He had attacked Okinosho.
The bartender was right, he needed to get home, get to safety. He needed to talk to Ahmed. Kalu patted down his pockets, searching for his phone, his pulse doubling once he realized he’d left home without it. Shit, shit, shit. He forced himself to breathe, looking around the car. No one on this train is going to kill you, he told himself. Just get home.
Run.
He downed the rest of the bottle and tossed it to the floor. As soon as the doors opened, he dashed out of the train and tore through the station. There was a row of taxis parked outside, the drivers asleep, their feet hanging out of the windows, seats reclined. Kalu banged on the bonnet of the nearest one.
“Bros! Wake up!”
The driver startled awake and started to curse immediately, but Kalu had pulled out thousand-naira bills from his pocket and shoved them in the man’s face. “Highland. Now now.” The driver paused for a negligible second before he nodded, took the money, and started the car, sleep draining away. Kalu entered the back seat and lay on it. No one could see him if he was flat like this, pressed against the questionable upholstery, lying like an already dead man. He was more drunk than he’d realized; the ceiling of the car was rolling. He closed his eyes and was surprised when his body started shutting down, dripping into a doze. The bartender was probably lying. Probably just wanted to see him piss himself, be that scared. Everything was probably fine. He’d call Ahmed and see if Okinosho was really even a client at the party.
He gave the driver some more money when they reached his compound, prompting shocked thanks from the man, then Kalu stumbled up the stairs and through his front door. His phone was lying on the floor under the dent in the wall from when he’d thrown it. The screen was a web of fine cracks, and it stayed black even when Kalu tried to turn it on. He groaned and went to the bedroom, plugging it in next to the bed. Maybe it was just dead and he could use it after it charged. He had time now that he was home and safe and the bartender was probably lying and everything would be fine once he got to talk to Ahmed.
Kalu lay on the bed and passed out.
Saturday, 10:30 AM
The dreams started frantic, a heap of Ghana Must Go bags burying Kalu, vodka pouring into his eyes, garbled train announcements in Hausa. The dream images trailed into nothingness, then burst up later, pictures of the girl at the party, her body trembling.
Kalu woke up with a gasp, shudders quaking through his bones, sweat in the pool of his neck. Hours had dripped past and it was morning, the next day lumbering slowly through his windows. He sat up and looked for his phone. It had fallen from the bedside table and his fingers scrabbled against the carpet to pick it up. The screen lit up underneath the web of cracks and Kalu sighed with relief as he called Ahmed from speed dial. Ahmed would be awake by now; the party would be over. He could ask him what happened to the girl and Ahmed would tell him the bartender’s story was a lie, that Okinosho wasn’t even at the party, that the man in the room had been a nobody. Kalu could go to Ahmed’s house and let Thursday make yam and eggs, and they would eat it in the dining room and play Obongjayar’s latest album while they smoked and the day would continue and the night would be just a dream, a dream that didn’t mean anything, something stuck in the darkness where it belonged.
His head was splitting open. When he dialed, Ahmed’s phone rang for so long that Kalu thought he wasn’t going to pick up his call. But then it went through and the sounds Kalu heard were cloyed, muffled.
“Hello?” Kalu said, his voice hoarse with dawn. “Ahmed? Are you there?”
Someone laughed as if from a distance. A man. Kalu knew it was not Ahmed; he knew his friend’s voice too well. The laugh was low, intimate, flirting. Kalu ended the call quickly. His stomach was churning again, sick with apprehension, and his shirt was sticking to his skin.
“Fuck,” he said, dropping the phone and putting his head in his hands. Why was there a man there? Why had that laugh—no. No, he was asking stupid questions and he knew it. He lay back down on the sofa and stared at the ceiling.
So. Ahmed was with a man.
Kalu exhaled and tried to decide what to do next, if he should call back, why the thought of his friend with another—with a man—was making him sicker to the stomach than the vodka had. The whole night on the train didn’t seem real. Maybe he hadn’t even seen the bartender. Maybe it was a hallucination. Especially the part about Thursday picking the bartender up? That was definitely some kind of dream. Everything was fine. No one was coming to find him in his house.
Kalu went back to sleep.
seven
Saturday, 6:26 AM
“You look like shit,” Ruqaiyyah said.
Ahmed sighed and smoothed down the terrible creases of his caftan. “I know. It was a long night.”
“And yet you came.”
They were standing just outside her doorway, having a quick smoke before going in. Outside the pool of the security light, Ahmed couldn’t see Ruqaiyyah’s face and he was grateful for it. She was someone who saw him too easily, which was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. They’d met at one of his parties years ago, a New Year’s thing in Zanzibar. She’d walked around the whole night wearing a thickheaded strap-on, rolling condoms on and off it, fucking whoever however, always with the same amused smirk on her face. Ahmed had made eye contact unexpectedly—he’d been sitting back on his heels, knees pressed into a bed, his head thrown back against a wall and his eyes closed while a girl with a full veil draped the fabric over his hips and gave him a blowjob under it, her hennaed hands stroking in swirls of orange and black. Years later, he would describe the veil to Saidat and have her wear it, but back then, the girl moaned around him and Ahmed had opened his eyes to see Ruqaiyyah behind the girl, sliding in her strap. The girl began to thrust back on it and Ruqaiyyah grinned at Ahmed, watching as the rhythm of the girl’s mouth changed on him.
“Remix,” she’d said, and laughed from her throat.
They became friends in the next hour as they discovered a mutual desire to inflict pleasure, a good-natured competitiveness that left the veiled girl with useless legs and exhausted lungs. Ruqaiyyah made it clear that she had no interest in Ahmed other than as a partner in crime, and they would have been closer, done more things together, if it wasn’t for what happened at the end of the trip when they were lying naked on a beach the morning before their flights.
“I can’t believe we never met in Nigeria,” Ruqaiyyah had said. “Both of us living in New Lagos, just to come all this way and meet like this.”
The surf washed gently up their legs, and Ahmed thought about the sand against his skin, particles against pores, a solid compaction that still washed with water. “I’m thinking of doing one of my parties there,” he said. “Back home.”
“Ah, I’ve been thinking the same thing! Except I want to make it a queer party.” She reached out and smacked his shoulder lightly. “We should work together.”
Ahmed frowned and turned his head toward her, squinting against the early sun. “What do you mean? You want to do one of my parties with me?”
Ruqaiyyah laughed. “No, keep your own parties. I mean, since you’re the one with all the party experience, maybe you can help me host mine. For the queers, by the queers, you know?” She managed to say the word “queer” with a small sour twist that somehow acknowledged how it could be an arrow with a disgust-poisoned tip even while reclaiming it in her mouth. The way it cut Ahmed was between the ribs, like a betrayal.
His voice was slow as he propped himself up on his elbows. “Why would I host that with you?”
Ruqaiyyah yawned and rolled on her stomach, folding her arms under her head. “Why not?”
“Why not get a gay guy to do it?”
There was a pause as Ruqaiyyah stared at him. She laughed, but Ahmed didn’t move his face so she cut it short. “Wait, are you serious?” she said.
“Yes, I’m fucking serious. Why are you asking me?”
Ruqaiyyah sat up, her breasts swaying gently, her voice careful. “I’m not sure exactly what conversation we’re having right now, I can’t lie.”
Ahmed sat up as well. “I think it’s pretty fucking clear what conversation we’re having,” he said. He knew he sounded defensive, but he couldn’t help how easily the irritation was slipping off his tongue. It wasn’t her assumption that annoyed him, it was the way she was continuing with it, looking at him as if he was a child trying to get away with a blatant lie, as if she knew him better than his own words were claiming. It felt like a violation, like she was reaching deep inside him and holding something and saying, This is you; you are only this, when his own voice had never even gone there. He wanted her to back down.
She wasn’t that type of woman. “Wait, so you’re trying to tell me you’re straight?”
Ahmed had cocked his head to one side. “As opposed to?” He knew it was fucked-up the way he was saying it, but he didn’t care.
