“You’ll like this one,” Ijendu said. “It’s like black wine.”
While the lipstick dried into a smooth matte, Aima brushed on mascara in the bathroom mirror and shaped her eyebrows with gel, hooking on gold earrings that dangled to her collarbone. There was a chance the earrings would be annoying once she started dancing, but with her hair up and her shoulders bare, they looked perfect. Out in the bedroom, one of the girls had lowered the music and started singing a song everyone knew from primary school days.
Ijendu, nwe ndidi, ị ga-alụ di tomorrow / Ijendu, nwe ndidi, ị ga-alụ di tomorrow
I nwere powder te n’ihu / I nwere pancake itekwasa
I nwere powder te n’ihu / I nwere pancake itekwasa
Aima came back into the room as the other girls were singing along and dancing in a circle around Ijendu, who was beating out the rhythm with a container of eyeshadow, tapping it against the headboard of her bed with one hand as she preened and pouted. When the song ended, everyone dissolved into laughter and someone turned the amapiano back up. Aima smiled, but she still felt so separate from them, so carved out, and not just because she was high. It was more like there was a picture she’d been cut out of and that cutout had been carried over and someone had propped it into this other picture and it was supposed to fit.
It was supposed to fit, but it didn’t.
Saturday, 12:30 AM
The lounge had rattan armchairs set out on the balcony, with ankara cushions and curved backs, glass-topped tables scattered between them. This place served the best cocktails, complete with hot bartenders who spun bottles and flipped shakers while flirting outrageously with the girls. Aima took a few shots early on because she didn’t want to stay in a funk all night. It would get too awkward; she would become a drag and no one wanted that. The girls were already skeptical about Ijendu’s believer friend tagging along with them. Aima wanted to fit in, to be cool, to be a bad gehl just for one night. With the vodka raw and burning through her, she could feel her joints soften, her body begin a stretch into something languid. More of Ijendu’s friends showed up and the group took up three small tables they had made a server push together. Aima crossed her ankles and stretched her feet in the comfortable gold block heels she had on, low enough that the other girls had made fun of them but high enough to flex her calves. She’d let Ijendu slather her legs in coconut oil so they were gleaming stretches, something you wanted to slide your hands or face on.
“I’m having lunch with my godfather tomorrow,” Ijendu was saying. “Hoping he’ll dash me some money. I did way too much shopping the other day and I want to take a quick trip to Milan, pick up some things there.”
One of her friends laughed. “What do you mean ‘dash you’? Your daddy is loaded! Besides, he loves to spoil you, don’t pretend.”
“She’s not the only one he likes to spoil,” another one chimed in. “Daddy O likes to spoil all his daughters in God.” The table laughed and Ijendu laughed with them.
“Please, he has different kinds of daughters; I’m not one of those.”
“That one is even better. You don’t even have to do anything for the money.”
Ijendu raised her glass in a toast. “We thank God,” she said, her smile sharp and pretty. Aima knew Ijendu was fond of her godfather—he’d helped her out of a tough spot more than once, and there was nothing to do except laugh and shrug at the things he did, the girls he privately fucked and sponsored while still wearing his wife on his arm in public. All the married men in the city were like that, even the pastors. Maybe I was lucky, Aima thought. Maybe if she’d convinced Kalu to get married, he would’ve ended up like all the other men. A licking voice in her head asked, What makes you think he wasn’t like them already? It dripped doubt in her memories, and Aima ordered another shot to wash it away.
She had been so confident that he was different, that she would’ve known, that she would’ve noticed something. Kalu never attended those secret parties that his oldest friend, Ahmed, threw all the time; he’d always told her she was more than enough, but now that her mind was loosening, Aima couldn’t help but wonder if she was just being as foolish as the other women.
Look at Ijendu’s own brother, Dike, for instance. He was back at their family house because his wife kicked him out for fucking their children’s nanny. The man had twin boys, toddlers, but if you watched the way he moved through the day, you’d never know it. He’d settled into his old room as if he’d never left, but he still drove his shiny SUV, didn’t wear a wedding ring, and even charged the hotel rooms he fucked in to his company credit card—expat perks, he’d joked to Ijendu. Half the women he was seeing didn’t even know he lived in the city, let alone that he had a whole family in the highland. You could do whatever in New Lagos. No one needed to know; no one would notice. And the women accepted the futility—they just assumed that their husbands were sleeping around because that made it a little easier when they were proved right. Not a lot, but a little. Some of the wives slept around too, did their own; and somehow it all balanced out. Aima wondered if that was the kind of life she’d been insisting on without thinking about it. If that was the type of life Kalu had been trying to save them from.
The edges of her vision had gone porous. She needed to dance. “How long are we staying here?” she asked.
Ijendu slammed an empty shot glass on the table. “We move!” she answered, her eyes bright. The other girls whooped and dropped cash, probably too much for the bill, but they didn’t care. They wound their way out of the lounge to the beat of whatever song was playing, glittering along the way.
The first club they hit up wasn’t full enough, but they still bought drinks and Aima danced by the bar, green and blue strobe lights flashing over her skin. She could feel the colors—green was prickly, like small spikes brushing rhythmically against her. Blue was soft, like a hand made out of water. When they left half an hour later, Aima danced her way to the door and down the stairs and back into the car, leaving teal trails in the air. She was tired of thinking, and she didn’t have to when her body was moving, so the solution was to just not be still for the rest of the night. The second club was much better, an excellent DJ and a sexy crowd. The girls got a table in the center of the club, on a raised platform roped off with red velvet and they ordered a few bottles. “Don’t worry, I’m covering you,” Ijendu said to her, and Aima kissed her cheek.
“Thank you, bebi.”
Ijendu slapped her ass in return and laughed. “Oya, be dancing for me.”
Aima smiled and let her eyes drift shut as she followed the music, braids swinging across her face, sweat beading down her spine. The music was molten silver rolling across her skin. Ijendu was dancing across from her in tight and controlled movements, not wanting to sweat too much. Aima lowered her waist, hovering above the floor, her hips snapping to the beat. She could feel people staring from the nearby tables (yellow stares, like the foam of dry sponges) and it fed her, a small performance. She was a mirror in front of a mirror, a looped reflection creating her own world. She spun in a circle, dropped her whole body to the beat, caught it on the next one, and alternated her shoulders on the way up. When she opened her eyes to glance at Ijendu, her friend was making mild circles with her hips and texting on her phone, a small frown blurring her forehead. Her nails were rose gold, matching her phone case, with tiny pearls curving against her cuticles. Aima closed her eyes again as the song started transitioning into the next one, letting the old beat go as she chased the new one underneath. She raised her arms, moving her hands and wrists, feeling the air-conditioned air push against her skin (lavender teeth scraping).
When she looked at Ijendu again, her friend was shoving the phone into her purse, her eyes locked somewhere else, occupied. Aima danced closer to her, trying to distract her from whatever was disturbing her. This was what they had come out for, after all—to stop thinking, to suspend the world outside and disappear into a beat, a song, colored smoke, and cocktails. Ijendu smiled and came back, sliding one leg between Aima’s thighs, rolling her body back in a wave. Aima felt heat slide under her skin (pure red-hot, like the tip of a burning mosquito coil) but she just laughed and put a hand on Ijendu’s hip, the peach silk riding up. They ignored the spiked interest of the men at the next table (cloying brown, like mud), who were leaning forward in their oversize sunglasses and velvet blazers.
Aima reached down for her vodka cranberry and Ijendu pulled out her phone again.
“Who are you texting sef?”
Ijendu kissed her teeth as she typed a quick message and put the phone away. “Nobody, just a friend disturbing me.”
Aima pulled her close, her hand warm on the silk of Ijendu’s back (this is what you do in a godless space, abi?). “At two in the morning? Sounds like a booty call.” Her mouth was a blackberry stain against Ijendu’s ear. “Let me know if you need to run off; I don’t want to spoil your market.” She didn’t know where she was getting this courage from, but the world was a textured welt of colors and Ijendu was a warm clear amber, heated honey.
“There’s no market, abeg,” Ijendu replied, not pulling away. “I wish I had someone delivering early morning dick.”
“You can always collect one of those guys and take him home.” Aima tilted her head at the next table and Ijendu grimaced.
“God forbid! And you call yourself my friend.” They laughed together, their heads touching, five different intoxications burning warm through them. Ijendu slid her arm around Aima’s waist and put her mouth next to her ear. “Is this helping, love? You feel better about Kalu?”
In another world, Aima might have teared up at the care Ijendu was showing, but she was one pill and several drinks too deep into this one; she was an orphan of faith; she was climbing through a window and unsure of which worlds she was entering and which she was leaving behind. She let her hand slip down to Ijendu’s ass and smiled a knife of a smile. “Do you want to help me feel better about Kalu?” she asked, her voice hard and playful, a bruised purple. It was only purple that could have made her do or say a thing like that, new world color, new madness, a dead God.
She expected Ijendu to push her hand away, to pull back, but her friend gave her a long look instead. They were both high, both drunk, but Aima could tell there was a pitch-black seriousness there, a barrel of tar. Ijendu raised an eyebrow. “Don’t start something you can’t finish,” she said, her voice level and low between them. One of the other girls glanced over, saw Aima’s hand still resting on the peached curve of Ijendu’s ass, and immediately, she turned to the others and started whispering. Aima ignored her, too intrigued by the easy surety in Ijendu’s voice. No one had told her unreal could feel so free.
“I asked you a question,” she replied.
“I’m just making sure,” Ijendu said.
Aima slid her hand along the silk till she met the skin of Ijendu’s thigh, then she started sliding her hand underneath it. “Let me know when you feel I’m sure enough,” she said. She felt wicked and it felt correct. Ijendu blushed and pulled away a little, but her eyes were laughing and bright.
“I’m calling the driver,” she said.
Aima nodded and wondered what colors she would feel later when their skins were touching. One of the girls offered her another half a pill with gossip gleaming in her face, and Aima took it. It was a chance to spend the whole night chasing colors, falling into wonderland without a map. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to be completely lost.
two
Friday, 11:12 PM
