, which chewed him up for money and, to avoid the cramp of constipation, shat him out fast. It was bad business for Passport Man to fart where he ate, and so, for his own sake, he put real effort into guiding Furo around the hiccups in the bureaucracy. Step by step Furo grew surer of the ground he walked on, and with new confidence he followed Passport Man into the next office, where his photo was taken and his fingerprint biometrics collected by another paid-off official, and then on to the third office, where yet another official fulfilled his stomach duty by stamping a slip and instructing Furo to return with it on Monday for passport pick-up. Emerging with Furo from this office, Passport Man said, ‘We have finished. Call me when you get here on Monday.’ He permitted himself a smile for the first time since Furo set eyes on his commando face. ‘You’re now a Nigerian, officially.’

Vultures, hyenas, Lagos taxi drivers, in rising order of cunning, greed, hard-heartedness, Furo was convinced after forty minutes of standing by the roadside opposite the passport office. And when his legs grew tired, he walked some distance away to a new spot along the road, but that didn’t help, every taxi that pulled up — ordinary yellow, special red, metro black, or unpainted kabu-kabu — sped away empty, the drivers unwilling to reduce their inflated prices. Furo knew why, as did everyone who witnessed his heated haggling. A white man in Lagos has no voice louder than the dollar sign branded on to his forehead.

Furo’s frustration turned to anger. Anger directed everywhere. Everywhere he turned he made discoveries about this new place he had lived in all his life. Life in Lagos was locked in a constant struggle against empathy. Empathy was too much to ask for, too much to give: it was good only for beggars to exploit in their sob stories aimed at your pocket through your heart. Heart, in Lagos idiom, meant guts, mettle, even recklessness, but rarely compassion. Compassion was a fatal fracturing in hearts bunkered against the city’s hardness. Hardness so evident in the hiking of taxi fares and the drivers’ refusal to look beyond a white face and hear a weary voice bargaining for understanding … that was the Lagos he was discovering afresh.

A smiling lady came to his aid. She was passing on the sidewalk when the last taxi driver called out his last price, four thousand naira, and then drove off after Furo held up his fingers in a peace sign that meant two thousand. As Furo stepped back from the road with a muttered curse, the lady approached him and said hello. At his grudging response, she threw him a cordial smile that raised his hackles and made his voice crackle with resentment. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I see you’re having trouble getting a cab,’ she said airily.

‘Yes,’ Furo replied in a rude tone, but his decision to cut short the conversation was overcome by the yearning to spread around his bitterness. ‘Can you imagine these bloody drivers? See the prices they’re calling! For what — where am I going?’ And when the lady indulged him by asking where he was going, he cried out: ‘Just Lekki, near The Palms!’

‘Ah-ah, but that’s not far at all.’ Her tone was soft with sympathy.

‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ Furo said. ‘I’ve been standing here for nearly an hour and I’ve stopped how many taxis, more than ten, and yet none of them has agreed to go below four thousand. I’ve even offered two!’

The lady smiled at him again, a mouth-and-eyes smile whose genuineness was almost telepathic, and then she raised her hand and patted the air before her chest in a soothing motion. ‘Take it easy,’ she said with assurance. ‘I’ll help you stop a cab.’ Feeling his anger ebb at the flow of her voice, Furo aimed a long look at her, took in her youth, the cheerful spirit reflected in her face, and he returned her smile at last and said, ‘That’s sweet of you. Thanks.’ He was about to ask her name when she spoke. ‘Don’t mention. You’ll have to move away though. We can’t let these drivers know we’re together. Go now, quickly, a cab is coming.’

Furo hurried over to a Toyota Tundra parked about three yards away. He leaned against the driver’s door, folded his arms across his chest, and tried to look bored. From where he stood he heard the lady speaking to the taxi driver in Yoruba. When she gave a low whistle, he glanced in her direction to confirm it was OK to abandon his owner’s stance, then pushed away from the Tundra and walked towards the yellow taxi, an ancient Datsun saloon. The lady straightened up from the passenger window at his approach, rolled her eyes at him and gave a playful shake of her head, then opened the door. He slipped into the car, and as she pushed the door closed, he looked at the driver, a long-necked man with wrinkles almost as deep as the tribal marks in his cheeks. He wore pink cutwork trousers, a fishnet singlet, a white skullcap, and he met Furo’s gaze with the most astonished look his sun-leathered face could manage. Furo swung his eyes to the window when he felt the lady’s hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ll give him one thousand naira,’ she said. Then to the driver, ‘Baba, this is my friend, please treat him well. E se, e le lo.’ She stepped back from the window, returned Furo’s wave, and resumed her stroll to sainthood.

As the taxi sheered away from the curb, Furo strapped on his seatbelt and prepared his mind for a rough ride ahead. The driver was transmitting his unhappiness to the car through his rough jabbing of the gearstick. He was aware he had been tricked into asking an honest fare, and if he could find a way that left his self-respect some wriggle room, he would renegotiate. Furo had already made up his mind to resist the move that, sure enough, barely a minute after they set off, the driver made. ‘The go-slow today is bad, very bad.’ This said in a sociable tone and followed by a sidelong glance at Furo, who remained silent. As weather was for Londoners, traffic for Lagosians was the conversation starter. The taxi driver tried again. ‘You speak English?’ The question was asked this time with a fixed stare. Furo, not wanting to be rude to the older man, nodded yes. ‘That’s good,’ said the driver. ‘You like Lagos?’ At Furo’s indifferent shrug, the driver grew voluble. ‘Lagos is a good place, enjoyment plenty. Nowhere in Africa is good like Lagos. Money plenty, fine women dey, and me I know all the places where white people are enjoying. Like Bar Beach. And Fela shrine — you know Fela?’ When Furo made no reply, the driver began searching through the cassette tapes scattered on the dashboard. ‘Let me play Fela music for you.’

‘No, please,’ Furo said. ‘I know Fela.’

‘Maybe next time,’ the driver said as he braked the car. Catching Furo’s eye, he jerked his head at the stalled cars ahead. ‘See what I was telling you. And we never even reach where the main go-slow go dey.’

Furo snorted with amusement, but when he spoke his voice showed irritation. ‘Baba, this is not go-slow. The traffic light is showing red. See, the cars are moving already.’

The driver grabbed the gearstick, the chassis grumbled, the car jerked forwards, and the ensuing silence lasted for several minutes of rally racing. Finally he raised one hand from the steering wheel and scratched his nose, then wiped his fingers on his trousers, and said, ‘Abeg, excuse me o, I’m very sorry for asking, but how come your voice is sounding like a Nigerian?’

‘I’ve lived in Lagos a long time,’ Furo said. ‘Watch that okada!’

The taxi swerved to the driver’s startled yell and the front bumper only just missed the motorcyclist’s knee. The taxi swerved again as the driver leaned out the window to shout back angry insults. After retracting his head, he turned to Furo, his eyes glinting with excitement.

‘Okaaay,’ he drawled, nodding his head. ‘So you are a Lagos person. That is how come you and your girlfriend played me wayo.’

It took Furo a second to catch the man’s meaning, and then he said with a laugh, ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

‘But you played me trick, talk true?’

Furo’s tone was mock aggrieved. ‘How can you say I tricked you, ehn, Baba? My friend asked you how much to Lekki and you told her your price. Where is the trick in that?’

‘Lagos oyibo!’ the driver said with a hacking laugh. ‘You funny sha. I like you.’

This old baba was a wily one, Furo thought, and turned his face aside to hide his smile. But the man was wise enough to know when to ease up, as it turned out. Silence followed their arrival in Victoria Island and the journey down Ozumba Mbadiwe Way, but as the car drew up to heavy traffic by the fence of the Lagos Law School, the driver spoke again.

‘So you are living in Lekki?’

‘Yes,’ Furo answered.

‘Ehen!’ the driver said, and then waited for Furo’s curiosity to show itself. When Furo looked his way, he said, his tone imploring, ‘You that are living in Lekki, if you are taking taxi every time, you know this is the truth. That price I charged your friend is not the correct one. I called little money because she is my Yoruba sister. I am not complaining o, nothing like that. I just leave it for you to add something for me.’

‘I hear you, Baba.’

‘That’s OK. We are nearing Shoprite. Where is the exact place I will drop you?’

‘Oniru Estate.’

‘Oba Oniru. I know there well. Which side are you going? Is it first or second gate?’

When the taxi pulled to a stop at the second gate of the estate, Furo handed the baba two thousand naira. Effusive blessings, an offer of marriage to one of his daughters named Bilikisu, and finally Furo was out of the car. All in all not a bad day, he thought as he ambled towards the gate, and turned around at the driver’s shout to wave back at the departing taxi.

The apartment was empty when Furo entered. After a few quiet minutes of lying on the guest-room bed, he shook off his torpor and sent Syreeta an SMS. She responded at once with a phone call to say she was spending the weekend at a friend’s and that she would return early on Monday. ‘There’s fried chicken in the fridge, cook something,’ she said, ‘but please don’t burn down the house,’ and because her pause seemed to call for it, Furo laughed before saying, ‘I’ve heard you,’ then ended the call. Realising he had to be careful not to wear out his clothes before he acquired new ones, he rose from the bed and began to undress. He stripped down to his boxer shorts, hung his shirt and trousers in the wardrobe, then padded barefooted across the guest room, his bedroom now — after two nights it didn’t yet feel like his, but he loved the thick Vitafoam mattress, the ingenuity of mankind’s small comforts that it represented — and threw open the door. He made a beeline for Syreeta’s bedroom and halted in the doorway. The unmade bed, the electronic hum of the fridge, the gauzy curtains stirring in the breeze, the imposing vanity table — its surface piled with cosmetic jars, gaudy bottles, squeezed tubes: all in doubles, twinned in the mirror — and in the corner the raffia basket of used underwear, like an outsized potpourri. He pulled the door closed and crossed the parlour, the TV following his movements with a dull grey stare. On the centre table rested two remote controls. He picked, pointed, pressed, the TV screen blinked blue, and as the DSTV decoder scanned for signals, he sank on to the settee.

He had the house to himself for the weekend.

A bed, two even.

And food, TV, anything he wanted.

Furo locked his mind on the TV, which showed a Nollywood movie, and in the scene a weeping woman sat in jail with a bloodied, shirtless man. The woman’s crying sounded strained, the movie jail was a real garage — motor oil spots on the floor, filigreed grille for a door — and the make-up blood looked like make-up blood. Furo changed the channel, and kept on changing, his thumb tapping the keys, the remote wedged against his belly, his knees spread apart and his shoulders slouched, his eyes blinking as the TV flickered and switched voices in mid-sentence: here’s some peri peri, a much stronger bite, dominate the headlines, nothing but Allah’s favour, love potting around, Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!, cocoa boom era, hungry man size, avoid Gaddafi’s fate, last scrap of hope, her majesty the queen, we make our own beef, terrible for tennis, stadium crowd chanting, still capable in spurts, battle to reach each level, xylophone tinkling, accused of phone hacking, can withstand his might, right to be proved wrong, hit you like ooh baby, off the starboard bow, what happened elsewhere, love can save the universe, loud audience laughter—

His phone rang: he could hear its plaintive jangling below the TV’s barrage. He jumped up from the settee and ran into the bedroom and grabbed the phone from the bed. It was Syreeta calling. ‘Phone was in the bedroom,’ was the first thing he said. And then, ‘I was watching TV.’

‘Enjoy,’ Syreeta said. ‘I just remembered I hadn’t asked you how it went. Your passport.’

‘Oh yes, it went very well. I’m supposed to collect it on Monday.’

‘We should celebrate. Do you plan to go out tonight?’

‘No.’

‘What of tomorrow?’

‘No plans for tomorrow.’

A teasing note entered her voice. ‘Don’t you do clubs? Come on, it’s the weekend!’

‘No clubbing for me,’ Furo said with a forced laugh. ‘I can’t afford it.’

‘OK then,’ Syreeta said. Her voice had reached a decision. ‘I’ll return on Sunday, in the evening. I’ll take you out, my treat. We must wash your passport.’

‘I’d like that,’ Furo said, to which Syreeta responded with a quick ‘Cheers,’ and then, as he began to express his thanks, the line went dead. Lowering the phone from his ear, he stared at it without seeing, thinking about Syreeta and her puzzling kindnesses. He knew she felt sorry for him, and he suspected she even liked him in her own hard-boiled way, but now it also seemed she trusted him, at least enough to leave her bedroom unlocked. But all of that didn’t explain why a Lagos big girl was so free with her favours, especially as she knew he had no money. He had nothing she could want, nothing at all. After all, she had seen everything, even his buttocks.

That morning, when she and he discovered his buttocks together, was branded on to the underside of his consciousness. He had awoken several times in a fright on Wednesday night, her laughter ringing in his mind. But the bigger terror was that the blackness on his buttocks would spread into sight, would creep outwards to engulf everything, to show him up as an impostor. That it hadn’t yet happened didn’t mean it wouldn’t still. That he didn’t have a hand in what he was didn’t mean he wasn’t culpable. No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world. Furo’s dilemma was this: he was born black, and had lived in that skin for thirty-odd years, only to be born again on Monday morning as white, and while he was still toddling the curves of his new existence, he realised he had been mistaken in assuming his new identity had overthrown the old. His idea of what he was, of who the world saw him as, was shaken by the blemish on his backside. He knew that so long as the vestiges of his old self remained with him, his new self would never be safe from ridicule and incomprehension. Syreeta, clearly, had shown him that.

Thinking these troubling thoughts, Furo spent the rest of Friday with his eyes stuck to the TV screen until he tumbled off the cliff edge of his mental fatigue. He awoke what felt like mere minutes later to the human noises of Saturday morning, and after he freshened up with a quick bath and a light breakfast, after the power went and the wild clatter of generators swelled in all corners of his mind and the housing estate, after he stared at the dead TV for so long that his eyes stung from the rub of the thick-as-mud air, and then, after he fiddled with his phone until he figured out how to turn off the Caller ID, he called his old phone. It rang on the first try, and before he could recover from the shock of the expected, that voice he recognised even better than his own jolted him awake to the horror of his mistake, a mistake he only salvaged by biting down on his tongue to control the urge to reply to his mother’s hopeful hello. He cut the call, switched off the phone, removed the battery, and then bowed his head to the pounding of the generators, the machine rumble of the world.

Later, when he’d calmed himself enough to breathe easy, he made every effort to close back the portal from which the past was leaking into his head.

Saturday passed slowly, but it passed.

He rose with the sun on Sunday and washed his clothes, then wrapped his towel like a sarong and stepped out of the apartment for the first time since Friday. The yard was empty, as were the estate streets, because sunny Sundays were bumper days for churches. After hanging his washing on the clothesline, he went back inside and swept the floor, dusted the furniture, beat the hollows out of the settee, and washed his piled-up dishes. The sun’s face was sunk in a mass of thunderclouds by the time he was done with housework. He gathered in the sun-scented laundry, ironed his shirt and trousers, and took a bath. By four o’clock he was ready for Syreeta’s return.

The rainstorm struck at five. From afar the rain approached like a crashing airliner. At this sound, a rising whine that left the curtains curiously still, Furo hurried into his bedroom and stared from the window above the bed, which gave the clearest view of the sky. He smelled the raindrops before he saw them. A lash of thunder roused the wind, which rose from the dust and began to swing wildly at treetops and roof edges and flocks of plastic bags ballooning out to sea. Raindrops swirled like dancing schools of silver fish and scattered in all directions, splattering the earth and the shaded walls of houses. Furo sprinted around the apartment shutting windows.

Syreeta arrived in the rain. As was usual during a storm, the power had gone, and Furo was stretched out on the settee, not asleep but drifting there, lulled by the drumming on the roof and the wind whistling outside the windows. He started upright when he heard the key in the lock. The door banged open, Syreeta rushed in, turned around in the doorway to close her umbrella and shake water from it, then kicked the door closed and bent down to rest the umbrella against it. She was barefooted. The bottoms of her jeans were rolled up to her knees. Her braids were gathered in a shower cap, and when she came closer Furo saw she was shivering. Her face was angled with annoyance.

‘You came in the rain!’ Furo exclaimed in welcome, but Syreeta made no response as she strode into her bedroom and slammed the door.

Furo stood up from the settee and skulked off into his bedroom. He took off his clothes and hung them in the wardrobe to preserve their freshness, and then slipped into bed and pulled the blanket over his head. Syreeta’s mood had dampened his, and the excitement he’d nursed all day at the thought of their going out was now a fluff of fear in his belly. He felt like a chided child, driftwood in angry currents, at the mercy of whims as changeable as Mother Nature’s.

‘Furo?’

When he lifted his head from under the blanket, Syreeta was standing in the bedroom doorway. In the splash of rainwater he hadn’t heard her open the door. Beyond the doorway the shadows thickened, night was falling, but Syreeta was as clear as a spectral warning in the white towel that wrapped her from chest to thigh. She spoke in a voice adjusted for crashing thunder.

‘Thanks for closing the windows. The house would have flooded if you weren’t here. And thanks too for cleaning up. How was your weekend?’

Furo sat up in the bed. ‘It was quiet. I got some rest. And yours?’

Waving aside his question with her left hand, with the right she grabbed the fold of the towel just as it loosened, and tightened it again over her breasts as she said, ‘This nonsense rain has spoiled my plans for today. We can’t go out any more. The traffic out there is crazy.’

‘That’s OK,’ Furo said. As the silence that followed seemed awkward for him alone, he dropped his eyes from her face. But when she said with a sigh, ‘I’m going to lie down,’ quicker than thought he responded with, ‘Can I join you?’ His glance caught the flash of her smile. She waited long enough for him to suffer for ever, and then she turned around without replying and walked away without closing his door. Furo caught his breath at the creak of her bedroom door, and by the time he was convinced the door wasn’t closing, he was almost gasping for air.

No refusal and two open doors.

Furo stood up and went through, shutting both doors behind him.

‘How is your neck?’ They were lying on their sides under the bedcover, Furo with his back to Syreeta. Her breath warmed his shoulders. The hairs on his neck prickled from her stare.

‘There’s still some stiffness,’ Furo said, and turned around to face her. His arm brushed her breast as he settled. He added quickly, ‘The massage helped a lot though.’

Her eyes were half-closed, her face slack with drowsiness, but she reached out her hand and tapped his nose with a fingertip. ‘Your nose is peeling, it’s sunburn. I’ll give you some lotion later.’ She curled her tongue in a yawn before saying, ‘How long has it been paining you? Your neck,’ and as Furo replied, ‘About five years,’ her drooping eyelids flew open in surprise. ‘Five years! That’s a long time. What happened?’

Furo found her stare distracting, so he moved his gaze to the heave and fall of the bedcover over her chest. ‘I strained it in university. Too much study.’

She yawned again, her tongue trembling pinkly against the roof of her mouth, and then rubbed her wrist across her eyes. ‘Which university did you attend?’

‘Ambrose Alli.’

Again surprise lighted her features. With a breathy laugh, she said, ‘You? In Ekpoma? How the hell did that happen?’

‘It’s a long story,’ Furo said.

‘I’m sure it is,’ she said in a lowered tone, as if speaking to herself, and then her voice turned back to Furo. ‘And I’m sure it’s a strange one too. You’re very strange, you know that?’ At this question she pushed her hand along the pillow till her fingers touched Furo’s cheek, and then her hand slid upwards to his scalp and began stroking. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask: why do you cut your hair so short?’

‘No reason. I just like it.’

‘You’re not going bald, are you?’ Her fingers tightened on his scalp, her long nails digging in. Forcing his head down, she raised herself on her elbow to stare at his crown. ‘You’re not,’ she confirmed, and released her hold before sinking back on to the bed. ‘Your hair looks red and gold, sort of orange. Let it grow. I want to see it full.’

Confusion flooded Furo. ‘I don’t want to grow my hair,’ he said at last.

‘But why not? Or you want me to say please? OK, please, do it for me.’

At the seductive lilt in her voice, a notion entered Furo’s head, and in a split second it metastasized into a tumescent stirring in his groin. He pursed his lips, creased his brow, held his pensive look for several moments before saying, ‘OK, I’ll grow it,’ a pause, ‘if you kiss me.’

Syreeta coughed with laughter, her legs kicking under the bedcover. ‘Only because of hair?’ she finally said. ‘Keep gorimakpa if you like, see who cares!’ Her giggles seemed to hold an invitation, and surrendering to the propulsive bubbling of his instincts, Furo pushed his head forwards and pressed his lips to hers. He felt her laughter splutter against his teeth, but when he drew back his head, he was reassured by the look on her face. ‘You’re in trouble now,’ she said in a mock-serious voice. ‘You can’t cut your hair unless I give you permission.’ Then she raised her arms, hooked them around his neck, and pulled his face into hers.

Time slowed to the splash of raindrops, breaths quickened, the air warmed, and someone kicked away the bedcover. When Syreeta pulled back to catch her breath, her crinkled nipples caught Furo’s eyes. He felt cramped by his boxer shorts, and, rocking forwards on his knees, he tugged them off, all the while pinning Syreeta with his eyes until his mouth closed on her breast, the left one, then the right, her hand guiding his head. The bed dipped under the shifting of hips, the push of a knee, the spreading of thighs. Raising his head from her chest, Furo asked, ‘Can I kiss you there?’ and she widened her eyes at him before nodding once. He slid downwards and stuck his head between her thighs, and as his tongue flicked and tasted, his mind noted facts: too sensitive, more tongue less teeth. Her whimpers washed over him. And then: ‘I’m ready,’ she said. He, too, was ready, but she stopped him with her thighs. ‘No. Condom.’

Furo stared at her as if from a long distance. ‘I don’t have any.’

‘On my dressing table,’ she said and unlocked her legs.

Furo felt trapped. Despite his dislike for the rub of rubber, he would wear two if Syreeta wanted. He would stand on his head if she told him to. But nothing would convince him to turn his back to her, not after what happened the last time she saw his buttocks.

Syreeta raised her hands to cup her breasts. ‘What is it?’ she asked. Drawing hope from the quaver in her voice, he placed his hand on her belly and trailed a finger along the hairline leading down. ‘Can I?’ he said softly. ‘I want to feel you.’

She searched his face. ‘You want to fuck me without a condom?’ Then she sighed, shook her head. ‘Ah Furo, I’m not sure.’

‘Please,’ Furo said, and touched her where she was softest. She stiffened and sucked in air. ‘Please,’ he repeated and rubbed her again. Her knees slowly parted. Her hands fell away from her breasts. And moans later, she agreed.

Furo awoke to what felt like an old day in a new century. Sunlight bounced off the zinc roof of the house opposite, voices trilled in the street outside the window, and a car with a tired engine rumbled past, its tyres splashing through puddles. A footstep sounded in the doorway, and then Syreeta entered the bedroom with a swing in her hips. She held a juice carton in one hand, her toothbrush in the other. She wore a G-string, flesh-coloured. Her left breast shone wet.

‘You’re awake,’ she said brightly as she padded up to the bed. Climbing on and straddling Furo’s belly, she tipped the juice carton to his mouth. ‘Drink, sleepyhead. Get your energy back.’ Her braids tumbled over his face as chilled apple juice poured down his throat. After he’d drunk enough, he nudged aside the carton, then reached up and tweaked her nipple. For soundless seconds she glowered into his face with longing eyes; then she slapped away his hand. ‘Not now, when we come back.’ She jumped off the bed. ‘I’m taking you out. We’re going to visit my BFF.’ Halting in the doorway, she cast a mischievous look back at him. ‘Oya, come,’ she said and waved her toothbrush in his direction. ‘Let’s bathe together.’

He had swung his legs off the bed before he remembered. He remained seated at the bed’s edge, and said to Syreeta, ‘I just remembered I have to pick up my passport today. Let me get my clothes ready. You go ahead and bathe first.’

‘If that’s what you want,’ Syreeta said and blew him a kiss. He faked a dive to catch it, groaned under its weight, and flopped back on the bed. She strode off laughing.

His buttocks felt like a weight dragging him back to a place he wanted badly to forget. Syreeta had avoided the topic ever since she apologised for laughing at him, but he knew it had left an impression, he suspected she would bring it up in coming days, and he hoped to impede that conversation for as long as he could. He had answered her questions that day by telling her that he was born with it, the blackness an outsized birthmark, and yet what he told her was one thing and what he knew was another. He knew he had to efface the blackness from his buttocks, from all memory. Feeling dejected by the enormity of this conundrum, he stared across at Syreeta’s vanity table with its science lab-like collection of cosmetic bottles. In that moment, the sound of running water from the bathroom splashed into his mind and washed up the hull of an idea.

As Furo saw it, his black behind was a problem to be solved. The step he was about to take was better than doing nothing. Better than sitting around hoping. His failure or success would come through his own hands, and if he failed, at least he would know he tried. He had no choice in the decision that had got him where he was, but now that he was here, he would steer his own course. On this thought, he stood up from the bed, strode to the vanity table, sat on the stool before it, and picking up cosmetic bottles one at a time, he read their labels. He wasn’t sure what he was searching for, but he knew when he found it.

The cheapest-looking of the skin-whitening creams was a pink-and-green tube called Lovate Cream. Hydroquinone and octyl methoxycinnamate, and other exotic chemicals only meant that it burned when Furo squeezed out a smidgen and rubbed it on to his wrist. The other whitening creams he found, which were branded more overtly (in one plastic tube, Pale & Lovely Winter Fairness, and in the other ampoule-type bottle, Daudalie Radiance Serum Skin Correction), both left his skin with no sensation more unpleasant than a cool slickness. The descriptions on all three labels promised what he wanted, and he decided against using the facial scrubs and alcohol cleansers he had piled to one side during his search. These strong-smelling potions made no claims to bleaching skin, and the risk of discovery he ran using them seemed much greater than any rewards. He couldn’t imagine what explanation he would give Syreeta as to why his buttocks smelled like her face.

Pale & Lovely was the largest of the creams, the one that Syreeta was least likely to notice being depleted, and Furo decided he would apply that every morning after his bath, followed by Lovate in the afternoons, and then the smallest bottle, Daudalie, at night. He would be careful with everything, from the amounts of cream he applied to the replacement of the bottles on the vanity table, because he couldn’t let Syreeta find out he was using her whitening creams, as that would only end in the conversation he was avoiding. At the thought of her catching him with his finger in her jars, Furo quickly arranged the table as he had found it, then he took up the Pale & Lovely and squeezed the pinkish cream on to his palm. After he returned the tube, he stood up from the stool and hurried out of the bedroom. In the bathroom he could hear Syreeta singing.

At Ikoyi passport office, Syreeta waited in the Honda as Furo went in. When he returned with his new passport grasped in his hand, she reached out for it, and after reading the identification page, she handed it back and asked how come his surname was Nigerian. Furo’s answer:

‘I’ve already told you I’m Nigerian.’

‘But you’re white!’ exclaimed Syreeta.

‘So you mean I can’t be white and Nigerian?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying. I’m asking how it happened.’

This question had been expected by Furo for some time, and over the long weekend he had thought through his answer. He’d considered saying he was mixed race with a Nigerian father and a white American mother, but while that explained his name and his black buttocks, it raised other questions, the most irksome being a white extended family and his lack of ties to the US embassy in Nigeria. The second story he’d considered was that his white family had settled a long time ago in Nigeria and along the line had changed their name, but on further thought that idea seemed absurd and so he discarded it. Nigerians readily adopted European and Arab and Hebrew names. It never happened the other way around.

The story he settled on appeared to him the most plausible, the least open to rebuttal — it answered every question except that of his buttocks. But then, he told himself, nothing in life is perfect. To Syreeta he said:

‘I don’t like talking about it so I’ll just say this quickly. My parents are Nigerians. They lived in America for many years, my father was born there, and while they were over there they adopted me. My mother couldn’t have children. They returned to Lagos while I was still a baby, and they quarrelled when my father married a second wife. My mother took me away, we moved to Port Harcourt, and I haven’t heard from my father in nearly twenty years. My mother passed away last year. I came to Lagos and got stranded. Then I met you. That’s why I have this name. That’s why I have nobody. Now I’m hungry. Can we stop somewhere to eat?’

‘Of course,’ Syreeta said, and after she faced forwards and guided the Honda on to the road, she added in a voice hoarsened with awe:

‘I didn’t know it was possible for black people to adopt white people.’

And so it happened that Syreeta stopped over at The Palms to buy lunch at the cafe where she and Furo had met six days ago, and by three o’clock they were back on the Lekki — Ajah highway, in after-work traffic, headed towards her friend’s house in Victoria Garden City.

Seated beside Syreeta as she steered the Honda through traffic, Furo realised why radio DJs were superstars in Lagos. The car radio was tuned to Cool FM, and many times on the drive from Lekki to Ikoyi to pick up Furo’s passport and back to Lekki for lunch and on to Ajah to visit her friend, Syreeta had danced in her seat and squealed with laughter at the music selections and the banter of a host of DJs who seemed never to run out of something to say. With the Honda now stuck in a monster traffic jam on the outskirts of Ajah, Furo began to think that for the millions of commuters who spent hour after hour and day after day in Lagos traffic with only their car radios for company, these feigned accents and invented personalities became as dear as confidantes. The more he thought about it, the more he was struck by blinding flashes of the obvious, a whole rash of ideas marching into his head to the beats from the car radio. Persistent power cuts in Lagos, in the whole of Nigeria, meant that battery-operated radios were the entertainment appliance of necessity for both rich and poor, young and old, the city-based and the village-trapped, everyone. Radios were cheap to buy and free to use, no data bundles or subscription packages or credit plans, and they were also long-lasting, easy to carry around, available in private cars and commercial buses, and most important, they were independent of the undependable power grid. Mobile phones even came with radios, as did MP3 players; and computers had applications that live-streamed radio; and thinking of it, the rechargeable lamps that everyone owned also had radios built into them. Then again there were those new Chinese toys for the tech-starved: radio headphones, radio sunglasses, radio caps, radio wristwatches. It was endless. Radio was deathless. Radio DJs were superstars.

Furo lost interest in this line of thinking when the DJ cut the music to announce that it was time to pay the bills so don’t touch that dial. After several minutes of jolly-sounding jingles, most of which seemed aimed at schoolchildren and petty traders, a spanking-new Tuface single was introduced by the DJ, and as the song sprang from the speakers Syreeta threw up her arms and hooted with joy, and then glanced over at Furo with a lopsided grin.

Syreeta showed a clear fondness for local music. Pidgin hip-hop, Afrobeat electronica, Ajegunle reggae, highlife-flavoured R & B, even oldies disco crooned to a lover named Ifeoma. Nigerian music dominated the Lagos airwaves, and Syreeta seemed to know the lyrics to every song. Rihanna’s anthems might be enjoyed, and Drake’s rap acknowledged with sporadic nods of approval, but when P-Square warbled, Syreeta hollered back. Furo also listened to Nigerian pop — he had two P-Square albums on his old phone — though he couldn’t say he had a particular taste for it. But now, hearing Syreeta sing along to lyrics that preached money and marriage and little else, he found himself hating P-Square a little.

The song ended, the DJ resumed his adenoidal chatter, and Syreeta said, pointing with a finger straight ahead, ‘See where those buses are turning — and that LASTMA man is just sitting there looking! OK now, I’m going to follow them.’

Furo stared through the windscreen at the congested road: in the confusion that met his eyes he couldn’t find what Syreeta was pointing at. The road should have resembled a Mumbai train station at rush hour — lines and lines of stilled cars stretching into the distance, armies of hawkers darting about in rag uniforms, the air sluggish with exhaust fumes and exhausted breaths — but it didn’t, it had a chaos all of its own. It looked exactly like after-work traffic in Lagos was supposed to look. A sprawling coastal city that had no ferry system, no commuter trains, no underground tunnels or overhead tramlines, where hordes of people leaving work poured on to the roads at the same time as the freight trucks carting petroleum products and food produce and all manner of manufacture from all corners of Nigeria. The roads were overburdened and under-policed, and even in select areas where road-expansion projects were under way, the contracted engineers worked at a pace that betrayed their lack of confidence in the usefulness of their labour. They knew as well as the politicians that Lagos was exploding at a rate its road network could never keep up with.

The cars ahead revved and spat out smoke, the Honda rolled forwards a few inches, and finally Furo saw the reason this section of the road was gridlocked. Metres ahead, in the middle of the highway, an excavator was breaking blacktop and scooping earth, and at the spot where it heaved and clanged, a new roundabout had been partitioned out with concrete barriers that narrowed the road into a bottleneck. A small band of touts, led by a cap-wearing man, whose white goatee caught the sunlight, had pushed aside one of the barriers, opened a path to the other side of the road — which was free of traffic — and they collected money from any car that squeezed through the breach. It was mostly minibuses that turned off to disgorge passengers and rush back into town, but a few private cars also took the opening. A state traffic warden sat on the tailgate of a patrol wagon adjacent to the breach and calmly watched proceedings. His crisp uniform shirt, the yellow of spoiled milk, was tucked into his beef-red trousers, and his black boots gleamed as he swung his feet back and forth. Heavy-shouldered and round-bellied, he appeared too comfortable in his position, too dapper for roadside work.

Furo turned to Syreeta. ‘I’ve seen the opening. Do you want to turn around? Aren’t we going to see your friend any more?’

‘We are,’ Syreeta replied. ‘See where the petrol station is? VGC gate is right beside it. I’ll cross over and drive by the side of the road till we reach the gate. If I stay here I’ll have to go too far ahead, I’ll have to follow this traffic till after Ajah Junction, then turn around and start coming back. With this go-slow, that will take us at least another thirty minutes.’

Furo was tired of sitting, his buttocks ached, and yet he wasn’t eager for Syreeta to take the shortcut. He felt too conspicuous to break laws openly.

He spoke. ‘I don’t trust that LASTMA guy.’

‘He won’t try anything,’ Syreeta responded, and turning to smile at Furo, she added in a teasing tone: ‘You white people fear too much.’

Furo didn’t return her smile. ‘I think it’s safer to stay on the road.’

Of course Syreeta ignored his warning, and after she forked out two hundred naira for the illegal toll — special fee for special people, white goatee said with a brooding glance at Furo — and drove through the breach, of course the traffic warden jumped down from his perch and bolted forwards to accost the car. Syreeta tried to drive around him, but the man was nimble despite his paunch and he also seemed to have no regard for his life. When he leapt on to the bonnet and bumped his forehead against the windscreen, smearing the glass with sweat, Syreeta braked the car to a stop, pressed the control button for her side window, and yelled out through the opening, ‘Are you crazy? Do you want to break my windshield?’

The traffic warden made no response as he slid off the bonnet on his belly, this action soiling his shirtfront and dishevelling his tucked-in hemline. Then he dashed to Syreeta’s side and tugged at the door handle, but finding it locked, he squeezed his arm through the window crack and grasped the top rim of the steering wheel with some difficulty. ‘Your key,’ he puffed, and his eyes darted towards the ignition. He blinked as he realised it was out of his reach. Unless Syreeta lowered the glass for him to lean in and grab the key, she was out of his power. The only option open to him was to coerce her into ceding control. These machinations were exposed by the whole range of expressions that played across the man’s features in the instant before he raised his gaze, and as he glowered at Syreeta with his sun-darkened face only inches from hers, his chest rose and sank with each baleful breath that clouded the glass barrier between them. His knuckles bunched on the steering wheel; the edge of the glass dug into the flesh of his upper arm. In a voice whose threatening tone had jumped several notches, he repeated his demand:

‘Give me your key, madam.’

Syreeta gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Are you joking? I’m not giving you anything,’ she said and shook her head in emphasis, then leaned back in her seat, calmly returning his stare.

‘You this woman, I’m warning you o, give me the key!’

‘Why?’ Syreeta shouted back. ‘Oya, tell me first, what did I do?’

‘You don’t know what you did, ehn? OK, I will tell you after you give me the key. Just do as I order. Obey before complaint.’

‘No fucking way,’ Syreeta said.

‘You’re looking for trouble.’ This said quietly, his tensed forearm trembling through the window. Vapours of cold air wafted out of the car into his shiny face.

‘You’re the one looking for trouble,’ Syreeta said. ‘Didn’t you see other cars passing? How come it’s me you want to stop? You think you’ve seen awoof? You better get out of my way if you know what’s good for you!’

‘If you move I will show you!’ the traffic warden growled in warning, at the same time shoving his second hand through the window to grasp the steering wheel. His flexing muscles seemed prepared to wrest out the steering wheel, and his expression showed he would try, but Syreeta, to Furo’s growing wonder, didn’t appear in the slightest bothered by the suppressed violence of those arms in front of her breasts. With a mocking laugh she averted her face from the traffic warden and stared straight through the windscreen. It was a deadlock.

Furo knew there was nothing he could say to defuse the situation, and nothing he could do in his broke state, but still he felt compelled to act. He leaned across Syreeta, met the traffic warden’s hostile eyes, and said in a beseeching tone, ‘Excuse me, oga,’ but Syreeta whirled around and shushed him with a curt ‘No.’ He settled back in his seat. Syreeta was handling this all wrong. She should be ingratiating herself to the traffic warden, not provoking the man to arrest her. With her car impounded she would pay a fine many times larger than the bribe that had prompted the traffic warden to pick on her, while he, for all his scheming and exertions, would get nothing except paperwork to fill.

The traffic warden broke the silence. ‘Abeg answer me, madam,’ he said in a voice so rude it could pass for a vulgarity, and Syreeta did, she veered her face around and told the man in haughty tones that she would have his job for the embarrassment he was causing her. Furo rolled his eyes in exasperation at her words. But surely she must know what to do, he thought. Nobody who had been in Lagos more than a few hours could remain ignorant of the survival codes, and yet Syreeta flouted rule after rule. The traffic warden had begun shouting the familiar threat that showed he had reached the end of his routine: he demanded to board the car and lead Syreeta to the nearest LASTMA office. Bureaucratic hellholes, LASTMA offices, and if the traffic warden made good his threat then Syreeta would be lucky to retrieve her car before the month’s end. And only after paying a heavy fine as well as settling the bill for mandatory driving lessons and a psychiatric evaluation, this last a precondition for allowing her back into the madness of Lagos roads. Furo felt he had to warn her, and he opened his mouth to do so, but Syreeta spoke first.

‘Furo, I’m sorry, please get down from the car.’

He tried to catch her eyes. ‘This is not the best way—’

‘I know what I’m doing,’ she cut him off, her right hand cleaving the air in time to her words. ‘I’ll deal with this idiot my own way. Just get down.’

Sighing in resignation, Furo reached for the door handle, and as he flicked it unlocked, the traffic warden released his grip on the steering wheel and sprinted around the car’s front. When the man grabbed the open door and yanked it wider, Furo looked at Syreeta. ‘Should I sit in the back?’ he asked. ‘I don’t mind following you to the LASTMA office.’

‘No need,’ Syreeta said. Then she noticed the anxiety on Furo’s face, and her expression softened, she curved her lips in a smile intended to reassure. ‘Don’t worry, I have this under control.’ She cast a look at the surrounding area, which was crowded with roadside stalls and noisy from all the people milling about, spilling their feelings into the air. ‘But there’s no place for you to wait around here,’ she muttered, as if chiding herself. ‘Oh, I know. Why don’t you walk to VGC? Go inside and wait for me near the gate. I won’t be long.’

Behind Furo the traffic warden snorted with derision, and Syreeta threw him a vicious look. Furo spoke quickly to forestall the attack gathering in her face. ‘If that’s what you want,’ he said, and climbed down from the car, then stood watching as the traffic warden jumped in and slammed the door. He heard the harmonised clicks of the car’s central lock, followed by the whirr of Syreeta’s side window closing. When Syreeta and the traffic warden turned on each other with furious faces, Furo spun around and strode away from their muffled yapping.

Avoiding the curious stares of the pedestrians he passed, Furo walked quickly to the filling station, then cut across its concrete expanse and approached the double gates of Victoria Garden City. Two lines of cars flowed through the estate gates, entering and leaving. In front of the entry gate, right beside the sleeping policeman, stood a private guard. Hands clasped behind his back and feet spread apart, he eyeballed each car that clambered over the bump. He raised his head as Furo approached, and his shoulders stiffened, his features hardened into a scowl. Furo realised there was someone walking behind him. A man wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt, his hair cornrowed, a rhinestone stud glinting in one ear. Furo turned back around, and slowed his steps to a shuffle, unsure if he should walk past the guard or state his business. Deciding on the action least likely to cause offence, he halted by the guard and said, ‘Hello.’

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ the guard replied, smiling in welcome. ‘Are you here to visit?’

‘Yes,’ Furo said.

‘I see, I see,’ said the guard, and ran his hands down the front of his epauletted shirt, smoothing it out. He ignored the cars entering the estate; he stared hard at Furo’s nose. ‘Who is the person you want to see?’

‘I don’t know her name … she’s the friend of my friend,’ Furo said. ‘Well, actually—’

‘I see, not a problem,’ the guard interrupted. He threw a suspicious look at the cornrowed man waiting behind Furo. ‘What is her house number?’

‘I don’t know,’ Furo said. ‘The thing is, I’m supposed to—’

‘Not a problem,’ the guard said and wrinkled his brow in contemplation. At that moment the cornrowed man made an impatient noise in his throat, and then he moved forwards, muttered ‘Sorry’ to Furo, and said to the guard, ‘I’m going to Mr Oyegun’s house.’

The guard aimed a furious stare at him. ‘Can’t you see I’m attending to somebody?’

‘I’m in a hurry,’ the cornrowed man said, his voice urgent. ‘Mr Oyegun is expecting me. I know his house, I’ve come here before.’

‘Respect yourself, mister man!’ the guard barked at him. ‘Or you think anyone can just walk in here anyhow? Who are you anyway? Move back, move back — can’t you hear me, I said move back!’ He flapped his hands in the chest of the cornrowed man, drove him back behind Furo. ‘That’s how we Nigerians behave, no respect at all,’ the guard said to Furo with a grimace of apology. Lowering his voice, he asked: ‘Do you have your, erm, friend’s phone number?’

‘I was trying to explain,’ Furo said. ‘I’m supposed to wait for someone to pick me up here. If you don’t mind I’ll just stand in that corner.’ He pointed to a spot inside the gate.

‘I see, I see,’ the guard said, nodding his head as he waved Furo in. ‘Not a problem at all, you can go inside. Should I bring a chair for you?’

‘I’m OK,’ Furo said. He passed through the gate, strode a few paces to the grass shoulder, and turned around to face the gate. The cornrowed man had moved forwards, he was speaking with the guard, who shook his head with vehemence and remained standing in the way. The cornrowed man flung up his hands and uttered a complaint, then reached into his pocket, pulled out his mobile phone, dialled a number. After repeated attempts at reaching someone on the phone, all seemingly unsuccessful, the cornrowed man again spoke to the guard. The guard ignored him, he stood with his chest puffed out and his fists clenched and his boots planted apart, glaring at passing cars. The cornrowed man gave up with a gesture of dismissal. Pocketing his phone, he whirled around and stalked off, and the guard glanced over at Furo. ‘Are you sure you’re OK, sir?’ he shouted across. ‘You’re sure you don’t want a chair?’

Syreeta drove through the gate barely five minutes later. Furo started to raise his hand, but let it fall when he realised she’d already seen him. She pulled up alongside, and he climbed into the Honda’s chill, which was spiced with a whiff of the traffic warden’s sweat. The skin over Syreeta’s cheekbones was stretched tight, a vein beat in her temple, and the car radio was off. Furo knew better than to ask about the traffic warden, how she had got rid of him so quickly. He held his gaze away from her face and stared through the windscreen. Road signs whizzed past. No honking. No hawkers. No litter. No parking. No okadas and danfos. The quiet through which the car sailed was deeper-rooted than the fact of the silent radio. No crowds, no roadside garbage, no traffic jam, no noise. The Lagos he knew was far from this place.

The Honda cruised down avenues bordered by mansion after mansion. Furo looked out the window till his eyesight blurred from the monotony of affluence, and then he craned his neck around to stare back at a black stallion (wild-eyed, it reared its head and chomped at the bit, yet trotted smoothly on) ridden by a man wearing jodhpurs, a jockey hat, and a sleeveless dashiki. He faced forwards as the car swept past a chain-fenced tree park with children’s swings, slides, and sand-pits; and turning into a side street, it slowed to a stop in front of a townhouse with an immaculate white fence and Doric gateposts. Through the grilled gate Furo spied a fleet of sleek vehicles, their bodywork glinting and windows sparkling. He finished counting the high-priced playthings — seven in all, the least exotic a Jaguar coupé — before blurting out in astonishment: ‘Is this where your friend lives?’ Syreeta nodded yes while tapping her horn, and after the gate slid open of its own accord, she drove in and parked to the side of the broad driveway, which bordered a lawned garden flashing with wild colours in a backdrop of tamed greenery. From the tree boughs dangled wind chimes and birdhouses. Furo swung the car door open to the smell of wetted earth, which mingled in the breeze with the frail scents of flowers. The monastic quiet was deepened by the gurgle of water from a stone cupid endlessly pissing into a fishpond. He climbed down the car and gazed around him, up at the security cameras hanging in the eaves and down at the clam shells covering the driveway. At the crunch of feet, he spun away from this vision of fortified Eden and followed Syreeta towards the front door.

The housemaid who answered the door was dressed in a starched white gown. Her smile of welcome announced she knew Syreeta and was pleased to see her, but in greeting Furo the smile faltered and she dropped her eyes, then dipped her head and pressed her hands against her belly in a mannered gesture of respect, after which she said in response to Syreeta’s enquiry about her madam, ‘She dey for visitor’s parlour.’ Following a trail of children’s laughter, Syreeta and Furo passed through two doorways and a museum-piece hallway before reaching an air-conditioned, brightly lit lounge that whiffed of cedar polish. The window curtains were drawn, the outsized TV was on — it showed Johnny Bravo in swimming trunks on a HD-coloured beach — and from the high ceiling a silver chandelier shone golden light. The sitting area was a dais with three steps leading up. Two sides of it were closed off by an L-shaped couch, burgundy red like the curtains, and under the chandelier stood a malachite table with nude cherubs for legs. A bottle of Remy Martin VSOP was on the table, and on the couch five ladies lolled, all clutching cut-glass goblets in which cognac swirled. Near the TV several beanbags were scattered on the parquet floor. On these were sprawled six children — all of them woolly-headed, fair-skinned, half-white.

‘Syreeta darling!’ a lady sang as she bounced to her feet and skipped round the couch. She was younger than Syreeta; she seemed barely out of adolescence. Her hair was cut low and sprayed silver, her fingernails curved blackly around the bowl of her glass, and the thin fabric of her white miniskirt was stretched so tight that Furo saw the flower patterns on her underwear. Tearing away his eyes, he glanced at the other ladies staring at him over the low backrest, and then he looked back at the one who breezed past him in a cloud of perfume and woody liquor. She hooked her free arm round Syreeta’s neck, and they pressed cheeks, exchanged babbles of affection, then the lady whirled around to face Furo. Her smile looked dazed. ‘So this is you!’ she said huskily, and after handing her drink to Syreeta to hold, she spread her arms wide and leaned into Furo so abruptly he had to hug her to keep his balance. She snuggled into his arms, rested her head on his chest, and brushed her hips against him. ‘Yum-yum,’ she said in a whisper meant to be heard by all, and then, with a ribald laugh, she disentangled from him. ‘I’m Baby,’ she said. ‘Syreeta has told me everything about you.’ Her appraising gaze swept down his body and rose again to his face. ‘Almost everything,’ she added with a chuckle.

Furo and Syreeta took their seats with the rest of the company, all of whom knew Syreeta, Furo realised from their greetings. As Baby bent over the table to pour drinks for the newcomers, one of the ladies, Syreeta had called her Ivy, asked Syreeta, ‘Where is he from?’

‘He’s American,’ Syreeta said in a tone whose casualness did not hide her satisfaction. ‘But he’s lived in Nigeria for so long that he’s now one of us.’ Like a presiding queen, she raised her hand in the direction of Baby, who arrived at that moment and handed one drink to her and the other to Furo before flopping on to the couch.

‘I just got back from Atlanta,’ said a lady whose large feet were emphasised by her zebra-striped tights. She uncrossed one leg and immediately crossed the other. Balancing her glass on her knee, she shot a questioning look at Furo. ‘Lovely city. I attended a business conference with Gianni, my husband. He’s Italian.’

Furo raised his glass and drank. The alcohol landed a sucker punch to his throat, and struggling to keep his discomfort from showing, he raised his swimming eyes to find the ladies’ faces waiting. ‘Ever been?’ the Italian’s wife asked with a hint of impatience, and into the silence Furo gasped, ‘No,’ and then began to cough from the burn of the cognac. Syreeta placed a hand on his back and patted gently. ‘Breathe slowly,’ she whispered to him. In a tone of wry amusement she said to the ladies, ‘He likes milkshakes,’ and the wave of coos that rose at her words lightened the grip on Furo’s chest.

The ladies reminded Furo of his university days. They were a type he recognised but hadn’t gotten a chance to mingle with at close quarters, to sit beside and be addressed by. They were the very ones who had partied at the trendy nightclubs that ordinary students could only dream about, who had travelled three hundred miles every Friday from Ekpoma to Benin City in the chauffeured rides of their aristos and returned in flocks on Sunday with excess cash and branded clothes and stories of their carouses that were the grist of campus gossip and front-page news of local celebrity rags. In a school system where money, sexual favours, and sugar daddy’s influence had black-market value in the acquiring of grades, these campus queens were only a few points down from straight-A students. They graduated from university with little trouble, with few carried-over courses, and without any employable skills, and after serving their country during youth service by playing truant at those high-paying jobs they always landed in either Lagos or Abuja or Port Harcourt, they set aside their degrees and put their talent to work in turning the same tricks that had served them thus far. Within toddler years after graduation the most successful of them ended up as Baby and her friends: sipping cognac in the mansions of their moneyed husbands. These women were hustlers, plain and simple, and Furo, back in those days of neck-cramping study and eating beans five times a week because his allowance had to be managed, had despised them almost as much as he wanted to befriend them. But now, with Syreeta in his life, he admitted to himself that his view of them had softened.

In the time that followed his arrival in their midst, Furo learned that Baby was married to a Dutchman, Ivy to a Canadian, Chika to an Englishman, Ego to a German, and Joy to the Italian. Chika was a buxom lady with heavily ringed hands, which she waved around for emphasis while she spoke, and her accent was the least Nigerian in the room, the most accomplished in its transatlantic melding of Peckham twang and Harlem slang. Between Chika and Baby sat Ivy, and when she rose to pour herself a refill from the cognac bottle, Furo saw how much taller than him she was. She wore pink high heels, black pencil jeans and a white tube top. On her lower back the lanky, long-tailed figure of the Pink Panther was tattooed in black ink. Ego sat furthest from Furo, and yet his eyes kept returning to her bleached blonde hairpiece, which cascaded down her right shoulder and curled around in her lap. Her eyelashes were so long they threw shadows on her rouged cheeks.

From the topic of their husbands the ladies moved on to their children. They all had one each, except for Ego, whose boy and girl were three and five years old. The youngest child, a plump two-year-old named Romeo, was Joy’s. His attachment to mamma was almost umbilical, as he toddled up to her again and again to blub at a slight by the other tots or to point squealing at the cartoon antics showing on screen. Joy spoiled him with attention, the other mothers warned, she fed him too much pasta and not enough of the yams needed to build his muscles, and they spent laughing minutes offering her advice on how to man him up in time for kindergarten. ‘In Naija a man must be strong o, even if he’s oyibo,’ Baby declared, and turning to face Furo, she asked with an elfin smile if he didn’t agree.

Baby’s girl Saskia was nearly four. When her mother called to her to come and greet uncle, the child pranced over and climbed into Furo’s lap without a word. ‘What a cute girl,’ Furo said to the preening mother, though to call her cute was an injustice to her prettiness. Her soft curls smelled of baby shampoo, her ripe banana complexion glowed from rich feeding, and her full lips trembled with pinkness. Her large grey eyes shone with boredom at adult worship. Furo found her insufferable. Syreeta, however, couldn’t hide her fascination. ‘Oh yes she is!’ she exclaimed in response to Furo’s words, and leaning across him, she kissed the girl’s cheeks and dimpled chin, then set down her drink and lifted Saskia from Furo’s lap into hers. In a Teletubby tone of voice she asked the child simpering questions about school, her bedroom, her toys, about how she got that naughty-naughty scratch on her knee, all the while nodding encouragement as Saskia lisped her replies. Questions exhausted, with a magic flourish Syreeta pulled a shiny box of milk chocolates out of her handbag and pressed it into Saskia’s hands. The child’s delighted yelp drew smiles from all the mothers, and it was with reluctance that Syreeta released her to return with her prize to her waiting playmates.

The conversation among the ladies turned to past boyfriends. In the zeal to one-up each other, their affected accents skidded and crashed, and from this wreck of grammar the mangled sense was rescued by a reversion to pidgin — the shortest distance between two thoughts. The straight-talking bluntness of the vernacular caused their mingled voices to beat the air like wings of released doves. Higher the voices rose and quicker the glasses tipped liquor down throats. The nature of the conversation also influenced the language, as the ladies’ speech slipped further and further into the maze of slang, seeking those shaded places where meaning hid in plain sight.

‘That my agaba Nikos nah proper olingo man sha.’

‘Nothing do you kpakam!’

‘Yemi still dey chop adro for inside Dublin?’

‘Your oko jus’ dey love up like person wey chop kognomi!’

‘Make una hear original gist o! This one fresh pass fresh fish—’

Their chatter was wide-ranging: from an ex-head of state who fixated on the feet of soldiers’ widows to overheard gossip of Abuja politicians who had a thing for orgies with boys. Then it was on to exotic cars and swanky restaurants and the latest kerfuffle in Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The lifestyles of the Lagos glitterati: who was cheating with whose daughter in Victoria Garden City, whose husband had just acquired a beach house in Tarkwa Bay, and which police commissioner’s son was spotted in a sex tape on xHamster. Now and again one of them would glance at Furo and, stopping herself on the cusp of a revelation, she would rise from the couch to pour a refill of cognac, only to resume from the juncture her empty glass interrupted.

The conversation petered out when the housemaid arrived pushing a serving trolley. Plates of coconut rice and boneless barbecue chicken were placed before the children and Furo, while the mothers and Syreeta were served steaming bowls of either catfish or cow-tail or goat-head pepper soup. After the housemaid withdrew, Ivy said a quick prayer to bless the food, and then everyone settled down to the business of eating. The sound of chewing was a poor substitute for table-talk, and so Baby, crunching on the biscuit bone of a goat’s ear, turned to Syreeta and asked about the drive down. Syreeta described the heavy traffic she’d gone through, to which the ladies responded with sympathetic noises. Except for Joy and Syreeta, they all resided in VGC, and their poor husbands had to endure the Ajah traffic on those days they couldn’t evade it by flying home in a chartered helicopter. The horror stories of Lagos traffic that the women shared soon led to Syreeta telling of her fresh experience with the LASTMA traffic warden, and after the oohs and ahhs that egged her on, after the multi-lingual curses directed at the traffic warden and his generations yet unborn, it was Ego who finally asked the question that was irking Furo.

‘How did you get rid of the pest?’

Baby laughed. ‘Ah-ah Ego, don’t you know who Syreeta’s man is? He’s a big oga—’

A sharp movement from Syreeta made Baby choke on her soup. Recovering from her coughing fit, she shot a guilty look at Furo, and then changed the topic to the havoc wreaked in Lagos by the rainstorm of the previous day. Her friends all piled in with tales of flooding.

Baby’s blunder had cast a pall over the party, and as Furo finished his meal, Syreeta stood up and announced their departure. ‘Aw!’ Baby exclaimed, staring up at Syreeta. ‘I was hoping you could wait until Erik returns. It would have been so nice for Furo to meet him.’ Then she rose with Furo, and after he and Syreeta said their goodbyes to the ladies, she walked them to the front door. Night had fallen; the house front was lit by halogen searchlights, under which Baby’s silver hair glowed. Baby hugged Furo by the door of the Honda, then held him at arm’s length with her fingers hooked in his trouser pockets and thanked him for visiting, asked him to come again. He guessed from her distracted air that she wanted a moment alone with Syreeta, so he said goodnight, climbed into the car, and shut the door. But before Baby arrived at Syreeta’s side, the house door flew open, Joy rushed out with her sleeping child in her arms, and halting in front of Syreeta, she said, ‘Can I ask a favour please? You’re going to Oniru, abi? Can you drop me at Chevron? By the junction, you don’t have to drive in.’ She adjusted her son’s head on her shoulder and turned to Baby. ‘Sorry to rush off like this, I have to take Romeo home to sleep, and to be honest I feel too tipsy to drive. I’ll send the driver to pick up my car in the morning. By the way, that catfish was delish! Ring you later to get your caterer’s details. Ciao-ciao.’

On Tuesday morning, while Syreeta was in the bathroom washing away the slick of lovemaking, Furo rolled off the bed, crossed to the vanity table, and applied his morning dose of whitening cream. Syreeta returned and, snuggling up to him under the bedcover, she said, ‘I’m going out later.’ Too drowsy to speak, Furo nodded acknowledgement. Moments later he was sunk in a post-coital slumber.

He awoke to the sound of a door opening and the aroma of food entering, followed by that voice that was now as familiar as the scent of her skin: ‘Sweetie?’ Furo opened his eyes to find Syreeta’s face above. She pulled aside the bedcover with one hand; in the other she grasped a plate. Half-moon slices of boiled yam, three sunny-side ups, and a splattering of tomato gravy. Furo’s stomach sat up with joy, and after he followed suit, he gave a yawn that became a moan of pleasure. With a trill of laughter, Syreeta placed the food on the bedside table, and then said, ‘I’m ready to go.’ She was bathed, dressed. Her car keys dangled from a crooked finger.

‘Don’t go, not yet,’ Furo said. He didn’t want to be left alone. ‘Are you in a hurry?’

‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘But I can wait a few minutes.’ She sat at the bed’s edge, tossed her keys to the floor, and placed a gentle hand on Furo’s chest. ‘Eat.’

He ate quickly. The last mouthful gone, he rose from the bed and walked to the fridge, took out a bottle of water, and stared out the window as he drank. He had overslept: his muscles felt waterlogged and the ache in his neck was more insistent than usual. He’d intended on washing his clothes today, but now he felt too lazy. Glancing down at his boxer shorts, he tugged at the waistband and checked it for grime. When Syreeta said, ‘You’ve been wearing those for days,’ he released the waistband with a snap, and raising his hand to rub his neck, he said to her: ‘It’s the only pair I have.’ He started towards the bed. ‘I need to get some new clothes.’ He sat beside her, then lifted her hand from her thigh, turned up her palm and covered it with his. His fingers were longer, blunter, fish-belly pale. A muscle flexed in her wrist.

‘Milk and chocolate,’ Syreeta said. Her eyes rose to his face. ‘Is something wrong?’

Letting go of her hand, Furo bent forwards and clasped his temples in his palms. ‘I miss my mother,’ he said.

‘Oh!’ Syreeta exclaimed softly, and reaching out with both arms, she drew his head against her bosom. Her heart raced beneath his cheek. ‘How did she die?’

Furo raised his head and stared aghast at her.

‘Your mother — what happened?’

He had forgotten. His mother was dead, his father had abandoned him, and his sister was someone he had never met. He lived with a woman who fed and fucked him. He was white.

‘Cancer,’ he said. He pulled away from Syreeta, flopped back on the bed, and the jolt of the mattress reminded him of his neck. ‘Can you give me a massage?’

‘I really should get going.’

‘Then go.’

He felt the force of her stare before she stood up from the bed. He heard the clink of a bottle on the vanity table, and then her footsteps returning. When she said, ‘Turn on your belly,’ he opened his eyes to see her unscrewing the bottle cap, the fragrance of eucalyptus oil escaping as she lifted it off. He adjusted himself on the bed and arranged a pillow under his head. As she bent forwards with the bottle poised, he asked, ‘Won’t you remove your clothes?’

‘Fuck it, Furo! I have to go out.’ Her voice had lost its patience.

He threw her a wide-eyed look from an awkward angle. ‘But that’s why you shouldn’t get oil on your clothes,’ he said with innocence. And then he grinned.

Syreeta gave a grudging laugh and glanced over her shoulder at the wall clock. ‘OK,’ she said as she unhooked her dress. ‘But I’m out of here in ten minutes.’

‘If you say so,’ Furo said, his voice muffled by the pillow.

Sometime during the night, Furo felt Syreeta stir beside him and then stand up to switch off her singing phone. When she slipped back into bed, he rolled closer and spooned her, nestled his face in her fragrant braids, and then drifted off in the sudden quiet.

Wednesday morning. Furo was curled on the settee watching Mr Bean on TV when a loud rapping on the front door killed his chuckles. Syreeta was in the kitchen peeling plantains for breakfast, and as Furo looked in her direction at the second round of knocking, he saw her peering through the window netting. Then she leapt back and whirled around and ran on tiptoe out of the kitchen with the knife grasped in her fist. Furo was on his feet by the time she reached the settee. He started to speak but she raised the knife to her lips and, grabbing his arm, she pulled him into the guest room. ‘Please stay here, lock the door,’ she begged in a whisper, her fingers digging into his forearm. Furo nodded in assent, after which she loosened her grip and began absent-mindedly stroking his reddened skin with a nervous look on her face. The knocking had grown louder, the in-between pauses shorter. Syreeta’s eyes refocused on Furo’s face as she said to him, ‘Don’t come out until I tell you,’ and striding out of the guest-room door, she eased it closed behind her. Furo reached the door in a bound. He turned the key and removed it from the lock, but still he felt exposed, so he rushed to the windows and drew the curtains, then returned to the door and dropped to a squat beside it. Still the pounding sounded; the blows were furious. But they stopped when a door slammed in the house, Syreeta’s bedroom door, and she called out, ‘I’m coming, don’t break my door!’ The sounds of the front door opening, Syreeta’s cry of surprise, and then a deep male voice, which followed Syreeta’s into the parlour. The settee huffed as the man, still talking, sank into it. Furo could hear him clearly through the thin wall that concealed their nearness. His voice was a rich baritone, brandy- and tobacco-roughened, and it seemed to emerge from a thick body. His words, as he asked Syreeta if she was punishing him, were accented with the mellifluous timbre of Yoruba.

‘I’m telling you, Bola, I’m not angry any more,’ Syreeta responded, to which the man fired back in tones of annoyance: ‘So why didn’t you show up yesterday? And why are you not picking up your phone? I was calling all night!’

‘I went to bed early. I wasn’t feeling well,’ Syreeta said. Furo had never heard her so submissive. From the man’s tone when he spoke again, he wasn’t surprised by this side of her. ‘Riri, Riri, Riri,’ he repeated with rising reproach. ‘How many times did I call you, you this troublesome pikin? You couldn’t even call back? I waited at our place for over an hour!’

‘I’m sorry.’ After a pause she added: ‘But now you know how it feels.’

‘Shut up there,’ Bola said lightly. ‘How is your body?’

‘I’m feeling better.’

‘That’s good. So you’re strong enough to give me some sugar? You know I’ve missed you. I had to cancel an important meeting today. Just so I could see your face.’

Syreeta’s voice now came from a different place, somewhere further away, nearer the bathroom. ‘Give me a moment to get ready. Are we going to Oriental?’

‘I’m here already,’ Bola said. She made no reply, and he continued, ‘We haven’t spent time in this flat since you moved in. I don’t even know what your bedroom looks like.’ Furo barely had time to interpret the creaking sounds from the settee when, as Syreeta called out with urgency, ‘No Bola, that’s the guest room!’ the door handle turned. Furo stared at the door with evangelical awe, the sweat dripping from his face like the last grains of sand in a fatal hourglass. ‘Is it locked?’ Bola asked, rattling the handle, each swing tugging the string that was snagged in Furo’s guts. And then, ‘Why is it locked?’ His voice, to Furo’s ears, was sibilant with suspicion.

‘No reason,’ Syreeta said. ‘I hardly ever use the guest room and so I locked it. I misplaced the key somewhere. I’ve been meaning to get a carpenter, but I keep forgetting.’

Again the handle turned under Furo’s terrified gaze. ‘Do you want me to force it open?’

‘Hell no, you’ll spoil the door! Leave it alone. I’ll take care of it later.’ Her words were followed by rapid footfalls, and after her door opened, she said, ‘This is my bedroom. Come and sit here and wait for me, I’m going to bathe. I’ll finish now-now.’

While he listened to Bola’s voice rising and falling in telephone conversation, Furo began to recover from his overdose of adrenaline. His outpaced heartbeats still left him short of breath, and his skin was cold with sweat, the wetness squelching in his armpits and between his thighs, yet he was calm enough to steer his thoughts to the trough of common sense. This much was clear: Bola was Syreeta’s sugar daddy, her lover and benefactor, her man. Furo had always suspected how Syreeta afforded her lifestyle, but now he knew it was to Bola as much as her that he owed his gratitude for the comfort he was provided. The roof over his head, the bed he slept in, the twenty thousand for his passport, the food he ate and the fruit juices he drank, he knew from whose pocket everything came. If Syreeta was the breast at which he sucked for favour, then Bola, though unknowing, was the father figure. As this notion flashed through his head — that he was fucking the woman of the man who sheltered him, a man whose voice this moment was bubbling from behind the wall that shielded his cuckolder — Furo felt a twinge of remorse. He shrugged it away. Going by what he’d gathered, the man was himself an adulterer. Syreeta was free, unmarried, her own woman; and from the sound of things, probably half Bola’s age. If anyone deserved pity, it wasn’t Bola.

The slam of the front door signalled the departure of Syreeta and her man. Through a chink in the curtains Furo tried to catch a look at them, but they had turned in a direction that was beyond the window’s angle of sight. He knew they were off to lunch, because after Syreeta emerged from the bathroom, he had overheard her and Bola discussing where to eat, and while she was dressing, they reached a decision to do the English pub on Sinari Daranijo. From Bola’s arrival in Furo’s life to his exit from the house no more than two hours had elapsed, but that was time enough for him to mark Furo’s hideout with his dominant smell. New banknotes in old leather, laundered fabric sprinkled with eau de cologne, and the pewter whiff of heavy jewellery: the smell of a man used to having his way. Before emerging from Syreeta’s bedroom Bola had handed over her pocket money for two weeks, two hundred thousand naira Furo had heard him say. Syreeta’s thank you, to Furo’s shocked ears, was unimpressed-sounding.

Furo’s phone rang. The sound came from Syreeta’s bedroom, and so he let it ring on. Seven missed calls later, by which time it was apparent that whoever was calling wasn’t giving up, Furo unlocked the guest room door and crept into Syreeta’s bedroom to find the phone under the bed. As he’d suspected, his caller was Syreeta, who said when he picked up the call, ‘Why didn’t you answer?’

When Furo made no response, she continued in a calmer tone, ‘I just wanted to tell you, I put the plantain in the fridge. Can you fry dodo?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there still light?’

‘Yes.’

‘You should warm the stew in the microwave before light goes.’

‘OK.’

Her next words were weighted with casualness. ‘I’ve gone out with my friend. I’m not coming back tonight. I’ll return in the morning.’

Furo said nothing.

‘Are you all right?’ Her tone was touched with defiance.

‘I’m fine.’

A pause, then a slow sigh, and she said: ‘Till tomorrow then.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Furo said and hung up.

After plugging his depleted phone into the wall socket beside the vanity table, Furo headed to the kitchen. He took the peeled plantain and the covered dish of tomato sauce out of the fridge, placed the plantain in a pan of groundnut oil on the gas burner, and while the slices sizzled and caramelised, he heated up the sauce in the microwave. Afterwards he trotted over to the bathroom to pee, and on the stroll back to the kitchen, he caught sight of a folded newspaper on the centre table. Bola’s no doubt; even the toilet smelled of him. His meal ready, he set it on a tray and bore that to the settee, then drew the parlour curtains, turned on the TV, and returned to the kitchen to fetch a can of Maltina from the fridge. The big new fridge, the glitzy microwave, the IKEA tableware, his appetising meal, he knew whose money paid for all of this. The fridge door closed with a whump.

As Furo sank down on to the settee to eat, he winced from the pain in his rump. His buttocks felt bruised. He had first noticed the sting in the morning as he rubbed on the whitening cream, but he made nothing of it, too much sitting around he supposed. The smarting had gotten worse this afternoon, it was becoming painful to sit, and it now seemed his right cheek had a sore. And so, after he finished his feast and put away the dishes, he entered the bedroom to look in the mirror.

The whitening creams were working: the skin of his buttocks had brightened. No doubt about it, a layer of shade had sloughed off, and the reddened skin underneath shone like a good egg held up to the light. And yet, seen beside the whiteness of his back and legs, his rump looked black and angry. The bleaching action had opened a sore on his right buttock, the size of a large coin, raw-red in the centre and ringed by encrusted ooze. It looked even worse than it stung.

There it was.

It was easier to be than to become.

Furo was certain he had made the right decision. He was determined not to give up until his ass was as white as the rest of him. But for now, faced with the mirror, he admitted the painful truth: until the sore healed, he had to stop bleaching his buttocks.

Around midday on Thursday, Furo was inspecting his laundered clothes in the parlour when he heard the scratching of a key in the front door lock, and the door swung open to reveal Syreeta awash in the avenging light of the bright sun. Her chipper tone, as she spoke from the kitchen, seemed forced to his ears. ‘I have a surprise for you.’ She moved forwards and left the door open, then stared at the blaring TV, avoiding Furo’s eyes. ‘Dress up. We’re going out.’

On the drive down Syreeta refused to tell him anything about the surprise. She fended off Furo’s questions, only revealing that they were headed to a place near Alpha Beach. Their destination turned out to be a shopping complex at the mouth of a wide sand road that ran straight as a chalk line towards the crashing ocean. Syreeta spent some time finding a spot in the jam-packed car park, and after they got down from the Honda, she led Furo past several blocks of shops. The row they turned into was lined on both sides with shops whose fronts teemed with party-dressed, white-looking mannequins. Furo guessed the nature of the surprise even before they halted in front of Success Is the Lord’s Clothings, ‘stockists of Italian suits and ties, British shirts and shoes, American wristwatches and belts, French perfumes & etc.,’ as the signboard announced. Chuks Yelloman Emmanuel was the MD/CEO. When Syreeta rapped on the sliding glass door and called out his nickname, he approached and wrestled the door open, then pressed his shoulders against the wall so they could squeeze past, and once they were through, he shoved the door closed as if anxious to keep in the clouds of frost blowing from the air conditioner.

‘Madam the madam!’ he said in stentorian tones as he engulfed Syreeta’s hand in both his massive paws. Pulling her deeper into his blue-lighted shop, he barked at his young assistant to move his yansh from the only seat in sight. Syreeta settled into the deckchair, and placing her handbag in her lap, she crossed her legs. While she responded to Yelloman’s animated greetings, Furo admired the painted toenails of her dangling foot, his eyes following her baby-oiled shin all the way up to her pampered knee, which peeped out from under the frilly hem of her skirt. Then he turned his gaze to the shoes spread across the floor like a horde missing its bodies. Every bit of space in the shop was taken up by all manner of fashion items. Folded on ledges and swinging from hangers were authentic designer clothes as well as their Aba imitations — but the real and fake were segregated, displayed with varying degrees of esteem. It was obvious to Furo why Syreeta had brought him here. The shop owner practised business with conspicuous candour.

It struck Furo that Yelloman hadn’t yet greeted him.

Syreeta addressed Furo. ‘This is it, the surprise. We need to get you some clothes for work. I can spend …’ She shot a glance at Yelloman’s averted face, and then held up her hands, one with fingers spread and the other curved in a fist. Furo’s eyes widened as she mouthed, Fifty thousand. He had never spent that much on clothes, not at one time. And never had he needed clothes as much as now. He felt a boiling need to express his joy, his relief at a problem solved. He wanted to fling his arms around Syreeta and squeeze her till she understood.

‘Thank you,’ he said in a quiet, even voice.

It was time to choose. He needed shirts, trousers, ties for the office, a set of underwear. But where to start? The shop was stuffed so full it seemed futile to search. No matter what he found, no matter how right for him it might seem in the blue light of the buying moment, the dim lighting of the shop, there would always be something better he had missed. He glanced at the corner where the assistant had scurried to, but the youngster was no longer there, he had slipped out the back door. And so Furo turned to Yelloman. ‘I want some shirts that look like what I’m wearing, but a bit cheaper than this. Can you advise me?’

Yelloman was standing perhaps two feet away, right beside Syreeta’s seat, and yet he acted as if Furo hadn’t spoken. When Syreeta tapped his leg with a knuckle, he glanced down at her. ‘My friend dey talk to you,’ she said.

In a tone edging towards aggression, Yelloman responded, ‘Wetin e talk?’

‘But see am for your front nah! E get mouth, abi?’

Yelloman turned to Furo, but his eyes were lowered. He was light-complexioned, his skin tone the Semitic hue associated with the most Roman Catholic of Igbos, and in the open neck of his shirt Furo could see a flush spreading. Reluctance pulsed through his frame and his fleshy nose quivered. Furo felt a thrill of misgiving. Yelloman was over six feet tall and built like a discus thrower. Veins rippled beneath the stiff hairs on his bulky forearms; his muscled legs made his trousers look small and tight. He appeared the quick-tempered sort, a man to be treated with caution, and something about Furo had clearly incensed him.

Yelloman made a sound in his throat in preparation to speak. Like a conductor at the start of a symphony, he raised his arms in the air, and then, with sweeping gestures, his movements exaggerated as if sign talking to the brain damaged, he said to Furo, ‘What — did — you — say?’

A spasm of laughter touched Furo’s face but he forced it back in time. Yelloman was staring at Syreeta, who was bent double in the chair with her hands gripping her sides and her shoulders heaving. She laughed so long that Furo got embarrassed on Yelloman’s behalf. Finally she straightened up, flicked a tear from her eye corner with a finger, and then met Yelloman’s look of brooding. ‘Abeg, Yelloman, no kill me with laugh,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘My friend sabe speak pidgin. No need to wave your hand like person wey dey drown.’

Yelloman’s face lit up with excitement. ‘Talk true? E dey speak pidgin?’

‘Talk to am, you go see.’

Yelloman looked Furo in the face for the first time. His golden-brown eyes glistened like boiled sweets. He sucked on his lips, as if tasting his words, and then he fired, ‘How you dey?’

‘I full ground,’ Furo replied.

‘Hah hah — correct guy!’ Yelloman barked in exultation, spreading his arms at the same time as if to throw them around Furo in a big-brother hug. But he checked himself, then glanced down at Syreeta and declared, ‘I like this oyibo.’

He talked nonstop as he led Furo around the shop and guided him to the best bargains. Long monologues about Nigeria, about the meaning of man’s existence as discovered through the experiences of a clothing salesman, and then questions about Furo: prying questions, eager questions, assertions phrased as questions. Where was Furo from, did he watch football, what did he think of Lagos, was he Syreeta’s man, wouldn’t he hurry up and start a family with her? His only daughter was six years old and already she spoke English better than her father. (‘Bone that CK shirt, no be orijo. Carry the Gap one. I dey sell am for six thousand but if you buy five I go give you everything for twenty-five.’) He was a self-made man, his father had lost everything during the civil war and so he had to give up school to learn a trade, but nothing spoil, he was successful as you can see, he was the owner of this shop and another in Ojuelegba, and he was widely travelled, he used to visit London every year for summer sales but had recently stopped, partly because it was cheaper to shop in Dubai and import from China, but also because those oyibo dey knack English like sey nah only them sabe the language. (‘That jeans nah your own, dem make am for you, nah your size finish. Take am for two thousand.’) But Furo was different, he spoke pidgin like a trueborn Nigerian, and even though his skin was white and his bia-bia was red and his eyes were green, his heart without a doubt was black. Abi no be so?

‘I be full Naija,’ Furo agreed, and Yelloman pounded him on the back in approval, then slashed the price of the leather slippers they were haggling over. With that last purchase Furo’s budget was exhausted and, as the assistant — who had returned to receive a reprimanding knock on the head from Yelloman — began bagging his wardrobe, he took the cash from Syreeta and paid Yelloman. ‘You be my personal person,’ Yelloman said as he walked them to the sliding glass door. ‘My gism number dey for the nylon. Call me anytime you wan’ drink beer.’

Arriving at the car, Syreeta unlocked the doors before taking the shopping bags from Furo’s hands and, after dropping them on the back seat, she turned back to him and linked her arms round his waist. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice muffled against his chest. She gave him a squeeze before stepping back. Her eyes shone with emotion.

‘Why?’ Furo asked in surprise. ‘I should be thanking you!’

‘I’m thanking you for what you did in there, for being nice to Yelloman.’ She opened the driver’s door, stuck a foot in the car, and spoke into the sun-baked interior: ‘And for being you.’

Sunday evening arrived at last, and Furo, who had spent the whole day waiting for Syreeta to return from her weekend outing, now turned his attention to the TV as he supped. He watched Cartoon Network until his plate was empty, then Fox News Channel as he drank his malt. In the Fox studio sat several pundits debating US debt, and the sole black man on the panel was the least articulate, the least flattered by the camera lighting, the least distinct against the blue and red of the studio’s backdrop. Furo’s attention soon wandered from the rigged TV show to Bola’s newspaper, which had been gathering dust on the table since his visit on Wednesday. It was the Tuesday edition, the same daily Furo used to read every week for job announcements. A lifetime ago, it seemed. Returning to his seat with the newspaper, Furo began to flick its pages, his gaze scanning desultorily. Seven die of cholera; Caribbean nations plan to invest in Nigeria’s power sector; Boko Haram strikes again: same old news, same recycled words, and same old faces of recycled politicians. And then — in a double-spread interview with a quarter-page photo of a soft-cheeked and heavy-lidded man — the same old problem of unemployment, but highlighted in a new way by Alhaji Jubril Yuguda, the Chairman and CEO of the Yuguda Group. Furo didn’t read the interview past the opening paragraph, but the pull quote at the bottom of the page held his attention:

‘We received more than 15,000 applications for our Graduate Executive Lorry Driver vacancies, but only 200 places were available … among the applicants were 18 PhD, 71 MBA, 680 Master’s and 11,240 Bachelor degree holders.’ Alhaji Yuguda

Several pages later, Furo was still mulling over the implications of Yuguda’s words when his eyes fell on a face he thought he recognised, and as he leaned in close to read the photo’s caption, his name jumped out at him. It was his photo, his old photo, a selfie of the old him. He remembered snapping it with the camera of the phone he left behind. It was a missing person announcement.

FURO WARIBOKO

Male, aged 33 years, dark in complexion, speaks English language fluently. Left Egbeda on the 18th of June at around 8:00 a.m. for an unknown location. If seen contact one Doris Esosa Wariboko (Tel: 08069834300/08143660843) or Akowonjo Police Station.

Furo lifted his head, stared sightlessly at the TV screen, and the newspaper slipped from his grasp, fluttering to the rug. His cheek muscles began to quiver and his eardrums ached from the force of the pounding in his head. He raised his hands to his neck and rubbed. His mother was searching for him. His family was spreading his name around. They had the right name but the wrong image. They had right on their side, but this was wrong. He should have known it would come to this. If anyone he knew, the Haba! people, if they saw this! Mr Obata, Arinze, the receptionist, everyone who knew his name. If Syreeta saw it! But why — why did the running never end? Because he had to settle his debts, that’s why. It would never end as long as he owed his family. Theirs was a debt of semen and milk, of blood and sweat and tears. A debt he could neither repay nor escape. But he would try.

So now he had to change his name.

Furo picked up the newspaper and gazed at the face bearing his name. Tired face, tired eyes, tired mouth, and black skin: that’s all he saw. That person wasn’t him. He had moved on beyond that. The only problem was, even as he’d forgotten how he used to look, he didn’t know what he now looked like. White skin, green eyes, red hair — black ass. Mere descriptions for what people saw, what others saw in him, and not who he was. He had to find out who he was.

It was time to see his face.

Furo ripped out the missing person announcement, and after burning it in the kitchen sink, he washed the ashes down the drain. He returned to parlour, folded the newspaper, replaced it on the table, and switched off the TV. Entering Syreeta’s bedroom, he shut the curtains before pulling off his boxers and singlet. And in this state of naked grace — stripped of the past, curious about the present, hopeful about the future — he strode to the tall mirror over the vanity table and stared into the face of his new self. A face whose features had altered less in dimension than character, and whose relation to the selfie in the newspaper was as close and yet as far apart as the resemblance between adolescence and adulthood. His face had sloughed off immaturity. Then again, the unexpectedness of his skin shade, eye colour, and hair texture was the octopus ink that would confuse his hunters, as even he wouldn’t have recognised himself in a photo of his new face, and so neither would his parents nor anyone who based their looking on his old image. He knew at last that he had nothing to fear. He was a different person, and right here, right now, right in his face, he could see he looked nothing like the former Furo.

Afterwards, Furo trotted off to his bedroom, spread his new clothes on the bed, and planned what he would wear on Monday. He couldn’t wait for many things. But most of all, he couldn’t wait to start work tomorrow. He was excited about his first real job. After he finished secondary school, he had worked for almost two years as a supervisor in his father’s chicken farm, but counting eggs didn’t count as a job. His next job had come after university, when he served the entire year of his national youth service teaching mathematics to junior secondary students in the sun-blasted and fly-plagued Kebbi State. That, too, wasn’t a real job. He hardly showed up for class as he spoke no Hausa and his students barely spoke English, and all he remembered of that wilderness were the fun and games he’d had with his fellow youth corpers. He was still hopeful then, full of big dreams, eager to succeed. He had prospects that many of his students, who were mostly sons of nomadic herdsmen and farmyard hirelings, could never hope for. He had received an education they could only dream of. Besides, he had his parents back home in Lagos, centre of excellence, to return to. But now he knew better, and in the period since he departed Kebbi he had many times wished he’d learned from his students how to milk cows and slaughter goats and plant onion bulbs, learned a handiwork to keep his mind off his own helplessness. That, at least, unlike his stinking stint at the chicken farm, would have been something to busy himself with until he found the job he deserved. Unlike his father, he would never stop fighting, never stop moving forwards, not now, not after he’d survived the hard long years of joblessness whose only purpose was to show him how easy it was for hope to shrivel. How disappointment became a hole with an endless bottom.

That was in the past. He had a job, a new life, and it was time to choose a new name. He had been trying out names as he chose his clothes for work, but none yet sounded right, none felt like his to keep. At first he considered taking Kalabari names, and then Itsekiri, Efik, Yoruba, but he soon gave up on Nigeria. In his new life he was American and his new name would confirm that. A new name from the new world for the new him — that sounded right. Yet he was still nameless and it was already night, and Syreeta would soon return. And so he arranged his Monday clothes on hangers and put them away in the wardrobe, then cleaned his shoes and set them by the bedroom door. After placing his passport, wallet and folded handkerchief on the bedside table, he left the bedroom. In the parlour he switched on the TV and tapped the remote control till he reached a music channel showing a 2pac and Biggie video. Reducing the volume to a murmur, he settled on the settee to make his decision.

‘Starting with names from A: Abe, Brad, Carl, Dave, Eddie, Frank …’

Frank felt right — easy to pronounce, easy to remember, and the same first letter as Furo. Good rule to apply for Wariboko. He needed a surname that would let him keep his initials.

‘Wayne, West, Williams, no … White … Whyte.’

Whyte, too, felt right, felt like his, and, in a slow voice that burred in his ears, he said both as one: ‘Frank Whyte.’ His eyes watered as he stared at the flashing lights on the TV screen. ‘Frank Whyte, Frank Whyte,’ he repeated, blinking to clear his eyes.

He had found his name.