Blackass (22 page)

Furo was ushered into an office whose every surface seemed laden with plaques and trophies, the walls covered with framed certificates and photographs of staff receiving framed certificates. Daylight filtered through the blue window screens and gave the room the atmosphere of a stained-glass chapel. The air was thick with the smell of dusty rug. ‘Take a seat,’ the woman whispered before withdrawing. An enormous man in white shirtsleeves, a red bow tie, and yellow-polka-dot braces was hunkered down behind the desk facing the door. When Furo halted at the desk, the man glanced up from his iMac screen and nodded at him to sit before returning his gaze to the playing video, which sounded like a sports car advert, a husky male voice waxing beatific about curves and balance. After the video reached its end, the man turned his cold eyes on Furo and said, ‘So Abu sent you.’ Furo recognised his voice from the video.

‘Yes – yes – good morning – sir,’ Furo replied with a stammer. He drew a calming breath, and reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a business card, then stood up from the chair and leaned over the desk with the card extended. But Umukoro refused the card with a sharp shake of his head, and then gestured at him to sit back down. ‘I know why you’re here,’ he said. ‘Start talking.’

Furo’s thoughts scattered in all directions. His improvised strategy was based on the sample books. He had nothing to say until the carton was brought in. As he tried to collect his thoughts, he began recalling all the things he should have done. He should have been less eager to avoid the hostility that brimmed in Headstrong’s manner. He should have come up the stairs with him. He should have stopped him from going back downstairs. He should have ignored that bad-luck receptionist. He should have phoned Headstrong to come up again and do the carrying. He should have insisted on carrying the carton himself. Or at least picked out some books – he should have thought of that before. And now this fatty bum-bum was waiting for him to sell books he should already have read, books he knew nothing about except – the memo sheets!

He shouldn’t have forgotten them in the car.

Umukoro’s voice stabbed the air. ‘How long have you worked for Abu?’ In a feeble tone, Furo responded, ‘I started yesterday,’ and Umukoro’s lips closed in a smile that turned his face sinister. At that instant Furo knew he had squandered any chance of succeeding where Arinze failed. Thus his surprise when Umukoro said, ‘I want to discuss something else, but first, let me tell you, Abu has come here many times to sell his books. The last time he came, I told him I would buy some books the next time he dropped by. But you’re not Abu.’

Sitting up to the pull of his ears, Furo spoke earnestly, ‘I’m his representative, sir.’ Whatever else he would have said was forsaken when three soft knocks sounded on the door, which then swung open to reveal the receptionist. She stepped inside and held the door open for the porter who had been playing draughts in the lobby. He shambled in bearing the carton and set it down by Furo’s chair. After the door closed behind them, Furo tried again. ‘Let me show you the books I brought. I’m sure you’ll like them. Mr Arinze selected them himself.’ He bent over the carton and took out four books, two in each hand, then spread them on the table. Bending down again, he reached for
The 7 Habits.
‘This book changed my life,’ he said with an abashed grin as he straightened up. ‘I don’t know if you’ve read it yet—’

‘Save your breath,’ Umukoro said brusquely.

Furo’s disappointment showed on his face. And yet, as he tossed
The 7 Habits
into the carton, he wondered what Umukoro wanted to talk about.

‘You know my business is advertising.’ Umukoro stared at Furo until Furo kenned he was awaiting acknowledgement. ‘I work mostly with multinationals,’ he continued after Furo nodded, ‘and most of their local branches are headed by foreigners. You white men like to do business with your kind.’ He dropped his gaze to the books on the table and a spasm of distaste curdled his face. ‘How much is Abu paying you? A hundred thousand per month? One fifty? I’ll double that. And I guarantee you’ll learn more about marketing than a bookseller can teach.’ He smiled his sinister face again. ‘Are you interested?’

‘Excuse me?’ Furo said.

‘I want you to work for me.’

Furo’s first instinct was to refuse. He was tempted by the money on offer – with three hundred thousand naira he could do anything, go anywhere, be anybody – and yet he knew he couldn’t bear to work under Umukoro’s weight. The man looked like a butcher and sounded like a moneylender. He gave off an aura of heartfelt arrogance and easygoing nastiness. Moreover, he wasn’t the sort that Furo could ever call Ernest. After one day of working at Haba!, Furo already felt needed there; and he trusted Arinze’s intentions. Across the desk, in those unblinking eyes that were narrowed by their fleshy pouches, in that huge belly of a man who had swallowed his ego, Furo sensed that Umukoro saw him as no more essential than cake icing. He wanted but didn’t need him, and if ever he felt the need, he would throw him over with the same ease that he now offered to take him up. Syreeta was right, he deserved better. But this wasn’t it.

Furo spoke. ‘Thank you for the offer. Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.’

‘No you won’t,’ Umukoro said. By the steady creaking of his chair and the quivering of his papal dewlaps, Furo guessed Umukoro was swinging his knees. The creaking stopped, his face froze over with indifference, and raising his hands to his computer keypad, he started typing as he said to Furo: ‘You’ve wasted enough of my time. Show yourself out.’

Furo arrived in the reception to find the receptionist engaged in a conversation with a man and a woman, both fashionably dressed, the man wearing a double-breasted suit of blue worsted, the woman a pearl-grey silk blouse and a pleated wool skirt. The ease of their postures, the relaxed cadences of their voices, marked them out as employees. Their voices dropped off as Furo approached the counter, and when he set down the carton to catch his breath, the woman asked the receptionist, ‘Are these the books?’ The receptionist said yes, after which the woman threw Furo a sideways glance before asking, ‘Can I see them?’ Without a word, Furo peeled open the flaps and stepped away from the carton. The woman reached in and pulled out
1001 Ways to Take Initiative at Work.
‘I haven’t read this one,’ she said to Furo. ‘Is it any good?’

‘Yes,’ Furo replied, and edging forwards, he stuck his hand into the carton and took out
The 7 Habits.
‘I also recommend this one,’ he said, and held it out.

‘Isn’t that Stephen Covey? said the woman as she accepted the book. ‘I read it a long time ago. I’ve read most of his books.’ Her words drew the attention of her male colleague, who came up behind her and peeked over her shoulder. She passed the Covey to him, and then waved the
1001 Ways
at Furo. ‘How much is this?’

The question caught Furo unawares. His self-esteem was scalded from his futile meeting with Umukoro, and though he’d been willing to play along with the woman’s interest, he hadn’t expected the game to end in serious talk. At the mention of money, he now felt the oil slick of misgiving as he realised that the book prices were on the memo sheets in the car. He’d seen the prices, and had even checked to confirm that they were given for all twelve titles, but he hadn’t memorised the figures, hadn’t thought he needed to. His newness on the job was showing up in too many ways, and his frustration at this proof of his ordinariness, his annoyance with himself for committing the same apprenticeship errors as anyone, nagged at his faith in his innate ability to think himself out of a straitjacket. While he struggled to keep his face from betraying his confusion (over the price) and dejection (from his identity crisis) to the woman awaiting her answer, his mind, that Houdini, rose to the rescue, as he remembered that he had seen the price of
The 7 Habits
scrawled in pencil in the top right corner of the title page. He was sure he had, he knew he had, it looked like a price, and he hoped the same had been done for all the books, as he couldn’t risk losing this opening by going downstairs for the memo sheets. And so he said to the woman with a confidence he didn’t feel, ‘The price is on the first page.’ She opened the book, stared at the page for suspenseful seconds, and when she said, ‘One five, that’s not too bad,’ Furo beamed a super-ego smile before proclaiming:

‘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.