At long last Tetsola announced his duty ended and exited the office. Alone with the laptop, Furo opened a browser and signed into his Yahoo mailbox. It was over two weeks since he’d last been online, and though he suspected — or, rather, knew — what awaited him there, he still had to see for himself that he was right. He was, of course: there was indeed something to see: a digital influx of panic and grief. His mailbox had three hundred and seventeen unread emails, many of them newsletters from the job-listing websites he was subscribed to; but he noted one email from his mother, several from his father and his sister, and countless Facebook and Twitter notifications from friends, relatives, and total strangers. He was tempted to dip into all these messages addressed to someone he no longer was, but he realised the cruel folly of that action, as already he could feel his resolve crumbling under the weight of the subject line of his mother’s email, sent on 22 June, which read: ‘MY SON WHERE ARE YOU???’ Furo’s struggle with himself was rife with sighs, and in the end, by the simple trick of averting his eyes from the screaming caps, the hook-like question marks, the words fatted on desperation, he succeeded in withstanding the Pandora pull of his mailbox. He did not succumb to his mother’s email nor to any of the others, not a single one. Instead, upon returning his gaze to the screen, he opened the mailbox settings, scrolled down until he found the option he sought, and deleted his account.
Logging into Facebook, he found the message icon red with alerts. As for the friend requests, they ran into hundreds. His wall was taken over by postings about his disappearance, ladders of comments in unreadable net lingo, sunny emoticons depicting horror, and video clips of green pastures and floating clouds set to cantatas. Also photos. It seemed every group photo he had ever appeared in was tagged on to his wall. By long-forgotten relatives, unrecognisable childhood playmates, and unknown people whose names he found impossible to pronounce. Chinese names with their Xs, Russian names spelled in Cyrillic; and the trendy idiocy of misspelled Nigerian names, those Yehmeesees and Kaylaychees; and also names that seemed like noms de guerre for child stalkers. It was alarming: the scale of the uproar, the scope of his celebrity. All this time the whole of Facebook was searching for him and yet he had no idea, he hadn’t heard a thing.
Getting off Facebook was a hassle, as the deactivation process was so well hidden that he was forced to Google it and follow the instructions he found in a Vice article. Facebook defeated, he turned his avenging fury on the newest and least utilised of his online platforms, his Twitter account. He signed in to find a string of mentions from @pweetychic_tk, whom he suspected was his sister and thus didn’t read her tweets before deleting the account. Then he picked up the notepad sheet on which Tetsola had scribbled ‘frank.whyte@gmail.com’ and ‘habanigeria789’, his official email address and his temporary password. He logged into the brand-new mailbox and changed his password without trouble, then read his first email, a welcome from Gmail. He was busy with customising the look of the mailbox when he heard from down the hallway the approach of feet, and sure enough, the footsteps stopped at his door. ‘Come in,’ he said in response to four loud knocks, made with a fist.
He recognised the shoes first. The pointed toes, the age-softened oxblood leather, the carelessly knotted laces. Then the face with its prominent cheekbones and that stuck fruit of an Adam’s apple. It was the man he had met on the day of his interview, the one who spat as he spoke, whose brother was married to a white woman in Romania. Or was it Poland?
‘You!’ they burst out together, their gazes meeting across the room. The man broke the look as he turned to close the door, and then, covering the distance to the desk with quick strides, he said with a grin, ‘Didn’t I say you would get the job! So you are my new oga?’
‘You work here?’
‘Yes now, I’m the driver. MD has told me I will be driving you from today.’
And all this time he had assumed that the man was a job seeker whose interview with Obata hadn’t gone well. Now it made sense, the help the man had offered that day. It was also apparent that Obata was a pain not only to him.
He said to the man, ‘So you’re my driver?’
‘Yes o,’ the man replied. ‘See how life is.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Victor Ikhide. But all my friends are calling me Headstrong.’
‘I won’t even ask why they call you that,’ Furo said with a snort of amusement. ‘Ehen, before I forget, now that you’re here—’ He rose from his seat, crossed to the window, and pried open the blind. ‘Come and see. I want to ask you something.’ When Headstrong joined him, he tapped the glass in the direction of the parked cars. ‘Which of those cars is mine?’ he asked, and Headstrong replied, ‘It’s the First Lady.’
The First Lady was a 1989 Toyota Corolla, this one ashcoloured, sagging with age and bruised around the edges, the roof hatch puttied shut. The model, which was popular in the late nineties, was considered a woman’s car, hence the nickname given it by Nigerian mechanics. Of all the cars in the compound, the First Lady was the one Furo least wanted — and now, for the first time, he thought that perhaps Syreeta was right. He deserved better.
Headstrong sensed the disappointment in Furo’s silence, but he misinterpreted it in the best light. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s a strong car, it won’t break down. I’m the one that is servicing all the company cars. The engine of that one is still good. Where do you live?’
‘Lekki,’ Furo muttered, ‘behind The Palms.’
‘Ah, I see! No wonder MD assigned me to be driving you. I live near that side, in Osapa London. It’s a long drive to Lekki, I won’t lie, but the car can handle it. Cool your mind, oyibo!’
Furo turned away from the window. ‘I have to get back to work. I guess I’ll see you at five.’ He walked to his desk but remained standing until Headstrong had opened the door, and then he called out, ‘One more thing. My name is Frank. Don’t call me oyibo.’
‘Yes o, Oga Frank,’ Headstrong said, and laughed as he slammed the door.
The rest of the morning passed in a loop of the new familiar. Knocks on his door, getting-to-know-you chats with Mallam Ahmed (the gatekeeper-cum-storekeeper-qua-handyman) and Iquo (who gushed about his office and special status for so long it became obvious they would never be friendly), and a quick visit from the taciturn Obata, who brought along a camera to take a photo for filing purposes; then the hours he spent alone, pacing the square of the room and staring out the window, through which he witnessed the arrival of the Haba! delivery van, this followed by another knock on the door and the entry of the second driver, Kayode. He was a socks-and-necktie man, a softer-spoken fellow than Headstrong; and no, he had no nickname, he said with a surprised look when Furo enquired. After Kayode left, Furo returned to his desk, where the only work waiting was the task he had set himself to, of browsing the internet in search of book-marketing tips from online experts whose free advice seemed one way or the other to involve the Amazon website. He was still on his laptop at sometime past midday when Tosin knocked on his door and invited him to lunch, but he declined, he wasn’t hungry, he thanked her for asking, and when she turned to leave, he snuck a look at her narrow waist, her flared hips, her musical sway, and said to himself what a great place Haba! was, such beautiful people, so warm, so welcoming. He looked forward to knowing Tosin better.