She and Nigel ordered their meals from clever menus pasted to sticks. The place made her think of an episode of Gilligan’s Island—when the crew members transformed a portion of the island into a nightclub for Thurston and Lovey. The waiter brought Nigel stout and her, palm wine. She found herself liking the tangy wine right away, not like back in Brenda’s bedroom. She sipped slowly. Thinking of Brenda made her feel jealous that she’d gotten to have a fling with Nigel, and the animal inside uncoiled, rose up a bit, its seductive tongue licking her nerve endings, teasing her with longing. She was ashamed of herself and drank more, hoping to drown the beast. Nigel ordered. “Give us a smorgasbord,” he told the waiter. “A little bit of everything.”
He took a swig of lager. “So tell me what things are like back home. What’s the big D up to these days?”
Angie shifted in her seat, feeling she’d been asked a trick question. Did he want to know what she’d been up to? How do you say, not a damn thing?
“It’s different from back in the day, that’s for sure,” she offered.
“Oh, I could see that when I left,” he said. “Crack killing off our young brothers. That shit is nothing like what we were dealing with.”
“And now, the whole AIDS thing.” She shook her head. “I mean, never mind Rock Hudson. All those folks who shot up? Now they have to worry about getting the virus.”
Neither of them said the obvious—that that could’ve been Ella’s fate had she lived.
“It’s on the continent too, unfortunately,” said Nigel. He took another swig. “Mostly in East African countries. Uganda is getting hit hard. They call it the ‘slim’ disease. And back in Nairobi, damn near every prostitute is infected, which makes Regina’s charges absurd. Like I’d even touch one of those women.”
Angie looked out at the couples on the dance floor. She didn’t want to hear Regina’s name.
“It’s wild, isn’t it, that one disease can reach across continents?” continued Nigel. He burped lightly. “When I got back to Africa four years ago, nobody was talking about AIDS. It was all secrecy and denial. Now, the World Health Organization is trying to play catch-up.”
Angie turned up her glass of palm wine, finished it off. “Let’s not talk about death and dying right now, OK?”
Nigel nodded his understanding, followed her gaze to the dance floor as music blared from the speakers. Angie twisted her torso as the DJ shifted to a new tune.
“Sonny Ade! I love him!” Nigel rose and held out his hand to her.
“I can’t dance like that,” she insisted as he pulled her onto the shiny square. They joined others and right away Nigel started doing the highlife—hip-swinging, rhythmic moves, hands out in front, palms spread.
“I can’t do it,” she said to Nigel.
“I’ll show you,” he said, gyrating just so—slow and sensuous. She mimicked him, pushing her butt out and rocking it up and down.
“That’s it,” Nigel whispered in her ear. A chill tumbled down her neck. She had a memory flash of Ella dancing to Bob Marley, recalled the thrill of seeing her sister move like that.
“That’s it!” he repeated. “You got it.”
They danced through two songs, and the whole time she watched the muscles in his neck move, the way his chest pushed against his shirt, straining the buttons, the way he threw back his head and chuckled. When they returned to their table, exhausted and thirsty, both gulped down fresh drinks waiting for them. She was tipsy by the time their food arrived—an array of exotic Middle Eastern choices that reminded her of the food in East Seven Mile eateries back home: grilled shish kabobs, garlic-laced salad, creamy hummus, baba ganouje, and spicy cabbage leaves. She ate greedily, thrilled to be away from the extreme choices of Nigerian cuisine—bland and gooey or searing hot and tasteless. They dipped their pita breads into each other’s plates, fed one another forkfuls of spicy delicious chicken, licked their fingers. Their empty plates were whisked away and the two shared diamond-shaped baklavas, the attar syrup a delight to Angie’s sweet tooth. They followed dessert with cups of dark, strong Lebanese coffee, looking on as the dance floor swelled with bodies.
Afterward, Nigel leaned back, lit a cigarette; she watched his cheeks suck in, then balloon out, watched his eyes squint. She was full, but not satiated. She watched him more, transfixed. She felt her desire rising, tried to calm herself with deep breaths. At last he tossed the butt to the straw floor and mashed it with his foot.
“We should get back,” he said. “The guy at the front desk said it’s best to see Dala Hill early, before the sun gets treacherous. Or before it rains. You never know what to expect.”
They walked side by side, Nigel’s strong arm around her; the feel of his lightly damp skin against her arm was almost unbearable. I’m out of my mind, she thought.
At the hotel, they made their way down the hall. She was so full and leaned her weight against him; he guided her to her room. After she opened the door, she grabbed his arm and tried to pull him inside. He resisted, and the force of his resistance pushed her closer, so close she stood on tiptoe and landed a kiss on his lips. A quick one, a dusting. She felt his hesitation, felt him freeze before he gently pushed her away, held her at arm’s length.
“Whoa, girl! What are you doing?”
She wasn’t listening, tried to move in again, kiss him. Just one kiss she thought. Just one.
He gripped her wrists. “Angie, no. We can’t. Hear me? We absolutely cannot. No.”
“Don’t say no to me.”
He looked at her with those hazy eyes. “Listen, you’ve had too much to drink. Get some sleep, OK?”
He turned, walked back down the dark hall. She watched him leave, then slammed her door, grabbed the loose dress with both hands and pulled it over her head, flung it across the room. She peeled out of her underwear and lay across the bed, breeze from the open window blowing across her naked body. She imagined Nigel undressing, crawling into his own hotel bed. She shoved the pillow between her legs and gripped tight. A mere brush of her fingers against her nipples, and she was crying out in release. Right away, she fell into a drunken slumber.
EIGHTEEN
Nigel banged on her hotel room door the next morning, waking her. She had to pull the bed sheet around her body as she stumbled toward his knocks.
He looked her up and down before he said, “Come on, get dressed. Dala Hill awaits.”
At first, as she hurriedly pulled herself together, she tried to recall what had happened, couldn’t remember beyond the failed goodnight kiss. And then she realized it was still there, the desire, lying in wait. She found Nigel in the lobby, sipping coffee. He’d gotten one for her too from somewhere, but she waved it off. She needed water, already perspiring. The hotel manager got her a bottled water, and she drank it down in a series of continuous gulps.
“You OK?” asked Nigel, looking at her with eyes that asked, Are we OK?
She nodded, bobbing her head nonstop.
“OK, let’s go.”
When they stepped outside the hotel, Nigel climbed onto the Vespa parked in front.
“You rented it?”
He smiled like a kid. “Hop on.”
“You sure you know how to ride this thing?”
“Don’t you trust me by now?” Light flickered in his eyes.
She climbed on behind him and held tight, grateful for this legitimate reason to grip Nigel’s body, press her own against his. The streets were moderately busy and the sky cut-glass blue as Nigel guided the motorbike through traffic. The wind created a billowy arc of her top, refreshed her wet skin. They traveled a few miles through the city, passing an array of buildings with Arabic signs, some with schoolchildren filing into them. Approaching the old wall, Nigel guided the bike through a large opening.
“The guy who loaned me the bike, Bola? He told me these passageways are called kofars, gates,” said Nige
l, his words rushing back to her, carried on the wind. “Gates like this are all around the wall, and each one has its own special name. They used them once to control people’s movement in and out of the city.”
She tried to imagine what that was like—controlling people with a giant wall and many gates. Her head ached. As they sped along, Angie found the Old City otherworldly, like a sepia-toned photograph overlaid with jewel tones created by Muslim women’s vibrant head shrouds. The Jakara River ran alongside, chasing them, and she buried her face in Nigel’s back for the rest of the ride, to still the buzz in her head. When they reached the Old City’s far end, Dala Hill rose before them in grandeur, an endless staircase carved zigzag style, from the base up to its crest. Nigel skidded to a stop.
“It really is more like a mountain,” she said.
“Bola says it’s seventeen hundred feet high. Maybe even higher.” Nigel threw down the kickstand. “Hop off.”
She stood looking up at the hill, felt her equilibrium upset by the moped ride, and his presence. A gatekeeper sat cross-legged at the base of the hill, which was scattered with debris. Angie thought it looked neglected as she watched Nigel give the man a few kobo. No one else was around.
“Let’s see how far up we can get,” he said.
“How many steps do you think there are?”
“According to Bola, exactly 999.”
“Shit!” she said. “That’s a lot!”
“You curse?” he joked, grabbing her hand. “Come on, we’ve gotta get to the top so we can see the view.”
They climbed slowly as the morning sun bore down on them. They climbed higher and higher, an hour passing, until finally they reached the top landing. Below them stood a sea of flat, brown rooftops and conical thatched ones, palm trees sprouting between them. A maze of roadways cut through the haphazard cluster of buildings, tiny figures walking the sinewy roads in between buses and cars.
“This is beautiful,” said Angie. “Imagine it at sunrise.”
They sat there for a long time, looking down on the ancient city, so contained in comparison to the push-and-shove and sprawl of wild, rambunctious Lagos. Nigel leaned forward, brushing his arm against hers; she still wanted him, wanted to open herself up to him right here on the top of this hill, right here in its soft earth. She was disgusted by her own desire, couldn’t be near him.
She stood. “I have to go.”
He looked up at her, squinting from the sun. “Go where?”
“Anywhere. Away from you.”
He grabbed her hand. “Angie, look, about last night, it was just something that happened.” He was still squinting. “We stopped it, that’s the important thing.”
She jerked away, freeing herself. “I’m leaving.” She turned, ran to the steps, began making her way down.
His voice hit her back. “Angie, stop it! Come back here!”
She ignored him, and trying to get away, stumbled and nearly fell.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Slow down!” But she kept running. The stairs were mere clay carved into the earth, and they softened under her feet, making her slide down.
“Angela!!!” he screamed, terror in his voice. He caught up with her, gripped his hand around her arm.
“Let go!” she yelled. “You’re hurting me!”
“Wait! Just wait, for Christ’s sake!”
“I have to get away from you!” she yelled, convinced this torturous feeling was all his fault. He’d caused it somehow, was making it happen. “Let go!”
But he didn’t let go, and for the rest of their descent, he held fast to her arm. They made their way down in silence, her need to flee subsiding with each step. If only he’d take his hands off of her, stop touching her. Once they were at the base of the hill, he looked at her and she saw it—desire in his own eyes.
In silence, they mounted the Vespa and took off, flying through the street, rushing against the wind. He was going so fast she wrapped her arms around him as tight as she could, desperate to hold on. She could feel the muscles in his body tensing, felt his urgency as he guided the bike through the Old City’s streets, dipping low at corners, terrifying her, the terror mixing with her aching lust. He passed the Jakara River, tore through an opening, and roared back through the Sabon Gari, flying past the Arabic schools and banks and mosques.
Once back at the hotel, they didn’t look at each other. He returned the Vespa to Bola and walked straight inside, to the back. She followed behind, slightly running to keep up. She thought about that Woodward Avenue motel Nigel and Ella had gone to, for their first time. She pushed the thought from her mind, forced herself not to think at all.
Standing outside her room, Nigel took her face into his hand and kissed her. She could taste the nicotine on his lips. He planted tiny kisses on her neck and she whimpered, collapsed against the door.
“Come on,” he whispered, and she fumbled with the key, until the lock clicked. Her room suddenly looked unfamiliar, as though she hadn’t spent a night there already. The shutters remained flung open and the calls to prayer wafted upward from nearby loudspeakers.
Wordlessly, he closed the shutters, darkening the room; he undressed her, took off his own clothes. He led her to the bed and they fell into one another, ravenous, starving animals. Afterward, both lay flung out, on separate ends of the bed. Afternoon car horns filled the room. A picture came to mind, of her ten-year-old self, on his lap, arms around his neck. She turned over, her back to him.
He touched her arm. “Hey, you alright?”
“No.”
He spoke to her back. “It was just one of those things that happened.”
She turned to face him. “Like you and Brenda?”
He looked taken aback. “Why do you have to go there?”
She felt on the verge of tears, shame and regret converging. “I don’t know.”
“Look at it this way,” he said. “It was hanging there and we took care of it, so now its lost its power, we can get on with things.”
Even as he said it, she could see his erection. They stared at one another. “OK” she said, and they both slid down into sleeping positions. He turned over, hugged the one pillow. His back was the most beautiful sight, its vertebrae an elegant stepladder to the broad expanse of his shoulders. She reached out, gingerly, touched him. He turned, abruptly pulled her to him and their bodies tangled together, sheet sliding to the floor.
NINETEEN
Angie felt like an airplane passenger, trapped on a transatlantic flight both never ending and unmoving. She and Nigel didn’t leave her room for two days. When hunger crept over them, Nigel brought back random items from the buka nearby—sliced mangoes, peanuts, boiled eggs. Once, he found dodo from somewhere and Angie ate the sweet, crispy-soft plantain with a yearning she’d never felt for food. They’d eat atop the bed, naked, and once done push the greasy paper to the floor, crawl toward each other.
She’d never understood what women meant when they said, “I couldn’t get enough of him,” or “the brother just did something to me.” Now she got it. Nothing else mattered, other than being with Nigel. She felt a kind of insanity, and while it frightened her, it was liberating. She’d never known what it meant to let go completely. And it wasn’t just that she’d had her first orgasm with Nigel, it was her lack of self-consciousness, her full-out passion. That was new. Often, afterward, they’d lay there spent, and she’d be certain they couldn’t possibly do it again; but then her foot would brush against his leg and he’d move his hand up her thigh and she’d turn and violently throw her body atop his. He’d moan and laugh and grip her ass and she could tell from his kiss that he was as stunned and grateful as she was. Curled up in Nigel’s arms in a post-coital exhaustion, Angie could feel his heartbeats as she listened to yet another call to prayer outside the thrown-open window.
Finally, they decided to get out, see the sights. Neither dared mentio
n the dye pits. Instead, Nigel suggested they go back into the Old City, and so they sought out their driver Emeka and climbed into his battered Datsun. In the back, they held hands as he drove right alongside the ancient wall, thick at its base. “As wide as eight people lying head to foot,” noted Emeka. They rode so close to the wall that Angie could see crumbling pock-holes of disrepair in the clay. The sight of its disintegration saddened her, and she felt a pang of longing for Nigel, as though what they had was already gone, already a poignant memory she’d look back on, a beautiful relic of another time and place in her life.
“So what’s this gate called?” asked Nigel as Emeka drove through a narrow opening.
“The kofar nasawara, the white man’s gate,” said Emeka. “They call it that because it used to lead to the colonial residence.”
“Oh, I like busting through this one,” said Nigel. “Feels gangster!”
Angie laughed. He was so funny.
Inside the gate, the Old City hummed. Hawkers and goats and children and head-covered women walked languidly along the sandy roads. Motorbikes sprinted by. Low buildings in reddish-brown ochre were everywhere. Funny how now that this thing had happened between them, she could really see, could focus on the city’s sights.
“They look like mud houses,” said Nigel. “Like some adobe-type thing in Mexico.”
“The city has all of these lowland pools and borrow pits that create mud during the rainy season, like right now,” said Emeka, adding that they used the mud to build Sudanese-style structures.
Angie pointed to an aqua-blue dome jutting into the horizon, brightening the cloudy sky. Emeka stopped and they stepped out for a moment to admire the dome and its majestic white-stoned structure beneath.
“That is the central mosque, Nigeria’s biggest,” said Emeka, coming up behind them. “It’s of course not very old. Thirty-five years old or so. But it’s a very important part of people’s lives.”
Into the Go Slow Page 29
