Easy Motion Tourist (5 page)

The same car had driven past her twice, slowing down to a stop the second time. But when Kevwe smiled at the driver, he looked away and drove off down the road, past all the other girls. When she saw the Toyota Corolla turning onto Sanusi Fafunwa Street again, behind a black Land Cruiser with tinted windows, she turned to Angel, the new girl she had just met that night, and nodded that she could have the SUV. Kevwe left the group of much older girls they had been standing with and walked up the road so that she wasn’t close to anyone. The Corolla pulled up onto the pavement. She looked down, away from the beam of the headlights that the driver had left on full beam and walked to the car.

She stopped by the passenger door and waited for him to roll down the window. She bent down, giving him a good view of her cleavage, and said ‘Hi, honey.’

‘Hi,’ he said. He sounded like he needed water.

She smiled at him. His eyes moved between her breasts and her eyes. She waited for him to say something but he stared out his front window, at cars driving by, and he sank into his seat.

‘Where do you want to take me, honey?’ she said. She spat out the gum in her mouth and flicked her head to throw her braids back.

‘How much?’ he said.

‘Short time or long time?’

‘We will just go to my hotel.’

‘Do you want me to spend the night, honey?’

‘No.’

‘OK, honey, just give me ten thousand.’ She waited for him to haggle her down. A car slowed down by them. She stood up from the window and used her finger to draw back a strand of braid. The other car stopped parallel to the Corolla and she bent back into his window.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

She looked closely at him. The same men usually came to Sanusi Fafunwa Street but she had never seen him, or his car.

‘Where are we going, honey?’

‘Federal Palace Hotel.’

‘I hope you will be nice to me, honey.’

He reached over and opened the door for her.

‘One second, honey.’ She placed her phone to her ear; she’d been holding it all the time. She took a few steps to the nose of the car and glanced at his plate number. She pretended to end the call she’d not been making and began typing a message before she got in next to him.

‘What is your name, honey?’ she said without looking up from her phone.

‘Bayo. Use your seat belt.’

‘What do you do, Bayo?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’m just asking, honey.’

‘I’m a banker.’

‘Which bank is that?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

She finished composing her text message and sent it off. She dropped her phone on her lap, placed her palm on his thigh, and began stroking, letting her fingers touch his crotch to check if he was hard. Normally she wouldn’t go with someone she didn’t recognise without telling one of her friends and letting the man know that the friend had seen his face, seen the car he drove, and seen the licence plate number. But the young man looked too nervous to be dangerous. She decided right then to take advantage of him, but she still had to check.

He kept his eyes on the road as she worked on his zipper. As soon as she felt him getting hard, she removed her hand and checked if her text had been received.

Amaka’s phone vibrated in her handbag. Like a mother programmed to her child’s cry, she could hear the phone vibrating in another room. It was one of three mobiles she always carried with her. One was her personal line, as she called it. The second one had a new pay-as-you go SIM card in it – she always had new SIM cards in her bag. A few hundred girls had the number to the third phone; none of them had met her or knew her name. It was this phone that had received a new message.

The text was from a contact that showed up as KEVWE. She looked up and saw Chief Ojo watching her. She blinked at him and continued. The message read ‘Evening ma. Young man at Sanusi Fafunwa. He said he is a banker. He is driving a black Toyota with number LA333KKJ. His name is Bayo. Going to Federal Palace. Thank you ma.’

She looked back up from her phone and caught him looking down her shirt. She smiled and he looked away at something
on the ceiling. ‘Work,’ she said. ‘Give me a minute.’

She got out a notebook from her handbag and switched it on. She had left it on hibernate – a trick her friend, Gabriel, taught her, so that the computer booted up faster.

Her fingers dashed around the keyboard, keying in her long password. An Excel spreadsheet filled the screen. She selected the ‘Find’ option and typed in the licence number from the text message. The number appeared several lines down. She clicked on the row to highlight it and read across. She was interested in the last column where the entry read SAFE.

In the car, Kevwe looked down at her phone. The message simply read: ‘OK.’

She deleted it and placed her hand back on the driver’s groin.

They got to Federal Palace Hotel quicker than if he’d been observing speed limits. He walked ahead of her and when the elevator doors slid open, he let other people waiting to get in first, including her, then he stepped in on the other side away from her.

His room was one of the smallest she’d been to in the hotel. She wondered if perhaps she should have taken the Land Cruiser she gifted to the new girl. She dropped her bag on the bed and kicked off her shoes. She had charged him a good price and had decided to get even more but she couldn’t afford to waste time; she had to get back to her spot before another girl stole it.

She undressed. She had no underwear. His eyes moved from her breasts to her shaved crotch. She placed her hands on her hips and waited.

‘Where you wan’ do am?’

His face shot up at her sudden switch to broken English.

‘Won’t you shower first?’

‘I don shower today.’ She felt like smiling at her luck. She knew he wanted her to wash away the last client she had been with; she had picked up that he wasn’t very used to this the minute he agreed to the price she asked for without first halving it. She’d decided to make him pay extra for anything other than plain sex with her lying on her back. If he wanted her to take a shower, he would also want to limit body contact and thus ask to take her from behind. She would tell him that doggy costs more.

‘Just go and shower.’

‘To take shower go cost three thousand extra.’

‘You want me to give you an extra three thousand?’

‘Yes.’

‘For what?’

‘To take shower, now. I tell you, I don shower today, but if you want make I go shower again, you go pay me three thousand on top the amount we agree.’

‘Why?’

‘Na time e go take.’

‘A five minute shower? That’s what you want three thousand extra for?’

‘Time dey go o.’

‘So, you won’t take a shower?’

‘You go pay?’

‘OK. Don’t bother with the shower. Just give me a blow job.’ He undid his zip and pulled himself out.

‘Ehn? Blow wetin? We no discuss that one o. I don’t do blow job for ten thousand. That one is fifteen thousand, and you will use condom.’

As he stared at her, still grappling with the fact that the same
girl who had called him honey and stroked his cock in the car was now hissing at him and refusing to look into his eyes, as if they had already had a fight. It dawned on him that he was being conned. He gradually grew limp. He zipped up his fly.

‘You can go.’

‘You want make I go?’

‘Yes. You can go. I’m not interested anymore.’

‘But you never pay me.’

‘Pay you for what? We didn’t do anything.’

‘You are not serious. Shebi you brought me here? Na me say make your prick no stand? Abeg, pay me my money.’

‘Money for what?’

‘See me see trouble. If your dick refuse to stand, na my fault? Oya, come and fuck now. You no fit? If I know say you be time waster, I for no follow you. Give me my money. Yeye man.’

‘Look, just leave.’

‘Wey my ten thousand?’ Her voice was sufficiently raised so that anyone on the corridor outside could hear her.

He looked down, shaking his head and smiling a regretful smile. He put his hand in his back pocket and counted out ten thousand naira. He held the money out to her.

She snatched the cash and counted it.

‘Wetin be this?’

‘Your money.’

‘How will I get back to the place you pick me from?’

‘I don’t know. Take a taxi.’

‘Make I take taxi?’

‘Yes.’ He could barely look at her.

‘By this time, taxi will cost four thousand. That is even if I find one.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘You this man, you are vexing me o. I for no follow you if I know say na like this you go dey do. Give me money for taxi.’ She held out her hand.

He looked at the outstretched palm, saw the calluses, the dirt under her nails, her discoloured cheap rings, and he felt shame like he had never felt before, and loathing.

‘I am not giving you anything. I will drop you back where I found you.’

‘Where you find me? I be dog wey dem dey find? Just because of the work I’m doing does not mean you should be insulting me anyhow. If not for condition, you for see me carry? After all, I get men like you for my family.’

He doubted that she came from anything other than a family of blackmailers but he kept his opinion to himself. He fetched his keys from his pocket and waited for her to dress and leave his room, then he led the way back to his car.

Two policemen stood by the gutter while a third, handling a Polaroid camera with a separate flash held in a different hand, took pictures. This was the extent of evidence gathering.

A white Peugeot 504 station wagon converted into an ambulance was parked diagonally across the road. Two men in crumpled white overalls and yellow kitchen gloves stood by its open boot waiting for the photographer to be done.

The driver of a police van next to the Peugeot pressed his horn in one long blast and exchanged dirty looks with the photographer. People watched from the safety of the other side of the road.

Kevwe saw the police car up ahead. ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ she said, but he had also seen the cars and the policemen, and he had
seen how the sight of them had made her jump. He continued driving until he was as close to the officers as he could, then he pulled his handbrake. ‘Get out,’ he said.

Kevwe sank low into her seat until her head was below the window line. As they passed by, she had noted that there were no girls on the road and that the only people watching were security guards and bouncers from the many clubs on the street. The police raided this area less than a week ago, so no one expected them to be back so soon. Several girls were still working longer hours to make up for the money they had lost to the last raid – including her. It had cost her sixteen thousand naira to ‘bail’ herself – all the money she had on her – and not before a drunken officer had pulled her into a lightless room that choked her with dust and pushed her hand down the front of his trousers. She had not been able to eat with the hand for two days.

‘Bros, please now, please. Just take me down there, to the end of the road. Please. It is the way you will pass as you are going. Honey, please.’