Butterfly Fish (34 page)

I spent the afternoon driving around aimlessly. Early evening, I stopped by a street vendor not too far from Festac to pick up Queenie's favourite snacks; perm dodo and suya. I got there early knowing soon queues would form.

I nodded watching the vendor's fast hands chop onions, season and salt the partially cooked strips of meat. He hummed to himself; the only dent on his perfect black skin was a pock mark between his eyes. His eyes were red, as if from worry, maybe they were always that way and I was noticing for the first time. His nose was broken and his white vest had spots of food. I felt an unexpected kindred connection. He moved his wiry, agile body effortlessly. I said “You're here every evening?”

“Three evenings a week, I do other things too sir.” He answered laughing; as though being underestimated was a common mistake people made.

I asked him what kind of other things? He chuckled, telling me he was a survivor.

To my surprise, I started talking. That was how I came up with the second part of my plan, plotting with a stranger, a street vendor I had never had a proper conversation with before.

I rang General Akhatar when I got home, but he was away in Abuja and not due back till the following afternoon. Heaviness slowed me down. Sitting in my big, white house with its servant quarters I felt like a poor man. Then I was angry. Angry at myself for doing a terrible thing you cannot erase, angry at meritocracy and the way it infected your system as a young man, angry happiness eluded me. No matter what I did, it danced away because of one night. One mistake. Something else nagged, making me furious. I couldn't remember who had introduced me to the General, how we had met. In my mind's eye, I saw myself reaching back into that moment, grabbing it like a rolled up piece of paper, then tossing it away.

I knew Felicia would be due home from the shop, her car tyres whispering as she eased in through the tall, black gates.

I found Queenie on her bed, awake, looking young and wise all at once. She stood to attention, laughing in her bright pyjamas after noticing the plate of suya and dodo in my hands. She told me she had known I bought suya, that mummy would be angry if she caught us with food upstairs. We traded secretive smiles before eating. Just for an instant, I nearly folded; a father sharing dinner with his child is a beautiful, uncomplicated thing. Not on this occasion. The smell of onions in suya hung in the air; our
hands were greased and peppered from the meat, a last supper for two fraudulent disciples.

That night I could not sleep. I sat up in my double bed picking holes through the time line of my life with a toothpick. I heard Felicia's steps approach my room. I knew they were hers, soft, as though she was walking through sand. They have always been that way. I knew she stood there listening, her eardrums prickled to detect every sound, sensing something, a feeling things would change again. She was breathing through the door and through a war only couples fought, bruised but still human. Now we wanted to show each other our bruises and say look what you have done. Can you see it there? Here? There? Okay, make it go away, do magic.

Now I stood on the other side, my fingers splayed against the door, listening like her. Wanting. I was a mystery to my wife; one day she had opened her eyes and not recognised me. We stayed that way for a while, listening to our breaths warming a wooden door, knowing each other through body movements we couldn't see. I remembered then how she used to burn herself by candle light, poring over old books that horded unfulfilled dreams. I wondered whether what I'd done to our marriage felt like a massive burn chafing against her clothes when she moved. Then, the handle turned, neither of us knowing which one had opened the door.

She

Stood

There.

Looking like the mother of unborn children, like the girl who deserved so much more than some shack of a shop. I picked her up, and did something I missed doing. I drew shapes on her body; half moons on her buttocks, in the lined crevices of her shoulder blades, tiny snail-shaped creatures of regret pulsing down the line of her back. A paper fan I coloured purple with the heat from my finger over her labia. I tongued the sweat at the base of her spine into a whirlpool, left hand prints on her thighs, and made murals for her out of her skin. I made love to my wife, the shaking of the bed sounded better than any music. The sweet sticky scent of her
would be trapped in my nostrils for the entirety of my earthly life; the walls between us fell down. Her body curled around me. I swam inside her repeatedly, attempting to halve her in two: one to leave behind, one to take away.

In the morning, I reluctantly received a call from Ben Okafor.

He informed me that a source had revealed General Akhatar has been killed in a coup d'etat along with the President on their trip back from Abuja. It was lead by my old friend Obi Ekebe and did I have any comments?

My blood chilled. I replaced the receiver. Okafor would go ahead and write the expose in the Trumpet. If I stayed, I was a dead man either way. Finished. Obi and I had been friends once. We had trained together, killed together.

But by the following evening, I planned to be unrecognisable as a common street beggar, a new man with a fresh passport hidden in my inside pocket.

Intermission

An insistent knock sounded on the door. I opened it to find two uniformed policemen, one with a gut, the other trim and ginger-haired. Their expressions were unreadable. My bad news radar went off.

I said, “Yes?”

“I'm Sergeant Molden,” said the shorter of the two. “This is Sergeant Murdoch.” He indicated to his flame haired partner. “May we come in?”

I stepped back to make room for their entrance in my narrow hallway. Molden spoke first in a choppy fashion, each word seeming to stand alone. “Do you know the whereabouts of your neighbour, the elderly lady?”

“Mrs Harris?”

“Whatever she calls herself,” Murdoch piped in. “Nobody actually knows her real name.”

“I haven't seen her for days. Why? What's happened?” Fear fluttered my hand to my throat.

“She's disappeared; we need to ask her some questions.”

“I don't understand. Is she in trouble?”

Molden rearranged his impatient expression and explained slowly, “It's urgent that we speak to her. If you hear anything, contact us. Have any of your things gone missing?” he asked.

Still shocked, on instinct I didn't mention the incident with the brass head.

“No.” We were all standing in my living room, spare pieces of a chess game.

“And you're sure you have no idea where she is or could be?” Murdoch asked.

“No, of course not, she was my neighbour not my mother.”

“We won't keep you.” Molden turned to the door “We'll be talking to more people on this street at some point, it's a serious matter. If you do hear or see anything please let us know.” He held a card out to me I looked at in horror before taking it as if he'd handed me rabies. From behind my curtains I watched them get into a blue Ford car and drive off.

Really! I walked back to the centre of the room as though on stilts. Mad butterflies, I thought back to our conversation at the park. A mad butterfly had told me something true after all. She was an escape artist. I couldn't help myself; I collapsed to the floor laughing. Several days later, I picked up a free City Lights newspaper from the train. There was a small feature on Mrs Harris. Wanted for benefit fraud, she had been assuming the identities of dead people for years. Stealing thousands from taxpayers, she had successfully been giving the police nationwide the slip for decades.

My theory was, fucked up people can't help being drawn to other fucked up people, sometimes unwittingly. She was duplicitous, I knew this. BUT.

Those people were already dead. What was the real harm, other than conning a system that screwed you anyway? If you could and got away with it, wouldn't you? In my warped way I was a little envious of her ruses, and her balls.

Later, I squeezed through her white unlocked kitchen window. Except for the sofa (there before she came), the fridge, the bed, the wardrobe, chests of drawers and washing machine, everything was gone. Even Buddy the Buddha, was no longer there to keep watch in the garden for only half the time. The kitchen felt barren without her
collection of herbs mixing together, scenting the air with an unidentifiable perfume. They'd flown the coop with her. I ran my fingers over the black, scratched counter tops.
She was real to me
. I thought of her sitting at my hospital bed, sipping green ginger wine together on the rooftop, and eating the best breakfast I could remember for a long time. I thought of her saving my life. And my heart bloomed for her, whoever she was. Pangs of loss arrived, sudden, hard.

Days later I found her postcard in my vest drawer. It had a blue lit up question mark positioned over a man's head. It read:

Well, the jig is up butterfly, I expect the boys in blue will be round asking questions. One day, I'll tell you all about it. And… I really am Scottish. Until that time, do the right thing xxx.

She could be anywhere. “Do the right thing.”

Who'd have thought?

Inside her, Houdini chuckled.

Boat

In the dream, my head smacked repeatedly against the curved underside of a boat back at those same traffic lights where the baby had wandered, illuminated by the opening of another day and the acrid smell of smoke in the air. I felt the tug of a current inside me but there was no water holding the boat, only glass everywhere and traffic lights winking. The chatter of voices filled with concern and curiosity. Cheated of water the boat didn't move, but interrupted the flow of traffic. The wound on my head stung. Blood oozed down the side of my face. Dry mouthed and nauseous, my head lolled. Through the thick, neon-coloured haze a slender, elegant figure reached out to me, grabbing my arm. Anon. She dragged me, my skin freshly stung, through ground filled with blood stained glass, glinting like jewels. Because of my position at floor level, a pigeon appeared to stumble away from the wound on my head. Undeterred, Anon dragged me to another road, only to shove me into light speed traffic. Decorated in broken glass, I fell to the ground, swallowed by engine noise, calling out freakishly in pigeon language to Anon who'd led me to the boat in the first place. I only owned half of the betrayal I tasted.

Chorus

At the medical centre, the woman in the painting of a dense forest had moved. Last time, she'd taken shelter beneath a hollow tree. This time, she was waist deep in the lake, searching for something as the painted strokes rippled. Hung on the off-yellow wall behind the reception desk, my eyes automatically went there each visit.

The receptionist named Carol, a slender auburn haired woman with overly plucked eyebrows, was talking on the phone at the back, while a photocopying machine churned out documents. She spotted me hovering, placed her hand over the receiver angling her head. “Hi Joy, you signed in for me?” I nodded, fished out a squeezed piece of paper from my back pocket. “This isn't helping.” I said loudly. “I'm still not getting enough sleep.” On the wall the white clock above a cluster of certificates ticked sharply. A fly in the clock skimmed the glass before landing on the nine. I paced the small reception area, hearing its wings flutter.