Silhouette

XXXVII

Ola feels like a wreck.

She stands before her mirror, she hadn’t switched off the AC the previous day and now her bedroom is freezing cold. She looks at herself in the mirror, her eyes are red and swollen, her hair is in disarray.

She peels off her clothes and watches them pool at her feet. She feels languid and slow, like she’s swimming in oil.

She peers at her neck, at the red bands circling from collarbone to jaw. She remembers the snarl on Dave’s lips, his eyes empty and cold. She stifles a cry and raises her hands to her lips as her eyes tear up. Her hands are trembling. She knows she’ll never get that image out of her head. Ever.

Her trembling hands reminds her of when she’d visited her uncle’s farm a year ago. Her uncle, Philip, had been busy with his herd of rams when she’d arrived. He was numbering their furs with a red marker and the whole herd had slowly sidled up to him, rubbing their heads against his back and legs, as if they were old friends.

Ola had been aghast watching those animals with outrageously sharp and curved horns. But Philip had finished his work unscathed, the rams had even bleated as he left the pen, as if calling him back to stay some more.
“Aren’t you afraid of those horns?” she’d asked him.

Philip who wasn’t much of a talker had shrugged and smiled. “They’re harmless,” he’d said. “Most of the time.”  One of his workers then brought a rabbit which had somehow escaped its hutch. The rabbit was in a black plastic bucket. It was a baby, tiny.

Philip had grunted. “You can keep it.”
Ola had grinned. She reached into the bucket to lift the rabbit but it bit her finger. She’d considered the baby rabbit, cowering and terrified in its prison. Ola had taken the rabbit home, and set it free in a small enclosure in her garden, but the rabbit wouldn’t come out. It would only bring its nose out, twitching away at the edge.

The rabbit ate nothing she’d given it. All through the night and into the next day it remained in the hutch. Trembling, twitching and cowering. Terror stricken. Ola had taken the rabbit back to Philip the third day.

Now she gazes at herself in the mirror, she is trembling all over. She feels like the rabbit. It is such a depressing thought that she falls to her knees and prostrates, curls into a fetal position.

Ola is terrified of the man she had loved. The man she loves. She allows the tears to fall.

Ten minutes later, she hears three knocks on the door. She knows it is Denis, he always knocks thrice. She raises her head up, glances at the clock on the wall, it is a minute past eight.

She wraps herself in her towel, goes to the door. She takes a deep breath and clears her throat.
“Denis,” she says. “I’ll be out in twenty.”

“Yes Ma,” says Denis. Ola knows he must have saluted though they can’t see each other.

***

Thomas adjusts the ID clipped to his shirt. He takes a deep breath and turns to Charles. “I’m ready,” he says.”

Thomas gets down the car, he follows Charles to the doors of Manila Ville; the biggest real estate body in the city of Lagos. The lobby is cool, air-conditioned. There is a small crowd of people in the lobby, all listening to a man in a navy blue suit. The man holds bundles of pamphlets in his hands, his face is lively, his expression is charismatic. A marketer who is good at his job.

Charles goes to the receptionist’s desk. Thomas is by his left, he clears his throat. The receptionist stares at the both of them with a wide smile. “Hello,” she says. “What can I do for you?”