‘That’s the cheapest you can find it anywhere in Lagos.’
He had no reason to doubt this claim. And what did it matter if it was bogus, he was doing his job. He was sure there was some jargon from Arinze to apply as appropriate, but he was too busy in the trenches to remember principles. Besides, he had caught the woman stealing glances at him. Lie or no lie, the sale was looking like his to make. When Furo spoke again, his tone was soft with coaxing. ‘I’m sure your decision won’t be influenced by price,’ he said to the woman, and flicked his eyes over the front of her blouse. ‘From your sense of style, anyone can see that you recognise quality.’
The woman took the 1001 Ways as well as four other books, and while she was away in her office fetching the money, Furo convinced her male colleague to buy The 7 Habits and talked the receptionist into placing orders for two books to be delivered at the month’s end. The other woman returned with cash and three colleagues, all female, and after Furo asked the new women for their names, before he distracted them with the play of his eyes as he spun his salesman yarn, he told Yemisi and Felicia and Enoch — the woman and the receptionist and the man — to spread the word of his presence to the rest of the TASERS staff, all forty-something of them. For that was his bright idea, his face-saving stratagem: to sell off the sample books and collect individual orders. To show everyone and their mother that his long years of unemployment had been a wrongful imprisonment, that he goddamn well deserved his freedom at Haba! and that Arinze, in granting him parole to prove himself, had indeed made the right judgement.
Through the open French windows, sunlight breezed into Arinze’s office and threw wavering shadows across the glass desk, rainbow-coloured patterns that drew Furo’s eyes as he narrated all that had happened on his visit to TASERS. Arinze listened without speaking until the end of the report, at which point he stated in commendation: ‘That was quick thinking.’ After accepting the sales cash and receipt duplicates from Furo, he instructed him to hand over the pending orders to Zainab, the head of sales, for follow up. Replying he would do so immediately, Furo rose from the desk and walked to the door, then turned around when Arinze said in a brooding tone, ‘So Ernest tried to poach you?’ Furo stood silent as he had nothing more to say on that topic, which seemed to be a touchy one for Arinze, who confirmed this by now saying: ‘And that’s supposed to be a friend. We learn every day.’
Upon entering the sales office and finding it empty, Furo deposited the pile of order forms on Zainab’s desk and left her a note explaining their source, then made his exit. As he pulled the door closed, Tosin appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Hey, Frank, wait!’ she called out. ‘It’s you I’m coming to see.’ Though her stride was hurried, the relaxed swinging of her arms assured Furo there was nothing to worry about. A laptop bag dangled from her shoulder on its too-long strap and bumped against her thigh with each step she took. She was smiling as she reached him and said, ‘It’s lunchtime.’ Then she waited, her silence loaded. Her tacit invitation reminded Furo he hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning, because Syreeta was still sleeping as he prepared for work. He also remembered that it was Tuesday, Bola’s day. Syreeta would be out when he got home. There would be no dinner unless he cooked it.
‘Lunch sounds good,’ Furo responded. Sweeping his arm in the direction of the staircase, he said, ‘After you.’ Instead of leading the way, Tosin unslung the laptop bag and held it to him. ‘I saw you didn’t have a bag to carry your laptop yesterday. I don’t need this, you can use it,’ she said. Furo stared at her; he made no move to accept the gift. ‘If you want it,’ she added in a voice that cracked under the weight of being casual, and the bag, the hand that held the bag, trembled in front of Furo. He reached out and took the bag.
‘This is nice of you,’ he said, his voice heavy with feeling. ‘I’m really grateful.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Tosin replied in a bright voice, and spinning around, she skipped forwards. Furo fell in step beside her, and when he glanced at her radiant face, he was struck by the sensation that he was reliving a happy memory.
They went to a fast food restaurant, Sweet Sensation, where Tosin told him about herself and he asked her about Obata; they sat alone at a window table and chatted until the jostle at the food counter was a little less hectic than it had been on their arrival; she asked him how he liked Arinze and he told her very much; they rose together from the table and walked side by side to the food counter to place their orders, his for that staple of local fast food menus, jollof rice and fried chicken, hers for that precursor of farting jokes, beans and boiled eggs. It wasn’t so much that she favoured beans than that she had grown tired of eating the same fare every day, rice and rice and rice, whether jollof or fried or just plain white. She told him this on Wednesday after she ordered beans again at another fast food restaurant, and when Furo asked if there was any buka around where they could eat eba and soup, she said there was. She admitted she had avoided leading him to such places because she wasn’t sure if he ate such food, and she promised to take him there the following day. On Thursday Furo arrived back at the office from his sales excursions two hours later than Haba! lunchtime, and halting at the reception desk, he started to apologise to Tosin for missing their buka appointment, but she told him there was no need to, she hadn’t been to lunch yet, she had waited for him. At this disclosure, Furo hurried upstairs to drop off his laptop bag and sample books, and coming back down, he found Tosin ready to go.
They were across the road from the buka before Furo recognised it as the place he had visited all that time ago, the roadside buka where he had eaten on the day of his Haba! interview. The same curtained shed where a fight had broken out between the food seller and her customer, the same food-is-ready spot where he hadn’t paid for his meal. Hadn’t yet paid, and hadn’t paid only because the fight had given him no chance, but now, at the first chance he got, he had come back to pay — that would be his story for the meat-gifting food seller with the red hair. In actual truth, if he had known beforehand that this would be where they were headed, he might have found a reason for not coming along, but now that he was here, it was the right place to be. Holding that thought in his mind, the karmic rightness of his unintended actions, he followed Tosin across the busy road and through the dusty curtains of the buka.
The buka was vacant except for the food seller, who now had blue hair. A bright blue hairpiece with silver highlights, it was glued along her hairline, smooth as crow feathers across her scalp, the ends gathered into pigtails that rode her shoulders. Dancehall queen-coloured, Swiss milkmaid-styled. Despite the new hair, it was the same woman who jumped up from her bar stool with an exclamation of recognition. Of course she remembered him. She was very sorry for what happened the last time, no mind that idiot. No, no, no worry, forget the money, forgive the past. These sentiments were gushed out after Furo approached her with banknotes clutched in his outstretched hand and said, ‘I was here some weeks back. I couldn’t pay that day because of the trouble with that man, the one who insulted you. I just remembered. Here’s your money.’
Tosin, too, wasn’t a stranger to Mercy’s buka. After her bewilderment was dispelled by Furo’s explanation, she greeted the food seller by name, then complimented her on her hairpiece, and asked after Patience, her eldest daughter, who sometimes assisted her mother in manning the establishment, but did so less these days as she had entered university, a fact her mother offered in a tone so full of pride that Furo even smiled. Pleasantries dispensed with, Tosin asked for oha soup with pounded yam, a meal which Furo, upon her recommendation, joined her in ordering, to Mercy’s expressed delight. And then, while the food seller busied herself in dishing out the food, Tosin leaned across the bench towards Furo, closer than they had been in three days of lunching together, near enough for her woman smell to tickle the hairs in his nostrils, and placing her hand on his knee, she said in a voice husky with admiration: ‘You’re so real. I like that. I like you.’