by Rémy Ngamije
“He is,” said the third.
“Did she reply?” asked the first.
“She just did,” said Séraphin.
Food I can do. Nigerian cooking, of course.
The response was read once, twice, and then a third time.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Séraphin.
“That’s a dinner invitation, that is,” said the second. “Pretty direct. You know what the next play is?”
“There’s no play,” said Séraphin.
The third rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Are we on the Lying Express again?” he asked. “If so, let me know when this train stops because I want to climb off.”
“Reply to Nike,” said the first Séraphin. “With a name like that you know you need to just do it.”
Séraphin looked at the glowing laptop screen for a while. All too familiar parts of a former personality were stretching from their slumber. He had made a concerted effort not to succumb to the lures of The Sauce. He inhaled deeply and reread the email. “Let’s just see what happens, okay?” he said.
“Atta boy,” said the second Séraphin. Séraphin’s fingers moved across the keyboard. When he finished typing his response they looked at the glowing laptop screen.
Your lobola may or may not be calculated according to your cooking skills and company. No pressure at all.
“Bold,” said the first. “Like a font.”
Séraphin sent the message. The response was speedy.
Funny. Dinner it is then.
Midway through another grey afternoon two days later, Séraphin’s phone pinged. The email was from Nike.
So … dinner?
Séraphin showed up at her apartment, a warm place with floating shelves holding an assortment of travelling Buddha charms. The fireplace looked unused and above it hung monochromatic pictures of Nina Simone, Gil Scott-Heron, and Hugh Masekela. When she walked to the kitchen to check up on supper he perused her bookshelf and found it burgeoning with activism. Her music collection harboured the fugitive sounds of Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, Lucy Pearl, and D’Angelo. There were some CDs that made him smile when he saw them.
“Boney M?” he called out to her.
“Do you know them?”
“You might as well cancel Christmas if you aren’t going to play any Boney. You have Joan Armatrading? She’s a gem. You have a cool music collection.” Nike walked back from the kitchen and began setting the table in her dining room, an intervening space between the lounge and the kitchen, clearing away her laptop and writing pads. “I grew up with some of those CDs,” Séraphin said. “My parents liked a lot of that music.”
“Thanks for making me feel older,” she said.
“Good music has no age. Nor do its collectors.” Nike beamed at him.
Dinner was bean and plantain pottage, spicy, with a zing that made Séraphin’s tongue rub around his mouth looking for some respite from the sting.
“Too hot?” Nike asked.
“It’s fine,” he replied. “Not used to spicy foods, though.”
“Strange, considering this is Cape Town.”
“I try to steer clear of three o’clock curries,” he said. “The ones that make you sweat like a sauna. At three o’clock your stomach makes that bloop-bloop sound and you know you’re about to spend the next two hours riding the porcelain horse.” Nike giggled, a strange sound. “Shit’s hotter coming out than it was going in. You don’t even wipe, you dab.”
“This isn’t dinner conversation,” Nike said.
“Small talk, law talk, dinner conversation, death. Those are the steps.”
“But you’re doing law,” she said.
“But I don’t talk about it. Boring in class, boring outside class.”
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s okay. Sort of glad it’s coming to an end.”
“What’re you going to do after you finish?”
“Don’t know. You?”
“Family law,” she said as she spooned some food into her mouth. She chewed delicately and swallowed before continuing. “Maybe working with gender or development groups. You seem like a corporate type. Suits and ties and shiny cars.”
“I’m sure that would make my parents proud,” he replied. He flicked the conversation back to her. “Human rights don’t put food on the table. Just more people in the ground.”
“That’s morbid,” she said.
“Enough law talk. What d’you do when you aren’t being a law student?”
“Depends on the day and how much time I have,” she said. “Photography mostly. I used to do that back in the day, before law school. Tried to see as much of Africa as I could that way. I spent a lot of time in Lagos, Kampala, and Bamako, they’re my favourite places on the continent. But then assignments became scarce. Everything in the media world is being devalued. I needed something with more security. What do you do when you aren’t swearing in your notes?”
“My story doesn’t compare,” Séraphin replied.
“We aren’t comparing stories, just telling them. I’m sure yours is fascinating too.” Her head tilted a little to the side.
“Some other time,” he said. “What else have you gotten up to in your life?”
“Well,” she said, “I did find time to get married and divorced.”
“Just ticking off things on the bucket list, were you?”
“Married for four years, miserable for three of them,” she said.
“Why’d it end?”
“Are you sure you want to hear it all?”
“Just the highlights.”
Nike put her spoon down. “Unequal ambitions, unequal drives when it came to chasing them. He became complacent, I put on more weight than makeup. He didn’t like the weight, I didn’t like the complacency. So it ended.” She paused. “But not before I was traded in for a younger model.”
“I knew there’d be some other crime,” he said. “Marriage makes no sense.”
“Not all marriages are bad,” Nike said. “Some work.”
He thought of his own parents and whether they made things work. But thinking of them made him feel sad about taking up so much of their time when he was younger—and even now that he was older. He remembered them at the bus station. The grey hairs which snuggled amongst the black, the skin which used to be ironed smooth, now cared, wrinkled. “The new model can’t have been that much younger. You don’t look that old,” he said after a while.
“How old d’you think I am?”
“Thirties,” he said, after making a show of scrutinising her. “But I can’t tell whether you’re in the half that misses their twenties or the half that’s learned to embrace the inevitability of their forties.”
“Funny,” Nike said. “Thirty-seven.”
“Damn,” Séraphin said, “you look good. So it’s your husband’s loss.”
“He didn’t think so. And this was when I was younger even.”
“Shame. If I put it in I wouldn’t take it out.” said the first Séraphin.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Séraphin reached for the jug of orange juice on the table and poured himself a glass. From the way Nike smiled he knew she’d heard what he said.
“How old are you?” Nike asked.
“Old enough to d—never mind,” he said. “Twenty-four.”
“I thought you’d be older.”
“I will be, eventually, and unfortunately.”
“It’s good to grow older. Especially when you’re a man. What you don’t want to be is a black woman. We have a very short shelf life.”
“Now that’s morbid,” Séraphin said.
“That’s the truth,” she said.
The truth was followed by a clearing of the table. The dishes were left stacked in the kitchen sink. Nike went over to a floating shelf and pulled a CD from it. Then she walked to silver CD player on another floating shelf and placed the disc on a protruding tray. The tray swallowed it like communion and music filled the room
.
“Sade,” said Séraphin. “Good choice. I like this album. “King of Sorrow” is my favourite from this.”
“It’s a good song,” Nike said, joining him on the couch, a dark brown affair of style unknown. “That’s the life of a black woman.”
“Not all black women are sad.”
“How d’you know?” she asked. She leaned her elbow on the backrest so that she was facing Séraphin. “Have you ever asked? Have you ever asked your mother if she was happy with her lot in life?”
“I don’t think she’s happy all the time,” Séraphin said. “But I’m sure she is definitely thankful. I’m also sure she’d have changed her situation if she wanted.”
“Really?”
“You haven’t met my mom. She’d smack life in the mouth if it disrespected her.”
“You speak of your mother well,” she said. “That’s good. But are you one of those men who speaks fondly of their mothers and unkindly about other women?”
“Guilty,” said Séraphin. “You do the same. Hating us while dreaming of Prince Charming.”
“Is that what you think we think about?”
“Some women,” he replied.
“Some of us dream of other things. Decent jobs and decent lives. It only so happens men stand in the way of both of those. It’s easier to go with you than to go through you.”
“Decent,” said Séraphin, “means adequate, just enough. Why not have spectacular and magnificent lives instead?”
“You’re still young. You’re not yet a man – I don’t mean that as an insult. You haven’t come to grasp your full power over yourself, or over the world.” She paused and looked at him directly. “Over women. The world will always bend to your tune. Always. One day when you realise this you’ll understand why decent will be enough for some of us,” she said. “It’s more than nothing.”
For a while they sat in the stillness that follows profound wisdom. The Séraphin stood up and stretched. He came and stood in front of Nike. He nudged her legs closed and sat on her lap, his legs on either side of her, and put his arms around her shoulders. Feeling no resistance, he leaned down to kiss her. She tasted like supper, and the pressure of her lips was firm and responded to his rhythms. He pulled away. “So,” he said.
“So,” she replied softly.
“Are you going to give me the stop-well-I-don’t-usually?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t usually—”
“Shut up.”
“Foolishness,” she said. “I’d just like to say from the beginning that it’s been a while for me.”
“That’s okay,” said Séraphin. He reached around her and made the zip of her dress purr as it raced down her back and down to her waist. “It isn’t like there’s a recommended daily allowance for this kind of thing. Although you can definitely get it seven days a week and at least three times on a public holiday.” He reached behind her back again and unclasped her black bra and let her round voluminousness into the evening air. He ran his hand over her breasts and then sucked on one and then the other. She moaned softly and then asked if things were not moving too fast. “If they are,” he replied as he pulled off his T-shirt, “then we can stop right here and I can go home. But I’m definitely taking these with me.” He cupped her left breast and squeezed gently.
“Foolishness,” she whispered with her eyes closed.
They were on the couch for a few more minutes, lips locked, hands rubbing and caressing soft and muscle-hardened contours, before Séraphin stood up, pulling Nike to her feet. He disrobed her and let her dress pool at her feet. She cupped her hands to her breasts protectively.
“Really?” he asked. She let go and straightened her hands at her sides, uncertain about what to do with them.
He let her lead them to the bedroom, where their bodies pressed together in the blueish-blackness of the night. The conclusion of their exertion pushed them to opposite sides of her bed like two magnets with similar poles. When the heat of their pleasure cooled their skin registered the winter chill. Séraphin pulled the duvet over them and they inched together.
“So,” said Nike.
“So,” said Séraphin.
“That was decent,” said Nike.
“Foolishness.”
“I was joking.”
“I know.”
“Sure you’re that good in bed?”
“No,” he said. “I know ninety per cent of a man’s sex life is spent rolling over and apologising. But I also know that was in the remaining ten per cent.”
“Foolishness.” They lay breathing in the smell of her room, which was fragranced by shea butter. “Okay, it was really good,” she said.
“I know,” he replied. He sat up. “I’m not done yet.”
Nike felt her cheek kissed, then her neck, then her breasts, and then her navel, and in the distraction of each fleeting kiss and some sly acrobatics, Séraphin popped up between her thighs. She scrambled to sit up, holding Séraphin’s head at arm’s length.
“What?” asked Séraphin. Nike said things down there were not a hundred per cent. “So?”
“I don’t want you down there,” Nike said hesitantly.
“If it makes you feel any better, I promise not to blow on your vagina.”
“Is that how it works?”
“What?”
“What?”
“Wait,” Séraphin said, “you just asked if that’s how it works. Am I correct in assuming nobody’s ever gone down on you?” In the dark, Nike was glad he could not see her expression. “Is this some sort of taboo with you?”
“No.”
“So what then?”
“All these questions.”
“I’m just curious.”
“You’re too curious.” Nike was silent for a long while before she said, “My ex-husband was my first and my only for a very long time. He never did that.”
“What is that?” asked Séraphin. He laughed at Nike’s hesitancy at naming the deed.
“That,” she said. “He said – he said my things looked funny.”
“Say what?”
“He said it didn’t look right – that it looked dirty.”
“The fuck?”
“Kind of made me insecure about it.”
“No shit.”
Séraphin looked at Nike sitting up in bed, with her womanly body wrapped around itself. Even here, in bed, in the dark, in this moment of intimacy and looseness, there had to be some insecurity. He always imagined women like Nike to exist beyond such scruples, to have shed all of the things which made them afraid. They were grown women. Only now for the first time did it strike him that grown women could also be afraid.
“I’m going to get a glass of water,” he said. “You’re going to lie back down here. When I get back we’re going to sort this thing once and for all. Nope. No buts.”
“Unless you plan on putting that in my face too,” added the first Séraphin. Nike made a sound of shock. “Thought so.”
Séraphin bounced off the bed and vanished into the kitchen. A running tap announced the glass of water and before she could compose herself he came back in, picked up the duvet and crawled underneath it, pulling it over his head. Nike felt her legs stretched out and prised open.
“Relax,” said Séraphin from beneath the duvet.
“I’m trying to,” said Nike. She covered her face in embarrassment. She felt a warm something brush up against her, softly at first, and then more firmly. The sounds coming from beneath the duvet were slippery. She felt ashamed for what could possibly be happening in the unseen dark, how her body responded to the shapes and figures being painted between her thighs. “Are you – is it – okay?”
“This isn’t dinner conversation,” said a muffled voice down below.
She clutched the sheets as a trembling began in her legs. A short while later she broke the Third Commandment at volume.
Séraphin clambered back to the pillows and lay next to her. She shied away from looking at him as he ro
lled onto his back. It took her a minute or so to work up the courage to come and lie in the crook of his arm, feeling his chest rise and fall with his breathing. Before they drifted into sleep he muttered, “Nothing weird down there. Only what you bring to it.” He thought he heard her say, “Foolishness” but he could not be sure.
Unspoken, unnamed, unclassified, uncategorised, the breeding conditions for situationships were present and the Nameless Thing That Was A Relationship But Not A Relationship flourished. They met up at Nike’s apartment, ate whatever she prepared, and then, as best as they could, put their minds to the law and its intricacies before they looked up from their notes and proceeded to chase more intricate intimacies.
On another night, with their notes spread before them, Nike said, “I have a question.” Séraphin did not look up from his notes. He hummed a reply. “How many people have you slept with?” Séraphin looked up. “You don’t have to answer.”
“Enough,” Séraphin replied.
“Does enough have a number?”
“Yes,” he said. “More.”
“Foolishness.”
“I’ve only slept with three people, you included,” she said.
“Rookie numbers,” Séraphin said and turned back to his papers. “You should use your body to rack up a better body count.”
“Are you always so complimentary?”
“When I’m trying to get laid after a study session I’ve been known to reach for nice words.”
“Foolishness,” she said. He looked up and found she had turned back to her piles of paper. “I have another question,” she asked after another while. “Have most of the women you’ve slept with been mostly white or mostly black?”
“Why?”
“I just want to know.”
Séraphin studied her for a while, uncertain about what to say. “Hoping my reply doesn’t sound like a tick on a to-do list, now I can say I’ve slept with a black woman.”
“So I’m your first,” she said. Séraphin noted the absence of surprise.
“Again, is there a reason you’re asking? Nobody asks questions like that just for their own sake. What’s on your mind?”
