I Wanted Eugene And No Less…

Whosoever decreed it impossible to tame a Mr. Fly Guy to your side of emotions, especially when you start out a total right off…Some cliché of sorts! I slipped my heart into a runaway love situation with a subconscious faith towards quashing that cliché. With the help of pretty Loy, what huddle could block that endeavor?

My story is about Eugene. Trendy and sophisticated, painfully handsome and knowing it; and as seeming, I was going out on a daredevil’s mission that Loy, my friend soon tagged Mission Impossible.

First, I elbowed my Bob. Why? I found out that he slept around much like some pedigree dog on a six-figure breeding salary! I had been too busy at college to notice until Loy let me into the know.

“Why didn’t you confide it earlier?” I inquired, bewildered.

“I thought it was obvious, and I was afraid to mention it anyway?”

“Oh, Loy, dear Loy. You know me better! You don’t want me wasted from some appalling disease, do you?”

My heart was thrown apart immensely.

“And think of all the shame unknown to me, sharing my boy with a hoard of immoral vultures only out for fun and ruin.”

Thrice, in that single month I ‘popped’ into Bob’s house and found him compromised with three different lasses; each time he either gave a feeble excuse or merely apologized when he thought there wasn’t a good reason enough. Bob could also be rude. I knew that deep within his ego Bob meant that I either take his excuses or quit his life anyway.

One day, his back to me, I chanced on him on the phone unfolding all the erotic things he would do to some lass, Naomi in the weekend when she would visit. I stood there at the open door listening to the whole load his whetting pledges and rage hit me hard; I turned and stormed off, too sickened irreparably and he only noticed me as I hit his gate shut behind me. I cried like a baby that whole night, maybe the fact that Bob was my very first boyfriend added to the hurt that I felt at being so cheated… why hadn’t I seen any whim of that side of Bob before?

Maybe it was coz I had little time for an intricate romance, partially from my engrossing college course, I was Med student then; the other part was from personality. My heart never really blazed much for a guy and the fact that Bob was my boyfriend was merely a fill in that slot in life. I hated people talking otherwise. But of course I did fancy Bob a lot; he was my real first boyfriend and time with him had brought him close in my heart and daily agenda though we had an agreement that my studies came before any thing else.

Maybe it was coz I was brought up to believe my future life as being about a husband and myself, the wife, and a team of kids and church; the man being the focus around which we, the wife and kids orbited for subsistence. So traditional. And so the man owned all the liberties, to loosen his morals at his pleasure as is common, while the wife sat back, hurting hard but working to make the marriage work anyhow. The intricacies of romance belonged to soap operas.

But the reality now hurt me, the fact that I had been as much loving and trusting as ever, never doubting my boy’s return love and faith one bit. Being played applied to the other lasses and was okay but being the victim shocked and hurt like a back-stab so underserved. Anger flames lit in my heart and fuelled more the following evening when, I called Bob ready to lists my disgusts. A lass picked his phone. I hung up candidly.

From that moment on, I knew I was over with him. His fate was sealed; my heart had reached its end of affection and a turning point had come. I wrote a long letter dismissing him; I gave him all the reasons worthwhile, put down every unpleasant episode I had experienced since Loy spoke of his infidelities. I named no names. Loy delivered the letter the following day in the afternoon. That night Bob called.

“We need to talk, Stella,” he said. Mysteriously, his voice was cool and controlled. He sounded like he was just across me at a dinner table and asking to be passed some soup.

I didn’t want to discuss anything and told him so. He asked if I was indeed sure that’s what I wanted and I affirmed.

“You leave me, Stella, you get another guy right from the scratches, and it’s not easy learning to pull along. You know me, Stella, me and all my debris. I understand you and it’s easier that way. I want us to get back on as usual, ok? You are angry now but I beg that you to take some time and think it over. I love you and it’s no secret. You love me and I feel it most right now. Tomorrow I will call again to know what you decide. You get that?”

Bob sounded smart and I felt suddenly stupid. Bob always hypnotized me. He managed to seduce my furies away all the time. His speech was slow and the tone measured; the same way he always did but knowing him better I knew an outburst could be lurking in the next phrase. I could almost see his eyes level and glaring at me with daunting challenge. In the true sense of the word Bob may have been merely managing some hostage situation, persuading off a lunatic holding a freaked out teenage lass hostage. Given a chance he could quickly grab and wrestle down the intruder, or otherwise drive a fatal bullet through him to securing the captive.

I would have believed him but for the slight edge of mockery in his tone; knowing him better, I knew he was trying to seduce me back into his love nest, he was tossing yet another false card into the game knowing my psychology well and obviously using it to get me back, as in – which guy wants to be abandoned anyway? He’d rather be dumping instead, especially an ego filled stud like Bob.

“Stella, baby, are you still there?”

He called my name so well, the same way he did whenever he comforted me, only this time it appeared he used it to get me back into an improved-security cage. If I were standing before him I would have easily run back into his arms, crying; not for reasons of affection but because I felt at a loss and in need of a shoulder to lean on. His was the best I knew and he was readily available ever.

“Stella, baby!” Now he purred like a kitten, “Talk to me, my Stella. I’m so fond of you, please; don’t let me beg you like this.”

I stood there, quietly nursing the handset next to my ear as hot tears began to roll from my eyes, down the temples, burning me. I choked and I knew I was going break into a sob without check if I stood there longer. Why was Bob doing that to me, hurting me and taming me that way? Why couldn’t he let me go quietly? Of what use was I to him when he could afford lots of lasses in his life? And if he really wanted me as his gal, wasn’t I enough? Why had he to go out to others, what wasn’t I affording him that the others did? Why couldn’t he let me go the way I decided to?

Thinking of his often sweetness, indecision hit me. I was getting intoxicated mentally and grew weaker as much as I got ripped down the middle. It dawned on me that signing out of a relationship wasn’t as easy as I envisaged; the other party mattered too, especially if you gave an ear. Maybe if I jumped into a bus and left town as soon as…hell!

I bet Bob wanted to sit me down to sort the facts of the ‘misunderstanding’ before agreeing in any case. Reality was that I liked Bob as a friend basically and I did not want to loose that amity. His company was desirable always albeit tempers got the better of him oftentimes. Going in acrimony would mean I loose that friendship.... Maybe, I thought, I should say to meet him to clarify the facts in my letter. Or maybe, I shouldn’t have sent that letter anyway. Was I too childish to give Bob the boot? He kept lots of girls for friends, I agreed with that but – what did I expect him to share with them? Maybe all he said was mere talk that sometimes got sensual, and no more… And so if I gave him up he’d probably tug one of the many girls into my slot. And his life would go on ok. I would be the looser and the other lass would laugh to stitches, rolling all the way…

“Stella, I’d like you to come over tomorrow. In the morning, I’ll be waiting for you instead of making the trip I said for this weekend, ok? I know you feel hurt now and I am sorry to make you be so but I do feel with you. I will confide some things I never did before, and I’m sure we’ll be all right. What time will you make it, baby?”

On the other side I imagined Bob truly sorry and blue, with a wet handkerchief in hand, nearly crying; sometimes I thought his life would be better acting, he’d rake in the bucks in tons. He was the only guy I knew who had tears for every occasion. He could laugh to tears and he had tears for the departed. If his team won, he dripped true tears of ecstasy and in anger he shed tears like a boy-toddler. In my downtimes when I cried Bob caught on and shed too. Often I fought back my own tears in hopes of keeping his face dry.

Loy had been in the room and from the corner of the bed where she sat she followed my reactions silently. After a point I had forgotten her presence, lost in my own pain and disorientation. I became aware of her once again as her feet shuffled on the carpet. I turned to face her, tears dripping down my face. She closed in quietly; her face was that of concern and worry. She reached me and without warning, took the handset from my hold and slowly and placed the receiver back to its cradle.

“Let him go baby,” she comforted softly. “You are right, he’s wrong and don’t try to excuse him. Bob is a bad fish and there are a lot more fishes in the open sea, baby. Good ones.” Her arms reached to envelope me and I ran into her in helpless desperation.

“Bob…” I broke into a loud sob. “Why? Why, Bob? But I love him, Loy. I really do.”

“I’m sure you do, Stella,” she tugged me slowly away from the bedroom, “but you deserve better. Don’t let him be your disease, baby. You’ll be okay but you have to let go of him first.”

Tears burnt my face incessantly. I felt I was loosing a big part of me when I still had the powers to keep a firm foothold. I wanted to disengage from her hold, run back to the phone, to Bob and to make it clear that I still loved him even though he hurt me. He’d apologize and then we’ll be ok once again. This time forever!

“Loy, I will call him, just once. I have to let him know how much he hurt me. Just let me this once, please, Loy…”

“It’s alright, you may, Stella but know he is a player and he long mastered his game. Give him another chance and he’ll make a score on you, he’ll sooth you back to him; and that won’t stop Bob from playing you anyway, especially knowing that you are stuck on him like some stitch-patch.”

She was looking intently into my eyes with all the care in the world. She had known all along and she didn’t tell me. Sometimes when I related good times with Bob I noticed Loy going blue but I never fathomed it was all for my sake. I kept thinking that she felt short with Ramah. He was a medical student like me though a final year. He was ever busy at his books and with barely enough time to nurture his relationship with Loy.

She looked hurt; it seemed this was the scene she had feared all along. It was easy even in my state of desperation to understand her sympathies; the hurt in her eyes exuded the torment and turmoil she must have carried within all along. Her gloom had been for me, after all...

The phone rang and I yelped, scared. I tried to make a dash back into the bedroom to pick it. Loy stopped me and she went instead, picked the receiver, listened quietly for a moment before replacing it slowly back to the hook. It rang one more time, almost immediately and she picked the receiver once more, listened again, cut the line and placed the receiver on the side.

“It was him again,” she announced as she came back. Mysteriously, she was now grinning.

I smiled back and it changed my mood abruptly. My desperation simmered down a lot; Loy gave me a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder and led me to the living room couch. We sat there quietly for the next long minutes; my mind stilling and lurking away from the thoughts of the while that passed. Then Loy broke the silence…

“We’ll teach him a lesson, that’s if you want us to, Stella. He should know what a good thing it was he lost.” She looked steeply into my eyes as if what she just said was a question and she needed a response. Our eyes locked for the next minute and I gathered what she had in mind. All complete, we laughed out hysterically and ran into each other’s arms – as in – a seal of agreement. YES! WE’LL TEACH HIM, AND WE’LL DO IT GOOD.

Bob called severally in the next few days but Loy and I made a resolve not to not to communicate and it was strong. I hung up each time as soon as I gathered it was Bob calling. He worked the home line and my cell incessantly. He sent his niece over with mails whose envelopes I never opened but sent back without return messages. He sent flowers that I returned pronto. Presents too. I deleted all his unread SMS messages and E-mails. I blocked his address altogether. Once he came home and met my big brother, Joe, to whom I had briefed of my hurt. Joe sent him away without a ceremony.

When Bob met Loy once he wanted to know what was going on. She said I had a new boyfriend and he demanded to know more. Loy shrugged her shoulders. None of her business, she meant. Bob could have killed her in his fury.

Very soon it was common knowledge among our mutual friends; Bob and Stella’s love was rocked and broken, the pieces too fragmented to be put back together. Swiftly, he slotted Magdalene into my apace, she was one of the girls I found him compromised with one day at his house. It hurt a bit but I hoped that would open newer grounds for me and my freedom, after all I resided in the same estate as Bob so we were apt to run into each other at the shopping center’s amenities. I was kinda glad hoping that his affair would certainly kill any urge for anger and confrontation with me; my personality couldn’t stand such. Sooner, he stopped calling and all…

Enough of Bob for the while…

Seeing and knowing Eugene was inevitable and it happened much earlier when I was still with Bob. Not that I had inclinations but Eugene, his gorgeous eyes were elsewhere. Then, I was comfortable with my life but the heck – every girl wants to be noticed by such a sweet boy. He was a year-long tutorial fellow at my faculty, though not in my department.

Eugene was tall, somewhere over six, with languid, pointing eyes that saw everything and spoke even in silence. Strong on the shoulders, he kept a thin thicket of a goatee that he seemed perpetually uncomfortable with and so plucked at many a time in habit, especially whenever he was listening and his height folded on a seat. From a distance he was almost coy but closer on his languid eyes aggressed and stayed aggressing. Because of that, he was hard to look at for long, especially when you were a lass, not unless you wanted to appear obviously smitten. And many a lass were so love-struck with him.

At twenty-five and with the current career status quo, obviously his life’s destination was well defined. Lecturing was merely a mere stepping-stone for bigger things ahead. Many times I heard lasses discuss him; lasses adept at communication with boys and possessing sharpened social skills; knowing how to get to the lad they set their sights on, showing him all the way into their hearts. Often, one or two would relate a time with Eugene however short, candidly elucidating his genuine warmth of personality. One lass would say how she mixed with him over lunch at the staff cafeteria. Another would say how she longed for a drive with him on a lazy Sunday. They had lots of dreams…

Eugene drove a silver black BMW that usually packed at the college lot next to the gate college side gate. Everyone wanting knew it. And it was common knowledge, the wenches with whom often he visited. Lasses of noticeable substance; cute all round, sisters, cousins, girlfriends, whatever... they were exotic; dressing well, walking well, talking well and – obviously groomed well. If they went to college they must have been real hybrid institutions. Their manners were rich in all aspects. Thinking of Eugene with the crop of my college’s women was unfathomable. He had better options.

My first experience Eugene came when he sauntered into a theatre once where I was to have an afternoon class. I had settled an hour too early to clear up pending exercises. I was alone.

“Hi,” his voice boomed, a heavy bookcase was under his armpit. His voice was breaking, like a spouting teenager’s. “Is a class coming on here, miss?” he asked. I hadn’t expected anyone over lunch hour, not until close to two that afternoon. The sudden boom of his voice shook me roughly and I pushed a file from the table in fright.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized as he reached the front of my desk to pick the file from the floor. Behind him was one of his lasses; tall, fine-boned and brown skinned. She wasn’t smiling and it made her face appear as pretty as a shop window mannequin.

“Yes, at two O’clock, sir,” I responded, my voice creaky.

“You busy, where are your colleagues?”

“Out for lunch, sir.” The ‘sir’ came out naturally. I noticed the girl had turned her neck to take a brief but intelligent peek at my work.

“Sawa.’ Okay. He responded and turned to leave. At the door he stopped short and turned. The girl nearly bumped into him. She cooed and Eugene apologised. “If it’s lunch hour, what are you doing here now?”

“Sir, I have assignments to finish.”

“Okay.”

And they were gone. That episode left me sweaty, breathless but I soon forgot about it.

A week after my love affair halted I found myself taking a greater interest in couples, both known to me or otherwise; I kept wondering at what time they were having. Had they just met and the fire was still burning hot if they were strangers? I asked within how happy they were and if one was cheating behind the other already. I wondered if theirs would lead them down some isles some days day or if they were only passing through towards that partner for life, still an illusion. So many things... Silently, I began to feel in need of company, especially whenever Loy and Ramah were having their lover’s times and I was left out. Sometimes, I felt as vacant as a room ready for occupation, the rent notwithstanding of course.

One particular week, several ‘frogs’ approached me for dates, both at home and college. Strange! Was word was indeed out that I was available? I wondered with amusement. I told Loy.

“Stella baby,” she responded, “Mr. Right is on the way but you’ll have to kiss frogs on the queue.”

I laughed.

One lunch hour, Loy cajoled me to fix me up with a final year Medic whom she said was really burning for me. I thought she was ridiculous.

“I can’t go out with a college boy,” I reconfirmed. I often affirmed that to Loy. Ramah, her boy was a college-mate and my constant attitude towards my contemporaries seemed to hurt her. She thought that I saw college boys as immature, Ramah too. Beyond that point I reserved my comment.

“So whom do you want?”

“Must I want somebody, Loy?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes. But what if somebody really wants you bad?”

“Whom?”

“Somebody good.”

“Let him work for it, whoever it is.”

Loy smiled. “Maybe I’ll hang you out in some street so the working boys may a try you out; maybe one in the lot may get you. Maybe,” her voice trailed off and her eyes traveled away from the table for a silent while, “Whom do you want, Stella? You must have someone in mind.” Her eyes returned, poked mine and I strained to keep mine level. I wasn’t comfortable discussing my life at the level of boys.

“I’m going to have to finish college first. Then the rest will fall into place. That must sound better?”

“Yeah. Better but only educated. You still need a guy, remember our promise to show Bob his great loss?”

“I do, Loy, but that was in the heat of that bad moment of hurt. I went over that bump and I am now fine.”

“I haven’t passed my side of the bump yet, lucky you. Many times I cried for you. Many times, Stella; even long before you were meant to begin crying, you know what I mean?” her eyes darkened suddenly and their intensity on mine rose.

I nodded. I began to see the darkening clouds in her eyes and knew that Loy meant what she said. I didn’t like the drag back to Bob.

“Fine, baby, give me a guy.”

She giggled like a little girl. “A student? You know you should mix where you mingle.”

“No pupils – until I die. No contemporaries, Loy; please think outside the box.”

She laughed. “A teacher?” she was grinning cheekily.

“Maybe.” I laughed amused.

“Mr. Eugene?”

“You are crazy, Loy.”

“I mean it, I mean it, I mean it, I mean it, I swear!” Loy was excited and even more excitement was getting into her manner.

“It can’t happen.”

“It can. Dare me! I’m sure it can. I’m sure you can beat all the wenches with an eye on him, I swear.”

“Forget it, Loy.”

She pushed her face across the table provokingly, her nose nearly touching mine as she hissed. “Just dare me and I’ll put you right into the mood. DO IT!” Her voice was hard and rising.

“No.”

“DO IT, DARE ME NOW!” Loy shouted. She glared harder at me; her voice was so loud, the glass in front of me tingled in resonance. He face squeezed and turned sour as if she was readying to brawl over the dare. Everyone turned in the cafeteria expecting a commotion. I watched her eyes darken and I knew she’d yell out again and yet more but louder if I said anything less than her interest. Wow! How I hated the attention she attracted, I thought better to quell her.

“Ok, I dare you.”

“YES!” she hissed at the same top voice. Then her normal voice returned. “You won’t regret it, baby, I promise you, Stella.” She reached over and kissed me so hard; she nearly came off with the skin of my cheek.

I didn’t know that that simple phrase would open a whole new experience for me. In that very week Loy went into high gear, planning how to go about her new task of getting me Eugene. I had never seen her in such high spirits. She talked Eugene, breathed him, slept him and it was as if she was the one whose heart was on the line. Two weeks later, Loy had managed to raise my spirits too. I began to have little dreams of Eugene too. I imagined him beside me 24-7 at the successful end of Loy’s project; him holding my hand as we walked, rubbing shoulders, talking me in that deep drawl of a voice. Him kissing me softly on the lip…Him beside me in the morning wake-up; him on my dinner plate each night…the more I imagined him the more my breath left me every the next time I saw him. Eugene was one hell of a beautiful boy a wanting lass didn’t meet around every next corner. My little dreams began growing into obsessions but I couldn’t dare imagine being set up with him when the one setting me up was but a total stranger to him too.
Loy gave me a gift CD that I played at home, Lionel Richie’s Penny Lover dubbed nineteen times in a single CD. It soon became her project’s theme song… will Eugene ever sing the words of that song to me one day – and every day after?

When Loy became indisposed for a week and I only saw her in between my classes, all she could chat about was her project. I couldn’t dissuade her, talking of Eugene was her aphrodisiac. She kept hypnotizing me more, to gear me up for the same shoes that – unbeknown to her - I was already wearing.

“Stella, baby, I’m down now but not out. We’ll resume as soon as my feet can touch the floor,” she joked, “and then each day will get us closer to the first date.”

I craved on. Any sighting Eugene rendered my emotions to turmoil so devastating that I had to pull my heart over for a while. He was more handsome and macho but still - I was out of his focus even if I was the only thing in his front. He looked like a dead-end in respects… I was too plain, too academic, too plain Jane to notice!

Soon I became a yielding dyke of emotions and started to ebb out. I was crying in my quiet moments like some silly, infatuated teenager unknowing how to get to Romeo when she needed to reach him badly! I was afraid to let Loy know that she needed not to entrance me any more; I was already a bad mess, in a bad crush that threatened my college assessment grades too. In class I doodled absently, barely took notes but attended faithfully just to be in the roll. At the onset it shocked me to be crying over some son-of-a-wench who possibly wouldn’t notice me if I were eve and him, Adam, in a final Garden of Eden where no other lass was but me. Later I began to excuse myself but for the sake of my loneliness. It would pass, I assured myself. Eugene would be history in my heart, right when I get my grooves back on, Stella is a tough kid, she is a lass coined of stone, not ice-cream, the kind that she currently seemed to be made of. Take heart, baby…

When Loy recovered she followed her word. “We’ll begin. First, by repackaging you. We’ll change you all over, you look bad, Stella. Seems you’ve been crying a lot, was it about me or Eugene?” she chided one Saturday morning. If only she knew, I thought silently. “Soon every lad will be running after your tail, coz you’ll be a winner. They love winners, but you’ll be meant for pedigrees like Eugene,” she added. Will she be true, ever?

With her guidance, I made a head start by raising my woman value from the scratches. I discarded almost all my pairs of shoes and clothing and bought choice replacements. My savings must have wondered why for. I complained that the sizes were way too slight but Loy waved me away. She knew better, she said and I abided. I started wearing makeup and Loy taught me better how. First, I felt awkward but Loy reassured me. We joined a health club and missed no day. We did some weights, joggings and aerobics. We swam often, almost as soon as our skins dried up, Loy kidded. Three weeks skipped and body tones transformed, hardening, trimming and skins glossed more. Gaits, poises and gazes woke up. The air around became lush and feelings of inner ambience crept deeper down our egos. I let my hair to grow long,
I remember the long moments at the mirror; when we stared into it and practiced on smiles, grins and poses like little kids. How wonderful it felt to notice the great lass that had been hidden beneath my old skin… Loy emphasized simplicity as long as it was uncommon. We laughed more than ever and almost joked as much. Our friendship grew more than ever and everyday life was more luscious.

“I like the way that Julia Roberts spontaneously lights her smile in Pretty Woman. That’s what we should practice.” And we did.

We bought a DVD of Pretty Woman and trained hard on Julia Robert’s igniting smile, giggling for hours on end, between the mirror and the video screen. One week did it, and as a final test Loy had me try the grin on a hunk out on the street. He lost his smile, stopped in his tracks and turned to make a come at me – to start me up? No way, baby! I walked on. Loy watched discreetly from a sideline bemused.

“Stella, I swear I heard the flutter of butterflies in his belly. You hit him too hard on a soft spot. I swear he’s need weeks on end to heal - he’ll skip many a meal in mesmerized fantasies of you.”

“Does that mean we are ready?”

“We will be, but only when I say so, but not now.”

And so we did much more; bought and flipped tons of copies of magazines, old and new for gal material; Elle, Cosmopolitan, True love, Ebony, name them. We cat walked wherever there was privacy and perceived runways; mimicking supermodels, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Jessica Alba, Wek Alek and all. We tried combinations of gazes, grins and struts in search of explosive, chic results and got plenty. And we laughed all the way….

We read about fine food and cookery. We practiced recipes; cooked from exotic recipes and it was fun. In the end we could have passed for pseudo-gourmets of sorts. Every other feeble thing that raised our woman value mattered and we scratched to ingrain it all into our personas. We stood, sat, danced, and chatted all the way to perfect ladies…

“All these just for a boy, Loy,” I inquired.

“Yes.”

“Aren’t we gone overboard?”

“Let ‘em boys come knocking and kneeling at your heart step, but don’t open the door yet, baby. Not until I approve, right?” she responded. I nodded.

I wanted to comment what I noticed happening to our aura but thought better to leave it to silence. In their affair, Ramah had slotted more Loy into his timetable than any other examinable unit he read and she liked the change. He had changed in so many ways; like fancying going out and to be seen with his Loy. He loved her but I knew he was showing the town what a good thing got; she was exquisite right from the façade and into the very depths of her womanhood. And when I accompanied them sometimes out he wanted to strut in between, almost to feel like a king of sorts. He loved the gawks that we were accorded and he relished in them. It made me realize more how much radiance we had gathered in obvious aspects that I supposed that Loy being unaware of as long as Ramah was ready to be with her or us. The were smitten like kittens.

With the transformations came a change of girlfriends. Out went Jackie, Jill and Jane, they simply slipped out from inability to conform. In came a newer class, some from the gym and aerobic sessions, the swimming clubs and the new hang-out joints.

I gathered the true extent of my makeover when I paid a visit to mum one weekend after three months of stay-away. I wasn’t out to impress but when she opened the door to let me into the living room, she just stood there in the middle of the doorway, gaping, wide mouthed, surprised and almost chocking with shock! She was too awed to let me in instantly, choosing instead to savor me absently, open mouthed and unable to say a word for longer than enough. So unlike her, mum scrutinized me from my head to toe over and over with the same stun in the eyes.

“Who the heck is this?” was all she said finally as she shook her head absently. I dished her a Julia Roberts’ grin. A reflection came upon her own face. Nice job, Loy, I commented within.

Mum squealed like a teenage girl and I beamed back fixedly. That seemed to ignite her reactions all the more. She was one adept at keeping emotions to herself; nothing ever got her overboard. This time, obviously Loy got the cut through her emotional sieve in a way like never before. We embraced and she stayed holding me even after long enough. In the whole visit she showed me off all and sundry; she asked to know what was so good about college life that brought my radiance. Eugene is on the way, I responded in my heart but only grinned back at her.

I recounted to Loy the day with my Mum and her conclusive remark was, “That ends step one, step two begins tomorrow.” Her eyes went back to her assignment book.

From one obscure lass to a real looker I was all grown and new… at least I felt it; and I enjoyed the image that my bedroom mirror returned. On some occasions I thought I got stunned, almost believing someone better was in me. I felt different, enhanced, and often I perceived of myself walking on a better platform. That helped me on the streets against the gawks that men and women accorded me. The way I talked, walked and reacted. I was indeed different from the uncomplicated church girl who had dissed a guy called jerk Bob four months earlier. For that head start I thanked Loy from the very bottom of my heart, her refined knowledge of beauty and style turned my librarian looks into a sophisticate ready to make a cool kill; her kind friendship and her ability to see what could become the best of me was equal to what people paid via their noses for. Boys paused taking notes if I walked late into a class, and they treated me better. My male friends teased, prodding to know more about my social availability.

Step two was two pronged. The first, as Loy put it, “to show Bob what a good thing he lost.” The second, to make me bait, dangled before Eugene, teasing him and tempting him in the course to set him into a mad run after me. It was that second prong that I awaited; Loy said she’d tip me more.

A week passed and she called my cell one day. She asked to see her after my afternoon classes. But I needed to visit the library to borrow books that hour. The following day was more compromising, over brunch at the college cafeteria. 11:00 o’clock, I told her. I knew she had something. We met.

“Susan is having lunch with our man tomorrow.” Loy announced with enthusiasm. I noticed earlier that she was uneasy and barely interested in her food. Her pretty face was as troubled as her mind raced, I had otherwise expected as her buoyant as usual.

Susan was in second year. A high-end woman; rich in everything. And sassy - she dressed well, conversed well but wasn’t in any way outward showy. Her type made a man curious and I supposed Eugene was. One date would lead to another and yet another, till the last major one down the isles of some cathedral. Her type didn’t snatch your man any day but rather, he just drifted towards her. Susan’s blameless and genuine methods awoke the hunter in most men. She was one of the acquaintances I had made so far and Loy’s news wasn’t any good at all.

“Let’s give up.” I suggested immediately and Loy almost choked on her food.

“What? No way!”

“So?”

“They are going to Kengeles, Koinange.”

“Well, I wish them well. I suppose they’ll have their fun.” I commented but I was at a loss of what sensible thing to say.

“Yes.” I noticed Loy’s mind was flat as much. It took long and the silence unsettled me.

“If we don’t give up then I suppose we can send them a cheer team, Loy, they may need applause.”

“Yes.”

“Loy! What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, we’ll send them some cheer.” She thought hard and I decided better to await the result. Four minutes of silence elapsed before she was ready to speak again.

“You’ll be that cheer, Stella. Tomorrow you’re having your lunch at Kengeles too, they’ll know you are in the house. I just want a way of introducing you to the eyes of Eugene. Thank goodness that you and Sue are on a one-to-one already. If the gods are on our side, you’ll settle with them at their table because - if Susan’s what I think she really is then she’ll invite you over. The Godforsaken lass won’t know she invited cutthroat competition.”

“And then what?” My heart was beginning to race fast. I had a lot more questions and reservations but I knew the time to raise them wasn’t then.

“And then you’ll have your lunch, Stella. That’s what you are going to Kengeles essentially. I only hope they won’t be on a two-seat table.”

“It sounds ridiculous, Loy.”

“Yes.”

She wasn’t saying more and I needed the whole plot from her.

“I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I.”

“So we drop it.” I said seriously. Then added. “You can think of another method.”

“Why another method? Getting a boy is supposed to be ridiculous and you said this sounds so. You’ll do it, Stella, it’s all normal if it sounds ridiculous.”

“I am not going to haggle over a guy like this, so think of something else, or forget it altogether.”

I stared at her hoping I sounded firm. Loy glared back silently for long; then she dived into other detail. What I should wear tomorrow. What makeup to apply. The shoes. The rings and necklaces. The perfume. Everything. Funny how she knew my whole wardrobe, down to the last panty hose! Loy sounded like tomorrow’s was either a decisive interview or a death knell. On radio it would have sounded like she was grooming a celebrity for a pageant set. By the time she wrapped up I had over ten pages of formal stalking communiqué simplified mentally. How easy for her, how easy to do from her side of the fence, I wondered. Loy had bypassed my adamancy and I only hoped she was sure of whatever she had said, suggested.

Getting out of home in time the following morning wasn’t easy; I tried to follow Loy’s mental preparation pamphlet to the letter, all the way from dress and up to makeup. By the time I was ready to leave I nearly missed the usual ride in my Joe’s car. He must have hooted a million rounds to get me out of the house.

“Are you sure you’re going to that college today?” he asked when I settled in the passenger seat. I affirmed with a silent nod. For the rest of the trip he left me to my thoughts as usual. He had his own, but mostly, he was on the phone discussing business. That’s the way we were, siblings and friends without a thing in common.

That morning’s unit lecture was long and didn’t go into my head any bit; I kept seeking out my watch to know the time and I was pensive and jumpy and just about got a seizure from the nervousness. I barely took notes but kept my pen doodling page after page as I reminisced what lay ahead with anxiety. It felt like doom on the way.

“If you didn’t go out last night, then you have a big one coming today.” Ahmed, seated next to me remarked. “But – if my comment mattered, by your dress you have about a big one today.”

We were friends and he noticed my lapses in class. I didn’t respond. Five minutes later he slipped a note and I opened it up. YOU’RE STUNNING, it said. I grinned and turned to peek at him momentarily. Five more minutes later he slipped another note. I SAID YOU’RE STUNNING!!!!! I wrote in the response, I SMILED BACK, YOU FOOL! He beamed like a puppy. I gave him a scowled face and his grin widened to near tear point, poor boy!

I met Loy after class in her room so she could calm my nerves if possible. They were so tight they could strum. Our game plan had been easier only up to today, I thought, the rest was tricky and I would face it all alone. I wished Loy would turn into some invisible genie and be beside me through out the coming hours, giving me the right urges and throwing love portion constantly into Eugene’s dishes.

But instead of calming me down Loy went over her instruction set one more time, this adding my complete menu down to the final toothpick. She kept sprucing me here and there as she recited her epithet. It crept badly into my nerves and when she began to explain a point of how to water down any attempt at a sensible conversation between Susan and Eugene, I couldn’t take it any more.

“You’re killing me, Loy. I’ll do what I can with all I have. I think it’s about time I took my freaked out self to that wretched restaurant anyway. What do you think?”

“Are you sure you are okay?”

“Of course not. I think it’s ridiculous and you said that’s normal. But I’m okay.”

“Don’t let me down.”

“Jesus Christ!” I wanted to run away. Loy was like a coach whose team was two goals down by halftime, in the locker room and still dreaming of an upset by tormenting the team.

“Okay, okay, baby. Just take it easy.”

“You take it easy, Loy.”

“Fine. And are you carrying your phone?”

“Jesus!”

“Okay, Stella. I’m edgy, that’s all.”

“I am edgy too but I’m not pissing you off.”

“I didn’t think I was pissing you off, baby. I…”

“Just shut up!”

”Fine, but I suppose…”

“SHUT UP, LOY. NOW!”

When I walked into Kengeles that afternoon I tried to be my trained self. I fought to keep my paces well measured and my gait straight. I fought to be normal as I scanned the room nervously. A waiter approached and pointed to a corner table at the farthest, darkened end. I shook my head with a smile without an explanation. I fought to catch Susan’s location if the couple was indeed there. I nearly sprained my neck in the extreme turns. They weren’t. My heart sank deeply but another piece of me clapped real loud. I wouldn’t have to torture my pretty self any more than I already had, at least for the rest of the day. I settled at the far table on the ground floor, I’d still have my lunch though my mood turned downbeat and I felt like tearing my heart apart in protest at the torture I’d put myself through to end up in the kind of frustration that I felt. I ordered a simple meal of fries but instead of eating I moved the pieces one at a time absently for long. A guy came and asked to settle across my table. I obliged with a nod a thin smile.

“You can order a full course on me,” he suggested. I looked up at him distantly. A piece of anger lit within me. What did he think I was?

“I can afford it.” I replied sarcastically. He smiled. I noticed that he flinched slightly but lost it sooner. His smile went back to the menu in his hands silently. Men, I thought. Always predating. When his meal came he settled on it like a starved tiger. I ceased to exist. OK.

I found myself stealing glances at him. Did he work at a quarry to have such a famished appetite? His strong facial features were handsome and the hands manning the spoon and fork bore thick hairy wrists. Occasionally, he peeked up at the door as if expecting a truck to back up with a fresh delivery to top his receding plate. Total, male, I decided. He must be nice, after all, I decided. Sensitive enough to have caught my cat piss-off and blacken out my presence. I was too rude, certainly. He had merely tried to be neighborly and I took it for an unwanted advance. Thrice he caught me looking at him but kept a reaction.

“I can help you clear your dish if you push it my way.” He offered without looking up. He was now rounding up the last of steak pieces in his meal. My heart shook and I didn’t if to be rude once more or to ease up on him. Whatever. His type must know how to handle my type, I thought.

Loy called. The ring of the phone cut through my nerves and I jerked. It was the right time, I decided. I said the plan had flopped. “I’m here all alone, Loy, I can’t imagine we’ve wasted all the time and emotions on this. I feel like a little teenage bitch insanely chasing a mirage of pseudo-star. Let’s stop it Loy. I’m losing my mind.”

She made no immediate response and must have noticed that a bad spill was leaking from my heart. I suspected that her heart sank too but she asked what I was doing, I supposed, as silence filler.

“I’m having lunch, of course. Did you expect me to starve my pretty self, Loy? Just tell me what I want to hear. I want to forget these crazy things we’ve been onto all this time so I can settle to work at my course. At least then I will come out with a better college grade. I can always pick a husband on the streets at least before I hit menopause.” I couldn’t hide the piss gathered in my mind.

Loy was silent for long, I suspected she was swimming through her own disappointment and my hurt but she spoke in the end to sign off.

“Fine, baby. Keep my change. Call me later when you’re ready for me. Bon appetite”

I wanted to tell her never to mention anything about Bob or Eugene until I die but she had disconnected the line. The heck!

Mr. Appetite was now looking straight into my eyes, unblinking. I called a waiter hurriedly now fully at my crude conversation with Loy. I paid my bill and left the restaurant in a huff. A distant piece of me wanted to remain at that table to engross the seemingly nice stranger.

I was forlorn the rest of that early afternoon. I attended lectures but as rituals. I avoided conversion anyhow and chose to speak if I had to but in short phrases. Later that evening I ended up in the library to study. Maybe not, I yearned for lots of quiet to sort through my foolish day. Usually, Joe picked me picked me up at nine in the evening for home if he could or I went home by bus. If it was too late, I passed the night over in Loy’s room.

At the catalogues the three computers were occupied for too long so I contended with the card drawers to search for material. I pulled round a chair and sat; busied myself working the cards half consciously. A term paper was due in a couple of days, maybe I could work on it, I had decided earlier. I scribbled down locations on a scratch pad and went on looking for more. Finding the books on the shelves would be the nightmare; fellow students either hid the books of stole some all together.

Then two strange things happened. I gathered that someone was peeking at me and I looked up to see Loy seated on a ground floor table. She blew me a kiss and I smiled back my surprise at her presence. I hadn’t expected her to be in the library. Loy avoided the library altogether, not unless the assessment tests demanded extra reading. A while later I looked up once more and caught her peeking strongly at me. Whatever was running in her mind! This time she winked and grinned widely. I made an equivalent return. Maybe she wasn’t in a studying mood after all. If I was going to finish my evening work I knew I would have to avoid Loy. A couple of people were working the catalogue drawers on my sides but the one on the left wore strong cologne that reached me with even greater intensity as the distance in between closed. Finally, he needed to use the box just above mine. I looked up and he returned his own. Our eyes met.

Bob!

I stiffened. I shivered. He eyed me with an equal surprise and shock. He recovered first but surprise remained in his eyes.

“Bob!” I hissed, “What are you doing here?”

“I can’t believe it Stella! I can’t believe it’s you!”

I was smiling silently, waiting for my cool to return but only loss came. He moved a little back and I gathered his full for. A little more weight he added, I noticed. Haggard some… on face but still, it was Bob. My former lover. My former friend. My former confidante. We had parted in acrimony but here he was… I hadn’t seen him since months back and I didn’t expected in our library, of all the places. I had refused neither to see him nor talk to him and it had healed my heart fast.

“How are you doing, Stella?”

“I’m okay. Just working hard at college. And you.”

“I’m good. You look better, dear. What have you been up to so I can do it too? I wouldn’t swap you for a million bucks. Never! What’s been going on?”

“Not much.”

Bob had a way with words. He knew how to mean what he wanted over-par. His eyes on my face returned to those of the same old days. Everyday, he had seduced me. Every minute, he had seduced me. And every second, he had seduced me. He had seduced me all the time and the feeling of love sedation was ever rife in my heart. Not until I discovered that he was cheating on me. Listening to him now, he was beginning the same practice of seduction. My day had been bad and I wanted to mend the badness but here he was, a sudden fear dropped into my heart and I lost my composure rapidly. If I gave Bob a chance of time with me I knew he would begin dropping fresh affection in my heart. It had been long since a boy gave me a complete feeling of being a full lass and I knew I was indeed vulnerable. The thought of the boy at the restaurant returned and I decided I had to watch out against cupid hitting me again.

“What are you up to here?” I inquired.

“Well, I started my MBA here last week. I couldn’t wait any longer and my employer is footing, both the time and the bill. I couldn’t resist it.” So interesting.

“Congratulations.”

Then he jumped to the former issues.

“You didn’t want anything to do with me at all, did you, Stella?” His eyes screwed hard on mine; and at the end of his question he stilled, expecting a worthy answer.

My mind raced back by months. I wanted to say a thousand things all at once, I wanted to explain myself just the same way I had wanted to in the last phone call he made to me. The same confusion was returning but nothing came out of my mouth. I only managed to look him back strongly in the eye until his eyes gave in and diverted. On the side I saw Loy wake up, pick her books and head to our direction. I felt some gladness.

“Bob, about that – this is not the right place, and of course not the right time. And I don’t have a mood for it either. I respect your interest but mine still doesn’t feel easy on those issues. I suppose you need to bury your side of those thoughts, fine? I buried mine and my life is going straight on.”

“Are you seeing someone now.”

“If it bothers you to know, yes I am.”

I watched his eyes turn gray quickly, the same old boy with the same old temper flares. His ego was still as high; it obviously hurt him that his former bird was now some other boy’s. His lower lip trembled slightly and he quickly bit it in suppression. I knew a tantrum was offing and I didn’t want it. Loy hissed from two yards away and tapped impatiently on her watch. TIME TO LEAVE!

“Sorry, but I’ve got to go. Enjoy your course, Bob.” I gave him one brief Julia Roberts’s grin and turned to strut away the Campbell method.

“Hey,” he called back sharply. I stopped and spun around the heel, “what happened to the friendship, can’t we get together sometime?”

“Good idea, Bob. But now that you are here, I’m sure we’re in for plenty of bumping, don’t you think so. But nothing longer than a wink, my boyfriend is a jealous one. Adios, baby!” I winked. I smiled. His return was a plastic hardness. I hoped he would understand true light of things.

Loy and I left quickly quietly.

“That was good,” Loy commented outside the library as we began to laugh at the convenience of luck that brought us together to the library.

“I think he’s still smitten, Stella. But it bothers me that you’re yet to get over him too. I saw from the way you looked at him in there.”

“It takes time, Loy. Just get me that other boy fast then all else will settle well.” Talking about the past brought a dark cloud in my heart. Loy was sounding as if Bob and I were a chart series for her analysis.

“Bob will try to make another come at you. For him you are but a challenge. And he likes challenge. His type does. But if he gets to know that you are still afloat he’ll badger in, as in, a scrum. Especially so from the princess you’ve turned into.”

“Just get me that other boy, Loy. Sometimes you talk too much. You fixed me a false date and you begin to hurt me now. Just shut up and get me a boy.”

She became silent. I knew she was sorry about the duped lunch but for now I wanted her silence for my own benefit. I had thought that meeting Bob would be my triumph but it turned out that I lost my emotional stance. I had returned to the same old me, lying barely under the skin. I was feeling the same hurt and needing to talk my inner heart out. Maybe I was only missing being with a boy... what if I went out with one of my close boy friends just to loosen up, maybe I’d be better. It almost occurred to me that I was barely performing each day but giving the most time to my looks and attitude for some man who’d probably notice I was all faked up. I really had to sort through my heart and attitude pretty fast, I decided.

“Loy, I have to finish my work before I leave for home today. I will go to the department theatre for some time. What about you?”

Loy said nothing for long. I realized she felt her turmoil too, but she wasn’t going to divulge a point of it. That’s the way our friendship was. Some things we only felt but never said until they passed. I know she knew that I wasn’t going to work at all but to brood over the day’s happenings; that I wanted to be alone and the only place assuring such solitude was the departmental lecture theatre on a Friday evening.

“I will go back to the library. Call me when you are leaving for home.”

I nodded and we parted. Miserably, I hurried round two corners that resulted me at the entrance of the theatre. A tank of tears threatened to spill from my eyes, if only I could get into the theatre, away from anyone I would cry for long. It would heal me and wash away all the stresses and strains of the day. I yearned to regain a foothold of my emotions; I was about to step into the open theatre door when someone called from behind me. I turned and it was Bob. He was three yards behind and his expression was timid. Bob stopped as soon I turned round, he looked almost afraid to step any closer. His eyes couldn’t level with mine and I thought he looked horribly tortured, almost afraid that I would scream out at his presence.

“What is it?” I wanted to yell but a mere squeak came from my throat. A pitiful show. It gave him the confidence to break the distance in between. I’m in danger, I thought. Bob knew me well to realize how weak I was then. He knew me enough to re-work my mood, to patch me into to whatever form he wanted, for his gain. He must have waited so much for this time and now that he had me cornered he closed in with impunity. I stood there endangered, wishing to sublime from existence. I had discharged Loy but I looked behind Bob helplessly hoping of sighting her just like in the library. Whatever Bob would say, I wondered; however I would react belonged to fate, I wasn’t myself at all…

“Come here.” He commanded, extending a bold hand at me. He wanted me to take it. I did. “Take it easy. I mean no harm to you Stella, it’s me, Bob, the same guy you knew. I haven’t changed at all, I still feel the same way.”

The first tear rolled down my face. Bob pulled me to himself; I knew he was going to embrace me in his arms. He had been warm. I knew he was still warm. I knew his embrace thawed away my indecisions. I knew I would grow weaker with time’s passing and he would proceed to intoxicate me with affection to return me back to his love fold.

“Take it easy baby.”

Distantly, I wanted to him to stop babying me coz it softened so much that had been hard. He could soften my heart into pulp any day; he only had to get a one-to-one with me like now. And I knew he had waited for so many months for a day like this; he must have planned for it and – maybe the MBA thing was a false ploy and his coming to the library wasn’t coincidental. He had a way with girls, and I was the prey right then. I had to run away! He ran a hand around my waist and…

“I have to go,” I said, pushing him away by the chest. I had to fight against his sedation by all means, I had to be strong. “I have to go.” I pushed harder. More tears left my eyes as Bob resisted my shoving him. I fought harder…

“Let me go.”

“No way. You have to listen to me, Stella.”

“Let me go Bob!”

“Listen to me, I want to talk to you. I really need to, baby. Please.”

“LET GO OF ME FIRST!” I screamed out. That did it. He eased his hold of me and I flew back, nearly losing my step and falling. My back hit a wall with a thud.

“You care no more, Stella, baby, don’t you?”

“No! I don’t. I have a class and I have to go. Bye.”

I turned fast and ran into the theatre door before he could reach me again. Right then I bumped hard into someone. Books and pens flew and scattered all over the front space of the theatre, the person’s and mine. He swore. I whimpered. I was more scared of Bob back to me again and as I profusely offered my apologies breathlessly, I went down on my knees to pick up mess due to me from the floor. The man was saying something constantly but he wasn’t coherent to me. I kept gazing back at the door with where Bob stood squarely, hands akimbo. On his face Bob was a sardonic grin sorts. He frightened me.

“Go away, please. Just go! And don’t come back!” I begged him from my position. I stopped my activity briefly as I pleaded. After a while he dragged himself away, shaking his head.

“What was that about?” The man asked with a concerned voice. I could have explained everything in my position and confusion. Bob was gone and I hoped, forever. I looked up at man before me. Eugene! And I was in the most awkward position with him; on my knees and he was standing right there in front of me, I had to strain looking up to gauge his expression. I panicked more and as he picked me up to the by the shoulders I wanted to run out of the theatre. I felt myself dumped from a frying pan, and into the fire.

“What was that about?” He asked once more. We were standing too close for my comfort and his eyes were straight down on mine. The scattered mess was forgotten temporarily. I was coming from one shock and into another. The new one shoved my heart in a different way. I had thought meeting Eugene would come via some official circumstance, presumably, candlelit and with modeled pretenses, courtesy of Loy’s teaching, and not this form of ragtag scenario with me running from my Mr. Former and then expected to explain myself to a presumable Mr. Future. I needed to organize myself first because all my good sense was stuck in the throat. Eugene was still holding my shoulders, concern scribed all over his face. I shook my head and stared down at the books on the floor.

“It’s a long story.” I said finally, disengaging myself and returning down on my knees to pick up the books and pens.

“You don’t do that!” He commanded. “Sit over there and pull yourself back together. I’ll pick up everything.”

“I caused it, so I’ll sort it.” I responded and hungrily went on picking up the books.

“STOP IT!” He yelled. I stopped breathlessly. I didn’t wake from the floor and he lifted me up once more. This time Eugene guided me to a front theatre seat and sat me down.

My heart beat so fast I thought it would come out. I perspired allover, my chest heaved and flattered like wings in flight. I watched him get back and collect all the books and pens together in one heap silently before walking over to me. Instinctively, I stiffened. The sight of Eugene coming to give me attention had always been an illusion and here it was, coming in all practicality. But the thought of what he was going to say unsettled me. Digging back into the scene with Bob was like digging into my love life and that was meant to be over a cup of steaming or something. Did I have a right to silence? I eyed him back squarely between the eyes but his eyes weren’t weak. Eugene reached his broad shoulders over me but before he said as word, I blurted out.

“I’m sorry I made that mess happen. Thanks, but I’m OK.”

He posted an amused smile on his face. “I know you’ll be OK but not yet. Just help me carry the whole lot to my car. We can sort yours from mine there before we can go our separate ways.” He didn’t grin or give a clue of what he was thinking.

“Okay.”

Eugene never spoke again till we got to his car in the lot. In the car he took his time picking out my books. When got to the pens there were a lot of similarities and he ended up dumping most of the pens on my side.

“I didn’t have so many pens.” I protested.

“I know,” he asserted as he pointed his eyes on mine. We were on the front seats of his BMW and the proximity began to play games on my heart. The air within was rich and quality. His eyes stayed on mine for long that got me unsettled.

“Now I can leave?”

“Yeah.”

“And the pens.”

“All yours if you take souvenirs. You hit me so hard, the only time somebody hit me that way was when I tried rugby in high school. I quit. You deserve something for the tackle.”

I found myself laughing freely. “And what will you quit this time.”

“Tomorrow I quit my job.”

“Oh, don’t, I opt to quit college for you.”

“And what about your future?”

“Oh, My father is a fat cat so I can afford to be a fat kitten.”

He laughed back softly. It was credulously genuine and it took a while before he settled back to himself. I enjoyed the amusement on his face even after and as he reached the back of his hand to wipe off a tear from his eye I instinctively pulled it down, forked out a white kerchief and shoved it into his palm.

“Why don’t boys stop doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“My grandpa keeps a hanky but for his nose. The backhand is wipe out tears. All boys do that. Why?”

“Maybe coz they never cry.”

“Interesting. You know, they do it much more than us?”

“And who’s us?”

“Me and my lot.”

We spoke for close to an hour and it was easy. He helped me to warm up back to my usually great self and I was really glad that he offered not to revisit the scene with Bob. When I was ready to leave it was close to eight in the night and Eugene opted to drive me home.

“No but thanks.”

“Why, you are not going home straight or something?”

“I’m meeting this boy in town and it’s the first time,” I replied easily. I wanted to sound like it was a true lie. I knew I was going to go round and back into the library, this time to concentrate on my work with utmost vigor.

“Ok. In that case I will get myself home to my dear wife and kids.”

“What? Oh, sorry. None of my business, anyway. Thanks for everything.”

“Thanks be to you. You have been a great company.”

I suddenly wished he could ask for a date but Eugene, seemed comfortable letting me go as I pushed out the door of the car and slipped out. He handed back the handkerchief and as a rejoinder I shoved back the handful of pens as a rejoinder.

“Why?” he asked.

“If you give souvenirs, I suppose you should be ready to accept some as well, not so?”

“Alright. Thanks. But I don’t even know your name yet.”

“It was on my book covers.”

“There wasn’t time to read, everything went so fast. My name is…”

“It was on the book covers, but I can do with a pet name. The one your grandma calls you when you go back to the village.”

“You sure want to know that?”

I turned round to face him as I lit my face with what I hoped was my warmest, sassiest smile. “You are nice, real nice. I suppose I can give you a chance to be my friend. Can you tell me your pet name tomorrow? Afternoon, one O’clock. At the Trattoria; my treat. I’ll say my name too. Then.”

“You’re bold but I’m glad.” His face lit up as if by a thousand floodlights. “I’m so glad. It’s not a normal day to get a fabulous date like you! I’ll be there, by all means.”

“By the way, it’s coz you are the only good thing that has happened to my day.”

“I would happen again if a chance emanates. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

I slid off the seat and receded from the car. I knew he was watching me, I could feel the rays of his ripping look hitting my back from head to toe. And so I worked hard to give him an amble saucy enough to transit his night and until Trattoria.

I called Loy and we met pronto. I narrated everything verbatim and her eyes and mind were locked on me over the time. When I finished she began to interrogate me incessantly. I went over sections again and again and Loy made insinuations here and thereabouts. In the end I’m sure she could recount the evening better than I.

“I’m more worried about Bob, he sure may cause you trouble.”

“Why, I think he will leave me alone, especially after that last time. I told him, I mean, I showed him he is a bug.”

“Well, I hope he caught on. I’ll watch your back though. Tomorrow by noon, I’ll know what he thinks, Stella. I’m apt to breath easy after then.”

“How will you know?”

“Somehow I will. I have methods. Oh, about tomorrow. Loy, you just set a boy up and they don’t like to be preyed on. You finished your part and it’s his turn to take over the game. Let him stalk you and let you be no easy prey, right?”

I nodded.

“Let him not feel hustled anyway.” Loy recited what I should wear the following day, clothing, shoes and makeup. As we parted she gave me a big bear hug that stayed put for a full minute.

Sometimes time travels as fast as light, other times it drags on and a single tick of the clock costs one full year. For me tomorrow took an eternity and I could barely concentrate on anything, not even sleep. I took no meal at home that evening even though I knew my innards begged me to eat something. I made my brother’s dinner and settled at the table with him but to watch him devour it. He asked why I wasn’t eating and I saying I had dinner in town.

“Was that why you were so dressed this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it?”

I was sure he didn’t want to know. My brother, Joe is a banker and he is a foreign currency dealer. His greatest concerns are news, news and more news. Politics, catastrophes, social scandals among the rich and the famous, wars and all. Anything that threatened to swing the exchange rates of the world’s major currencies either tickled him. If he wasn’t glued on the boring online computer screens at the office he was poring over printouts, at home or the office. Many times he was on the phone over the same. I watched him nibbling his dinner as he pored over a huge scroll of printouts when he asked to know about my day; he barely looked up. I enjoyed him as a brother and as friend but the most I liked was his non-intrusion attitude into my private life, not unless I pushed him to.

“I’ll tell you next week, after you finish going over that Biblical scroll.”

“It’s not Biblical. And it’s no that important. I can toss it aside for another week. I’m ready now.”

“Tell me another lie.”

He smiled. “Ok. When you are ready, I’ll be ready, Stella.”

Solved. Joe dug his head back to the page. How much we looked the same, sometimes his appearance shocked me, it was easy for even a strange eye to know we were siblings. We were similar up to mannerisms and attitude. I began to wonder at his social life. Joe never kept an affair any longer than a month; the girls yearned to eat his time but he had not much on offer. And when he met them, Joe brooded over his trading and no meaningful conversation transpired. The girls quit sooner for other pastures. That never bothered him in the least but a threatening dollar would keep him up all night. I wondered if he ever made love to his girls with one piece of mind.

“Stella,” Joe called and shook me off my reverie. He was smiling and barely looking at me.

“Yeah.”

“Stop staring into my life,” he said and went back to his pages with a preoccupied face.

Bewildered at his telepathy I didn’t defend myself. Maybe a complaint would sail me over being so caught flatfooted.

“Joe, we never talk.”

“Why do women say that?” He asked as he lifted his head abruptly to look straight me. He must have been expecting my line.

“I’m not a woman…”

“Strange.” He smiled and his head dove back to his reading, “Get me the saltshaker, Stella. I asked us to talk and you postponed it by a full week, then you blame it on me.”

He didn’t need the saltshaker; Joe wanted to send me from the table.

“Stella,” he called out as I reached the kitchen.

“Yeah.”

“Forget it. I can do without it, baby.” As an afterthought, he added, “I’m sorry.”

In many ways we were mental clones but these similarities drove me insane sometimes, I felt I was reacting to my own walking copy. Sporadically, I flared up if my incense took the better of me, just the same way he did. Joe wanted solitude and lacked the impudence to mouth a request; many times I did just that and he never protested. Probably he understood too, these similarities but chose to act them instead of weaning us off them altogether. I obliged and went upstairs to my room, after all this was his turn for a request for solitude. I called Loy and we titter for long before resigning for the night. What a day is had been, so long.

The date with Eugene happened. He was warm and easy to talk to, just like it had been in the car the previous evening. We spent two full hours chatting and knowing more about each other. He was enthusiastic to listen to me though I wanted to keep a lot of myself within. Somewhere in the time Loy called and wanted to know how it was going on.

“Fine.” I answered.

“How fine?” She wanted to know. I was about to make the response she expected but Eugene was eyeing me and probably forming what the caller was saying on the other end. I kept quiet.

“Ok,” Loy said, “I suppose he is looking at you now and listening from across the table so I’ll ask for ayes and nays.” She paused. “Are you enjoying the afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think you will nail him?”

“Yes.” I wanted to object but I saw Eugene’s eyes narrowing as if his inner sense was in tow.

“Has he set another date yet?”

“No.”

“Hope you don’t try to fix him a date as you did yesterday. I want him to take charge of things. All his types have egos even when they seem as innocent as toddler, probably that the best pretence they can ever show.” She kept quiet as expecting my comment but I shut up. “Stella, remember all the lessons we practiced in the past few months?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Is he looking at you right now?”

“I suppose so.”

“Just confirm it.”

“OK. Yes.”

“Remember the Julia Roberts’ smile?”

“Yes I do.”

“It took so long to master. Do me one little favor, won’t you?”

“I’ll try.”

“Give it to him now, won’t you?”

That amused me and I found myself grinning broadly at Eugene. His face lit up and – I think I saw a male equivalent of my smile on his face. Our eyes gripped for a while before I took mine away.

“Did you do that, Stella?”

”Yes.”

“And won’t you do me one more favor?”

“No, that was the last one. Listen, I have to go now, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, Stella; I should be. I’ll call you later. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I stayed the phone on my ear for a while trying to wash off the effects of the conversation with Loy before facing Eugene’s screwed eyes. I didn’t look up.”

“What was that about?” He asked.

“It was my pastor.”

“Oh!” That took him aback, “Seemed to have lots of questions for you.”

I noticed he intentionally mentioned neither She nor He in his line. Something about gender sensitivity? I wondered, but the omission sounded like a question in itself. I wouldn’t answer the omission, I decided.

“Asking if fellowship tonight is ok.”

“And you refused?”

“Yes, wants a worship for my every breath. You don’t pray, do you?”

Eugene weighed me for a while before responding. But his wasn’t an answer.

“You have plenty of no-go zones. I promise you I won’t trudge where you don’t want trampled. I expected you tell me about last time, who was that guy?”

“You really want to know?”

“I want to know.”

“My boyfriend.”

“Oh! Didn’t seem so to me. But obviously you are on the rocks. Why didn’t you sit your disagreements to clear the air?”

“The air is clear now. He was my boyfriend.”

“Amazing, so amazing.” Eugene let the statement to hang in the air. Did he want me to defend a point? I stared back blankly.

“No entry beyond that point.” He said with a wave of his hand and a smile.

“No! No! No! Not at all; that was another life but he refuses to take the truth according to me; I suppose it’s something about ego.” As an after thought, I added, “I think he is looking for a wife.”

”No comment.”

I laughed at his reaction. “I asked if you believe in something.”

He weighed expectation from my face.

“Everybody believes in something. I believe I’ll be fond of you.” He laughed softly, inwardly for a while.

Huh!. “I think it’s you with barriers. Can I make a promise?”

Eugene nodded.

“I promise not to trudge where I must not. Do you pray?”

“I do. I’m catholic, a staunch catholic.”

“So, what does your wife do for that matter?”

“I’m not married yet?”

“When is your wedding?”

His eyes left the restaurant and ran around the whole city. If Eugene was looking at me then, I was invisible.

“I don’t know. When do you plan to go for your postgraduate?”

“I’ll decide after I know your wedding date.” I wasn’t about to be ducked. My eyes leveled on his face and it unsettled him. “When is it?”

“I don’t have a time frame, Stella. There are lots of things to do first before I begin to think that other life. But I’m sure that now is not ripe. So, when do you plan on your further studies?” So clever!

“The time is not ripe. That makes us birds of a feather. And have you told all the lasses that you aren’t unavailable since you have to tend to lots of business first?”

“Have you announced your unavailability so the boys can look elsewhere than you?

“Yeah, on a billboard at the Sarit. Go there and you will find it. Next week I’ll have it on the FM. I suppose I’m destined for a nunnery”

Eugene laughed raucously. Couples at nearby tables were distracted from their conversations.

“You’re funny, Stella”. He began to laugh afresh as his eyes began to tear. Instinctively, he reached them with a backhand. I deterred him and offered a handkerchief.

“You lost the other one, I know.”

“Thanks.”

When we parted he didn’t ask to see me again. That hurt a little. Eugene didn’t even take my number. Maybe for him I was just one among the hybrids that clung on him. Maybe I didn’t make an impression at all, I thought. A week elapsed quietly, but for me it was long, especially in college where I prayed to chance on him around the numerous corners of college. His car was parked in its usual slot everyday.

Loy kept assuring me that it’ll be okay but it bothered me, that Bob heightened his stalking me, he called incessantly, day and night and if I switched off the line, the next time I turned it on brought at least five text messages that slowed my mood a great deal. Loy suggested I change the line and I did. It saved me from a lot of hurt.

On the tenth day since Trattoria, Eugene walked into my favorite theatre early in the evening carrying two cases of books in both hands. Under his armpits were the day’s newspapers. I was alone theatre and as he approached, I noticed he acted like an old friend. We conversed for rest of that evening but this time he was more open. We laughed freely when we did.

I learnt that he had had a lass in the US. Annette. A student of Linguistics currently but their communication was drying up from her side. Eugene suspected that Annette was starting a new relationship that was taking her time. We argued over his insinuation that lasses tended to forget their current relationships faster than lads when distance took them apart. Eugene insisted that men held on much longer.

I learnt he’d start his PhD in two year’s time. In the end he apologized for taking my study time. We parted at the parking lot as I waited for my brother to pick me up. No dates were proposed, and no numbers were exchanged. It hurt me silently.

The following day we bumped into each other at the shelves of the library. Eugene pulled me like a favorite pet to a secluded end of the expansive floor and once again we got engrossed into each other. Talking standing took half the time. We then pulled seats and talked on until the library floor began to fill up with students coming for study after dinner. From then on we whispered nose-to-nose until even that was too loud. We went down to his car and finished our evening over cans of Coke.

Whenever Eugene spoke to me I found myself giving him my undivided attention and I hated to disrupt him explaining or narrating to me. Whenever I spoke he lent me the same kind of an ear. His whole world focused on mine and he devoured every word as if he wanted to hang onto every one. In the beginning that scared me and I lisped but I grew out of that fear. Reaching across to him for a friendly tap on his arm was natural. He did the same often, but the difference was that his fingers on my skin set a million things disrupted in my system; I almost stopped to operate logically. Eugene was quickly etching into my heart. I was getting more and more enchanted romantically and each new day I grew fonder, especially after our meetings. I almost forgot that he was in my game plan with Loy. I noticed that his women friends took berths away from us and the ones who dared intrude quickly felt uncomfortable and quickly left He still chose to make no formal dates. Not even asking for my number.

It soon became a routine that he dropped by the theatre or my favorite library corner, even if to pass his regards only. Many times I went to those locations even when I had no reading to do but in earnest expectation that he passes by to bring those same regards. I kept hoping for him to lead me on to a next stage and it almost became a craving. Loy suggested that I absent myself from those meeting points for a while. That worked a miracle. Loy called me one evening and passed me a phone number she got from the bulletin board asking me to call it urgently. It was Eugene. The sound of his voice on the phone filled a void of the days that elapsed. I missed him and I told him so. Deep in me the extent hit me by the sheer cheer in his speech. He asked to meet me right then at the college cafeteria. I actually flew there, tossing aside the study effort I had been making towards an assessment test for the following day. Eugene met me with a brief kiss on the cheek and we settled for coffee. We sat there till closing time. I had called my brother, Joe to say I’ll make it home alone. Eugene said to drive me home.

Thrice more, he dropped me home when Joe was working late. It felt awkward to part and as we shook hands my heart felt like a kiss instead. Clumsily each time, I left the car for the gate, lonely and wishing I could be with Eugene more.

Some male classmates started chiding me, believing I was already in a relationship with a teacher. I made reactions that only heightened the chiding. Indeed I spent a conspicuously lot more time with Eugene than anyone else, most of the rest Loy, class and my books.

The academic was coming to a close and exams were due in two weeks. That meant a few things. I was going to get really busy and meeting Eugene would be rare. I told him I wouldn’t be coming to college some days but to study at home. After the exams I would go to Mombasa for a month’s visiting with my aunt. I wanted to know what he would say to counter my intentions but he went to a silent loss. I promised to communicate. Eugene became broody and it hurt me, especially knowing that he and I had become so fond. In the sidelines I was happy at the discovery of his basic affection for me. I wanted to hold him by the arm for reassurance but that territory was yet unknown. I avoided anything that made me really feel his bare skin since it turned my reactions into turmoil that I found hard to come from. And what if what I felt was merely fro my side alone; I’d have hated to embarrass myself.

One evening he drove me home at ten in the night. I invited him in and introduced him to Joe. Right on they hit it and were soon engrossed in man talk that locked me out, dispatching me upstairs to my room for another hour. When it was time to leave, Joe took Eugene out to his car, only to remember me at the last minute. Joe called me down and left us after them promising each other to be in touch. Weird, I thought.

Alone with Eugene I insisted he leaves sooner since he was driving home alone and the hour was late. We shook hands but our clasp stayed. The warmth of his hand made me feel good in the cold night. A tingling, warming sensation ran down my spine as he pulled me close to his body now leaning on the car. I was hesitant at first but my body soon drifted slowly until I was fully supported by him. He slipped his arms around my waist and a burning sensation hit my bosom. I wanted to moan from the little peace I felt. Instinctively, I pushed weight onto him as my hand flew around the nape of his neck. Eugene ran one hand slowly up and down my back and my eyes closed, taking me into an autonomous bliss I didn’t yearn to come from. He tilted my head up by the chin and instantly, I knew he was going to kiss me. A thousand fires lit in my new world and quickly turned into a torrent of heat that scalded my entire body, every part of my body was burning, every part of my body was yearning for more of Eugene’s excitement. When his lips grazed my cheek I couldn’t stop moaning from sheer pleasure. He roamed his lips slowly around my face and the tingling caused nerved to jerk, making me to push my entire body even harder onto his. And then our lips met… I just wanted to die!

As I write my story there is an engagement ring on my finger. In two months time we will be married and I can barely wait for that time to say “I DO”, the fact that finishing college will take another while is not withstanding. I do not know who the best man will be but for the best lady, your guess is as good as mine. This minute Eugene is lying on the long couch in his house with a TV remote control in his hand. He is trying to watch three football matches on different channels and a cartoon series to boot, the same thing that real boys do; I know he is not thinking about me this minute but of the likes of David Beckham and Scooby Doo. I know that he loves me but above all, we are the best of friends.

Me, Jackie…

Think of this. You are young, never been kissed, with OK looks and no attitude; you die for a guy but his eyes roam the other lasses instead, never to settle on you for even one single wink!
You grow up, pass through high school and the status quo persists pitifully. Your hopes to net him long died though but the etches of his impression linger on in your heart… he really was something, that kid. But then you have had your other share of experiences with bigger boys and carry some sad facts hard to swallow.
Not that you are weather beaten but - at 26 you feel you have seen it all, done it all, blur, blur... but one little truth borne off experience is that pretty boys don’t stay long in love, especially if their mouths aren’t gagged, they aren't blind and their ears work well. If their humor rivals Bill Cosby’s and you are their bitch on the block, sorry, baby, in just a matter of time you’ll become their former bitch on the block.
So means, if you’re wise then you pool your coupling efforts towards the lesser-bestowed lads instead. They will love you with all their might to no end. If only you could close your eyes to their looks forever, life would be a permanent candy when everyday weather asked for a candy to wash away the need for another candy after the last candy strolled down your thirsty throat! Too bad, if your search mark is too high, coz you will soon move on in your quest for Mr. Right, whom you probably envisage is still up, unseen, high in the clouds; his coming will be announced with a blistering thunderclap bordering that of the Lord’s return. So be it! For me I feel wiser having gone through several blizzards up till this far.
The heck! I tell you, that first kid, Noel was one hell of a guy to dream about, day and night. He was 13 then, and I, 9. Everything about him was exquisite for me, I mean, all save for the fact that he saw the other girls but me. I felt inadequate and wrecked utterly! Any gal gone past a hard crush may easily glimpse into what I felt…
That was then, when I was that little girl at that tender age still presumed, unknowing; hormone streams were already beginning to gather in readiness for the teenage storm. I remember neighborhood instances when, given a choice between breath and Noel, I would easily have chosen Noel. I wanted to wake from dreams and find me on the love laps of Noel but that dream never came to be. Maybe I wasn't any looky enough to warrant a cool baby like Him then; everyone kept saying how too long my legs were, or how I walked like a boy, especially so with my bows for legs. Did it really matter anyway? If you loved someone, wasn't it only about the heart and nothing else? At that tender age, I remember Thomas wanted me but I thought he was too rugged. Danston too wanted me but - compared to Thomas, his attitude was horrid to warrant my taking.
I declined both advances but left my focus open for an angel, probably still drifting down from upstream. I can't remember anyone else strongly itching and inching for me through out my entire mid teenage but seventeen brought forth an avalanche of lads. So much had changed in my physique and attitude and I think they were for the better coz, I don't think all those swarms of boys coming on me saw nothing worth to hover over. No more disproportionate legs. No more pimples like moon hills sprouting every waking morning.
Compulsion to have the best of lads was waning and – I bet greater maturity had popped up. That was the first time when another real boy really swept me off my feet and sheer ecstasy gripped me. Dick was his name. He was four years older than I and was marketing something somewhere in town; it didn’t matter to know what but only the fact that his smile lit my heart a little more each next time. Before long I was eating love for all my meals of the week. Life became a fairy tale and every absence from Dick set my heart into spins as bad as his presence. Whichever way, I was hooked and nothing really went on without him in my breath. Still a mere school gal but with the finals slow approaching, days of the week were long to end, especially so since Dick wasn't around me over my school hours and his work regimes - and I had to wait long before my heart began to beat again. He showed plain affection for me. He gave me attention more than I thought was necessary. He pampered me like his kid-toy. Dick knew how to treat me right every minute and it set my whole being fully seduced beyond redemption. My eyes saw nowhere else than him…
It was at age eighteen that I got the first kiss, and - I think it started another crazy spin in my life aside from the love-stupefied wench that I had become. So passionate, it was as much as it just about killed me from the sheer joy it brought. Dick’s hot lips nearly turned me into a zombie! How could I have been managing without a kiss before, really? How I thought I had wasted the past teen years not knowing the ravaging pleasure of the kiss of a lover - and the cuddles as company! Everyday after that first one, I swear I needed a kiss; my life became dependent on daily doses that I swear I could cross miles just to get some to pass the night over into morning. It was also at age eighteen that I first did it – oops! Knowing Dick really made me cross borders that for all lasses are valued with deepest chaste. I hasten to pass that point for the sheer pleasure and pain that drives through me at its mere mention.
Things took a bad turn with the coming of Yodit to the fore. She was from Eritrea, a refugee awaiting translocation to Australia. The week she landed her seventeen years into our neighborhood was the very week that my heart began to suffer nose-dive losses. Truly, she was a real something, Yodit. Everything I wasn't, she was. And everything I was, she enhanced. She was one of those women whom God probably spared time to mould as a proof of his understanding of beauty. Yodit was not a common face you met round every next corner of the street. She was tall, hitting six, almost egg-yellow skinned and with a ready and an almost intoxicating grin that ever said come to me boys.
Dick took to Yodit like a bad need, leaving me packed at the love lights traffic -thunderstruck. I had thought of myself indispensable and it nearly destroyed me that Dick could drop me like a real bad habit. Every attempt to reclaim him took him farther and farther from me, and so I gathered every breath I could muster and kept off him. For me that was lesson number one. Never to predict a boy; but to leave him as wild card in the love play. If he’s helplessly cute, don’t take him as seriously, not unless you have reason beyond reasonable doubt. My neighborhood had all the best examples of its emotional pains in couple and mine was but flip of a page in the chapter. Everyone seemed to be dissing the other for another like in soap operas. Sweet affairs were ever standing and ending over time.
Yodit and Dick had their fun and – fortunately or not - it brought forth a baby boy - Babu. She left behind the boy, ten months then, with the father painfully when her time was up and she needed to proceed to Australia as planned. Dick has since got married but to another lass after hopes of uniting with Yodit met stiff Visa problems. Rumor had it that Yodit’s heart moved on right as soon as her aero-plane hit the airport tarmac in Perth. Her new man was the very pilot who flew her into Australia. I don’t blame her. And I don’t blame that fortunate pilot…
Along my way came Ben the egoist. He really knew how to build aerial castles. I almost rented one of them. The only good thing about Ben was tail-on-end humor that he dropped in tons. No minute I spent with him missed laughter and time passed fast. Soon he wanted to marry me but – were we really ready? I wondered. You don’t raise a family on meals of permanent laughter alone. I said he goes for a career first before we discussed anything matrimonial. Then I was only twenty-one, and he, twenty-eight.
My end with Ben came when he got into the grooves of my best friend, Shirley. She was twenty, not as cute as Yodit had been but everything about her carried a true tag of SEXY! Sooner, they eloped and not long after wind came back to the neighborhood that they were married and she was expecting their first baby.
I really was disgusted and irritated that I had seemingly become a proofing ground for boys and girls; but that taught me lesson number two; to barricade my boy against the girls around me. Many times, the innocent and awkward exchanges they make aren’t as innocent but silent calls to scratch itches they mutually feel and grow. Between them are many silent lusty questions and wonders transpiring quietly and hoping for exploration and exploitation, come the right time. You end up the fool in the shadowed love triangle long commenced behind your loyal back. Dick once joked that he could get any real queen, citing that - between any man and woman, it’s just a matter of time before they close in, nothing withstanding as long as pheromones kept moving back and forth.
Richard followed Ben. He was a perfect gentleman; handsome, well groomed and styled. His efforts at romance were drawn from the likes of Harlequin romance and he perfected the art to the last dot, leaving you feeling like a true lady in a soap opera where the perfect lass gets the star lad.
He was so apart from the previous boys in my life and I thought the change was indeed welcome. Richard called when he promised. He never was late for dates and he dressed well, spoke well and all... he pulled back my chair in restaurants and stood when I got up in the middle of a meal if I had to visit the loo. He called it The Ladies’.
Sometimes I thought he was painful, having to play right every step of the way as if life was as straight as a line between some two points. There were times, and they grew, when I itched for the contrary. I wanted more natural surges. I wanted temper flares and hence – cat fights, real squeals. I yearned him to be escape dry humor that was his trademark and to spell things, as they were – spades as S-P-A-D-E-S and not S-P-O-O-N-S. But Richard wasn’t any forthcoming, he was growing more and more English down time and it raked my sanity wildly.
From the depths of my yearnings came the desire for a typical ruff-neck to complete the half that came with Richard. One day, at the French Cultural Center after watching a French play, and - I don’t gather any French at all, I spotted a large hulk of a lad as crowds streamed out. He looked so big, so hard and so blunt, the kind I craved for; his shoulders were wide giving him an easy comparison to a rugby star’s. Our eyes met behind Richard’s back and stuck briefly. My heart missed a beat and began to pound beyond control. His look set my heart aching instantly and on the spot I knew I was going to play Richard, come what may. That big boy has to get me, I decided. I would present myself in every possible way for his taking, I swore within.
Right then, I made an eager excuse and adrenaline drifted me towards the general side of the lad. Almost immediately, he accosted me, leaving behind the skinny gal in his company. It was indeed blunt, more adrenaline shot into my veins to excite me more. That kind of a move on a lass wasn’t common. Contact was brief and after he handed me his card discreetly, the meeting ended. He seemed to know we wanted the same thing. No word was spoken. Only thin smiles transpired but mine was a lot more afraid for normalcy.
The name on the card was Nico. Him and me soon took on a clandestine affair of number twos. He had a steady girl, Paulette, the famished girl he had been with at the theatre. I gathered that they were fond and close though it beat basic logic; the fact that our thing was grew hotter, and seethes beneath exploded exothermically whenever I met him. The stolen moments wasted no minutes on neither preludes nor interludes as we ate each other up like two ravenous ogres out to gobble each other up greedily.
Needles to say, Nico and I became best of friends in every way. Our legal partners took that fact as we gave it, letting us have our pseudo-privacies that soon became part official. I had become an infidel of sort. Love grew and I liked it. Richard wasn’t any skeptical but constantly wondered what a good lass like me would want out of a lad, with lots of rough edges like Nico. I didn’t know but another lesson was in the offing to complement the one from my affair with Ben.
One fateful day, from the shadows I watched Richard and Paulette suddenly go into an unexpected kissing spree. It was meant to be stolen and - I had gathered a strong feeling earlier to believe that Richard and Paulette were having a thing behind my and Nico’s back! I thought to confront Richard but thought better not to. Probably, his inner eye had seen my romantic affiliation to Paulette’s Nico too and he was either paying back or drifting naturally to Paulette to fill the gap that Nico was leaving more gaping with time.
One Sunday, the four of us were lounging together and Nico, being the ruff-neck, laid bare truth of the hidden relationships.
“Let’s not pretend any longer,” he said, “it’s a cross-over.”
Mouths went dry but when he suggested official swaps, bluntly still, sighs of relief were emanated from the rest as signature appends on the suggested deal. That evening, Richard became my official former and as a caution from my past lessons, I decided to tag Nico as far away from Paulette as possible. I did not want to get entangled with Richard anyway. Some friendships had to be lost - and they soon were.
Nico turned out to be the man I wanted to father my future babies. Not that he was any more gorgeous beyond normal but he attracted my inner heat and he woke fires and I knew would never go out if he kept his side of the love bargain. I loved his physique and it was the same that I wanted of my future sons and daughters; big strong body bones, with wide shoulders reflecting abundant good health, surety; and stance of defiance as a sign of aggression for both protection and future fending support.
Unluckily, he died after a year in a horrific car crash on a working trip to Nakuru. I was very devastated! May his soul rest in eternal peace.
Later I did some thin college and got a little job as a receptionist with a rich man’s firm in town. Thank God. That was one step though puny, towards financial independence that I had so much yearned all along, especially after losing Nico. I opened my first bank account and was gearing for more advancement. As a lass with a keen eye on looks I wanted be in a good position to make whatever I wanted of myself, especially since my kind of job needed a good face for the company’s facade. I promised myself a few things; one was to brush boys aside as a sign of continued remembrance and faith to Nico. I also needed to develop a career, to improve on the financial inadequacies that had lit my upbringing; perhaps I would be able sooner to get out of home and start to make it on my very own. How life was so promising to light up in spite of Nico’s passing on!
Let me say a few things about myself, maybe you’ll be able to see well into my personality. My name is Jackie and I am 26. I am a size ten, five foot five but I fancy high soles that add me at least three inches - I know you know that the sum of five-eight makes a lass be really outstanding vertically, she only needs a little more of other qualities and attitude to become a darling angel. My skin is chocolate brown, smooth and my face, round. My cheeks are not boned and when I smile, I hear the best of me comes out; perfect teeth that are white, and deep wells of rippled dimples that are my hallmark. I have full lips that spout. I know my eyes are large, animal dark and intoxicating, coupled with pupils that are even darker and hard to notice, unless I’m out in the clear noon-sun; then they become prying but thank God, I never let my eyes to stay on other people’s any longer that briefly.
My legs are kinda long and trim with soft, full and even calves and are bow-ish, I hated them in teenage, especially coz I had to cross town in a skirt as a school girl through out the terms but I wished I knew better their greater worth. They are outstanding, not my comments! My voice is Tony Braxton’s baritone and I suspect it gives me a commanding aspect; especially since I’m quite a talker from every angle and placement.
My general facade is above par though if I were a car, I wouldn’t be top of the range. I am not the listening type though I believe I have a quick wit to learn the drift of things as they come. Heart-full laughter is my favorite hobby apart from mingling and making friends. I party less since the demise of Nico but it’s okay, I bet some things have to change in life, either with the coming of new age or from lessons of the past.
My present boss has a cousin. A typical male who feels for me but I hate that. I know he thinks that my feelings reciprocate but it’s all about my job. As a receptionist I am paid to smile faithfully and I enjoy that. I give him some too and I notice it turns him more head-over-heels on me. He takes the most of his working hours hovering like a bird with a nest next to my desk. My boss is an ok guy and he chides me about his wanting cousin, Tolbert is the lad’s name. I don’t like that but hope he stops such thoughts. I told Tolbert off softly but he sees it as a challenge and has since doubled up his heat on me. I said that I am seeing someone else and we are steady and it just got him more aroused. My kind were meant for him, his eye said. I hate that, especially since it looked obvious that he sees himself as the better male for whichever woman his heart has lined up for seduction.
Tolbert, on the average is a mere rich kid. Handsome, born and bred in wealthy air, knowing not what shortages mean, financial and social. He drives a convertible BMW and - I once rode in it when he insisted on taking me home one evening when it was late and public transport wasn’t available. I saw the shocked look on his face as he consumed the poor environment of my residence. He suggested moving me to the other side of town. I refused. Affluence will come, I thought, but I’ll be the one to bring it. Boys like Tolbert never gave a lass anything for free; and in a case like mine, I would be at his beck and call.
It bothered me how to reduce Tolbert’s coming on at me but last week brought a chance. I met Noel again, the former estate kid who took my heart into his whirlwind. For once he saw me and waved. His new office is right across us on the street. Nothing about his looks and general attitude is different but when I spoke to him again I gathered that his job was better and his life more set than mine. He drives a Legacy, the same car that makes me go crazy and wishing for my own. It’s just a matter of time, I thought to myself; then we’ll be economic rivals, I told him within.
Noel asked me for a date and I obliged but with a knowing that I had only two intentions to fulfill. To toss Tolbert off my trail. And to learn methods that lead me towards the top. My teenage fire for him has since died, thanks to the tidbits of experiences with boys and bad fates that happened along the way. One day, God willing, one man will come along; a man at par with Nico or more, to take me into his heart, then probably I will think of settling down and starting a family. At 26 and with not much career achievement to be proud of, a lass like me really needs to put jokes far aside for a while; that’s why I’ll begin a management course at the Kenya Institute of Management in a week’s time. That will be but a mere start towards my future. I know it will be bright.