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Someone in a white suit, seated elegantly on a single chair, holding a glass to her lips and watching him approach.

Mrs. Obaego–Nwabufor. Agu's wife.

In all his speculations, he never considered her .

The few times he'd seen her, there hadn't been enough seconds to send a greeting. And even if there was, she always effused thick fumes of a cornered fox that dared anyone to get close. But right now, she sat like she owned the room, the world, time and probably him too.

“Timi Lawson,” she called, and Timi startled at the out-of-place deep voice. Smoothly affected, like a British-born Nigerian trying to sound local. “We meet.”

He gave a bow, then settled in an adjacent three-seater. “It's a pleasure to finally meet you, ma'am.”

She placed her glass of white wine on the coffee table, uncrossed her legs, and leaned forward. Coco Noir, Dame B's favourite, drifted to him. “Ma'am?” she said, then waved a dainty hand, well-trimmed fingernails coated in white. “Please, just Lillian.”

“Lillian,” he said. “Timi, then.”

Her thin red lips spread wide, deepening the laughter lines at the corners of her mouth. The smile sat oddly on her face, like a botched makeup. Her beauty popped in stoicism. Too lethal for something as harmless as mirth.

“Timi,” she drawled. “Smart enough to crawl into my husband's circle, but not enough to find his way to me.”

Timi took her words for what they were. A scolding. “You didn't cross my mind.”

“Hm. I get that a lot. So, I figured, if Mohammed doesn't come to the mountain, the mountain would have to slip on her high heels and go after Mohammed.”

Timi studied her. “Why?”

“The little notes were clear, weren't they? I can help you, Timi.”

“Help with what exactly?”

“What you need help with.”

So, she'd summoned him for games. Well, two could play. “I'm lost,” he said.

She squinted. “You're not planning anything against my husband? ”

He put on his best bewildered expression, despite the surrounding chilliness from the humming air-conditioner seeping into his skin. “Is that what he told you?”

Her fingers rapped against the armrest. “My husband isn't much of a talker. He grunts, though. Like a rundown truck loaded with more logs than it can carry.” Her gaze pierced him.

“Are you asking if he grunted anything within the two minutes we spend with each other every other night he can get it up?”

His profession had prepared him for the eccentricity prevalent amongst old-money folks, but nothing close to an appropriate reply ventured near his brain.

She smiled at his speechlessness. “I hope you'll forgive me if I don't have time for subtlety. Events like this give me the ick. Unfortunately, it's the price I have to pay to get what I want.”

Timi finally found his voice. “And what do you want?”

“I want you to properly finish what you started.”

“I'm doing that already.”

She tucked an errant hair strand behind an ear, exposing a semi-arc of diamond studs. “If you think whatever you've planned is the end game, then you really are a dolt. You think if you leave my husband with breath, he won't blast you to the deepest part of hell?”

He opened his mouth to say how utterly unbothered he was as long as Uncle Jude's name was cleared, but nothing came out. At some point, he'd begun to care what happened after dealing with Agu. To him, his future, to everyone who had helped, and to Alex. Especially Alex.

Fuck.

As if sensing his turmoil, Lillian pressed on. “And you think it's just you? Everyone close to you would be incinerated right after.”

He managed to meet her gaze coolly. “So far, everything I've heard has to do with me. Why are you telling me all this? What do you want?”

Lillian got up in one graceful movement. She moved towards the blinds, pushed a button and the evening layer slid up to reveal day-mode. Her movements were sure and relaxed, like she'd done it many times. The grating sounds of the loud fuji drifted up, shattering the quietness .

She peeped down the window. “Look at them,” she murmured. “Despite already having the luck seventy percent of the population can only dream of within the throes of hay fever, they still show up, smiling and licking feet way ahead of them.”

Timi got up to stand beside her. A sea of heads and colours were lost in the festive atmosphere only Dame B could create.

“My husband met my father in an event like this, back at the village,” she said.

“Young, plucky, strong. A jobless graduate.

He laid at my father's feet and begged him to place his muddy shoes on his white polo.

For the rest of the burial ceremony of our village chief, he was my father's unofficial foot mat.” She sneered. “He disgusted me.”

When Agu said Timi reminded him of himself he hadn't pictured a village doormat. Though, if Agu had demanded he laid down to be stepped on, he may have considered it a small price to pay.

“People like that become the worst scum of the earth,” Lillian spat. “And my husband was no exception. Ready to do the work my father wouldn't soil his hands for. And in return I was handed over as a prize for loyalty.”

“I'm sorry.” The reply had a questioning lilt to it, as reading Lillian was braille to a limbless blind.

She waved elegantly, diamond rings catching the light.

“Please. I live better than eighty percent of the world population, I certainly don't deserve pity. Neither is it what I want.” She placed a hand on Timi's upper arm, causing him to flinch.

If she noticed, she didn't acknowledge it.

“Timi, my husband is a very bad boy. And the only way I can secure my kids' future is to put the bad boy where he belongs.”

Timi took some steps back, and her hand dropped. “Shouldn't the police station be your destination, then?”

She burst into a throaty laughter. “Ah. If my husband hadn't picked and cleaned you up, I'll believe you're a complete idiot. But that man, blast his dark soul, sure knows how to pick talent.” She raised a contemplating brow. “Or maybe not every intelligence is well-rounded?”

A weariness slithered in, the kind he felt in the presence of people like this. Who ate and shat superiority. He had no time for bougie dramatics. “ I don't know what you think is going on, ma'am, but your husband and I have a deal I'm sticking to.”

“Ma'am. Ah.” She bent low, pushed through a sandal buckle, and pulled something out.

She straightened, grabbed Timi's hand and placed it within his palm.

“When you check this out, maybe you'll drop the moronic act?” She glanced at her Piaget.

“Oops. The clock strikes midnight. Great talk, Mr. Lawson.” Then, she sauntered off.

She got halfway through the living room, before Timi recollected himself, and hurried after her. She halted, sending him a questioning look.

He held up a memory card. “Why give this to me? Why now?”

For the first time, real emotion crossed her face.

“I may be one of the luckiest, but luck doesn't always mean lucky,” she said.

“Mr. Lawson, the first time we get to speak is in a darkened living room, under the guise of an impromptu party.

I couldn't even…finish my drink.” She patted his arm.

“Why don't you put your intelligence to good use, uh?”

“I don't—”

“My father is dying soon,” she said so matter-of-factly, she might as well have been holding the knife. “I won't let him give my inheritance to the Philistines. Help this poor woman out, Timi, and what my husband did for you would be a drop in the ocean.”

He didn't stop her this time as she disappeared through the doors.

After a few minutes of staring blankly out the window, he headed for the LM. Dame B met him as he strolled across the foyer.

“Uh uhn,” she said, shaking a finger at his face. “I know that look, and I forbid it!”

He took in the tall glass in her hand, her dim eyes, sweaty forehead, and sighed. Arguing with a tipsy Dame B was trying to reason with a wall. So, he allowed her drunken hug, and retreated to the secluded backyard terrace, to wait till she was done discussing with guests, before sneaking out.

Bending over the balustrade, he pulled out the memory card Lillian had given him, flipping it between his thumb and fore finger. And must have zoned out, because a 'Hey!' thrown directly into his ears nearly gave him a heart attack. He jumped up, swiping at his assaulted ear .

“Sorry,” Mojena, one of Buck's artistes, grinned at him. “I called you like ten times.”

Timi didn't know much about him, save his few afrobeat hits, his last album that pulled scanty streams across board, and the open secret of his gayness. Though he'd neither confirmed nor denied and was perpetually single.

Timi glanced towards the sliding doors, then back at him. “Should you be here?”

Mojena made an ugly expression on his passably handsome face. Was this how he looked when he pouted? “Awww, c'mon. There's love in sharing nau. Dame B isn't only for you.”

Timi shucked the card into his pocket and returned to his original position. “I'll like some privacy if you don't mind.”

Mojena didn't leave. Instead, he mimicked Timi's position, body too close. “I'll vamoose. But now we're here, I'm curious about something. The hashtag trending, what's the truth?”

Irritation swept through him. “Shouldn't your focus be on your new single? Buck drops useless signees, you know?”

Mojena shrugged. “Doesn't stop me from asking questions about our own.”

Our own.

Timi straightened. “Meaning?”

“Timi, you don't have to keep hiding.” He stepped closer, bringing along a spicy smell. “Look at me. I'm a living proof of being myself despite the hate.”

So, he was gay.

Timi resisted the urge to shove him off. Ever since Alex, he'd been plagued with curiosity. If the new world they'd opened accommodated more than themselves. And judging from the sly smile contouring Mojena's face, an answer to that question was probably at hand.

Mojena reached out to trail a finger across Timi's cheek, till they rested a shy breadth away from his upper lip. “I've always suspected, y'know? Someone as pretty as you…you'll be perfect for a real man. ”

Timi kept his eyes on the man's face, intent on reading his own body's reaction to being propositioned by a guy.

The repulsion at being touched by a stranger was present, but asides that, the man's hard and lean physique didn't appear any different from the females' who approached him.

Before Alex, the thought of being with a man was enough to send him into an apoplexy.

A nauseating, soul-damaging atrocity he would have strangled himself for before entertaining.

However, as Mojena gripped his neck, breath wafting across his face, his aversion had given way to the bored appraisal he gave his women before deciding if they were worthy of Tim-dick.

Unfortunately, it seemed to have grown desensitised to every touch, save Alex's. He wasn't going to slap Mojena's face away because he was a man, but because he'd tasted the real thing and would swat at every face before he returned to the previous emptiness.

A wave of acute longing hit him, along with a renewed revulsion at the approaching face that wasn't all defined angles and aristocratic beauty. But as he raised his hands to push, his eyes caught a figure standing by the glass door. Handsome face so frozen, shivers engulfed Timi.

“Alex,” he breathed.

Alex stared at Mojena who was still trying to regain his balance from how hard Timi had shoved him. Then, without sparing Timi a glance, turned around and disappeared.

Timi made a dash after him, but Mojena stalled his movement. “Holy shit! So, it's true. Is that…is that your–”

He stared at the hand on his arm. “Get your hands off me.”

Mojena, who still looked dazed, stared dumbly at him for a moment, then quickly dropped his hand. “Look, man, I didn't know. Your secret is safe with me. I can never out anyone.”

Timi was already heading to the door, heart galloping. What was Alex doing here? What had he seen and misconstrued? And why did it feel like he deserved death by asphyxiation when Alex had insisted on them being friends?

“Hit me up if you want a safe place,” Mojena called out. “You sure look like you'll need it. Good luck, man! ”

Fuck!

Dusk had settled like a dusty tarpaulin by the time Timi drove into Alphonso's car park. He turned off the engine, got down and dialled Alex's number for perhaps the hundredth time. And his heart gave a massive somersault when the call eventually got picked up.

He cleared his throat. “I'm outside. Would you come out or should I come in?”

For a long while, nothing, save a faint music, came from Alex's end. Then, his voice came on and Timi nearly teared up with relief. “Outside where?” he asked.

“Alphonso's. Where else?”

“Leave.”

“Not until I see you.”

“Okay. I guess they can accommodate you till next week. My regards to Dr Isa. Good nigh–”

“Wait!” The music had gotten louder and familiar. Alex was all for instrumentals and classicals, not the jarring afrobeat filtering through. “Where are you?”

Soles crunching on stones filled the airwaves, and when Alex finally spoke, the music had faded. “Timi, just go back.”

He clutched the phone to his ear. “Tell me where you are, and I'll come pick you.”

Another long silence, then, “Give the phone to Suleiman.”

“Why?”

“Cause I want him to drive you home.”

“You'll have to call his number. His wife may not like it, though.”

A ruffling sound. “You drove yourself?”

“Obviously. ”

“Why would you embark on such a journey without checking first if you're allowed visitation?”

“I checked. You didn't pick my calls.”

“My presence at the party should've given you a hint.”

Timi swallowed. “Alex…”

“Did you drink?”

His eyes burned. “Why do you care?”

A long pause, before Alex said, “You're right. It's none of my business. Go home or back to the party, I don't care.”

Timi's heart squeezed. “How hard is it to tell me where you are?”

“Let's not drag this—”

“Just fucking tell me where you are!”

“No.”

“No? No, what?”

“I'm not telling you anything. I have to g—”

Timi closed his eyes. “If you cut this call, I'll never speak to you again.”

“Fine by me,” Alex said.

He licked his dry lips. “What you saw—”

“...is none of my business. You're allowed to do whateve—”

“I'm sorry,” Timi whispered.

“I don't understand your apology.” Alex's voice was a perfect blend of distant politeness. “I have to go. Drive home safely.”

Timi leaned against the LM long after the call dropped, staring at an army of ants exposed by the bright halogen lights surrounding the care home, leaves and twigs crackling discordantly to the damp wind.

He stood there, watching them crawl, and crawl, and crawl.