Nwachinemere

   "Nwachinemere!" He cried

     Dimka’s voice reflected the bottles of Guinness extra stout he had French kissed until he coaxed the last drops out, his eyes barely focussed on the young man he was calling, the song of alcohol in his blood was affecting his senses. The other men in the bar echoed his call as they welcomed him to the revelry that can only be found in a Nigerian beer parlour.

   He had been known as NwaChinemere since he was four years old, he’d even forgotten what he was called before then and it hadn’t occurred to him to ask for his birth name. His parents would have considered his request to know his birth name rather strange because they had forgotten his name due to the circumstances that led to his re-christening.

  He was a little boy with a now forgotten name until he survived a horrid accident, he was the sole survivor of the wreckage of a lorry that had been transporting more than a hundred people. He’d been abducted by his stepmother’s sister who’d planned to sell him to trans Saharan slave traders. It was a bizarre plot to make his mother ”run mad” with the disappearance of her only child after ten years of barrenness. His father’s friend Ozurumba was one of the first to the get to the scene of the accident and he recognized the little boy who’d escaped unscathed from the inferno, he took him home to his parents.

    His stepmother heard of his return and fainted. When she came to consciousness, she mumbled a garbled account of her nefarious plot, she was driven out of the house and ostracised by the community, she died four years later in a strange land and was buried by the council. Everyone was thankful that Ozurumba was travelling to see his brother who lived in the North on that particular day, no one was willing to take the mental journey down the ramifications of the might have beens.

    People came from far and wide to see the wonder boy who’d survived all the odds stacked against him, they brought gifts and money. It was a pilgrimage of sorts for the people in the environs, the Christians and animists all came to see him and told tales of how special he was when they returned to their homes and so his fame grew.

   He couldn’t live up to the weighty expectations of his people, everyone wanted him to be something different. His father wanted his son to become a trader, his mother wanted to be “Mama father”. Like Hannah, she’d had other children after NwaChi- as she called him. His siblings just wanted him to be rich and famous and to them that meant he had to become a footballer.

 Unfortunately he had neither the business sense to become a trader, the calling to priesthood or the talent for football, all he had was a belief that the world owed him everything. He found his way to Lagos and made a living operating a lotto stand as an agent for “Baba Ijebu”.

   His parents were disappointed that he didn’t attain their aspirations or even follow the conventional educational path as his mates had done, it wasn’t like they’d been able to afford to send him to a tertiary institution. His Lagos hustle paid the bills at home and that deadened the taste of their unfulfilled desires.

  He was sitting in his kiosk when she drove by, her car attracted his attention and he craned his neck to see the beast on wheels. The driver was driving the car too slowly even for their pothole ridden road and she brought the car to a stop a scant twenty metres away from the kiosk. 

  She came out and kicked her front left tire, he'd already seen that the tire was flat and she was wearing a white trouser gown that his last girlfriend had called a jumpsuit. 

 Moved by her beauty and the opportunity to touch one of his dream cars, he told his assistant to man the kiosk and he went to help her.

 She didn't have a car jack and he had to get one from the mechanic workshop down the road. In a few minutes he exchangedthe defective tire for the spare tire which had obviously never touched the ground before. When he got back from returning the jack, he found her sitting on the bench in front of Iya Kasali's shop and drinking a coke as she tapped a shapely foot.

  She invited him to sit beside her and asked Iya Kasali to get him a drink. The woman was smiling as she brought the drink and his jaw fell open from shock, She was the most irritable, cranky and prickly woman he'd ever met. He refused the drink, the woman's smiles had chilled him to his marrows.

 "My name is Bola Sanchez" she said with a smile, "What's yours?" She asked him.

 "Nwachinemere", he replied. "You must have be of Brazillian descent to bear Sanchez, right?" He asked and she simply nodded

 As she sipped her drink, they talked about a number of things and he found himself relaxing and reveling in her company. She made him laugh and her wit was lightning fast and razor sharp. He knew he wanted to get to know her.

 "I like you", he told her. "I'd like us to be friends and see where this leads.

 She was silent for a long time he got nervous.

 "Please say something" he begged, "say anything at all"

She began to laugh and snort. She asked him in between bouts of laughter if he was serious about what he was saying. His expanding frown was her answer.

    Kosisochukwu was with her younger sister when she walked past them, her curiousity shone in her liquid brown eyes. She was an eighteen year old secondary school leaver who was awaiting her UME result. She was above medium height but wasn't tall enough to be considered tall, her legs always reminded him of pillars due to their thickness and straightness. Today she wore a mini skirt that showcased her legs and her fledgling buttocks, he could see the tiny stretch marks that seemed like mini tiger stripes on her legs. 

 He always shuddered when he saw her stretch marks. It reminded him that though she was slim but lush now and was one of the most beautiful girls in the neighbourhood, her ultimate destiny was to be an obese christian mother. He'd seen it happen too many times to be wrong about it.

  Who's the girl with the afro punk?" she asked "She's very into you, but I don't think you've noticed"

 "Her name is Kosisochukwu and she's my friend's niece, I'm like an uncle to her" he said through gritted teeth. "If you don't want to accept my offer, tell me and stop looking for excuses".

 She looked at him and told him there was no way she could "be his friend and see where this leads" because she was the daughter of a prominent politician and he was a classless young man. 

 They were oil and water she said, trying to mix them was a waste of time. With those words, she got into her car and zoomed off with a dazed man in her wake.

  He went to his kiosk and lay on the makeshift bed he'd installed for those mornings when business was slow. he'd only planned to lie for a few minutes but he woke up four hours later to see his assistant looking at him with worry etched on his face. 

 "lock up and keep the money in the usual place" he told him as he took a sachet of water to wash his face and rinse his mouth. When he was done with his toilette, he decided to numb his wounded pride with alcohol.

  He walked into the bar with only one thing on his mind- making love to several bottles of Star lager. He heard his name echoed in several corners of the bar but he refused to meet their eyes, he didn’t have it in him to be wear the toga of NwaChinemere- the human magnet. He scowled at them and they got the message, he made his way to the darkest part of the bar and swung himself on the unsteady bench.

 Madam Goodtime decided to serve him herself, she swung her humongous buttocks encased in a filmy gown that had all the men in the bar transfixed as she sashayed to see her favourite customer. He smiled a little as he saw her, they’d had a short affair when he first came to Lagos and they’d stayed friends.

 “Which kind beer you want” she asked, “On the house” she said with a smirk

Many of her customers would have slapped anyone who’d told them Madam G had said the magic words “On the house”, she was renowned for her love of money and had always told her customers she’d only give them free drinks if they were on fire.

 “For real?” he asked with an answering smirk.

 She suddenly felt very old and worn out, and she told him he’d infected her with his bad mood. He told her he wanted four bottles of star and a pack of cigarettes.

 Her accompanying caught the attention of the drinkers who weren’t already focused on them.

“You know say you no dey smoke cigar” she said as she rose from the bench. “But I go give you pepper soup to take hold your side this evening, everything na on the house”

 “If I say na you I want, na still on the house?” he demanded petulantly.  His eyes roved over her body in the intimate fashion of a lover and the haughty confidence of a man who considered himself irresistible to his prey.

 She ignored him and went to get his order. As she set it down, she told him to get a woman closer to his age to quell his lust in. He smiled at her words as he poured the first beer into the stainless steel cup she’d provided. He believed that stainless steel cups gave beer a mature taste and would increase his drunkenness threshold.

  He remembered how Bola had called him classless, how he’d felt foolish because of her words but couldn’t say anything because her beauty and poise had tied his tongue. He nursed his beer and searched his heart for the bitterness he had felt earlier, he was surprised to find it gone.

 He felt a little unsteady when he finished his last Star bottle but he knew he could still take himself home, by that time the crowd at the bar had lessened considerably and he only had to slap three backs as he left the bar. He decided to take the longer route home as he ruminated on his thirty years on earth and all the women who’d crossed his path, he wasn’t a Lothario but he’d had his fair share of sexual encounters. He decided he’d hang up his female chasing boots once and for all.

  He was grabbed by the softest hands he’d felt in a while and was shocked to see Kosiso’s face attached to the hands.

 “I love you” she said softly,

 “always” she insisted as she kissed his back.

 “Kosi, you’re too young for me” he replied with consternation. If Bola hadn’t mentioned it in the morning, he wouldn’t have had a clue of what her feelings for him were. He felt the loosening of her grip and immediately knew he’d said the wrong thing.

 “I’m at least twelve years older than you” he pleaded, “in a few years, you wouldn’t even remember that I exlst”

 She left him and went to cry at the dead streetlight post, the street was dark because of the prevailing petrol scarcity and the residents hadn’t paid their monthly bribe to NEPA. He went to her and hugged her, he promised that if they were both single in five years and she still felt the same way then they’d get married. She sobbed her agreement and ran home like the hounds of hell were after her.

 He felt the vibration of his phone and he looked at the call display to find an unfamiliar number, he picked to tell the person to call him back the next day but the caller’s words arrested him.

“It’s Bola” she cooed, “I was impressed by the way you handled yourself today. You showed me courage and self-confidence, two things I find lacking in you men of our generation. If your offer is still open, then I’d like to take it”

 For the first time in his life, he lost his voice. He barely managed to croak “OK” and she laughed and told him she’d call back the next morning.

 In a dazed fog he walked the remaining distance to his house.

“Nwashinemere”, his neighbour Baba Funke called him as he entered the compound. “Come help me carry this fridge outside so that I go fit put am for my truck, I dey commot early tomorrow morning” he said.

 As they carried the fridge with Lekan his son guiding them with a flashlight, he turned to him and said “Mr Nwashinemere, wetin your name mean sef?”

 “It means he who God works for” was his reply

 “The name fine gan” the older man mused, “I go name my next pikin that name”

 “Oga, you still dey born another one after this battalion wey you get here” NwaChi asked with shock lacing his voice

“Na im make me wan give am that name, I need pikin wey God go dey work for” they all laughed as they put the fridge in the truck, locked it and went inside.

 As he inserted his key into the padlock of his front door, he realised that he hadn't given Bola his number.