Blackass

FRANK WHYTE

The soreness in Furo’s buttocks was a minor irritation when he opened his eyes on Monday morning. A bigger worry was his new job, all the unknowns that could go wrong on his first day. But as much as he dreaded this new adventure, he was also excited by it. Yawning widely to clear his head of sleep, he sat upright in bed and threw open the doors of his mind to the sounds scrabbling beyond the darkness of the bedroom. He could hear Syreeta knocking about in the kitchen; she was becoming flatteringly domestic. And she had offered, last night, as they lay in bed, before she turned to him with her ‘fuck me’ sigh, to drive him to the office this morning. It was she again, sounding just like his mother, who had suggested that they set off early to avoid the Monday traffic. Furo was surer than ever of how she felt about him, but still, just to be safe, now that the two weeks were up, he would ask if he could stay on longer at her apartment. Later today, he thought, when he returned from work, he would ask then. At this, his first decision of the day, he climbed out of bed.

After a rushed breakfast of toast and boiled sausages, Furo and Syreeta left the house at five thirty. The sky was deep purple; the moon was still out; dew dripped from the leaves of the looming trees in whose branches roosters roosted. As they tramped past the silent houses, the crunch of sand beneath their shoes sounded like ghouls in conversation. The estate streets were deserted except for clusters of sheep bedded on the tarred road leading to the gate. Syreeta had to zigzag the Honda around the motionless shapes, and when the headlights stilled against the closed gate, the guard, swaddled in blankets and rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, shuffled from the shadows and shone his torchlight into the car before crossing to unlock the gate. Syreeta sped through with a scream of rubber.

The roads were clear through Victoria Island, across Third Mainland Bridge, and down the endless stretch of Ikorodu Road, but, as the sky brightened under the sun’s approach, they drove into heavy traffic at Maryland Roundabout. At first sight of the congestion Syreeta cursed, and as the Honda slowed, Furo stared out the window at the stagnated cars and thought about the last time he had passed this way. On foot, homeless and broke, and headed for The Palms. He owed Syreeta much more than he could tell her. ‘Sorry about the traffic,’ he now said to her. ‘Hopefully you won’t have to drive me tomorrow. I should be getting my car today.’

She took a moment to respond. ‘I still think that salary is too small.’

The previous night, after lovemaking, they had had a conversation about Furo’s job. Syreeta felt that his status, his oyibo-ness, had been taken advantage of. She argued that he was worth way more than eighty thousand and a company car, and when he sighed with indifference, she told him that the first job she’d got out of university had paid two hundred and fifty thousand. She was also given a car, the Honda. At this offered scrap from the mystery of her life, a history she had guarded thus far with utter silence, Furo’s interest sat up and woofed. She had to be, and if he had thought about it, he would doubtless have concluded that she was, but it had never occurred to him that Syreeta was a graduate. After he blurted out his surprise, she laughed before saying how could he think she wasn’t, and then she told him that she had a degree in accounting from Unilag, and that she had done her youth service at the National Assembly in Abuja, where she was retained afterwards, though she gave up that position when her benefactor lost his senatorial seat in the last elections. She capped her testimony by repeating that Furo could do better, to which he responded with some heat: ‘Our situations are different. You’re a woman.’ A kept woman, he meant, and Syreeta caught his meaning in his tone. She shot back: ‘And you’re a white man. You don’t have to fuck anyone for favours.’ Then she turned her back and ignored him until he fell asleep.

But now she was smiling as Furo replied with caution: ‘Maybe the salary is small, but it’s all I have.’

‘Until something better comes along,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Furo.

‘That’s the spirit. Something better will come, very soon, you’ll see.’

When the Honda pulled up at the gate of Haba! Furo said his goodbyes to Syreeta, then clambered down from the car. He felt like a cosseted child on the first-ever day of school, a feeling of abandonment and peril that grew stronger as Syreeta drove off with a cheery wave. It felt too easy to call her back, to climb back into the coolness of the car and be driven home to finish his sleep, and then watch TV, eat her cooking, do anything but worry about work, money, responsibility. It felt too easy to give up what he had wanted for so long — a money-paying, office-going, real-life job. Not easy enough, he told himself, and striding to the closed gate, he nodded at the maiguard who emerged from the gatehouse at his knock, then said in answer to the old man’s polite question, ‘I work here.’

Following their start-up meeting, which lasted about an hour, Ayo Abu Arinze showed Furo around the office, and during the tour he delivered a running commentary on the internal workings of the three-year-old company, its mission and vision, rules and regulations, the anecdotal history. ‘Work starts at eight and ends at five, but the office is locked up around ten, so you can stay until then if you want … what we sell, in a nutshell, is self-education … lunch hour is between noon and one … I was a senior manager in the telecoms industry before I resigned my job to start this company … every word in a Haba! proposal must be spelled correctly, no text message spellings, that is a rule … Nigerians must start reading serious books, whether for work or for pleasure, that’s my vision … the red button on the dispenser is actually cold water and the blue is hot,’ Arinze said as he led Furo into office after office and presented him to the staff as Frank Whyte, the new head of marketing.

Sales, Accounts, Human Resources, Information Technology, and Marketing: the five departments of Haba! The sales department comprised two staff members, one of whom had been employed on the same day as Furo. The senior sales manager and department head was a bejewelled, hijab-wearing, boubou-clad woman called Zainab. She beamed a fatigued smile at Furo, and when, to the clatter of gold bangles, she raised a hand and patted her belly, he saw she was with child. The new salesperson was a plump, stylish woman whose name was Iquo, and after Furo was introduced, she spoke in a confident tone of voice, her words directed at Arinze: ‘I remember Mr Whyte from the interview day. I also want to thank you, sir, for granting me the opportunity to work for this great company. I promise to give my best, sir.’ She sounded easy to boss around. This intuition of Furo’s was strengthened when she stood up from her desk and rushed towards the door as he and Arinze turned to leave, but Arinze waved her back and said, with a cool glance at her eager face, ‘I can get the door myself. One more thing, please don’t call me “sir”.’ The next-door office was the IT department, and it held one person, Tetsola. He was a wide-shouldered and long-limbed man who sat hunched over a white-tiled ledge in the dim cubbyhole that was crammed with dismembered computers and discarded compact discs and tangled rubber cables. His office, which shared a wall with the lavatory, had been converted from a bathroom, and perhaps for this reason, because of the mouldering smell that seeped from the peeling walls, he remained silent when Furo was introduced. He dipped his head at Furo’s hello, and then shuffled his feet in their outsized sneakers as Arinze described his duties and praised his work to Furo, but he refused to say a word. After emerging from the IT office, as they made their way downstairs, Arinze told Furo that he himself handled the company accounts, hence his office doubled as the accounts department, while the HR department was staffed by two people, Obata and Tosin. Obata was the head of department, but it was Tosin who managed the support staff of two drivers and one gatekeeper. She also served as his personal assistant.

‘Meet the amazing Ms Amao,’ Arinze said as they reached the reception desk. ‘Tosin has been with me from the very beginning … she and I opened this office together as the only staff. You could say she’s the face and voice of Haba! Anything you need to know about the business, about how we started, or where to get ink for the printer, or how to requisition books from the store, Tosin’s the person to ask.’ And to Tosin he said, ‘This is—’

‘I know, Furo Wariboko,’ Tosin interjected.

‘Oh yes,’ Arinze said with a low chuckle, and then nibbled his lower lip. Finally he spoke. ‘From now on he will be known only as Frank Whyte.’

During their meeting in Arinze’s office, Arinze had expressed astonishment at Furo’s decision to change his name. In response to his cautious questions, Furo explained that Frank was his Christian name and Whyte was his furo ere, his family name, the English version of his family’s compound name. Many Kalabari families still retained this legacy of the slave-trading days when the chieftains answered one name in the clan and another to the white customer, the European sailors, who had no interest in learning their names and thus, partly in mockery and partly from necessity, addressed them by English nicknames. Hence it became that Fyneface was Karibo, Yellowe was Iyalla, Black-Duke was Oweredaba, Bobmanuel was Ekine, Georgewill was Otagi, Harry was Idoniboye-Obu, and, according to Furo, Whyte was Wariboko.

But Whyte was not Wariboko. Furo wasn’t worried about this fabrication, his first to his boss. He had no fear he would be caught out. Ayo Abu Arinze was Yoruba or more likely Igbo, or even of mixed ethnicity, with some Hausa thrown in somewhere — his three names together were confusing, but his surname was Igbo — and more to the point, he wasn’t Kalabari, so it was unlikely he would know the secret history of Kalabari names. Yet Arinze was Nigerian enough to know that the whitest names in the country came from Furo’s parts, the Niger Delta. Besides, he was pleased at the reason Furo gave for making the change. Because, as Furo said, Whyte would be easier for Haba! customers to pronounce and memorise, and, furthermore, it would remove the distraction of a white man bearing a black name. Such dedication to duty boded well, Arinze said, and he agreed with Furo that no one in the office need be informed of his old name.

From the lobby Furo and Arinze went back upstairs to Obata’s office. Obata was typing on his laptop, and he looked up from the screen as they entered, then pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. He greeted Arinze in a genial tone and nodded at Furo like an old enemy, and then, apart from a sidelong glance at Furo’s face, he showed no emotion as Arinze informed him of the name change. When Arinze finished speaking, he asked:

‘What name should I use in his employment file?’

‘Frank Whyte, of course,’ Arinze answered.

‘And his salary account? Will that be opened under this name?’

‘That’s a good point,’ Arinze said. He turned to Furo. ‘What do you suggest? Your new passport bears your old name. We’ll need new ID to open a bank account.’

Furo pondered on this snag before he said at last, ‘I’ll make the change official. I’ll get a new passport. Is it possible to pay me in cash until I bring the passport?’

‘That we can do,’ Arinze said. ‘Tell you what, Obata. Don’t open a file for him, not yet. For tax purposes let the records show that he’s on a three-month internship in marketing, and put down his salary as marketing expenses. Frank, you’ll have to bring your passport before the end of three months, by the end of September. Then we’ll make your position permanent.’

‘I’ll get the passport this month,’ Furo said. And he added: ‘Thank you, Abu.’

‘Perfect,’ Arinze said. ‘Now let me show you to your office.’

After Arinze left him alone, Furo strode around his office, acquainting himself with his new status. The austere, white-walled room was furnished with a wood-laminate desk, a steel-legged plastic chair, a foot-flip trash can, an air conditioner whose remote control was the only item on the desk’s surface, and a single-tiered pinewood shelf that was affixed to the wall across from the desk. The shelf was lined with books whose spines bore titles such as The Rules of Wealth and Defying the Odds and The Leader Who Had No Title. Adjacent to the shelf was the room’s only window, underneath which stood two cardboard boxes, and when Furo opened their flaps, he found that both were packed full of new-smelling books. After closing the boxes, he rose from his squat, then raised his hand to the window and wedged open the slats of the venetian blind. He gazed through the glass into the front of the compound, where he saw that four cars were parked, a black Mercedes jeep and three sedans. The jeep had to be Arinze’s, and since he couldn’t hope for that, Furo imagined that the least punished-looking of the sedans, a red Kia, was his.

His fantasies were interrupted by a knock on the door. He edged away from the window before calling out, ‘Come in,’ and the door swung open to reveal Tetsola, the IT man, at full size. He looked seven feet tall. When seated in his office he had appeared uncommonly large, but then Furo had also felt Brobdingnagian in the cramped space. What he now felt was embarrassment at his own puniness; and some confusion over his gut-deep stirrings of inadequacy. Everything about Tetsola — his basketballer limbs and those heroic shoulders, but also the commando jut of his chin — were exaggerations of the human form. The stares he must draw, Furo thought with a rush of resentment as unexpected as it was strong. He knew very well how it was to be stared at by everyone; he knew the price he paid for the loss of his anonymity. Yet he still envied Tetsola for standing out from the crowd. Or, nearer the truth, standing above it.

‘Come in,’ Furo said again, to break the cycle of his thoughts.

Tetsola ducked into the doorway and loped forwards. Standing closer, he towered over Furo like a father figure. In his raised palm was balanced a black Zinox. Furo guessed that the laptop was the reason for the visit, and he waited for Tetsola, who was glancing around the room with a smile that showed his bovine teeth, to confirm this, and just as he began to speculate that his visitor might be mute, Tetsola confounded him by saying in the wrong voice, a voice right for an eunuch but too feeble, too squeak-squeak, for a giant’s maw: ‘I’ve brought your lappy.’

For the next half-hour, while seated at his desk and facing the laptop screen, Furo listened in mute wonder to that nasal tone as Tetsola ran him through all his improvements to the laptop. He had upgraded functions, partitioned hard discs, and installed the latest versions of the best programs for any task Furo would ever need to perform on a machine of such limited processing power, limited not because the Zinox was bad, but because, didn’t Furo agree, Mac was the greatest. Much of this geeky lecture, on account of the terminology as well as the R2-D2 inflections of Tetsola’s voice, was unintelligible to Furo, and the torrent of information only succeeded in making his buttocks sweat. He kept adjusting himself to find a less pinching position in the chair, but he kept on listening, he kept on looking, he wanted to understand everything there was to know about the first computer he could call his own.

At long last Tetsola announced his duty ended and exited the office. Alone with the laptop, Furo opened a browser and signed into his Yahoo mailbox. It was over two weeks since he’d last been online, and though he suspected — or, rather, knew — what awaited him there, he still had to see for himself that he was right. He was, of course: there was indeed something to see: a digital influx of panic and grief. His mailbox had three hundred and seventeen unread emails, many of them newsletters from the job-listing websites he was subscribed to; but he noted one email from his mother, several from his father and his sister, and countless Facebook and Twitter notifications from friends, relatives, and total strangers. He was tempted to dip into all these messages addressed to someone he no longer was, but he realised the cruel folly of that action, as already he could feel his resolve crumbling under the weight of the subject line of his mother’s email, sent on 22 June, which read: ‘MY SON WHERE ARE YOU???’ Furo’s struggle with himself was rife with sighs, and in the end, by the simple trick of averting his eyes from the screaming caps, the hook-like question marks, the words fatted on desperation, he succeeded in withstanding the Pandora pull of his mailbox. He did not succumb to his mother’s email nor to any of the others, not a single one. Instead, upon returning his gaze to the screen, he opened the mailbox settings, scrolled down until he found the option he sought, and deleted his account.

Logging into Facebook, he found the message icon red with alerts. As for the friend requests, they ran into hundreds. His wall was taken over by postings about his disappearance, ladders of comments in unreadable net lingo, sunny emoticons depicting horror, and video clips of green pastures and floating clouds set to cantatas. Also photos. It seemed every group photo he had ever appeared in was tagged on to his wall. By long-forgotten relatives, unrecognisable childhood playmates, and unknown people whose names he found impossible to pronounce. Chinese names with their Xs, Russian names spelled in Cyrillic; and the trendy idiocy of misspelled Nigerian names, those Yehmeesees and Kaylaychees; and also names that seemed like noms de guerre for child stalkers. It was alarming: the scale of the uproar, the scope of his celebrity. All this time the whole of Facebook was searching for him and yet he had no idea, he hadn’t heard a thing.

Getting off Facebook was a hassle, as the deactivation process was so well hidden that he was forced to Google it and follow the instructions he found in a Vice article. Facebook defeated, he turned his avenging fury on the newest and least utilised of his online platforms, his Twitter account. He signed in to find a string of mentions from @pweetychic_tk, whom he suspected was his sister and thus didn’t read her tweets before deleting the account. Then he picked up the notepad sheet on which Tetsola had scribbled ‘frank.whyte@gmail.com’ and ‘habanigeria789’, his official email address and his temporary password. He logged into the brand-new mailbox and changed his password without trouble, then read his first email, a welcome from Gmail. He was busy with customising the look of the mailbox when he heard from down the hallway the approach of feet, and sure enough, the footsteps stopped at his door. ‘Come in,’ he said in response to four loud knocks, made with a fist.

He recognised the shoes first. The pointed toes, the age-softened oxblood leather, the carelessly knotted laces. Then the face with its prominent cheekbones and that stuck fruit of an Adam’s apple. It was the man he had met on the day of his interview, the one who spat as he spoke, whose brother was married to a white woman in Romania. Or was it Poland?

‘You!’ they burst out together, their gazes meeting across the room. The man broke the look as he turned to close the door, and then, covering the distance to the desk with quick strides, he said with a grin, ‘Didn’t I say you would get the job! So you are my new oga?’

‘You work here?’

‘Yes now, I’m the driver. MD has told me I will be driving you from today.’

And all this time he had assumed that the man was a job seeker whose interview with Obata hadn’t gone well. Now it made sense, the help the man had offered that day. It was also apparent that Obata was a pain not only to him.

He said to the man, ‘So you’re my driver?’

‘Yes o,’ the man replied. ‘See how life is.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Victor Ikhide. But all my friends are calling me Headstrong.’

‘I won’t even ask why they call you that,’ Furo said with a snort of amusement. ‘Ehen, before I forget, now that you’re here—’ He rose from his seat, crossed to the window, and pried open the blind. ‘Come and see. I want to ask you something.’ When Headstrong joined him, he tapped the glass in the direction of the parked cars. ‘Which of those cars is mine?’ he asked, and Headstrong replied, ‘It’s the First Lady.’

The First Lady was a 1989 Toyota Corolla, this one ashcoloured, sagging with age and bruised around the edges, the roof hatch puttied shut. The model, which was popular in the late nineties, was considered a woman’s car, hence the nickname given it by Nigerian mechanics. Of all the cars in the compound, the First Lady was the one Furo least wanted — and now, for the first time, he thought that perhaps Syreeta was right. He deserved better.

Headstrong sensed the disappointment in Furo’s silence, but he misinterpreted it in the best light. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s a strong car, it won’t break down. I’m the one that is servicing all the company cars. The engine of that one is still good. Where do you live?’

‘Lekki,’ Furo muttered, ‘behind The Palms.’

‘Ah, I see! No wonder MD assigned me to be driving you. I live near that side, in Osapa London. It’s a long drive to Lekki, I won’t lie, but the car can handle it. Cool your mind, oyibo!’

Furo turned away from the window. ‘I have to get back to work. I guess I’ll see you at five.’ He walked to his desk but remained standing until Headstrong had opened the door, and then he called out, ‘One more thing. My name is Frank. Don’t call me oyibo.’

‘Yes o, Oga Frank,’ Headstrong said, and laughed as he slammed the door.

The rest of the morning passed in a loop of the new familiar. Knocks on his door, getting-to-know-you chats with Mallam Ahmed (the gatekeeper-cum-storekeeper-qua-handyman) and Iquo (who gushed about his office and special status for so long it became obvious they would never be friendly), and a quick visit from the taciturn Obata, who brought along a camera to take a photo for filing purposes; then the hours he spent alone, pacing the square of the room and staring out the window, through which he witnessed the arrival of the Haba! delivery van, this followed by another knock on the door and the entry of the second driver, Kayode. He was a socks-and-necktie man, a softer-spoken fellow than Headstrong; and no, he had no nickname, he said with a surprised look when Furo enquired. After Kayode left, Furo returned to his desk, where the only work waiting was the task he had set himself to, of browsing the internet in search of book-marketing tips from online experts whose free advice seemed one way or the other to involve the Amazon website. He was still on his laptop at sometime past midday when Tosin knocked on his door and invited him to lunch, but he declined, he wasn’t hungry, he thanked her for asking, and when she turned to leave, he snuck a look at her narrow waist, her flared hips, her musical sway, and said to himself what a great place Haba! was, such beautiful people, so warm, so welcoming. He looked forward to knowing Tosin better.

Shortly before five Arinze stuck his head into the doorway and asked Furo if he had met his driver, if he had seen his car, and then told him that the car was Haba! property and should be treated as such, that after work it should be parked at Furo’s house, never at the driver’s. ‘Victor can’t be trusted,’ Arinze said. ‘Give him an inch and he’ll use your car as a taxi.’ Advancing into the office, he handed the car key to Furo and told him to always make sure to collect it from the driver after he was dropped off. And finally he asked, ‘Are you happy with things so far?’

‘I am,’ Furo replied.

‘Perfect,’ Arinze said. ‘I have a client for you. Let’s meet in the morning, at nine, my office.’ A pause, a nibbling of the bottom lip, and then: ‘Have a good day, Mr Whyte.’

Furo departed his office at five sharp to find Headstrong perched on the bonnet of the First Lady, and after handing over the car key he slipped into the front seat, then slammed his door in echo of the gale force with which Headstrong had closed his. While Headstrong poked at the ignition, Furo noted that the car had neither radio nor air conditioning; but the engine started without any trouble. Headstrong swung out of the car park and sped forwards over the bumpy ground, as rough a driver as expected. Again, as Furo feared, Headstrong began to talk as soon as they hit the road. In a podium voice, with frequent glances away from traffic, he went on about this and that but all related to his goal to travel overseas, anywhere was good so long as it wasn’t Africa, though South Africa wasn’t bad, there were white people there, and didn’t Furo think that black people were their own worst enemy, if not, then how come suffering followed the black man like flies follow shit; but Furo should know, he lived in Nigeria, he could see for himself — and how come he had a Nigerian accent, how long had he lived in this rubbish country?

‘All my life,’ Furo answered in a voice sunk low by fatigue.

That was what it felt like to him, that all his life would be spent listening to the prattle of a man he must ride with five days a week, in traffic and in a car that lacked even the comfort of a radio. On entering the car, he had shunned the back seat, the owner’s corner. Sitting in front had seemed the right thing to do, as much for the view as for the sake of the driver’s feelings, but that decision now proved a blunder. Seeing the superabundance of saliva that Headstrong secreted, clearly in his case for lubrication, he was genetically equipped to talk for ever. These churlish thoughts of Furo’s were presently interrupted by a loaded silence, into which he ventured:

What did you say?’

‘But how come?’ Headstrong repeated.

‘How come what?’

In a tone of exasperated emphasis, Headstrong said, ‘How come you’ve lived in Nigeria all your life? Why haven’t you left?’

‘Because I like it here,’ Furo said.

And yet, and yet, even through all the painful years? The migration stories were always there, floating around like redemption songs in the rundown auditoriums and overflowing hostels of his university. He knew countless people who had chosen that path. Professors, students, even a girl in second-year zoology whom he had fancied from afar. Some had left from university and the others had gone in droves in the years after graduation, westward-bound through air and over water and across the Sahara sands. And yet, and yet, he had never been tempted, never thought of migrating, of seeking asylum in the sunless paradises of the world. Not then, not now, not yet. He knew why he remained, but Headstrong would never believe him, especially if he told him everything that he couldn’t. Some are born to love a mother who devours her young, a nation that destroys her own, but not Furo. He had never loved enough to be disheartened.

Headstrong regained his voice. ‘Either you’re joking or you’re mad!’ he burst out. His tone was shrill, and he kept looking away from the road as he addressed Furo, he kept showering spit in his direction. ‘Nobody can tell me that they like living in Nigeria. Except that person doesn’t have any sense at all, at all. Even if you have all the money in the world — you see that pothole, you see what I mean, where are the good roads? You don’t know what you’re saying! OK, let me ask you this one, what about light? You like NEPA, abi? Is it because you have money to buy generator? So what about petrol? Tell me now, how can you run your generator when fuel scarcity is everywhere? And what of armed robbers? What of kidnappers? Ah, OK, what of Boko Haram? You like them too? Police, nko? Apart from standing on road to be collecting money from innocent people, what work are those ones doing? Or even …’

On he went, his voice flailing at Furo.

Furo’s position was now unbearable. His skin crawled from drying spit, his buttocks ached with renewed malice, and a deep flush was burning across his face. Other commuters were staring into the car, as startled as he was by the spectacle of the oyibo being screamed at by his driver. He had to do something to regain control, to restrain Headstrong’s belligerence. No longer would he stand for the micro aggressions and blatant rudenesses he had gotten from Headstrong ever since the first day they met. He was the boss here — he wasn’t mates with this ordinary driver. Even Arinze wouldn’t talk to him this way. Neither would Syreeta, the only person he owed anything to. Headstrong was out of bounds and needed putting in his place.

‘Shut up!’ Furo yelled at the top of his voice. In the stunned silence, he took several deep breaths before saying in a threatening tone, ‘Look here, Mr Ikhide, I’ve had enough. What gives you the right to speak to me that way? You’re my driver, just stick to your job. In fact, another word out of you and I will report this matter to the MD!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Headstrong murmured without looking over. His balled hands tightened their grip on the steering wheel as he added: ‘Please don’t tell MD.’

‘You talk too much, it has to stop,’ Furo said, stern-voiced. There was more he wanted to say, especially about the spitting, but already he was growing weary of playing boss, and so he finished in a softened tone, ‘I’ll forgive you this time, but watch yourself.’

By the time the car arrived at Oniru Estate Furo was wondering if perhaps he had been too harsh. Since the telling-off, Headstrong had remained silent and fixed his attention on the world in front of the windscreen, and Furo now regretted the loss of ease between them. But he resolved that the quiet was worth the tension, and after Headstrong, following his instructions, parked the First Lady behind Syreeta’s Honda, then got down, locked the doors, and handed over the key, all of this done in silence, Furo claimed the final word: ‘Report here tomorrow morning by six o’clock. You have my number, call me when you arrive.’

Furo planned that night to inform Syreeta of his name change and then borrow money from her to make another passport, but he was exhausted from his first day of work; and, also, they had so much to discuss already — his first-ever office, his disappointing car, his early impressions of his colleagues, his very own laptop which needed a carrying bag, his masterful handling of the driver’s impertinence; and not forgetting his wish to stay on longer in her apartment, a question to which she responded yes with reassuring promptness — that in the end he decided there was no hurry, it could wait, he didn’t need the passport anyway until September; and, again, in spite of his fatigue, he would rather make love to her than explain why he’d adopted a new name; and so, perhaps because she had missed him all day, but certainly, on his part, because his confidence was raging from his improved circumstances, Furo and Syreeta fucked relentlessly that night.

At the nine o’clock meeting on Tuesday morning, Arinze gave Furo a crash course in sales. Lesson over, he handed Furo his company ID card, a pack of business cards, and a bundle of branded bookmarks that Furo was to present to clients as gifts. The business cards — a simple design of green text on a white background, with ‘Haba! Nigeria Ltd’ stamped on the flip side — bore Furo’s mobile number underneath ‘Frank Whyte’ and his email address underneath ‘Marketing Executive’. Seen in print, his name felt the more his and his title gave him purpose. His plastic ID card displayed a colour photo of an unsmiling man with a buzz of carroty hair and eyes the colour of sun-warmed seawater. It was a face that startled Furo less and less.

After the meeting ended, Furo returned to his office and summoned Headstrong to lug down the carton of sample books that Arinze had selected. To aid Furo in his sales pitch, Arinze had printed out a memo whose first three sheets had the books’ descriptions, snippets of promotional reviews, their list prices and discount ratios. On the penultimate sheet were details about the client company and its owner, Mr Ernest Umukoro; while the last sheet contained some FAQs about Haba! as well as Arinze’s answers, which were in red. Armed with this information, Furo set off for Gbagada, where the company was located. The company name was TASERS, Total Advertising Services. It employed forty-six people, the memo said.

On the drive down, Furo sat in the back seat with the carton of books beside him, and as the silent Headstrong steered the car with steady hands and a ramrod neck, Furo looked through the books. There were twelve titles, two copies of each, twenty-four books in all. He found some titles he had heard of before, even seen vendors flogging in traffic. One such was Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. Another was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Furo knew The 7 Habits well, his father owned a copy whose tattered cover used to be a constant sight around the house, and over the years as Furo searched for a job he had picked it up many times with the intention to read but hadn’t ever gotten around to achieving this. Apart from the pain in his neck, his scepticism was blameworthy for his inability to dig into that marker-highlighted bible of his father’s. His highly ineffective, chicken-farming father. A man as blind to his ironies as those book vendors who sweated while wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan My money grows like grass. At least the vendors were disciplined in their execution, they got things done. More to the point, they weren’t sold on the books they were selling.

Returning The 7 Habits to the carton, Furo resolved again to read it — if only the pain in his neck would allow him. At this thought, he jolted forwards in his seat, raised his left hand to rub his neck, swung his head side to side and worked his jaws, then clamped his mouth shut and composed his face as Headstrong cast a startled look in the rear-view mirror.

The pain in his neck was gone.

TASERS was on the top floor of an eight-storey building whose elevator didn’t light up when Furo jabbed the buttons. In a far corner of the lobby the uniformed porter was playing a game of draughts with a rifle-bearing police officer, and when Headstrong, at Furo’s command, walked over to the porter to ask if the elevator was ever coming, the man raised a hand and pointed out the staircase without looking up from the draughtboard. Furo crossed to the unlit stairwell, waited some seconds for his vision to adjust to the shock of darkness, and then, as the sound of Headstrong’s footsteps approached behind him, he set off at a sprint. But five floors up he ran out of breath, staggered huffing on to the landing, then hunched over to find his wind. He was in that position when Headstrong arrived with the carton of books balanced on his head and his mobile phone held out before him, its screen lighting his path. He continued on with his light and load, the echo of his footsteps fading above Furo’s head. Furo waited for the sweat on his face to dry before he resumed his ascent, and as his heavy feet delivered him on to the last-but-one floor, Headstrong jogged past on his way down.

At the stairhead, the door marked TASERS was ajar. Through the gap Furo sighted the carton of books on the reception counter. The flaps hung open. Standing close by was a woman whose sleek black hairpiece was styled like a geisha’s hairdo. She was holding one of the books, flipping through it, but as Furo pushed past the door, her hand stilled in the splayed pages, and she turned around. Furo halted, said good morning, and after the woman returned his greeting, he said: ‘I’m here to see Mr Umukoro. I’m from Haba! Nigeria Limited. My name is Frank Whyte.’

The woman cocked her head and asked, ‘What of Mr Arinze?’ she asked.

‘He sent me,’ Furo replied. ‘I’m the new marketing executive.’

The woman’s face cleared. ‘Marketing executive,’ she said, drawling the words and nodding slowly. ‘It seems Haba! is moving up.’ She extended her hand to the open carton, placed the book in it, and after closing the flaps, she said in a tone that strove to be casual, ‘Your boss usually comes himself. You know he has been trying to sell us books since last year?’ At Furo’s silence, she gave a small smile and said, ‘I’ll tell oga you’re around.’ She strode to a glass-panelled door, buzzed it open and stepped into a long passage, and some time later, through the closed door, Furo heard another door open. He turned away from the door and swept a glance around the reception area, but his mind was elsewhere. In light of the information he’d just got from the woman, that Arinze himself had been to TASERS to sell books — a detail he neglected to mention during their meeting — Furo realised he needed a fresh strategy.

What had Arinze told him this morning? Know your strategy beforehand. Because of what he now knew, what he’d just learned, that was a fail. Convince the client that what you’re selling is what he needs. But Arinze, over several visits, hadn’t succeeded in that. Once you get the client talking, the sale is halfway made. That was it. Furo could feel the seismic tremors of an idea taking shape in his mind, and decided to plant his trust in the impromptu. He would forego any introductions other than a greeting and the handing over of his business card, following which he would spread out the sample books and then ask the client which of the titles he had read. With this new strategy, Furo thought he stood a chance of getting the client talking; and when the door swung open, after the woman announced that oga was ready to see him, he reached for the carton of books, but she said no, leave it, I insist, I’ll have someone bring it in. Without his conversation starter his plan was a non-starter. And so he told the woman not to bother, but she marched forwards and nudged his hand away from the carton, shook her head at his protestations, and said in a firm voice as she guided him by the elbow towards the door: ‘There’s no way I’m letting you carry that heavy load.’

Furo was ushered into an office whose every surface seemed laden with plaques and trophies, the walls covered with framed certificates and photographs of staff receiving framed certificates. Daylight filtered through the blue window screens and gave the room the atmosphere of a stained-glass chapel. The air was thick with the smell of dusty rug. ‘Take a seat,’ the woman whispered before withdrawing. An enormous man in white shirtsleeves, a red bow tie, and yellow-polka-dot braces was hunkered down behind the desk facing the door. When Furo halted at the desk, the man glanced up from his iMac screen and nodded at him to sit before returning his gaze to the playing video, which sounded like a sports car advert, a husky male voice waxing beatific about curves and balance. After the video reached its end, the man turned his cold eyes on Furo and said, ‘So Abu sent you.’ Furo recognised his voice from the video.

‘Yes — yes — good morning — sir,’ Furo replied with a stammer. He drew a calming breath, and reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a business card, then stood up from the chair and leaned over the desk with the card extended. But Umukoro refused the card with a sharp shake of his head, and then gestured at him to sit back down. ‘I know why you’re here,’ he said. ‘Start talking.’

Furo’s thoughts scattered in all directions. His improvised strategy was based on the sample books. He had nothing to say until the carton was brought in. As he tried to collect his thoughts, he began recalling all the things he should have done. He should have been less eager to avoid the hostility that brimmed in Headstrong’s manner. He should have come up the stairs with him. He should have stopped him from going back downstairs. He should have ignored that bad-luck receptionist. He should have phoned Headstrong to come up again and do the carrying. He should have insisted on carrying the carton himself. Or at least picked out some books — he should have thought of that before. And now this fatty bum-bum was waiting for him to sell books he should already have read, books he knew nothing about except — the memo sheets!

He shouldn’t have forgotten them in the car.

Umukoro’s voice stabbed the air. ‘How long have you worked for Abu?’ In a feeble tone, Furo responded, ‘I started yesterday,’ and Umukoro’s lips closed in a smile that turned his face sinister. At that instant Furo knew he had squandered any chance of succeeding where Arinze failed. Thus his surprise when Umukoro said, ‘I want to discuss something else, but first, let me tell you, Abu has come here many times to sell his books. The last time he came, I told him I would buy some books the next time he dropped by. But you’re not Abu.’

Sitting up to the pull of his ears, Furo spoke earnestly, ‘I’m his representative, sir.’ Whatever else he would have said was forsaken when three soft knocks sounded on the door, which then swung open to reveal the receptionist. She stepped inside and held the door open for the porter who had been playing draughts in the lobby. He shambled in bearing the carton and set it down by Furo’s chair. After the door closed behind them, Furo tried again. ‘Let me show you the books I brought. I’m sure you’ll like them. Mr Arinze selected them himself.’ He bent over the carton and took out four books, two in each hand, then spread them on the table. Bending down again, he reached for The 7 Habits. ‘This book changed my life,’ he said with an abashed grin as he straightened up. ‘I don’t know if you’ve read it yet—’

‘Save your breath,’ Umukoro said brusquely.

Furo’s disappointment showed on his face. And yet, as he tossed The 7 Habits into the carton, he wondered what Umukoro wanted to talk about.

‘You know my business is advertising.’ Umukoro stared at Furo until Furo kenned he was awaiting acknowledgement. ‘I work mostly with multinationals,’ he continued after Furo nodded, ‘and most of their local branches are headed by foreigners. You white men like to do business with your kind.’ He dropped his gaze to the books on the table and a spasm of distaste curdled his face. ‘How much is Abu paying you? A hundred thousand per month? One fifty? I’ll double that. And I guarantee you’ll learn more about marketing than a bookseller can teach.’ He smiled his sinister face again. ‘Are you interested?’

‘Excuse me?’ Furo said.

‘I want you to work for me.’

Furo’s first instinct was to refuse. He was tempted by the money on offer — with three hundred thousand naira he could do anything, go anywhere, be anybody — and yet he knew he couldn’t bear to work under Umukoro’s weight. The man looked like a butcher and sounded like a moneylender. He gave off an aura of heartfelt arrogance and easygoing nastiness. Moreover, he wasn’t the sort that Furo could ever call Ernest. After one day of working at Haba! Furo already felt needed there; and he trusted Arinze’s intentions. Across the desk, in those unblinking eyes that were narrowed by their fleshy pouches, in that huge belly of a man who had swallowed his ego, Furo sensed that Umukoro saw him as no more essential than cake icing. He wanted but didn’t need him, and if ever he felt the need, he would throw him over with the same ease that he now offered to take him up. Syreeta was right, he deserved better. But this wasn’t it.

Furo spoke. ‘Thank you for the offer. Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.’

‘No you won’t,’ Umukoro said. By the steady creaking of his chair and the quivering of his papal dewlaps, Furo guessed Umukoro was swinging his knees. The creaking stopped, his face froze over with indifference, and raising his hands to his computer keypad, he started typing as he said to Furo: ‘You’ve wasted enough of my time. Show yourself out.’

Furo arrived in the reception to find the receptionist engaged in a conversation with a man and a woman, both fashionably dressed, the man wearing a double-breasted suit of blue worsted, the woman a pearl-grey silk blouse and a pleated wool skirt. The ease of their postures, the relaxed cadences of their voices, marked them out as employees. Their voices dropped off as Furo approached the counter, and when he set down the carton to catch his breath, the woman asked the receptionist, ‘Are these the books?’ The receptionist said yes, after which the woman threw Furo a sideways glance before asking, ‘Can I see them?’ Without a word, Furo peeled open the flaps and stepped away from the carton. The woman reached in and pulled out 1001 Ways to Take Initiative at Work. ‘I haven’t read this one,’ she said to Furo. ‘Is it any good?’

‘Yes,’ Furo replied, and edging forwards, he stuck his hand into the carton and took out The 7 Habits. ‘I also recommend this one,’ he said, and held it out.

‘Isn’t that Stephen Covey? said the woman as she accepted the book. ‘I read it a long time ago. I’ve read most of his books.’ Her words drew the attention of her male colleague, who came up behind her and peeked over her shoulder. She passed the Covey to him, and then waved the 1001 Ways at Furo. ‘How much is this?’

The question caught Furo unawares. His self-esteem was scalded from his futile meeting with Umukoro, and though he’d been willing to play along with the woman’s interest, he hadn’t expected the game to end in serious talk. At the mention of money, he now felt the oil slick of misgiving as he realised that the book prices were on the memo sheets in the car. He’d seen the prices, and had even checked to confirm that they were given for all twelve titles, but he hadn’t memorised the figures, hadn’t thought he needed to. His newness on the job was showing up in too many ways, and his frustration at this proof of his ordinariness, his annoyance with himself for committing the same apprenticeship errors as anyone, nagged at his faith in his innate ability to think himself out of a straitjacket. While he struggled to keep his face from betraying his confusion (over the price) and dejection (from his identity crisis) to the woman awaiting her answer, his mind, that Houdini, rose to the rescue, as he remembered that he had seen the price of The 7 Habits scrawled in pencil in the top right corner of the title page. He was sure he had, he knew he had, it looked like a price, and he hoped the same had been done for all the books, as he couldn’t risk losing this opening by going downstairs for the memo sheets. And so he said to the woman with a confidence he didn’t feel, ‘The price is on the first page.’ She opened the book, stared at the page for suspenseful seconds, and when she said, ‘One five, that’s not too bad,’ Furo beamed a super-ego smile before proclaiming:

‘That’s the cheapest you can find it anywhere in Lagos.’

He had no reason to doubt this claim. And what did it matter if it was bogus, he was doing his job. He was sure there was some jargon from Arinze to apply as appropriate, but he was too busy in the trenches to remember principles. Besides, he had caught the woman stealing glances at him. Lie or no lie, the sale was looking like his to make. When Furo spoke again, his tone was soft with coaxing. ‘I’m sure your decision won’t be influenced by price,’ he said to the woman, and flicked his eyes over the front of her blouse. ‘From your sense of style, anyone can see that you recognise quality.’

The woman took the 1001 Ways as well as four other books, and while she was away in her office fetching the money, Furo convinced her male colleague to buy The 7 Habits and talked the receptionist into placing orders for two books to be delivered at the month’s end. The other woman returned with cash and three colleagues, all female, and after Furo asked the new women for their names, before he distracted them with the play of his eyes as he spun his salesman yarn, he told Yemisi and Felicia and Enoch — the woman and the receptionist and the man — to spread the word of his presence to the rest of the TASERS staff, all forty-something of them. For that was his bright idea, his face-saving stratagem: to sell off the sample books and collect individual orders. To show everyone and their mother that his long years of unemployment had been a wrongful imprisonment, that he goddamn well deserved his freedom at Haba! and that Arinze, in granting him parole to prove himself, had indeed made the right judgement.

Through the open French windows, sunlight breezed into Arinze’s office and threw wavering shadows across the glass desk, rainbow-coloured patterns that drew Furo’s eyes as he narrated all that had happened on his visit to TASERS. Arinze listened without speaking until the end of the report, at which point he stated in commendation: ‘That was quick thinking.’ After accepting the sales cash and receipt duplicates from Furo, he instructed him to hand over the pending orders to Zainab, the head of sales, for follow up. Replying he would do so immediately, Furo rose from the desk and walked to the door, then turned around when Arinze said in a brooding tone, ‘So Ernest tried to poach you?’ Furo stood silent as he had nothing more to say on that topic, which seemed to be a touchy one for Arinze, who confirmed this by now saying: ‘And that’s supposed to be a friend. We learn every day.’

Upon entering the sales office and finding it empty, Furo deposited the pile of order forms on Zainab’s desk and left her a note explaining their source, then made his exit. As he pulled the door closed, Tosin appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Hey, Frank, wait!’ she called out. ‘It’s you I’m coming to see.’ Though her stride was hurried, the relaxed swinging of her arms assured Furo there was nothing to worry about. A laptop bag dangled from her shoulder on its too-long strap and bumped against her thigh with each step she took. She was smiling as she reached him and said, ‘It’s lunchtime.’ Then she waited, her silence loaded. Her tacit invitation reminded Furo he hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning, because Syreeta was still sleeping as he prepared for work. He also remembered that it was Tuesday, Bola’s day. Syreeta would be out when he got home. There would be no dinner unless he cooked it.

‘Lunch sounds good,’ Furo responded. Sweeping his arm in the direction of the staircase, he said, ‘After you.’ Instead of leading the way, Tosin unslung the laptop bag and held it to him. ‘I saw you didn’t have a bag to carry your laptop yesterday. I don’t need this, you can use it,’ she said. Furo stared at her; he made no move to accept the gift. ‘If you want it,’ she added in a voice that cracked under the weight of being casual, and the bag, the hand that held the bag, trembled in front of Furo. He reached out and took the bag.

‘This is nice of you,’ he said, his voice heavy with feeling. ‘I’m really grateful.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Tosin replied in a bright voice, and spinning around, she skipped forwards. Furo fell in step beside her, and when he glanced at her radiant face, he was struck by the sensation that he was reliving a happy memory.

They went to a fast food restaurant, Sweet Sensation, where Tosin told him about herself and he asked her about Obata; they sat alone at a window table and chatted until the jostle at the food counter was a little less hectic than it had been on their arrival; she asked him how he liked Arinze and he told her very much; they rose together from the table and walked side by side to the food counter to place their orders, his for that staple of local fast food menus, jollof rice and fried chicken, hers for that precursor of farting jokes, beans and boiled eggs. It wasn’t so much that she favoured beans than that she had grown tired of eating the same fare every day, rice and rice and rice, whether jollof or fried or just plain white. She told him this on Wednesday after she ordered beans again at another fast food restaurant, and when Furo asked if there was any buka around where they could eat eba and soup, she said there was. She admitted she had avoided leading him to such places because she wasn’t sure if he ate such food, and she promised to take him there the following day. On Thursday Furo arrived back at the office from his sales excursions two hours later than Haba! lunchtime, and halting at the reception desk, he started to apologise to Tosin for missing their buka appointment, but she told him there was no need to, she hadn’t been to lunch yet, she had waited for him. At this disclosure, Furo hurried upstairs to drop off his laptop bag and sample books, and coming back down, he found Tosin ready to go.

They were across the road from the buka before Furo recognised it as the place he had visited all that time ago, the roadside buka where he had eaten on the day of his Haba! interview. The same curtained shed where a fight had broken out between the food seller and her customer, the same food-is-ready spot where he hadn’t paid for his meal. Hadn’t yet paid, and hadn’t paid only because the fight had given him no chance, but now, at the first chance he got, he had come back to pay — that would be his story for the meat-gifting food seller with the red hair. In actual truth, if he had known beforehand that this would be where they were headed, he might have found a reason for not coming along, but now that he was here, it was the right place to be. Holding that thought in his mind, the karmic rightness of his unintended actions, he followed Tosin across the busy road and through the dusty curtains of the buka.

The buka was vacant except for the food seller, who now had blue hair. A bright blue hairpiece with silver highlights, it was glued along her hairline, smooth as crow feathers across her scalp, the ends gathered into pigtails that rode her shoulders. Dancehall queen-coloured, Swiss milkmaid-styled. Despite the new hair, it was the same woman who jumped up from her bar stool with an exclamation of recognition. Of course she remembered him. She was very sorry for what happened the last time, no mind that idiot. No, no, no worry, forget the money, forgive the past. These sentiments were gushed out after Furo approached her with banknotes clutched in his outstretched hand and said, ‘I was here some weeks back. I couldn’t pay that day because of the trouble with that man, the one who insulted you. I just remembered. Here’s your money.’

Tosin, too, wasn’t a stranger to Mercy’s buka. After her bewilderment was dispelled by Furo’s explanation, she greeted the food seller by name, then complimented her on her hairpiece, and asked after Patience, her eldest daughter, who sometimes assisted her mother in manning the establishment, but did so less these days as she had entered university, a fact her mother offered in a tone so full of pride that Furo even smiled. Pleasantries dispensed with, Tosin asked for oha soup with pounded yam, a meal which Furo, upon her recommendation, joined her in ordering, to Mercy’s expressed delight. And then, while the food seller busied herself in dishing out the food, Tosin leaned across the bench towards Furo, closer than they had been in three days of lunching together, near enough for her woman smell to tickle the hairs in his nostrils, and placing her hand on his knee, she said in a voice husky with admiration: ‘You’re so real. I like that. I like you.’

‘I like you too,’ Furo said.

On Friday morning, as Headstrong banged his fist against the car horn, Furo looked up from the book he was reading — The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — and stared out the windscreen at the closed gate. He saw at once what it was that angered Headstrong. The maiguard, Mallam Ahmed, was standing beside the gatehouse with his back turned to the gate. He was engaged in heated discussion with Obata and another man who sat in a battered wheelchair. The stranger wore a candy-green muscle shirt and the empty legs of his tracksuit trousers were knotted at the ends. His Popeye arms waved above his head in rage.

‘I’ll get the gate,’ Furo said to Headstrong, and alighted from the car, walked to the gate, and shouldered it open. After the car gunned through, he headed for the quarrelling men. He halted beside Obata, who fell silent and shot him a scowling look, then swung back his face and resumed his stream of insults.

Arinze, it turned out, was the ghost in the gathering. Though his name didn’t once pass Obata’s lips, Furo soon realised that Arinze was the person Obata was most angry at, the one he blamed for what had happened. Mallam Ahmed, out of deference for Arinze, only alluded to him in the most roundabout ways, but at no point in his stumbling defence of his own involvement did he fault Arinze for what had happened. The man missing his legs — the maiguard called him Solo — was the only one who said Arinze’s name aloud. And so Furo put his question to Solo.

‘Wetin happen?’

All three men raised astonished faces. It was Solo who voiced what they were thinking. ‘You sabe pidgin?’ he asked in a tone of disbelief, and at Furo’s nod, he grasped his wheels and rocked the chair forwards. He began to speak, his voice subdued at first, but it rose in passion as Furo responded, and then surged higher as Obata tried several times to interrupt. By the time he wove his story to an end, his wheelchair was rattling from the force of his emotion.

‘But why this oga go come dey threaten my life with police?’ These final words ejected from a mouth that remained open in a rictus of righteousness, Solo flung out his muscled arms and glared upwards at Obata, who saw a chance to get a word in.

‘You’re a liar!’ he yelled and shook a finger at Solo. ‘Just imagine, you tout, you handicapped criminal, telling me that cock-and-bull story! You’re a bloody idiot!’

‘See me see wahala,’ Solo said and swung his frantic gaze to Furo’s face. ‘Oga oyibo, I think you see as this man dey curse me?’

‘Only curse?’ Obata retched up a laugh. ‘I haven’t started with you. If you don’t produce your gang today,’ and here he sucked in air through his teeth, ‘you’ll see what I will do!’

‘So what will you do?’

Obata whirled to face Furo. ‘What?’

Furo maintained a civil tone. ‘Insulting this man is not getting us anywhere. You say he knows where the others are. Fair enough. So what’s your next step?’

‘And how is that your business — Furo Wariboko?’

Furo felt his ears grow hot. His chest burned with loathing. He opened his mouth to release the steam building in him, then closed it as he realised the risk that arose from squabbling over that name. He wouldn’t let Obata trigger him into ceding control. He had everything to hide and nothing to prove, so Obata was rigged to win that shouting match. Right from their first encounter, Obata hadn’t bothered to hide his hostility towards him, and though he was prepared to resist all salvos from that quarter, he couldn’t restrain his vexation at the steady sniping he had endured from Obata all week long. The suspicious glances Obata gave him in passing; the snide remarks Obata uttered within his earshot about the treacherousness of oyibo people; the refusal of Obata to speak his name in his presence; and now, in a marked escalation of their secret war, the broadcasting of that name that had the power to demolish everything that was Frank Whyte. Furo was maddened by Obata’s sneak attack, but he wasn’t mad enough to respond with shock and awe. When he spoke, his voice was cold as iron.

‘Abu gave you clear instructions about my name. Please follow them.’ He paused, marshalling his thoughts. ‘The language I’ve heard you use with these men is inexcusable for someone in your position, and in fact, your attitude regarding this matter is unprofessional.’ In the charged silence, Furo shook his head at Obata. ‘I’m an executive of this company. It is within my right to tell you when your actions reflect badly on us. You can’t go around insulting people. Do that in your house if you must, but not at Haba!’

‘Tell am o!’ Solo exclaimed. Even Mallam Ahmed appeared to have picked a side: he turned his face aside to hide the smirk ghosting across his po-faced demeanour.

For an instant Furo assumed his words had caused an effect opposite to what he wanted, but Obata was more dependable than sweating dynamite. His eyes got redder and rounder as his outrage grew; his throat worked silently as if from bitterness; and then his stillness shattered. His yells flew at Furo like bursting shrapnel.

‘See this man o — you shameless impostor! What do you know about Haba!? You just joined only which day and already you’re growing wings. I don’t blame you sha. It’s oga I blame for employing a common fraudster.’

Furo’s smile was a poster image of cordiality. ‘Are you done?’ he asked Obata.

‘So you find me funny?’

‘Just tell me when you’re finished.’

Obata raised his arm and jabbed Furo in the chest with a stiffened finger. ‘Idiot oyibo, I’ve just started with you! By the time I’m finished you won’t have a job.’

‘Thank you,’ Furo said. He turned to Mallam Ahmed. ‘Go and call the MD. Tell him I said he should come now-now.’

‘Yowa,’ said Mallam Ahmed and headed off, his rubber slippers slapping the ground.

Obata was stunned into silence. He licked his lips to wet them. He cast up his arms and let them drop to his sides. He exhaled in loud spurts. Swinging his gaze between Furo and the departing man, he reached a decision. His voice sounded trapped when he called out, ‘Ahmed, wait first.’ Mallam Ahmed marched on, and when Obata spoke again, a note of panic sounded in his throat. ‘Ahmed, can’t you hear me? You’re under my department, you take instructions from me. I’m giving you a direct order. Stop there!’

Mallam Ahmed halted, turned around, and retraced his steps. Throwing a regretful glance at Furo’s feet, he said, ‘Nah true e talk. I no fit disobey order.’

‘No problem,’ Furo said brusquely. He looked at Solo. ‘Wait here for me.’

‘Frank,’ said Obata.

‘No go anywhere,’ Furo continued as Solo nodded assent.

‘Frank, listen to me,’ Obata said with urgency, and placed a gentle hand on Furo’s arm.

‘I dey come,’ Furo finished, and as he made to move forwards, Obata’s grip tightened on his flesh. ‘Get your hand off me!’ Furo snapped at him.

‘Please, just listen to me,’ Obata said and dropped his hand. ‘I was out of line.’

‘That’s not good enough,’ Furo said. But he waited.

Obata coughed to clear his throat. ‘I lost my temper. That’s not an excuse. It won’t happen again.’ And then he muttered, ‘I’m sorry.’

Furo raised his gaze to meet Obata’s hate-moistened eyes. ‘I’ll be frank with you,’ he said. ‘I’m still unhappy about the way you treated me the other day, on the day of my interview. But I won’t take your insults any more. The way you spoke to me today is totally unacceptable.’ At Furo’s stern tone Obata’s eyes had fallen, and so Furo now finished in a softer voice. ‘I won’t report you this time, but the next time you insult me, or refer to me by that name, I will tell Abu that either you leave this company or I do. I hope we’re clear?’

Obata nodded before saying in a gruff, unsteady voice, ‘We’re clear. I wash my hands. You can deal with this,’ and he waved his arm at Solo. ‘It’s your department anyway.’ He spun around and walked with long, quick steps towards the office building. Furo looked away from the retreating form when Solo said with a low chuckle, ‘Power pass power. See as that one been dey shine eye for me. Now whitey don tell am word, e no fit talk again. Oyibo, you be correct guy.’

‘My name nah Frank, no call me oyibo,’ Furo said in a curt voice. After again asking Solo to wait, he stepped away. As he approached the parked First Lady, Headstrong, who had been watching all this time from his perch on the car’s bonnet, stared at him in a manner that seemed to grow less unfriendly with closing distance, until his gaze dropped when Furo reached him, and he held out the car key in silence, then pushed off the car and trod in the direction of the gatehouse. Furo locked up the car after collecting his laptop bag and the dog-eared copy of The Five Dysfunctions. He strode into the office building, glanced at the unoccupied reception desk, then sprinted upstairs and headed for Arinze’s office. He tapped once before opening the door to find Arinze talking to Tosin; but, as he made to withdraw, Arinze said, ‘No, Frank, we’re done here, come on in. I have some exciting news. Have you just arrived? I’ve been looking for you.’

‘I was downstairs,’ Furo responded. He smiled at Tosin as they passed each other, and then took the seat she had vacated. ‘I just met Solo.’

Arinze looked perplexed. ‘Who is Solo?’

‘He’s one of the special vendors.’

Delight deposed confusion in Arinze’s features. ‘Where is he? Is he still around?’

‘He’s waiting downstairs.’

‘Perfect! I’ll see him after our meeting,’ Arinze said. He hunched forwards and began rolling a pen along the desktop, and after he grew tired of this dissemblance, he settled back in his seat and spoke in an eager voice. ‘You’ve heard about my little project — the special vendors?’

At Furo’s yes, he pressed on: ‘So, what do you think?’

‘It’s a brilliant idea,’ Furo said.

And he meant it.

Going by what Furo had gathered from Solo’s story: exactly a week ago, Arinze had sent Mallam Ahmed to the National Stadium in Surulere to scout for unemployed, wheelchair-bound men who were willing to earn some money by selling books, and after Mallam Ahmed returned with Solo and three others, Arinze met with them and determined he would try them out with ten titles each, after which, based on their success at selling the books, he was ready to hire them on commission and also brand their wheelchairs with promotional stickers and then arrange for the delivery van drop them off every morning at the busiest spots in Lagos. Haba! Special Vendors, Solo said he had called them.

Arinze spoke. ‘I’m really glad you like the idea. It wasn’t easy convincing Zainab to support me on this one, and as for Obata, he was dead set against the project. But I mean, just imagine the potential! The branding benefits, of course, not the money. We’ll never make money selling books to individuals, not in this country.’ He paused, wrinking his brow. ‘You say there’s only one of the special vendors downstairs? That’s strange. I hope he brought good news. I gave them some books last Friday, and they were supposed to report back on Tuesday, but we didn’t hear from them. And now only one shows up?’ He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Tell you what, Frank. I’m sorry, but can we postpone our meeting to eleven? I have to see this man now.’

‘Eleven’s fine,’ Furo stated, and rising with a rush of pity, he trailed Arinze to the door, walked behind him down the hallway, and stopped at his office as Arinze continued towards the stairs. He couldn’t bring himself to tell him what had happened. That early this morning, before the start of work, Obata had dispatched Mallam Ahmed to the National Stadium to search for the missing men among the sunrise crowd of sportspeople and fitness freaks. For nearly two hours, everybody the maiguard questioned had denied knowledge of the men’s existence, and when Mallam Ahmed finally found Solo — in a huddle of wheelchairs under the shade of a fake almond tree, some of the men bench-pressing, others puffing spliffs — the first thing Solo said was: ‘Police don seize de books o.’

Eleven sharp, Furo returned to Arinze’s office to find it empty. He stopped in the doorway, wedged from front and back by his surprise at the absence — an absence which to Furo was out of character for Arinze, who was the type that always kept his word. Furo was mistaken in this instance, as he discovered when a disembodied voice floated in through the French windows, making him flinch in shock. ‘I’m over here.’ It was Arinze.

Furo stepped out through the French windows. It was his first time on the balcony, his first sighting of the backyard scenery, and his umpteenth experience of the particular disorder that attended everyman solutions to everyone’s problems. As he took in the skyline, his gaze was captured by the battalions of plastic tanks mounted on towers of rusted rigging, each tank a sole source of water in the compound where it was stationed. And the rears of the fortressed houses, their concrete fences crowned by glass shards and metal spikes and razor wire. Also vying for attention was the sound and the smoky fury of countless generators. The nerve-grinding roar of individual power generation was as much a consequence of every-man-for-himself government as the lynch mobs that meted out injustice in public spaces. Private provision of public services had turned everyone into judge and executioner and turned everyone’s backyards into industrial wastelands. Every man the king of his house, every house a sovereign nation, and every nation its own provider of security, electricity, water. Lagos was a city of millions of warring nations.

In the far corner of the balcony, Arinze was stooped over the railing with his forearms dangling out. When Furo drew close to him, he spoke without looking up, like he was resuming an old conversation. ‘The most painful thing is the constant disappointment. Everything in this country prepares us for that feeling. One disappointment after another …’ His voice trailed off, and Furo grunted to show he was listening, and then snuck a glance at him. Bitterness showed in the squeeze of Arinze’s lips, but his voice was untouched when he spoke again. ‘I’ve scrapped the special vendors. It was a failure. I should have known better.’ He bit his bottom lip, then straightened up from the railing and turned to Furo. ‘Let’s get to work.’

Once inside, they took their seats at the desk, and Arinze read through sales data on his computer screen before declaring satisfaction with Furo’s performance. Furo had visited seven companies in four days, sold ninety-one books, and brought in orders for about three hundred. ‘Not bad for your first week,’ Arinze said in a tone of approval; but the next instant, in a voice veered on the businesslike, he instructed Furo that he was only to go out for marketing assignments on Monday of the following week, because on Wednesday they would be travelling to Abuja for a crucial meeting, and it was essential that Furo prepare for it.

‘Who are we meeting?’ Furo asked.

‘Alhaji Jubril Yuguda.’ Arinze must have seen recognition in Furo’s face, because he nodded once and then said in a voice as soft as a prayer: ‘The big man himself.’ Giving up all pretence of concealing his exhilaration, he leaned forwards on the glass surface of the desk, his presence looming with the parallax creep of his reflection. ‘You must have heard of Yuguda’s project, it’s been all over the news: the lorry driver employment scheme. OK, perfect. It kicks off this month, the seventeenth. One of the project objectives is to give the drivers some business training, so that they can set up their own SMEs. That’s where we come in. Yuguda wants books. Lots and lots and lots of business books.’ Arinze’s tone kept dropping lower as the books piled up on his tongue, until finally, under the weight of all that hope, he sank back in his chair. ‘It’s the big time, Frank,’ he said, his anxious gaze holding Furo’s. ‘It can change everything for us.’

The one o’clock sun was the fiercest it had been since 19 June. It was a sweating Furo, irked by the slow progress of Iquo and Tosin as they headed back to the office from lunch at the buka, who finally found refuge in the reception’s coolness from his dread of sunburn. He left the chatting ladies at the foot of the stairs, and as he walked down the hallway towards his office, he met Kayode emerging with the crash of flushing water from the lavatory. Over the past week Furo had been validated in his impression that Kayode was the opposite of Headstrong, as since their brief exchange on his first day of work the driver hadn’t spoken to him again. For this reason, a niggling curiosity, Furo halted by Kayode, greeted him in a cordial tone, and said the first thing that came to mind: he asked him if he knew where Headstrong was. Kayode kept his gaze on the floor as he shook his head no, all the while maintaining his grip on the lavatory doorknob. ‘If you see him, tell him to come and see me,’ Furo said, and then turned towards his office with the eerie suspicion that Obata was spreading evil gossip around the office.

Furo was Googling the Yuguda Group when a knock sounded on his door. ‘Headstrong,’ he called out distractedly, and as the door opened to admit Tosin, he exclaimed, ‘Hey beautiful!’ He was rewarded with a supernova smile. Tosin flitted across to his desk, rested her hips against the edge, then cast a glance at his laptop screen and said, ‘What are you up to?’

‘Some research on the Yuguda Group. I’m travelling to Abuja with Abu on Wednesday. We’re meeting Alhaji Yuguda.’

‘I know. That’s why I’m here. I was instructed to book your flights. I want to confirm what name you’ll be travelling under.’

‘Oh,’ Furo said, and his tone supplied the missing ‘no’. He had just realised he would need ID to fly, and since the only official document in his possession belonged to Furo Wariboko, he would be forced to travel under that name. That was the last thing he wanted, this pulling back to a place he had left behind. This resurrection of a self he had buried. All these questions and challenges from HR, from Obata and even Tosin. While thinking these thoughts, Furo had risen from his seat, and he tramped around the office until he saw Tosin watching him. Reaching a quick decision, he stopped in front of her and said, ‘Can you give me some time? I’ll let you know by Monday.’

‘We have to book early,’ Tosin said. She paused before adding, ‘I’ll wait till Monday.’ And finally, in the gentlest of voices: ‘I hope I’m not prying, but which name is really yours?’

Despite her stated hope, she was prying full steam ahead.

Furo was attracted to Tosin, he had admitted that already. He knew the feeling was mutual. Since they’d begun lunching together the signs of her affection had grown stronger with passing days and lengthening conversations. From the start he had shown his enjoyment of her company with light flirtation. Not today though, and not, as she might think, because of Iquo’s presence, but because yesterday, while making love to Syreeta, he had imagined Tosin in her place. The guilty sting in the tail of that fantasy had stunned him back to his senses. Tosin was not Syreeta. Not Syreeta who asked no questions, not even about his buttocks; who revealed nothing about herself, not over food or in bed; and with whom it felt good to be bad.

Furo spoke, his tone cutting, ‘My name is Frank Whyte.’ He averted his face from the mercury surge of hurt in Tosin’s eyes, and then he walked the long way round his desk. Standing beside his chair, he said, ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I need to get back to work,’ and when the door closed behind her, he relaxed his features with a sigh, then sat down, picked up his phone, and searched through the contacts until he found the number he’d stored as Passport Deji. The call was answered by the voice he recognised. ‘Afternoon,’ Furo responded to the man’s hello, and then began his introduction: ‘I’m the guy—’

‘I remember,’ Passport Deji cut him off. ‘You’re the oyibo who get Nigerian name.’

‘That’s right,’ Furo replied, and then he said he had changed his name and he needed a new passport by Tuesday at the latest. He ended with the question that was burning a hole in his pocket: ‘How much will it cost me?’ Passport Deji was silent a long time. ‘It’s not possible,’ he said at last, his voice doleful at the loss of business. ‘Not in Lagos. Your fingerprint have already enter immigration computer. You must go to Abuja. That nah the only place where you fit do a new passport with another name.’

After the call, Furo chuckled through a long list of paraprosdokians — phrases with unexpected endings, such as (1) Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with; (19) You’re never too old to learn something stupid; and (37) If you’re supposed to learn from your mistakes, why do some people have more than one child? — which were in a chain email forwarded by Tetsola, until three o’clock came and went. Afterwards he tried to make up for his misuse of office time by spending the next hour reading up on Yuguda’s business, but by five o’clock he was sugar-sick from gleaning details in online tabloids. He had Monday and Tuesday to continue his research, and so he gave up for the day, and shut down his laptop, and was reaching for his bag when the door to his office flew open. The startled leap of his heart hauled him to his feet, but he regained his calm when Zainab said from the doorway, ‘Thank God I caught you! Please, Frank, I have a favour to ask.’ Releasing her grip on the doorjamb, she placed her hand on the bulge of her belly, and gulping air like a blowfish, she shuffled into the office on legs bowed by the weight of life. Furo hurried round his desk to meet her halfway. This was the first time she had entered his office, and because of the straight cut of her satiny jellaba, it was also the first time he had noticed how advanced her pregnancy was.

‘Do you want to sit?’ he asked as he took her elbow. In response she shook her hijabed head, then leaned against him, and as he led her towards the table he said, ‘I hope the baby’s treating you well? Is this your first?’

‘Ah, no, my third,’ she answered with a fatigued smile, and rested her haunches against his desk. ‘But this one is giving me more trouble than the boys. It’s a girl.’

‘How many months?’

‘Almost eight. I’ll do my CS in August, after Ramadan ends, Insha’Allah.’ She fell silent to catch her breath, and then glanced around his office with interest before she said, ‘Let me not keep you. The favour I want to ask is, we just received an order for fifty books, but the customer wants us to deliver them today. He’s in Lagos Island, near Awolowo Road. Your driver told me you pass there on your way home. Can you please drop off the books for me?’

‘Of course, no problem, I can do that,’ Furo said.

‘O se o, Frank.’ She reached out and patted his hand. ‘Do you speak Yoruba?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Ah-ah, why not? Your girlfriend hasn’t taught you yet?’

Furo gave a chuckle at the fishing in her question. ‘I don’t have a girlfriend,’ he said.

‘But still,’ Zainab stated in a voice from which dangled something hooked. ‘You can’t stay in Lagos and not speak Yoruba. I’ll teach you myself. In fact, you should have a Yoruba name by now. I’ll give you one—’ She fell silent, a squall brewed in her face, and she clamped her lips in pain as her hand rubbed her belly in commiserative circles. After her sigh of release indicated the spell had passed, she smiled a sweaty smile, and jerking her thumb in the direction of her bump, she quipped, ‘I can’t teach you anything until this one has come.’

Neither her suffering nor her jesting could quell the irritation Furo had felt at her suggestion of giving him another name, and so he said in a dour tone: ‘Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.’

Zainab searched his face, then heaved up from the desk and toughened her voice. ‘I’ll give your driver the books and the delivery address,’ she said. ‘The customer will sign the invoice. I’ll collect the duplicate from you on Monday. I appreciate the help.’ Placing her hands on her belly, she clutched it like a dance partner, and then started towards the door, leaving behind a trail of pheromones that hinted at reproach.

With Zainab gone, Furo packed up his laptop, exited his office, and then halted for an awkward moment at the top of the stairwell and adjusted the bag on his shoulder in readiness to see Tosin, whose voice he could hear below. The first thing he sighted on reaching the bottom step was Headstrong in front of the reception desk. His arms rested on a carton that stood on the desk, and he was listening to Tosin, who was seated. The hum of their voices continued without pause as Furo strode past the desk. He had unlocked the car and was waiting in the back seat by the time Headstrong emerged from the building, the carton in his arms. The entrance door closed in slow motion, pulled back by its own weight, and then it squealed open again as Tosin came through with her handbag in one hand and a carryall in the other. While Headstrong headed for the back of the car to stow the carton, Tosin startled Furo by catching his gaze. Making a beeline for the car, she halted beside the window by which he sat, her silent form blocking the light.

‘Hello,’ Furo offered. His voice came out squeezed. ‘Hello too,’ Tosin responded, and as she let the silence do the rest of her talking, he decided to try again. ‘Are you travelling?’

‘No. I’m spending the weekend in Ajah.’

Furo almost giggled with relief. ‘That’s my direction. I can give you a lift.’

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ Tosin said drily. When she took a step towards the front of the car, Furo said, ‘Hold on a sec,’ and throwing open the back door, he leapt out. ‘Let me have that,’ he said, and grabbed the carryall from her hand. After she climbed into the back seat and scooted over for him, he placed the carryall between them, and then pulled the door shut. At that instant, as if at a sign, Headstrong banged the boot closed.

From the moment the First Lady sped through the gate and Furo stuck his head out the window and shouted bye-bye in response to Mallam Ahmed’s waving, nobody said a word. Headstrong stared ahead, Tosin stared at the driver’s backrest, and Furo stared at nothing. But nothing soon became that beast of metal and rubber, of bellicose honks and hydrocarbon fumes: a traffic jam at Olusosun. This go-slow was unlike any other, because it crawled past a terrain which stank to the carrion bird-darkened heavens. On those days when the road was clear, cars sped up when approaching the scandalous sight: a range of craters dotted with blazing fires and strewn with galactic garbage. But today, as Furo grabbed for the glass winder, he saw car windows shooting up everywhere. For all commuters unlucky enough to pass by Olusosun, closed windows and breakneck speed were reflex actions, futile efforts against the stink that rose on plumes of smoke from the largest dumpsite in Lagos.

The traffic jam evaporated at the mouth of Third Mainland Bridge. As was usual at this hour, the bridge was free-flowing in the direction of Lagos Island, while the opposite lane, clear of traffic in the mornings, was now gridlocked. Lagoon breeze fanned across the bridge, and as the First Lady hurtled singing into its path, Tosin broke the silence. ‘Frank,’ she said, and when Furo turned towards her: ‘How do you manage with all the stares?’ Furo’s expression announced his bafflement. ‘The other cars, in the go-slow, people kept staring at you.’

‘Oh, that.’ Furo snorted in dismissal. ‘I’m used to it.’

‘You have a strong mind,’ Tosin said. She looked through the window at the water flashing past, to which she directed the sadness of her next words. ‘The way we stare at others, at white people, we Nigerians, it makes me ashamed. It’s just plain rude.’

‘Yes, I agree,’ Furo said. ‘But don’t let that bother you. There’s nothing you can do about other people’s rudeness.’ As the boomeranging meaning of his words struck home, Furo felt a stab of embarrassment, and he said quickly: ‘I’m sure people stare at you too.’

‘Me? Why?’

‘Because you’re pretty.’

Tosin threw him a pensive look, and then glanced forwards as Headstrong said, ‘What are you ashamed of, ehn, Tosin? What is the bad thing about looking at oyibo people?’

A spasm of annoyance crossed Tosin’s face. It was by force of will that her tone remained civil as she addressed Headstrong. ‘Look at it this way. How would you feel if you travelled overseas and everyone stared at you just because of your skin colour?’

‘Like a superstar!’ Headstrong exclaimed.

As Furo fought back his laughter, he heard Tosin say, ‘Victor, be serious.’

‘OK,’ Headstrong said in a serious tone. ‘I will tell you what I think. Number one, your question is not correct. Because why? White people are not like us. They treat everybody in their country with respect. In fact, they treat us black people special. A policeman cannot just go and stop a black person on the street and be asking for his ID card. Not like our own police. Yes, listen, let me tell you! Even if oyibo want to deport you from their country, you can tell them that they’re fighting in your village and all your family are dead, that you’re a refugee and you want asylum. Because of human rights, they can’t do you anything. You see what I’m saying? Those are better people.’ Out of breath, he fell silent. But the next instant, while Tosin and Furo exchanged glances in mute accord that Headstrong was something other than compos mentis, he spoke again. ‘Abi am I lying, Oga Frank?’

Furo looked at the rear-view mirror. This was the first time Headstrong had spoken his name since their falling-out. And yet, though the question was offered in a genial tone, the topic was the same that had started the trouble on Monday. Furo had no desire to go down that route again. And so he said, ‘It’s not that simple. But no, you’re not lying.’

‘Aha!’ said Headstrong, and raising a finger, he wagged it in triumph.

With a laugh Tosin said, ‘I give up.’ She turned to Furo. ‘Has Headstrong told you of his plans to migrate to Bulgaria?’

‘Poland! Poland!’ Headstrong corrected, slapping the steering wheel in emphasis.

‘Sorry o,’ Tosin said in tone that showed that she wasn’t, and as Furo said with a grin, ‘He has,’ she smiled back at him. Furo deepened his voice in imitation of Headstrong:

‘My elder brother lives in Poland—’

‘And he’s married to a white woman,’ Tosin completed.

‘Two of una no serious,’ Headstrong said. But he laughed too.

And then Tosin said, ‘And you, Frank,’ but her voice trailed off. After some thought, she reached over the seat back and tapped Headstrong’s shoulder. ‘Before he bites off my head, abeg, Victor, ask him where he’s from.’

‘Even you?’ Headstrong said with amazement. ‘He has shown you his bad temper too?’

‘Yes o,’ Tosin replied. ‘And just because I asked him one small question.’

‘What of me? He threatened to make MD sack me!’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m not, I swear to God. The dude dey vex like full Nigerian.’

The smile Furo maintained during this exchange was beginning to droop at the edges. Tosin and Headstrong’s tones had remained good-natured, but the facts they traded pointed to the opposite in Furo. In the pause that followed Headstrong’s last statement, Furo felt he had to speak up to defend himself from the guilt his silence signified. ‘Come on guys, I’m not that bad,’ he said, his tone conciliatory, and then closed his mouth as Tosin whirled on him and demanded, ‘What are you saying? So you mean Nigerians are bad?’

Even as Furo was occupied in weighing what was heavier in Tosin’s tone, the mock or the serious, Headstrong decided. He gave a grunt of amusement, looked over his shoulder, and then burst out, ‘Fire on, Tosin!’ For the first time in days, with a pleasure he had never thought he would feel at the sight, Furo saw spittle flying from Headstrong’s lips. And then he felt it on his face, sprinkling his cheeks — as it also did Tosin’s face. After Headstrong turned back around, Tosin widened her eyes in pretend horror and wrinkled her nose in real disgust. Acting on a feeling that had been building since Tosin entered the car, Furo reached out, took her hand in his, and squeezed. When she looked at him, he mouthed, I’m sorry. She returned the pressure of his fingers. Releasing her hand, he settled back in his seat and said in a chatty tone:

‘Actually, I think Nigerians are great people—’

‘Let me hear better thing abeg,’ Headstrong interjected. ‘Just tell us where you’re from.’

With a glance at Tosin, Furo said, ‘I’m American.’

‘Barack Obama!’ Headstrong yelled, and punched the car horn with both hands.

Approaching the Ikoyi end of Awolowo Road, turn into the last street before Falomo Bridge, then take the first right and keep looking left, keep going until you see a shrine. Seventies Lagos in its architecture, the facade of the two-storey building was neo-rustic. Set in the front fence, which was streaked with creeper plants and daubed with protest graffiti, was a wrought-iron pedestrian gate. From the gate a stone-paved walkway cut through a grass patch populated with scrap-metal sculptures, cracked clay pots and wooden wind chimes. More wood inside, from the ceiling beams to the stocky unvarnished armchairs to the slabs of mahogany trunk that served as tables in the restaurant-cum-bar. Hanging from the walls of the dimly lit chamber were pencil drawings of Fela and canvases of Ehikhamenor iconography and framed photos of Lagos street scenes captured in monochrome. A widescreen TV rested on brackets beside the bar, and from a concealed stereo the voice of Fela bemoaned the lot of the common man. The place was packed with dapper folks engaged in one or more of four activities: talking, drinking, dining, and surfing the web on their pricey gadgets. The scent of incense commingled in the air with tobacco smoke.

Furo walked into this scene, the destination for the book delivery, and after halting underneath the entrance archway to take his bearings, he headed towards the barmaid who welcomed him with a gap-toothed smile. He smiled back before saying, ‘I’m here to see Mr Kasumu,’ and after the barmaid placed a call on the intercom, she told him that Kasumu wasn’t in but he’d left a message that his visitor should wait. Picking up a menu from the stack on the bar counter, Furo turned and approached a nearby table. Headstrong was waiting in the vestibule with the delivery package, and now, in response to a hand signal, he came forwards and placed the carton by the table, and then left to fetch Tosin from the car. Furo passed time by reading the menu, and when Tosin arrived with Headstrong, he offered the menu to her, but she shook her head no. Handing the menu to Headstrong, he asked if he wanted a drink, to which Headstrong replied he wouldn’t mind a cold Harp. Then Headstrong opened the menu, and his expression darkened until, bending towards Furo, he said in a scandalised whisper, ‘Their beer nah four times normal price! I can’t drink here o, the beer won’t taste sweet in my mouth. If you give me half the money I will go outside and buy something to eat. That one is better than wasting money in this rich man juju house.’ Chuckling at the truth of Headstrong’s words, Furo reached into his wallet, then passed across five hundred naira, and as Headstrong stood up with a thank you, he said to him, ‘Don’t go far. We won’t be here long.’ But now, for the time being, he was alone with Tosin in a setting that lent itself to romance, and since neither had ordered drinks, they soon discovered they had nothing to do but avoid each other’s eyes and eavesdrop on the chatter from other tables, some occupied by couples, none of whom seemed as awkward as Tosin looked and Furo felt. A lull in the room’s conversation threw into sharp relief a phrase from the song that was playing at low volume. Bend your yansh like black man, Fela chanted angrily, and Furo, with a frisson of apprehension at the prophetic force of those words, shifted his buttocks in his chair, and then glanced towards the clomping footsteps on the wooden staircase at the front of the room, from where emerged a heavyset man with skin so pale it looked bluish. He carried a tripod in one hand, a video camera in the other, and he was dressed like a journalist, in khaki shorts, canvas boots, and sun-faded face cap, with a backpack riding his shoulders. His T-shirt gave him away as an old Nigeria hand. It was plain white except for the large green lettering inscribed across the chest, which read, OYIBO PEPE. Marching past the table, he caught the direction of Furo’s eye, and winked at him from a deadpan face.

‘That’s a man who’s sure of himself,’ Tosin quipped as she watched the man over Furo’s shoulder. Her gaze soon changed direction, a guarded look entered her face, and leaning closer to Furo, she spoke in a whisper. ‘I think someone knows you. She’s coming this way.’

Syreeta, Furo thought with a sinking feeling, but when he raised his eyes to the woman who halted beside him, the stone loosened from around his neck. The first thing he noticed was that she wasn’t Syreeta. The second was that on all ten fingers she wore silver rings in designs that ranged from animal motifs to adinkra symbols. She was slender, bosomy, her dark skin glistened with lotion, and her henna-dyed dreadlocks fell to her neck. Her unpainted lips, now curved in a smile of greeting, were cigarette-blackened. On closer inspection, her air of melancholy was an effect of her large, deep-set eyes.

‘Hey you,’ she said to Furo. She stared at him as if expecting to be recognised.

Her appearance was too striking for him to have forgotten, so he was sure they hadn’t, and yet he asked, ‘Have we met before?’

‘We have,’ she said. ‘You’re Furo.’

At that name, Furo’s heart leapt like a flame. He dug his heels into the ground in an effort to keep his face from breaking into expression. In a controlled voice, a voice that barely shook, he said, ‘I think you’ve made a mistake,’ and turned away in a show of indifference.

‘I haven’t,’ the woman said. Her tone was dismissive with confidence. ‘We met a few weeks ago at The Palms. I bought you a drink, a chocolate milkshake. It’s me, Igoni.’

Furo remembered. He remembered Igoni. He remembered their meeting at The Palms, and their chat in the cafe, and the favour he had asked that Igoni refused. He remembered talking to Syreeta after Igoni left, and then going home with her. He remembered everything about that night, and the next morning, and every day that had passed between then and now. Such as who had bought him a milkshake. And this woman, this Igoni, wasn’t that man.

Not any more.

Furo felt like laughing and crying.

It had happened to Igoni, too.

Somewhere, in some way, it was always happening to someone.

‘I remember you,’ Furo said at last. He stared at Igoni’s breasts. ‘You look different.’

‘I know,’ Igoni said with a throaty laugh. And then, glancing at Tosin, she added, ‘Let me not keep you. I just wanted to reintroduce myself.’ She opened her clutch purse and drew out a complimentary card, which she handed to Furo. ‘We should meet up soon. Please call me.’

‘Sure,’ Furo said. ‘Bye.’

As Igoni walked away, Furo listened to her fading footfalls, thinking at the same time about what to tell Tosin, how to explain away that nuisance of a name. He was more worried by what Tosin thought than he was curious about Igoni, though he wondered even now about how she handled her transformation. He felt less threatened by the appearance of Igoni than by Tosin’s overhearing of his old name. She and he were in this together, and maybe someday, when he was better settled into his new life, he might call her up just for the sake of finding out what sort of blackassness was hidden under her skirt. But for now, Tosin had to be answered.

When Furo spoke, his tone was affronted. ‘Some of these Lagos girls are so bold you won’t believe it. That one approached me in the mall and started chatting me up. I had to give her a fake name to get rid of her.’ He paused, watched Tosin’s face, and saw the dawning of comprehension. ‘That’s what I use Furo for — to protect myself from people like that Igoni.’

On his late return to find Furo waiting for him, Kasumu accepted the carton of books with profuse apologies — so sorry to have kept you waiting, I had no idea my order would be delivered by a white man, he said, his words slurring between belches — and he offered to make amends by buying dinner for Furo and his girlfriend. Furo corrected him about the nature of his relationship with Tosin, to which Kasumu responded with insinuating laughter. At Furo’s refusal of a meal, and then a drink, even one drink, Kasumu raised his hands in surrender before escorting Furo and Tosin to the car with his matchmaking arms draped around their shoulders and his beery hiccups clearing mosquitoes from their path. After Headstrong unlocked the car and Tosin climbed in, Kasumu grabbed Furo’s wrist and dragged him away from the open door, then crowded him against an electrical pole and with frantic whispers offered him the directorship of his NGO for motherless children. The salary and perks would be better than whatever Furo got as a delivery boy, assured Kasumu, and, but of course, everything was negotiable based on his success with attracting donations from all those white people who believed anything they were sold by one of their own. ‘What do you say?’ Kasumu ended, peering into Furo’s face.

‘No thanks,’ and freeing himself from the hand that gripped his elbow, Furo jumped into the car, slammed the door, and told Headstrong, ‘Go, go, go!’

Night had fallen during their wait to deliver the books. Good enough reason, Furo told Tosin, to cancel her plan of dropping off in Lekki to catch a taxi the rest of the way to her sister’s house in Ajah. And so, despite Tosin’s objections that it was too much trouble, Furo instructed Headstrong to drive on past the turning into Oniru Estate. The weekend traffic to Ajah held them up for several hours, and it was almost eleven o’clock when they arrived at their destination in a moonless neighbourhood where the temporary power cut was approaching three months long. After bidding goodnight to Headstrong, Tosin alighted from the car, followed by Furo, who escorted her through the sea-bottom darkness all the way to the front gate before saying:

‘Lest I forget, you can book my flight under Furo Wariboko.’

‘All right,’ Tosin replied in a tone that sounded preoccupied, and Furo was about to ask what she was thinking when she pre-empted him with the question, ‘Do you want to come in?’

During their conversation while waiting for Kasumu, Tosin had told him that the house she was going to was her older sister’s, who along with her husband and their toddler son had travelled to Dubai on vacation, and so she would be alone. She didn’t like being alone, she said, especially in a house without electricity. That was when it crossed Furo’s mind that he could, if he wanted, spend the night with Tosin. But did he want to?

‘I do,’ Furo said.

It was the weekend. Knowing Syreeta, she wouldn’t be home, but he would keep to the rules she had enforced on him. He would call her to say he wasn’t returning tonight.

There was only Headstrong to get rid of.

Staring at Tosin through the gloom, Furo said, ‘What about Headstrong?’

Tosin caught his meaning. ‘He can leave. You can stay the night.’

But the First Lady, Arinze’s warning, Haba! property. He had forgotten about that. It was getting too complicated. The more he had to strategise, the less he felt like starting this romance. Besides, under and beneath all, he wasn’t ready to show his black buttocks to anyone.

Furo said, ‘Arinze warned me not to let Headstrong keep the car overnight. I can give him money to take a taxi home, but I can’t drive. If he parks here, how do I move it tomorrow?’ Tosin was silent long enough for him to make up his mind, and when she said at last, ‘Do you really want to stay?’ he voiced his decision: ‘Of course I do. But maybe not tonight.’

The drive to Lekki was swift. It was minutes to midnight when Headstrong eased the First Lady into its usual parking spot in Oniru Estate. While Furo waited by the roadside for Headstrong to lock up, he looked around to confirm that Syreeta’s Honda was missing among those parked. Headstrong approached, and as Furo held out his hand for the car key, the driver said, ‘I think you know Tosin likes you.’

‘Goodnight,’ Furo responded, and they parted, back on good terms.

Upon entering the house, Furo headed straight to his bedroom, dumped his laptop bag on the bed, and was shedding his clothes when the lights blinked out. Standing in the dark with his trousers in his hand, the deep silence before the storm of generators stirred in him a bitter loneliness, so he reached for his phone, and suppressing his misgivings about the line he was about to cross, he dialled Syreeta’s number. The ringing was cut off by a blast of dancehall music. ‘Hello, hello,’ he said without getting a response, and then he raised his voice to a shout, ‘Syreeta!’

Her cheerful tones broke through the din. ‘Hey sweetie, are you home?’

‘Where are you?’

‘I can’t hear — I’m in a club.’

‘With Bola?’ Furo announced with the clairvoyance of jealousy, and Syreeta’s loud laughter only enraged him further. Her laughter fizzled out as she caught the whiplash of menace in his answering silence, and when she said in a cautious tone, ‘You know his name?’ Furo swatted aside her question with his own:

‘Are you with him?’

A teasing note slithered into her voice as she retorted, ‘Are you jealous?’

‘Just answer me!’

‘No,’ she said, and through the percussive music he caught her sniff of derision. ‘The weekends are for his wives.’ She paused. ‘I only see him on Tuesdays.’

‘But you go out every weekend.’

‘I go clubbing with friends. I thought you knew that.’

‘Friends?’

‘My friends,’ she said sharply. Then she relented. ‘Anyway, Baby’s here.’

‘How come you’ve never invited me?’

‘But I have. Think well. The day rain fell.’

‘I don’t remember.’

Her sigh retained its force over the distance. ‘Why are we discussing this now?’

‘You’re too busy to talk to me?’

‘Come on, Furo.’

‘Don’t call me Furo!’

He, too, was shocked by his yell.

Syreeta spoke. ‘Something’s wrong. I’m leaving right now. I’m coming home.’

‘No, no, don’t. I’m sorry I shouted at you. You can stay.’

‘Thank you, lord and master,’ Syreeta said with a strained laugh. The bass of a hip-hop tune filled the interlude. ‘But I’ll come back early, tomorrow morning. I’ll take you out. We’ll go watch a movie. Would you like that?’

‘I guess,’ Furo said. ‘Sorry again I shouted at you.’

‘That’s OK. You’re just a big baby. My—’ Her words got drowned out as a male voice shouted above the partying noises, Oi, Sy, get off the bleedin’ phone, and then she said hurriedly, ‘I have to go now, see you tomorrow,’ and ended the call.

The first time Furo’s phone rang on Saturday, it was Tosin calling. Syreeta was in the bathroom, she was preparing to take him out to get a pizza and catch a movie, and so, despite Tosin’s hints about the freeness of her day, he kept the conversation brief. On the drive to City Mall, his phone rang a second time. ‘Aren’t you answering?’ Syreeta asked, and after he replied that he didn’t know the number therefore it must be work so it could wait till Monday, Syreeta turned the radio volume back up. His phone continued to ring in the restaurant, and in the time between departure from La Pizza and arrival at The Galleria, a trip of twenty minutes, it rang four more times, all of the calls from the same number that had pestered him during his meal. While Syreeta bought tickets for a showing of The Avengers, Furo stood in line for popcorn and sodas. In the dim theatre, as they walked up the aisle, his phone rang once more. Hurrying down a middle row to the accompaniment of irate shushes from nearby moviegoers, Furo arrived at the velvet-padded wall, sank into a seat and, after thrusting the popcorn buckets at Syreeta, he finally gave in to the caller’s doggedness by switching off his phone.

‘You should call that person back, it must be important,’ Syreeta whispered as the movie started.

On the drive back to Oniru Estate, while waiting at a red light on Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue, Furo was startled by a pained moan from Syreeta, who, when he looked, was doubled over the steering wheel but straightened up as soon as the amber flashed. After the Honda darted forwards, she responded to his queries by saying it was her period and she had forgotten to buy tampons and so would make a stop at a pharmacy in The Palms. ‘I’ll be quick, wait here for me,’ she told him after she parked, and leaving the engine running and the air conditioning blowing, she set off for the Rubik’s Cube building of the mall. When Furo lost track of her pink blouse in the rainbow crowd that swarmed the mall’s entrance, he took out his phone and powered it on. The start-up tone was interrupted by the beep of an incoming message and, tapping the keypad with cold sweaty fingers, he saw that the SMS was indeed from the same number that had been SOS-ing him. As he read and reread the words, ‘I know who you are & I’ll tell everyone the truth soon, just wait and see!’ the suspicion he had been suppressing ever since his pizza breakfast was ruined by the persistent ringing rose from his belly in seafood-smelling waves of nausea.

The message was clear. No doubt about it, someone had found out the truth about him. Thirty green blinks of the dashboard clock were all Furo could bear of the eternity of suspense, and in that time he cursed Obata, he ruled out Tosin, absolved Arinze and dismissed Headstrong, so in the end, with his heart beating in his fingertips, he took up the phone, dialled the malignant number, and was still waiting for it to ring when a female android voice uttered into his ear, ‘The number you have dialled is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later. The number you have dialled is unavailable …’ He dialled again and again, all the while hoping the automated response was the usual falsehood from network providers to conceal their shoddy service, but at last, on sighting Syreeta in the distance, he gave up trying and accepted that his fate was that of a crying child whose mother couldn’t sleep. No rest for him until he cut off all ties with his former life.

Monday night in bed, during a lover’s quarrel over nothing, Syreeta said to Furo, ‘Why are you such a big dictator?’ to which he replied smirking, ‘Because you’re a small country.’

They laughed together.

Night, Tuesday, alone at home, sprawled on his back in Syreeta’s bed, surrounded by the ghosts of her woman smell, a book — Are You Ready to Succeed? — clutched in his hands, eyes smarting from the friction of reading, Furo looked up and sighed, ‘Igoni.’

He had been thinking of her lately.

On Wednesday morning, Headstrong drove Furo and Arinze to the airport in Arinze’s Mercedes jeep, and when they arrived at MMA2, after alighting with his pigskin suitcase, Arinze told Headstrong, ‘Head straight back to the office and hand over my key to Tosin.’ The sternness in Arinze’s voice caught Furo’s attention as he lifted out his borrowed carpetbag, and the driver’s response, in a grovelling tone, ‘Yes, sir — journey mercies, sir,’ made him wonder what he was missing in the exchange. Then Arinze led the way into the bustling terminal, where long lines of people waited at the airline counters, and Furo nodded yes at his boss’s suggestion that they check in at separate counters to halve the chances of both missing the flight due to encounters with glitchy computers or bungling personnel. Before parting they agreed to meet afterwards in the departure lounge. Furo joined a queue, and after long minutes of watching in fuming silence as cowards in front of him yielded to incursions by bullies from behind, he got his chance at the counter. He handed his passport to the neckscarved ticketing agent, who shot him a searching look and stared down at the passport, but looked up again at his face, and then called over a colleague, a man. Furo’s cheek muscles suffered to uphold his mask of unconcern as the two agents consulted in whispers while glancing from the passport to him, and at last the male agent laughed, gave Furo a cheery thumbs-up, and walked away shaking his head. After checking Furo in, the woman passed him his passport and boarding pass before saying by way of apology:

‘I’ve never seen a white man with a Nigerian name before.’

Furo passed through immigration without incident, without so much as a curious glance from the bored-looking female officer who thumbed through his passport, and without the body scanner detecting his metal buckle. A male officer, green-bereted and rubber-gloved, noticed the buckle while conducting a body search of the spread-eagled Furo, and then told him in a listless tone that he should have removed it, but when Furo apologised and dropped his hands to his belt, the man waved him through. Smiling with relief at this casual confirmation that he had passed all the tests, that his passport was authentic and so was he, the passport holder, Furo strode to the conveyor belt, picked up his property, and after putting his shoes back on, he ambled off in search of Arinze, whose waving hand he shortly spotted from a seat row beside their boarding gate.

Their flight was two hours late, and yet Arinze was unbothered by the wait. He reassured Furo by reminding him that the meeting with Yuguda was set for five o’clock, and he disclosed that the only reason they were catching a morning flight for a forty-five minute trip was because he had expected the delay. As he and Furo rose from their seats and joined the surge towards the boarding gate, he said to Furo, ‘Trust our airlines too much and you’ll be late. Fly them long enough and you’ll be dead.’

After the plane landed, as Furo followed the press of bodies down the aisle towards the exit, he passed by a first-class-seated woman in Bob Marley braids who clasped a mixed-race toddler in her arms. The child, on catching sight of Furo, stretched her toy arms in welcome and cried out in a tone of rapture, ‘Dah-dah!’ Furo was startled, but the mother more so. ‘Jeez!’ she exclaimed with a shamed expression, and tightened her grasp on the squirming child.

Even a baby, when surrounded by people of identical skin colour, is prone to the error that one slight difference constitutes an individual.

This was Furo’s first visit to Abuja. Arinze, though, was a recurrent visitor, a frequent flyer to Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport. This showed in the confidence with which he navigated the domestic terminal and ignored its patches of happy-green synthetic turf scattered with gold-painted stones and forested with mirrored pillars. Holding his gaze away from the funhouse glitz, Furo walked beside Arinze with mimicked poise. Arinze’s regular driver was waiting for them outside the terminal building. On the long drive to their hotel, he indulged the man’s talkativeness, while Furo, alone in the back seat, stared out the taxi’s windows at the broad avenues of the Federal Capital Territory, the brutalist architecture of the government buildings, the unfamiliar Sahel skyline, the swathes of greenery awash in sizzling sunlight, the roadside cameras which the driver pointed out as the latest effort against the machinations of those fanatic murderers who hated books. After the driver ran out of Boko Haram bombings to report, Arinze craned his neck over the seat back and asked Furo what he thought of Abuja.

‘I don’t know,’ Furo responded. ‘It’s different from Lagos.’

‘That’s true,’ Arinze said. ‘Lagos was built from blood and sweat and raw ambition. Abuja was designed as a playground for the rich. I’m sure some will argue that there’s nothing wrong with that, but when the rest of your country is populated with desperate people, your dream city hasn’t much chance of retaining its character. Some of the worst slums in Nigeria can be found on Abuja’s outskirts.’

‘Just like where I live!’ the driver exclaimed. ‘I’ve done taxi business in Port Harcourt and Lagos, and I’ve driven buses in Ghana, in Liberia, but Daki Biu is the worst place I’ve ever lived. They don’t have water anywhere.’

On that topic the taxi driver took off again, as he described his experiences in the fantastical shanty towns of the West African coast — Makoko in Lagos, Rainbow Town in Port Harcourt, Old Fadama in Accra, and West Point in Monrovia, all of which existed by waterways, unlike the dustbowl of Daki Biu — and he didn’t exhaust his nostalgia or empty his windbag of stories until the car drew to a stop at their destination, a multi-storey hotel in the upmarket district of Wuse II. There was no time to dawdle as their meeting at Yuguda’s residence was drawing near, and so Furo and Arinze dropped off their luggage in their rooms, then sat down to a quick lunch with the driver in the hotel restaurant. In Furo’s hurry to finish his outsized meal, he spilled banga soup on his pearl-grey necktie, his favourite, the only one he had brought along on the trip, but Arinze said in response to his muttered apologies, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you.’ They left the restaurant, Arinze and the driver heading for the car, while Furo ran to the elevator and rode up to his sixth-floor quarters. His equilibrium restored by the wet patch on his tie, he joined them in the car, and they set off for Asokoro just after four. All through the drive Furo faced the open window so the car’s draught would dry his tie.

Yuguda’s residence, from outside the towering fence with its gate of armoured steel, looked like a wartime castle. But once the gate opened, the property took on the splendour of a summer palace frozen in time. Royal palms lined a driveway the length of a small-town main street, and shimmering beyond the trees were landscaped gardens. The terrain climbed from the gate in a natural slope, at the crest of which stood a two-storey Greek-columned house. It was built of marble blocks, floored with marble-chip, and a marble frieze of Arabic script circled the salon that Furo and Arinze were led into by a liveried old man — who told them to wait standing up. An instant after the double doors closed behind him, a lady emerged through a gauzy portière on the far side of the room and padded towards them, her sari swishing. Halting in front of Furo, she exchanged glances with him in mutual appraisal, and his eyes locked on her thin lips as she said, ‘How do you do?’ Her Ivy League accent bore the faintest trace of a Hausa intonation.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Furo replied. He waited for her to greet Arinze in turn, but she again addressed her words to him. ‘My father will join you soon. Do you want your assistant to be present at the meeting?’

Furo reddened in embarrassed silence, which he finally broke with the stammered words, ‘He’s not — this — Mr Arinze is my boss.’

‘I see,’ the woman said, her tone unruffled. ‘Please have a seat, both of you.’

The two men sat down, and then Yuguda’s daughter, with no sign of her thoughts on her haughty face, rang an electric bell. It was answered by a boy-child who was clad in the house colours, and after she gave some instructions in Hausa, he left and soon returned carrying a tray bearing two glasses, a bottle of orange juice, and a jug of iced water. Yuguda’s daughter waited till the guests had been served drinks before taking her leave, and as the portière fluttered into place, Furo whirled to face Arinze and started to apologise for the lady’s slight, but Arinze cut him short. ‘Forget about it. We came here for a reason. Let’s focus on that.’

The meeting with Yuguda lasted half an hour; the agenda was hammer-on-nail straightforward. Upon Yuguda’s arrival, he exchanged quick greetings with both men before shooting Furo some questions about his accent and where in Nigeria he was from, and then he switched his attention to Arinze and asked for twenty titles on how to start a business. At a nod from Arinze, Furo pulled out the prepared booklet Arinze had given him the previous day, and holding it steady on his knees, he read out the information in a loud clear voice. The instant he finished, Yuguda said: ‘There are no Nigerian books on that list.’ The truth of this observation startled Furo into uncertainty, but Arinze’s tone was assured as he replied, ‘You’re quite correct. We only sell world-class books. None of the Nigerian titles were good enough to make this list.’ Yuguda riposted with: ‘How are my people supposed to run businesses in this country when all the books you’re putting forward are based on foreign models?’ The combative phrasing of Yuguda’s question convinced Furo the deal was lost, déjà vu Umukoro all over again, and yet his disappointment took nothing away from his admiration for the fighting spirit displayed by Arinze’s answer. ‘I strongly believe, sir, that the best business practices, like the best books, are universal. I have nothing against business books by Nigerians. But until they measure up, my company will never sell them.’ Yuguda’s comeback was swift: ‘Measure up to what — whose standards?’ ‘Yours,’ Arinze said. ‘The Yuguda Group deserves only the best.’

When Furo and Arinze stood up to leave, Haba! Nigeria Limited was nine million naira richer. Yuguda approached and shook their hands for the first time, first Arinze’s then Furo’s, and while holding Furo’s hand, he asked for his business card. Furo handed it over with an apology for forgetting to do so earlier, and after Yuguda glanced at it, he rang for an attendant to show them out.

On arrival at the hotel, before Arinze dismissed the driver for the night, he instructed him to pick them up at six o’clock the following morning for the drive to the airport. Entering the hotel lobby, Arinze invited Furo for a drink at the lounge bar, and though he ordered soda water for himself, he gave Furo leave to drink the bar dry of alcohol if he so wanted. ‘You’ve earned it,’ he said. ‘You did a fantastic job today. We both did.’ Furo thanked him for the compliment, and then told the barman he wanted soda water, too. The drinks came, Arinze rushed his down, and after spending a few more minutes chitchatting with Furo, he retired at five minutes to eight. He had to tuck in his four-year-old daughter by telephone, he told Furo.

Alone at the bar, Furo wondered what to do with the rest of the night. With Syreeta in faraway Lagos, he realised this was the freest he had felt in a long time. The vestiges of his old life still haunted the old city so different from this one where no one knew him, where everything was new, even the mistakes a man could make. Abuja was pioneer land, a frontier city, though the founding fathers were all rich folk and politicians. The bandits here rode Bentleys and settled fights with money blazing. Returning to the thought of what to do, Furo checked his wallet and saw that he had only three thousand naira left from the ten thousand he’d borrowed from Syreeta the previous week. Without money he couldn’t afford the freedom Abuja offered, he admitted to himself as he put away the wallet. He couldn’t even afford the only leisure that came to mind.

In Abuja after dark, the ladies of the night were everywhere. Or so it had seemed to Furo on the return journey from Yuguda’s residence. He kept catching glimpses from the car window. Flashes of colour under lightless streetlamps, flickering shadows in the shades of trees, the glow of cigarettes at the mouths of lonely streets, and gathered in fearless packs by the gates of noisy nightspots: the shapes slouching, prancing, gesturing, the painted faces turned to passing cars with a longing that tugged the purse strings. Even at the hotel, as the taxi slowed in front of the gate, Furo saw the women staring at him.

Furo struggled awake to the ringing of his mobile phone, and reaching across to the bedside table, he answered it blind.

It was Yuguda.

‘Hello, sir,’ Furo stuttered, and sat up in bed, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

Yuguda was waiting at the Piano Bar in the Transcorp Hilton. ‘Come alone,’ he said before hanging up.

Furo checked the time. 11:43. Night.

He dressed and dashed from his room. Six floors down, the hotel lobby was empty except for the concierge, who Furo asked for a taxi, only to be informed that he would find many in the car park. Crossing the lobby, he remembered with dismay that he had only three thousand naira on him, besides having no idea where the Transcorp Hilton was or how much it would cost to get there. The one thing he was certain of was that the taxi drivers would charge outrageous fares, especially from a white person at midnight in a city as expensive as Abuja. He arrived in the car park without yet having found a way out of this quandary. After identifying the oldest taxi, a Mitsubishi Galant with a new paint job, he drew up to the car and saw that the driver was asleep on the bonnet. He roused the man with a soft tap on the knee, stated his destination, and, bracing himself for the haggling to come, asked what the fare was. ‘Maitama, abi?’ the driver said, rubbing his eyes with both hands. ‘Your money is five hundred.’ Without a change of expression or the slightest pause to give the man the chance to regain his senses, Furo said, ‘Let’s go, I’m in hurry,’ and climbed into the front seat. The driver slipped in and told Furo to wear his seatbelt, then started the engine. As the car nosed through the gate, several streetwalkers straggled into view. One of them whistled at Furo, and on impulse, he whistled back.

He was beginning to like this city.

Arriving at the Transcorp Hilton, Furo entered the lobby to find it as crowded as a crocodile watering hole in drought season. Jostling in the electric atmosphere were Senegalese kaftans, gold-braided military dress, European designer rags, and the people who wore these at midnight. Lights poured from the vaulted ceiling, and the mirror-bright floor turned the world upside down. A black automobile, polished to a gloss, was on display near the lobby’s centre. The banner beside it announced to onlookers that they were ogling a BMW Gran Turismo. (The tyre rims clearly impressed more than the zeros on the price tag.) But Furo only had eyes for the Piano Bar, which he found in a recessed wing to the left of the lobby. Walking down the short flight of steps, he looked round at the gathered drinkers, and spotted Yuguda. He was in Furo’s line of sight, seated in one of the tub chairs arranged in ménages à trois around the lounge, and the cocktail table in front of him held a bottle of Irish cream and a martini glass. A woman lounged behind him. Curvaceous in a sleek sequined gown, her crimson lips opened and closed over the microphone in her hand, and her other hand stroked Yuguda’s shoulder as she serenaded him to the plonk of piano music. Yuguda seemed less austere in the jeans and tucked-in T-shirt that had replaced the brocade babariga he’d been wearing at his house. He was almost a different person, this one beaming with catlike pleasure as the chanteuse planted a kiss on his shaven scalp.

During their meeting earlier, Yuguda hadn’t once smiled. Not even when he joked that whenever Furo spoke he had to look at him to confirm he was a white man. His smile now faded as he saw Furo approaching and, raising an imperial hand, he waved the woman away, and then motioned Furo towards a chair. His first words, ‘Do you like the Irish?’ threw Furo into a tizzy of misapprehension until he kenned it was a drink he was being offered. At Furo’s perforced assent, Yuguda crooked a finger, and an eager waitress arrived the same moment the chanteuse ended her song. The waitress had finished pouring Furo’s drink and was refilling Yuguda’s from the Baileys bottle when the chanteuse, purse in hand and high heels clicking, swept past their table with a goodnight aimed at Yuguda. He didn’t respond or glance at her, and neither did he speak to Furo until the waitress curtsied away, whereupon, reaching for his glass and raising it in a toast, he announced in a solemn tone, ‘To the future.’

One thing was unchanged about Yuguda: he got straight down to business. ‘I have a job for you,’ he began and took a sip of his drink. The glass left a line of cream on his upper lip, and after he licked it clean with a flick of his tongue, he balanced the glass on his chair’s armrest, his fingers gripping the stem to hold it in place. ‘My GELD project is a CSR investment that has the potential to become a PR disaster.’ Furo nodded with rapt attention. ‘On paper I have the team to execute the project, but this is Nigeria.’ Yuguda paused for several seconds. ‘I need someone at the helm to keep everyone on their toes,’ he said at last. ‘I need a leader who can command respect and inspire fear. That person is you.’

Inspire fear, command respect — me? Furo thought with a mental burp of surprise, but he remained silent out of a stronger feeling of sacramental reverence. After all, any place where the highest is sought is a holy ground — and what was higher than the pursuit of happiness? Here was Yuguda preaching salvation, happiness on earth, thus he was worthy to be Messiah. Besides, the whole truth was, Furo was thoroughly tired of stewing in perpetual brokedom.

Yuguda took another drink from his glass, and bending forwards, he set it on the table before continuing. ‘You’ll get respect because you’re white. They’ll fear you because you’re Nigerian. You know the tricks, you understand the thinking, you speak the language. You can figure out their schemes, and you’ll know how to block them. Catch me some scapegoats and I’ll deal with them, then you just watch the others fall into line. You’ll get some training, of course. We’ll send you for management workshops, leadership seminars, all of that. But fear and respect — and power — those are your real tools. Your power is half a million naira per month. You’ll also get a car and a furnished apartment in Asokoro.’

While Yuguda was speaking, Furo picked up his glass and raised it to his dry lips, and he only stopped sipping when Yuguda finished. In the silence that followed Yuguda’s words, Furo replaced his glass on the table, and after burping into his cupped hands, he said:

‘I don’t have a degree.’

‘That’s not important,’ Yuguda replied. He stared at Furo from under his heavy eyelids. ‘But you attended university, didn’t you?’

‘I did.’

‘In Nigeria?’

‘Yes.’

Yuguda’s nostrils flared with pleasure. ‘I knew it. You are the right man.’

Furo spoke again. ‘I don’t have a Nigerian passport.’

Yuguda’s surprise showed in the length of his pause. ‘Why is that important?’ he asked.

‘I just want you to know that I can’t prove that I’m Nigerian.’

‘I see,’ Yuguda said, and seemed to weigh his words before asking, ‘Do you want a Nigerian passport?’

‘Yes.’

‘That can be arranged,’ Yuguda said in a firm voice. And then, glancing down at the face of his platinum wristwatch, he asked, ‘Anything else?’

‘When do you want me to start?’

‘Next Monday — the sixteenth. The GELD office opens then.’

Furo bowed his head in calculation. Unlike the other offers he’d received since joining Arinze, this one was impossible to ignore. This was what he had dreamed of since graduating from university, what he had worked so hard for all those long years of submitting job applications. This was the better he deserved: a job that gave him a chance at independence. Yuguda’s offer came with real money, a new car no doubt, and a house of his own in Abuja. There was no question in his mind about the meaning of this opening: it was the road to a final break with his past. He had no choice but to take it. And since he could find no doubts about embarking down this path, then better to take it running, grab it by the horns, and ride it bucking into the future. At this decision, Furo raised his head and spoke.

‘Thank you for your offer. But there’s one thing. I want seven hundred thousand a month.’

‘That’s too much,’ Yuguda said. He stared Furo down before adding, ‘There’s free accommodation. Few of my employees get that.’ Furo remained with his eyes lowered and his thoughts guarded, and so Yuguda pressed on. ‘Your car is a brand-new Kia Cerato. It also comes with a driver.’ At Furo’s stubborn silence, Yuguda spoke again in gruff tones: ‘I’ll give you six hundred thousand. That’s my best offer. You should take it.’

‘I’ll take it,’ Furo said. ‘But there are some things I need to settle in Lagos before moving down here. I’ll need some cash. Can I collect an advance on my salary?’

‘Of course,’ Yuguda said. ‘I’ll send instructions to the Lagos office. You can go there on Friday. Shikena?’ As Furo nodded in agreement that that was all, Yuguda checked his watch, and then rose from his seat. Furo leapt up to accept his handshake. ‘Welcome on board, Mr Whyte.’

When Furo and Arinze landed in Lagos on Thursday morning, Kayode, the second driver, was waiting for them. After they entered the Mercedes, Arinze asked, ‘Where’s Victor?’

‘He has travelled,’ Kayode said.

‘Travelled where? I wasn’t told he was going on leave.’

‘Not leave, sir. Victor has travelled to Poland. Tosin said that he called her last night from inside the aeroplane.’

‘That’s a surprise,’ Arinze said and sank back in his seat.

Furo was likewise taken aback by the news of Headstrong’s departure. He hadn’t suspected that his driver was so far gone in his scattershot schemes. But he had done it, he had turned his silly notions into dogged action, he had walked his talk, and for all his efforts, for all the laughter he had endured and the mockery he had ignored, he was right this moment arriving in his Polish dream. So that’s how it is, Furo thought. One day a man was a talkative dreamer stuck in a dead-end rut, a laughing butt who spat defiance at his country and yet grovelled before his bosses, and the next day he was living his dream. If a moral existed in Headstrong’s story, then it was loud, clear, and staring Furo in the face.

Coincidences are messages to the blind.

Furo now understood that. His twinges of guilt at his own impending exit were eclipsed by the realisation that the news of Headstrong’s departure, the fact that it was coming as he was going, had deeper meaning. It was yet another lesson in letting go, in moving forwards.

Arinze stirred in the comfort of the jeep’s leather seats. ‘Furo,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to find you a new driver. I’ll put Obata on it this morning. Hopefully we’ll get a replacement by Monday. I can—’ He fell silent as Furo’s phone started ringing. Furo pulled the phone from his pocket, saw it was Syreeta calling, and after rejecting the call, he said to Arinze:

‘Please continue. I’ll call the person back.’

‘I was going to say I can drop you off tonight. Oniru Estate is not far from where I live.’

‘Thank you, but you don’t have to.’

‘No, no, it’s nothing.’ Arinze fell silent, and Furo hoped he was finished, but he spoke again. ‘Look at Victor, he’s worked for me for almost two years, and yet he left without even saying goodbye.’ He paused in reflection, then exhaled a long sigh before saying, ‘One of the reasons I will never leave Nigeria is because, in this country, anything can happen.’ Cocking his head at Furo, he smiled into his eyes. ‘And you, Mr Whyte, are a perfect example of that.’

They arrived at the office, and while Kayode parked the Mercedes alongside the unwashed First Lady, Arinze told Furo to come for a meeting after lunch so they could discuss the delivery of Yuguda’s books. They alighted from the car, walked together into the building, and Arinze mounted the stairs while Furo stopped in the reception to talk to Tosin. Headstrong was sly and Yuguda was a godsend, he agreed with her, and he’d missed her too but couldn’t do lunch today because he had a meeting with Arinze. By the way, he needed to discuss something with her. Could she come up to his office as soon as she was free?

In the upstairs hallway, by the door of the lavatory, Furo came upon Obata talking in low tones with Iquo, who watched his mouth with paralysed raptness. Obata hushed as Furo drew close, and he swept past them without speaking, then changed his mind and returned to where they stood. They met his gaze with mirrored expressions of enmity. It was all he could do to stop himself from laughing in their faces. He felt so far beyond their small-minded intrigues that he almost pitied them for the putrid pleasure they got from thinking that he cared. And yet, despite not caring, he couldn’t help wondering how long it would take Obata to go running to Arinze with the news. Maybe today, probably tomorrow, but whatever, he would be long gone by then. And so, staring hard at Obata’s face, Furo spoke:

‘I know it was you who sent me that text message.’

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

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

‘I want to kiss you.’

‘What?’

‘I said—’

‘I heard you the first time.’

‘Can I?’

‘No.’

‘Tosin—’

‘No.’

‘What are you afraid of?’

‘I’m not afraid.’

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

‘I said no.’

‘Don’t you like me any more?’

‘I’m not answering that.’

‘Please, just one kiss.’

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

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

‘You’re being insulting.’

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

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

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

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

Tosin was dangerous.

She saw through his whiteness to the man he was.

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

It was time to leave.

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

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

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

Minutes later, he left the building.

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

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

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

‘You first,’ Syreeta said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I’m pregnant.’

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

‘And yes, it’s yours,’ Syreeta said.

Oh no.

‘I want to keep it.’

Not now.

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

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

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

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

Furo resolved to stop Syreeta. He wouldn’t allow her to bring a baby into the world he was building for himself. It was a risk he couldn’t take. His black behind was trouble enough to live with, impossible to be rid of, but a black baby would destroy any chance of a new life. Of that he was certain, the baby would be black. Furo’s baby. Not Frank’s. Not his.

Because he was, frankly, white.

That question answered, he turned his attention to the problem. As he saw it he had two choices. To go to Syreeta this instant and confess the truth, show his buttocks as proof, and try to convince her that the child she was carrying was not the one she was expecting.

But the truth was not his way.

And so he stood up from the settee and went into the bedroom and told Syreeta she couldn’t keep the baby. Why not? I want us to do this properly. What do you mean? Come with me to Abuja. Give me time to save some money. Then we’ll get married. What did you say? I’m asking you to put your past behind you. I want you to be my future. I want to marry you.

Moments later, during lovemaking, she accepted his proposal, though without words, her body moving beneath him like a wave of yeses.

In the morning, after Syreeta left for the clinic, Frank rose from her bed, strolled over to the fridge and took out a carton of lychee juice. Holding the carton in his right hand as he drank, he scratched with his left a stubborn itch on his buttocks, then turned around and stared over his shoulder into the mirror. His buttocks had healed, the scabs had fallen off, and the effects of the bleaching creams — the lightening, the reddening — had worn off.

His ass was robustly black.

He turned away from the mirror and strode off to the bathroom. Afterwards he got dressed in his blue T.M. Lewin shirt, his black trousers, his brown shoes, and after pocketing his wallet and his white handkerchief, he stuck his plastic folder under his arm. Picking up the phone that Syreeta had lent him, he switched it on and ignored the beep-beep of text messages tumbling in as he copied out Yuguda’s number, before deleting it from the phone along with every number he had saved. And then he walked out the front door with nothing, and left nothing behind except, in Syreeta’s bedroom, arranged on the bed, a phone, a house key, a ripped-up passport, a folded pile of clothes, and a note that ended with: I’ll pay back what I owe.