Page 32

“Woman…” Mr. Fash warned.

“What?” Mrs. Fash exclaimed. “You know he won't ever say a thing. If he didn't want him to know, why bring him here? And why make all those snacks unfailingly for weeks?”

Timi's eyes widened. “That was Alex?”

Mrs. Fash snorted. “Boy, who will wake up as early as 4am to make freshly baked snacks for anyone? That's why I open at 10.”

“I didn't know,” Timi whispered. Alex had been so against baking when he mentioned it. Reason he'd been putting off their plans. Why had he vehemently refused if he could bake? Why had he baked for him?

“Of course, you didn't,” Mrs. Fash said.

“We did everything we could to get him to try baking again, then he gets a new job, and the next thing he's baking for his new boss.

As if that isn't enough, he asks for ingredients to possibly try out the one thing he could never do.

Then, he brings you here? Do you know how many times we've begged to see his friends?”

Timi stared at her, his mind, empty of thoughts. Mouth, empty of words.

“So, yeah, I must ask what you did.” She eyed him from head to waist. “You're a very handsome man, alright. But if Alex swung that way, I'd have known. If he was a girl, I’d have forced my son to marry him, instead of that white woman he ran off to Canada to be with.”

Timi felt like he'd been thrown off a helicopter without scuba gear.

“Shirley is a good girl, but why do I have to travel thousands of kilometres before I see my son? So annoying.” Her eyes took on a faraway look, a soft smile playing on her lips.

“Akin, my three-year-old grandson, is very handsome, sha.” Her eyes refocused.

“You should see him…wait, I have his pictu—”

“Oh, God,” Mr. Fash groaned. “At this point, you might start telling him about Bala and what he did to our bathroom.”

Timi couldn't believe the Bala angle also interested him.

“That idiot,” Mrs. Fash snapped, forgetting she was about bringing out her phone. “Have I not warned you to stop using the services of people who think they can do everything? What's an A.C repairer's business with bathroom plumbing?”

Mr. Fash caught Timi's gaze as if to say, see what I'm saying?

Timi clung to the ray of clarity in his now toppled world. “Sir, can I understand what's going on?”

Mr. Fash sighed. “She's trying to thank you for doing the impossible.”

He licked his lips. “Which is?”

“Have you ever heard of Chocosnit?” Mrs. Fash asked.

Timi nodded, almost frantically. He'd told Alex how much he loved the biscuits. A household name that had suddenly vanished from the country's hemisphere. Was Alex…? Did Alex…?

“Ka—Alex's family owned it,” she said. “Do you know what happened to it?”

“It went belly up?” he asked in a small voice .

It all made sense now. Alex's quietness as Timi talked about the snack.

The unexplainable aura surrounding him. Sometimes cool and aloof.

Other times refined and aristocratic. Even when he served, he looked like a master teaching his servants humility.

Had he done all those jobs—fashion assistant, bookkeeper, cashier, caregiver, wrestler—in a desperate bid to return to the soft life the bad economy had snatched from him?

“Belly up?” Mrs. Fash snorted. “More like…wickedness down.

“What does that even mean?” Mr. Fash asked.

“How else can you explain the witch-hunting?” she snapped.

“Witch-hunting?” Timi interjected, before they changed the subject.

“Alex's father got into this…power tussle with some northern elites,” Mrs. Fash said.

“You know how we all think Northerners own the country?

Yes, they do. Before long, every government agency for food control was after him.

Claiming he added BHA and BHT preservatives to his biscuits and it was killing children.

Nonsense. Ike believed in natural. Vitamin C, vinegar, you name it.

He told them he was willing to submit himself for investigations, but the news had leaked.

And Nigerians only hear go. He also volunteered to eat chocosnits on live TV, but no major network would take him.

Cancellations began here and there. Debts piling up because he wouldn't give in to their tyranny.”

“Alex was in the university,” Mr. Fash picked up the story. “Studying hard to take over the business someday. He wanted to drop out, to help his father to start up something else, as the only son. But it was…too late.”

Timi suspected what that meant, but still asked, “Too late?”

They took some time, eyes on the ceiling and towards a service window facing the rest of the café.

Then, Mr. Fash cleared his throat. It sounded like a gunshot.

“Well, Ike…died. His kinsmen tore into his properties like hyenas. Alex managed to finish his degree, before they all moved out of the country without informing anyone. I was the administrative head of the Ibadan distribution company, and my wife worked in the accounting department at the main office. We were like family.”

Mrs. Fash dabbed her eyes. “He's always been so good at baking.

Everyone assumed he hated the business because he didn't get along with his father, but the only time I saw him smile was when covered in flour. Pained me so much when he stopped baking. It pushed me to start—” her eyes scanned the coffered ceilings, “—this, with the love I'd also developed for baking. Every day, I prayed he would find his path, and then—”

“Have you two been bothering him?” A new voice cut in.

Timi raised his gaze towards the doorway and balked at the grinning faces peeking behind Alex. Alex stepped into the small space, but the faces remained behind, shining with glee, hands waving. He mustered a grin, waving back.

“Sorry,” Alex murmured, setting down a try laden with round, chocolate biscuits. Chocosnits but without the animal shapes carved into them. Same ones he'd told Alex how eating them, somehow, calmed his anxiety. “They have some items they'll love you to sign, but you can do that later.”

He should say something. Wow, why didn’t you tell me you could bake?

He even looked towards him to say something along those lines, but once their eyes met, his brain scrambled.

Every interaction they'd had, and actions they'd undergone played like a movie's end credits.

Alex, giving himself to his cause because he'd faced something similar.

No, something worse. A lot worse. Someone he loved had died.

How terrible he must have felt, watching the whole country turn against his father, or hearing Timi talk about the snack so nonchalantly.

Timi had been too young, or too preoccupied to follow the story then.

He'd kept on going to the university's supermarket day after day, asking for his favourite biscuit no longer in stock.

Until he'd given up and tried another. Suffering only a mild irritation, where Alex's world had crumbled.

He'd assumed Agu was behind Alex’s motivation, he hadn’t envisaged a laterally inverted image of his.

“Damn. What have these two told you now?” Alex queried, gaze flitting between the old couple.

Mrs. Fash stared at the tray like it held the Holy Grail, and Mr. Fash had his head thrown in the opposite direction, as if he couldn't bear to look at it.

They both made it seem a shattering miracle had occurred, and maybe it had.

He knew what it meant losing hope on a possibility ever becoming real.

“You did it,” Mrs. Fash whispered. “Did you…was it too difficult?”

Alex smiled. “You worry too much. I'm fine.”

Mrs. Fash dragged him by his lapels to face level. She felt his face and neck. “So, you didn't faint?”

Alex raised his eyebrow. Not his Eucharia Anuobi one. This was softer, teasing. The one Timi had been receiving lately whenever he began his shenanigans. “I think you'd have been the first to know.”

Her odd question took Timi back to Emerald Vaults. Where Alex had sweated from fright. Death is unpleasant, he'd said. Then, Nejeere's quietness when Timi told her he'd been bringing snacks. Had his father's death caused a baking phobia? What pushed him to fight it?

Mr. Fash gripped Alex's hand. “Well done, my boy. Well done.”

“Oya, oya, enough,” Mrs. Fash said. “Ehn…Joy! Bring in some cold minerals.” She swung her gaze to Timi. “Or do you want Guilder? We have some in the store.”

“How did you find my stash?” Mr. Fash sputtered.

Mrs. Fash raised her nose. “Look at this old man. You think you can keep a secret from your wife of thirty-eight years? Thank God, I didn't throw them away.”

“You—” Mr. Fash began hotly.

“No alcohol for him” Alex said, fingers grazing Timi's arm. “Joy, get some smoothie instead.”

Timi watched as the old couple stared at Alex, probably also bewildered at his bossy care.

He stared at the man who had taken it upon himself to make sure he never felt alone.

Fear for fear. Secret for secret. Past for past, like dangling shrivelled ball sacs.

But where his was ugly and humiliating, Alex's was simply sad.

So sad, a fist clamped down on his chest, like he had the worst case of heartburn.

Fingers flicked his forehead, and he grabbed them, startled.

Mrs. Fash clicked her tongue, pulling back her fingers. “Your thoughts are giving me a headache. Will you stop blocking your energy pathway and enjoy some biscuits? ”

They all chuckled, including Alex, though his eyes burned him with an intensity contradicting his widely smiling mouth.

Timi bit into the biscuit, closing his eyes against the chocolatey and buttery goodness he thought he would never taste again, and wondering how long before he surrendered and had a taste of its baker.