‘I don’t know how you do it, I’d mix up their names and get caught,’ I said.
‘Mix up ke? You’re not serious. What is your brain for? Chigbo is the accountant but his earnings are not enough to meet my needs, Pero is doing well but he’s yet to blow, and Jide can afford to buy me whatever I want. One of them will eventually propose. If any of them starts acting unserious, I switch up immediately – there are many fishes in the sea. There’s even one footballer that’s on my case but he plays for a second division team in Ukraine. How much can he be earning there?’
It wasn’t uncommon but it never failed to amaze me how easily people were willing to be duplicitous in love. I shook my head with a smile and said, ‘But do you like or love any of them? You must like one more than the rest.’
She laughed, a belly-aching laughter that let me know just how funny she found my assertion. ‘Love? In this economy? You’re not serious. You better wake up, streets are rugged.’
I dropped the card on the hamper without reading it and picked up my phone.
Marve appeared to be in the middle of a panic attack. ‘Zina, please I need your help.’
‘What happened?’ I asked, sitting on the bed and preparing for the worst.
‘A picture I posted is on a popular blog. Oh God, what do I do?’ she said.
The blogs had the power to make or mar reputations, to twist lives and tarnish relationships. We feared them, loathed their influence and paid to manipulate them to our will.
‘Why did they post your picture?’ I asked, relaxing now that I knew it wasn’t a life-or-death issue.
‘My assistant photoshopped the picture and she didn’t do it well, stupid girl. The wall bent around my ass. What am I going to do? All the brands I influence for! People will say they’re fake. And I just trended on Twitter the other day for tweeting something innocent.’
‘You trended?’ I’d never acquired the obsession with social media, the desire to grow a following like a trained pet, ready to do your bidding, the obscene power we’d accorded the opinions of others over our lives, the breathless trepidation at being ‘cancelled’.
‘You didn’t see? I tweeted one quote I saw online o, people thought I was subbing another actress, what is her name again? Ehen Boma! I didn’t even know she was trending for her boyfriend wahala. Which kind bad luck be this?’
I giggled in the face of her panic, unable to help it. ‘Why are you photoshopping your ass? It’s big enough as it is. And your waist is small enough.’
‘Ah you know I’m influencing for this brand that sells waist trainers, buttocks cream and half-caste soap. I was just trying to encourage my followers to buy from them.’
‘You don’t even use any of these things. You’re naturally fair and you’ve had plastic surgery.’
‘Zina abeg, I called for a solution not a lecture. Can you help or not?’
I suddenly felt in need of a cigarette. ‘I’ll call Zino, he knows everyone. He might be able to get it taken down, but it will most likely cost something,’ I said.
Marve exhaled in relief. ‘I’m ready to pay any amount. God bless you.’
The knock at my door excited me because I assumed it was the food I’d ordered – fried snail and special fried rice, the first proper meal I would have in weeks, a break from my extended diets.
Charles was resting confidently against the frame when I pulled the door open. He straightened with a cocky smile; I hadn’t set eyes on him since the botched meeting at his office. ‘Hello Zina. Did you get my special package?’
My face squeezed into a frown. ‘What are you doing here?’
He raised a supercilious brow, then smiled. ‘You had no idea, did you? That it was my company financing this project?’ My stomach sank; I’d been so grateful that the project had been taken up that I’d not bothered to look into the financiers.
‘Are you not going to ask me to come in at least?’ he mocked when I stayed silent. He eyed my skirt. ‘Is this how you travelled here? Isn’t that skirt a little too short?’
I laughed at the irony, the effrontery even. ‘What do you want?’
Eyes twinkling, he stretched out a hand and ran it over my hair and down the side of my face, I struggled to remain expressionless even though all I could feel was disgust. ‘I don’t think you need to ask that question.’
He was a man accustomed to this, to wielding his wealth and privilege as a weapon until he achieved what he wanted. I thought about how easy it would be give in, to fuck him and get it over with so I could be left alone.
I’d heard a story once, of a girl who told a persistent admirer that she’d been dedicated to a god as a child – it was why she was so beautiful – and anyone who was intimate with her against her will would die within seven days; his pursuit had ended after that. Would it be so hard to believe if I said the same?
Charles was irritated by my silence. The cavalier smile disappeared and a contemptuous sneer took its place. ‘Why are you acting like this? It’s not like it’s your first time. I’ve heard the stories about you. I’ve even gone as far as sponsoring your film and this is how you behave?’
I slammed the door in his face.
‘What happened? I hear the producers are having issues with you?’ Zino asked me over video call two weeks later.
‘It’s nothing serious, just a minor misunderstanding,’ I answered. I did not need it becoming a bigger issue than it was. Eventually Charles would accept no for an answer; he’d heard it enough in the past weeks.
‘Are you sure? I’ve never heard anyone say you’re difficult to work with. I’ve never found you difficult to work with either. I don’t like what I’m hearing.’
I smiled at his concern. ‘It’s really nothing that can’t be sorted, I promise.’
‘You’ll get tired of this act eventually. Let me know when you’re ready,’ Charles had said to me after I had the stewards return the baskets to his room.
Some connections were simply etched in the very lining of the cosmos. It was what I thought as I observed Ego and Emeka. I’d never told her about the times Emeka had called my phone, pretending to be interested in catching up just so he could catch an unintentional slip-up on my part about Ego, the days we’d met up for lunch and how his ears had perked up at the mention of her name, his eyes pleading with me to reveal just a little more. I’d wanted her to move on, to walk away from the murkiness of the past, but watching them as we had dinner at her apartment – the inordinate subtle caresses, the clandestine whispers, the unmistakable ardour every time their eyes connected – I realised I’d expected the impossible.
‘Romance!’ I texted Ego at the table.
‘Can you behave?
’ she replied and sent a warning glance in my direction.
Bayo had been calling and texting nonstop, tempting me to change my phone number. But that night, I called him.
‘Hello?’ he answered tentatively when the line connected, and I thought he sounded exactly the same as he had years ago, the same shy boy unsure of himself and his advances. ‘Zina, are you there?’
