They walked through the door into a lobby that was empty except for a large mirror hanging on the wall in an old frame with chipped edges. Kalu flinched at his reflection. His eyes looked haunted, ringed with shadows, dull with fear. Sweat stained his shirt and his shoulders were drawn tight. Felix looked feline in comparison, relaxed and sharp as he walked with easy strides to a staircase that spiraled downstairs. “This way,” he said.
Kalu hesitated. “We’re going into a basement?”
Felix grinned. “Something like that.” He started disappearing into the floor, one step at a time, not waiting to see if Kalu would follow him, not bothering to reassure or explain. Kalu looked around the lobby and pulled his phone out of his pocket, pressing the power button as if that would resurrect it. The screen glitched brightly back at him and died again.
“Are you coming?” Felix’s voice called out from the bottom of the staircase.
Kalu took a deep breath and went down the stairs, his eyes adjusting as the light moved from a basic fluorescence to a simmering sinuous red, as if filtered through bloody glass. Felix was waiting in front of a door blocked out by a curtain of crystal beads, shimmering unholy, lengths and lengths of them singing against one another. His eyes were bright and excited, as if he was bringing Kalu a present.
“This is the place where no one is going to look for me?” Kalu asked, arching an eyebrow. “What’s in there? Ritualists?” He kept his voice dry and level, hiding the fear wrapped around his ribs.
Felix barked out a short laugh. “Better,” he said, and reached through the crystals, opening the door. A wave of bass-heavy music poured out, a wall of sound slamming into them, Yoruba drums and Lagbaja’s voice singing. The sound of strikes against goatskin pulled at Kalu’s chest, beat by beat, ricocheting inside his head. Colored strobe lights pierced the smoky room and Kalu squinted as he walked in behind Felix. Silver poles stretched from the ceiling to the floor on velvet platforms scattered around the place. Naked girls in obscenely high platform heels were spinning on them, legs flung open or curled around the poles, vibrating into a pointed foot, thigh meat jiggling under glistening skin.
“You brought me to a fucking strip club?” Kalu hissed, but Felix didn’t hear him. The boy was slapping palms with some other man, bumping shoulders, all grins and welcome. A dark-skinned dancer flipped a head of bubblegum-pink hair and fluttered neon-green eyelashes as she bent over then snapped back up, her legs an impossible length as she ran long sparkly nails over them. Kalu caught her eye and lowered his as soon as she gave him a knowing, feral smile. He kept following Felix as they wound through the club, the smell of shisha and perfume heavy in the air.
Kalu thought he’d been to every strip club in the city, Ahmed made sure of that, but he’d never known about this place, never even heard rumors or whispers. And there was money here, messy heaps of five-thousand-naira notes lying on the dancers’ stages even as their assistants tried to scoop them up into bags as fast as the customers were spraying them. Surprisingly, there were no foreigners—no Lebanese men with slick shiny hair, no sunburned Europeans ogling the deep rich skin of the dancers like they did at every other strip club Kalu had been to. It was only Nigerian music playing, no trap, no rock ’n’ roll, just a Lagbaja song sliding into Asake. One of the seating areas was filled with Northerners in embroidered robes and covered heads, holding gold money guns that spat out currency notes in clouds of expensive paper. Felix leaned over their table to bump knuckles with a thin amber-colored man with a hooked nose. Kalu watched as the boy slipped a bag of fine white powder to them, then a waitress with long braids led him and Felix to empty seats, brushing a kiss against Felix’s cheek before she left. Felix plopped into the leather seat and Kalu slid in next to him, leaning over to yell in his ear.
“What is this place?”
A corner of Felix’s mouth tugged up as he leaned toward Kalu. “Somewhere for those people who don’t want to be found.” His eyes dragged away as two dancers came over to them, limbs snaking to the music, eyes hooded and promising. Felix reached out to one of them, pulling her hand till she tumbled into his lap, her red mouth open and laughing. The second dancer leaned into Kalu, her breasts oiled and golden in a copper demi bra. “What do you want, Daddy?” she whispered into his ear, and Kalu winced.
“One second,” he said to her apologetically, turning away to get Felix’s attention. The boy gave him an impatient look as the dancer in his lap nuzzled at his neck.
“Bros, what is it? You’re safe here.”
“I need to borrow your phone.”
Felix rolled his eyes and pulled an iPhone from his pocket. “That’s extra.”
Kalu paused, a frown pulling into his face as he stared at the keypad. “I…I don’t know the number off head.”
The boy gave him an incredulous stare. “Are you serious?”
Kalu couldn’t believe it himself. He spoke to Ahmed several times a week, but the man changed his number often and always called Kalu from the new one, so Kalu had never kept track of the morphing digits. “Who knows anyone’s number these days?” he said weakly.
The dancer in Felix’s lap giggled and gave Kalu a pitying look, as if he was the biggest mugu she’d ever seen but he just didn’t know it yet. “Email them,” she suggested. “Shey you know their email at least?”
Kalu could have kissed her for the suggestion. The other dancer slid her hands up his back and started kneading his shoulders. He was too stressed to even try and stop her, his head buzzing and his hands numb. How often did Ahmed check his email? Pretty frequently, and if his notifications were turned on, he’d see it immediately. “Thank you,” he said, and Felix rolled his eyes, sipping on his drink.
“You owe me so much money, bros,” he said, before turning back to the girl who was now straddling him, her hips wining in slow circles.
Kalu pulled up an incognito browser page and logged into his email, tilting the screen away from the girl working on his shoulders. He started to write a quick note to Ahmed, but then he realized that the only way he had to get out of here was on Felix’s bike, and from the look of things, Felix wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon. He tapped the boy on the shoulder. “I need the address here.”
Felix laughed and didn’t even look at him, his gaze fixated on the dancer, who was unhooking her jeweled bra in exaggerated slow motion. “It’s a private club,” he said. “Members only.”
“Someone needs to come and collect me,” Kalu explained.
“Well, then, he needs to be a member.”
Kalu took a deep breath and reminded himself that this boy just saved his life. “How does someone become a member?”
This time, both the dancers laughed with Felix. “It’s five million naira,” Felix said, leaning back as the girl planted her hand in his chest, her back arching as she pushed him.
“As if you paid that kind of money,” Kalu replied. “Be serious.”
“I’m being serious. My own was a…special case.”
“A drug dealer discount, abi?”
Felix shrugged and pinched the girl’s nipple, grinning as she hissed in air. “Whatever you want to call it. But your friend must sha show up with money if he wants the address. Otherwise, if he comes here without it…” He left the end of the sentence as empty as a noose, a bullet casing.
“Money is not his problem. What’s the address?”
The boy told it to him and Kalu typed it into the email, keeping it brief, not wanting to mention Okinosho’s name in case the girl saw it. The man from last night put out a hit on me. They came to my house. My phone died. You need to come and collect me. 54A Ubancheleke Avenue. Hurry up, please. You’ll need to pay 5m to enter. Long story. I’ll pay you back. Send me your number so I can call you. There was a whistle as the message was sent, and Kalu tried to return the phone to Felix but the boy waved him off.
“Keep it for when they reply. And stop disturbing me!”
Kalu slid the phone into his pocket and exhaled a shaky breath. Ahmed would see it. Ahmed would come, and everything would be fine. The girl behind him casually slung her leg over his shoulder, the point of her stiletto striking the leather of the seat between his thighs. “Do you have time for me now?” she purred. Her skin smelled like rose oil. “We can play while you wait,” she added, and Kalu almost toppled into the smudge of her voice.
Everything else hurt with an insistent throbbing that started in his heart and radiated outward. There was nothing else he could do until Ahmed came, and as she slid over him, flinging off her bra, her breasts swaying in front of his eyes, Kalu found himself wanting so desperately to just forget everything else for a moment. She slid her long fingers to her chest and cupped her breasts, presenting them to him, straight black hair falling to her waist, dark brown eyes watching his. Kalu grabbed her hips and her flesh was warm, flooding his palms with fullness. She ground her pelvis into his and threw her neck back, her throat a dark skim of glory before him. He could feel an erection start and his throat thickened. It would be so easy to forget. She pressed her body to his as if he was everything she’d been waiting for. “Shey you have time?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he answered, his voice raspy. “I have time.”
seventeen
Saturday, 6:13 PM
Souraya didn’t want to pick up the phone when she saw it was Ahmed calling. He’d dropped her off at her hotel just hours before, still apologetic but without an explanation, and still with those iced off eyes.
