LOVE ME LIKE ART

12

열둘
Zachary A. Choi

MRS ROLT'S REVELATION nonplussed me completely. It felt like I was a speeding car climbing the motorway, about to be rear-ended.

Floored me.

Confused the fuck out of me that all week I've been telling myself that there is no way I had to have heard it right. Imani, being one of the many ones that helped Mr Rolt's storm his two-decade marriage?

The same Imani that I met, weeks ago?

I still remember the contours of her lips. The tantalising draw of her perfume and the brown cascade that framed her eyes, as we sat on the bar stools talking like we weren't two strangers that had just met, an hour or so prior.

Mrs Rolt's reveal pierced through my things in a way I never thought it would. I couldn't say anything tangible, after she dropped that grenade in my lap. I had resigned myself to the idea that I didn't strike a chord with her as well as I initially thought and now... this. This is now on my doorstep and I can't defer delivery to another day or throw it out because the burden isn't on any one's shoulders but mine.

If I take this case on, full tilt, I'm publicising secrets that span more than a decade. Secrets that could be the difference between Mrs Rolt getting what she deserves out of that marriage, after putting all of her dreams on hold for his.

And not.

Maybe, it is a good thing that Imani remains this stranger in my head.

"I can't believe I am out again with you man." Tobenna barbs at us, as he drives a gust of smoke out of his nose. He settles himself with a glass of Jack 'n coke carved in his other hand. He is carping at us, like he is a man without any agency when he brought his own two feet here.

"We didn't put a gun to your head, nigga." My friend, Temidare Lawal chides back. "Your respite lasted what? 2 days, g?" Out of the five of us, he is the one with loose lips. However, his loose lips doesn't thread back to his job as a Strategic Consultant in a Big 4 financial firm.

"Cus you man run bare chat on the GC. Always suffocating the fuck out of my mentions." Tobenna throws out an explanation, in an attempt to make it stick. And tries to make us believe that he is here outside his own volition.

He might believe that but we certainly don't.

"Hear my man?" Tem's facial features screw in a jovial grimace, "You're talking like you don't know how to mute us. It's WhatsApp, g. Moving like a real Unc."

This elicites a chorus of laughter of Hamza, Tino and I. "Whatever." Tobenna shrugs, kissing his teeth.

"Why you pressed? It ain't even like you had another motive to go to, akh." Tinotenda Abasi throws out a grin, as smoke pours out of his mouth.

"I would've been at home, fool."

"Stroking one out on your ones? Bet." Tino sags into the corner seat that is plush with cushions and takes another blow. He then palms over the pipe to me. Smoke wisps around me as I throw my head back in a tipsy abandon.

"Why? When I can get your mums to do it, broski?"

Tino shuttles into a jesting laugh as he takes a sip of his tart rum. "She don't want your shrivelled dick."

"She didn't say that last time when I was bending her over."

"You always take it too far, g. Always." The rubber from his pipe cruises against his lips as Hamza Amin postures as honorary peacemaker.

"He goes low, I go lower akh."

We all met at University of Birmingham, during first year more than a decade ago. Tobenna and I were both enrolled on the same law programme, Hamza, Tem and Tino did the accounting equivalent and we've been friends since. We have seen the highs together—Hamza's nikkah to Farah, the birth of Tino's son, Simba and the lows; Tem losing his mum to the awful beast that is cancer.