Doing Dangerously Well (28 page)

“Stop calling me Babs.”

“BamBam. And do you know how I know this?”

Barbara sighed.

“Because I looked it up. And do you know why I looked it up?”

Barbara pulled down her mirror to check her eyebrows.

He flipped the mirror back up. “Because I looked up Nigeria.” He leaned forward into her face. “And do you know why, Babu?” He suppressed a crooked smile filled with pride. “Because I wanted to see where you were going.” He sat back, satisfied. “It was important to me, that’s all.”

She exploded, honking at a driver. “Ah-ah! You want see pepper today-now?” Then she sat back, shaking her head in disbelief. “They’re driving slow-slow,” she said to Astro. “A bird that flies too slowly will drop out of the sky.”

“Pardon?”

“You need speed to fly-now, my friend.”

“I need some speed to get me through this trip, man.” Astro ostentatiously opened his own
West Africa Magazine.
“Hey! Look at this! Three ministers have been killed in a yachting accident. Man, those yachts. Death traps.”

“Just shows you where you get when you put your trust in God.”

“Not church ministers, Bang-Bang. Parliamentary. In Nigeria. People close to Kolo.”

“Ah-ah! Wetin? What kind of juju is on that man’s head-oh?”

After driving past hills that now seemed too rich, too green and too self-satisfied, she swerved into the crescent driveway of her parents’ house.

“Oh, Babu!” Astro peered through the window like a child at a fair. “Look at this place! Bra-Bra, you’re always so full of surprises.” He leaned over and nuzzled her nose.

He got out of the car.

She rolled down her window. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she said in a businesslike voice.

Astro turned around, fragile, terrified, clutching his plastic bag.

“Got some important work to do. I’ll meet you here in three hours.”

Barbara arrived at a delightful cottage with climbing roses creeping over its windows and ivy running riot over its limestone bricks. Butterflies fluttered amid a garden of voluptuous blossoms and winking flowers in apparent haphazard design. The property smelled of lavender and spice. She parked Astro’s car on the cobblestone driveway, its flowered roof a pleasant counterpoint to the grounds.

Barbara rang the bell.

A man in a pink sweater answered the door. He stared at Barbara, perplexed. He looked her up and down.

“I’m Fantasia Smythe.” She held out a bangled hand.

“Sure. C’mon in, my dear.” He extracted himself from his musings and led her to a front parlour. “Please sit down. Tell me, how can I help you?” His blue-grey hair fell over his eyes, whose brows had been plucked.

“I’m a missionary.” She tilted her head. “We’re doing important work with our flock in Nigeria.” Only once she had uttered these words did it occur to her that she had forgotten to take off her Taoist yin-yang pendant. “We need some dynamite. We’re building a church. Just have to get rid of the old one first.” And her Black Power earrings, each sculpted into the form of a raised fist. “Can I see your catalogue?”

“Uh, sure.” His lip balm glinted in the sunlight.

As she heard his steps click down the stairs, she crossed her ankles, her tight-laced shoes squeaking as she stretched her toes. She glanced around at the objects within the room: the antique chandelier, the mahogany bookcases that entirely covered one wall, two giant Chinese vases and eight etchings placed with precision in two rows of four across tasteful crimson walls. The contents of the room could probably finance a revolution in most African countries.

He reappeared with an assortment of papers and a catalogue, which he laid in front of her. “So, here’s dynamite listings. We have detonators here; deflags here; RDX—that’s here, but, I don’t know, you’re not going through steel, are you? Fuses; delays; blasters; cord. Was there anything else?”

“God will guide me.” She tapped his hand, then flipped through the catalogue, creating a small breeze. Understanding nothing, she finally gave up in confusion.

“May God guide you,” she said, handing the catalogue back to him. “Send the products to Fantasia Enterprises.” Barbara selected a green pen, a symbolic link to the Nigerian flag and, by extension, its people. She jotted down Femi’s address, her head wiggling with self-importance as she wrote.

After completing her covert activities, Barbara hopped back into the rusting Volvo and returned to the parental home in a carefree mood. Astro stood outside the gates, waiting for her, plastic bag in hand. He looked small at such a distance. She waved to him and opened the passenger door.

He got in and slammed it shut.

“Enjoy yourself?” she asked, swerving into the path of an oncoming car to avoid a pothole. She ran through the plans in her head. Although she had just bought enough dynamite for
at least six months, she would need to get financing so Femi could buy explosives in Nigeria at local exchange rates and hide the expenditure from Drop of Life. She could place it under “awareness-raising” or some other such budget item.

Barbara shook herself free of her ruminations, having noticed that the car was unusually quiet. She looked at Astro to find him staring at her. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

He hugged his plastic bag to his chest. “Nothing. Keep your eyes on the road.”

A car honked.

“What do you mean ‘nothing’?” She honked back at the car. “I can tell something’s wrong.”

“Oh, really? Like what?”

“I dunno.”

“You don’t know?” he screeched, clutching his plastic bag. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Am I supposed to?”

“Okay. Let me get this right. I’m sitting in a car with a wannabe secret agent—”

“A what?”

“—who deliberately left her boyfriend in an open field by himself because she thinks her work is too important for the likes of him—”

“A what? An open field? It was a driveway!”

“—and lied to him about introducing him to her parents—” The bobble on his hat was jiggling again.

“I didn’t lie!”

“-who, by the way,
weren’t even in!”
His pink earflaps quivered with anger.

“They weren’t?” She considered, perplexed by this turn of events. “But they’re always in!”

“Said ‘boyfriend,’” he quote-marked the air with trembling
fingers, “is now probably on some international FBI’s Most Wanted list; said ‘boyfriend,’” more air quotes, “has probably got his face plastered over a whole bunch of offices—”

“There’s no way—”

Astro turned to stare out his window. “I’m just a microchip in your poker game—”

“A what?”

“-who was innocently misled into believing he had a bona fide relationship.” His bottom lip quivered, “Call me naive.” He gulped down a sob; in his averted eyes, genuine distress.

“I had something else in mind.”

“Look at this!” He turned towards Barbara, pointing at his pitiable face. “You know what you’re looking at?”

She huffed, having suffered a lifetime of witnessing such behaviour. “I dunno. Overacting?”

“You’re looking at a pawn, a patsy, a dupe.” His fingers were still pointing at his face. “The victim of a devious mind.” His voice trembled. “Contact the FBI to tell them we’re through, please.” He bit his bottom lip and looked steadfastly out of the window. “That’ll save me a lot of hassle. Particularly with the fish tank.”

On the morning after her return to Ottawa, Barbara charged towards work, darting past May’s blanket of tulips and the canal’s bright boats. She dashed into the office, ran up to her turret two stairs at a time and picked up the phone, breathless. She dialled one of her father’s former colleagues.

“Hello. Can I speak to Mr. Mortimer, please?”

“Herbert Mortimer speaking.”

“Hello. It’s Ernest Glass’s daughter.”

“Oh! How are you doing? Still at TransAqua?”

Since he had assumed it was Mary, Barbara adopted a more businesslike approach. “That’s a positive. I’m …” she tried to
remember her sister’s title, “… Manager of Dams, of Water Dams.” Sounded right. “We have a problem here. One of our people has just left. Couldn’t stand the pressure.” She slung an arm behind her chair. “So I fired him.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear it!” Herbert replied.

“Well, as we say in the business, if you can’t stand the water, get out of the bathroom.” She guffawed, then trailed off. “It’s an in-joke.”

“I remember those,” he commiserated.

“Anyway, I was wondering-could I send you a copy of some blueprints? We need an im-pact ass-ess-ment.” She drew the last words out, as if he would not understand them. “You can invoice TransAqua once you’re done. So sorry to disturb you. It’s just that the UN’s Dam Commission is flexing its muscles again.”

“They ought to be disbanded.”

“We’re working on it.”

Within a fortnight, Barbara had a rough estimate of the damage the new dam would cause. The statistics were alarming. Hundreds of thousands of people would be displaced, with no plans for compensation. The dam would submerge cities, towns, factories, crops and historical relics. She sent the analysis to Aminah, copied to her team.

After that, life at work died down to a stultifying boredom. Femi was in the thick of the action, while she pretended to file papers.

At home, she sat on her porch with her vegetarian egusi and yam, admiring the arching blue, missing her former daily companion. She yearned for a more innocent time, when she felt as if she could conquer the world, when life was something to be enjoyed, not battled, when she was able to revel in its simplicity rather than get bound up in its complexity. And the
common thread running through all these times-Astro. Barbara realized she did not even know his real name, nor did it matter. He seemed to come from the heavens; to him, reality was only something to be dazzled by. He was the force who had supported her, never doubting her ability nor questioning her judgement.

Perhaps he had forgiven her.

She turned to her Wiccan charms and embarked on a small ceremony to bring her luck. Then she picked up the phone.

“Hello, Astro. It’s Barbara.”

“Hey, bud.” His voice wobbled a bit. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Just phoning to see how you are.”

Silence.

“I’m fine. So I guess you can check that off your list. Astro’s fine. Tick.”

He hung up.

W
ith the blueprints secreted in a generous, multicoloured handbag, Aminah visited the offices of the
Popular Star,
whose editor, Richard Nzekwu, was one of the few Nigerian journalists with ideological rather than regional leanings.

The appointment was for nine. Aminah turned up a respectable hour and fifteen minutes late. She was finally admitted to the editor’s office around noon.

“Thank you for seeing me, sir,” Aminah bobbed a curtsey.

“Please sit down, madam.” Nzekwu was a small man, no more than five feet tall-no match for Aminah’s bulk-and his legs swung under his chair as he sat.

“Thank you, sir. Oh, look at this wall! So many prizes! Ah-ah-does Nigeria have this many prizes for journalism?”

He smiled as her bellow carried through the moist air to far-flung cubicles. “Of course not.” He hiccupped out a laugh. “I make them up myself!”

“Ah-ah, sir! Why are you so modest?” Aminah stood up, her large frame casting a shadow over the editor. “Look at the size of this trophy! What car could fit this trophy?”

Nzekwu’s legs swung merrily under him. Arrayed behind him in order of height stood bottles of water from all over the world-Italy, France, Canada–all the great suppliers, from mountain springs to deep aquifers, keeping guard over the office’s health. Outside, dotted within the vast groupings of cubicles, precious water was dispensed by large refrigerated containers. It was obvious to Aminah that, despite the prohibitive cost, the editor knew his paper could run only if his journalists had access to fresh water. Water-borne illness had bankrupted many other concerns whose proprietors had had less foresight. She looked down at him with admiration.

After the obligatory hour of chit-chat, they finally approached the subject.

“I have a story that I know your paper would be interested in.”

“Oh, really?” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. Not a comfortable position. He crossed his ankles instead.

Aminah had been a journalist long enough to know that a sense of drama was at the core of every good editor. So she began as she would a film. “Is that chair comfortable, sir?”

“Yes. Fairly so.” He nestled into its vinyl covering.

“Is it strong?”

“Yes, pretty strong.” He bounced up and down on it a couple of times.

“Can it support your full weight?”

“Yes. That’s what it’s doing now.” He choked out another chuckle and laced his hands in his lap. “Why?”

“Because you will need it.” She lowered her voice and shifted forward. “You may be in shock after what I am about to tell you.”

Nzekwu scooted forward in his chair. “What are you about to tell me?”

“Something that is so incredible, even I cannot believe it.”

“What? What is it?”

“It’s about Kolo.”