THE HOTEL RECEPTIONIST, IN A WHITE chiffon shirt and dotted bow-tie, was indifferent to our persuasive charm. We ruined the glossy, silent space like foraging birds, dropping markings of our exuberance. She had told us a night in the cheapest room was thirty thousand naira, but we thought we could negotiate better. She turned incredulous eyes to her supervisor who sat on the other side of the lobby, munching quietly on corn and ube.
Lighted gold with ornate chandeliers tipping above, the walls of the moderately spacious reception were lined with several images: the stoic faces of politicians, the hotel administrators, posters advertising overseas graduate programmes, another displaying hotel services, such as a spa and intercontinental dishes. The woman eating the corn and ube put away her nylon with meticulous motion and walked over to us, her black lipstick matching her black suit.
“We don’t allow four people in one room,” she said.
“We’re not four,” said Ikenna. “Two of us just came to swim. We’ll be leaving in the evening.”
“Then why not pay and go to the pool straight?”
“We’re friends, we came together,” said Jacob, dropping the backpack slung over his shoulders. It was he and Ikenna paying for the room.
“In that case,” she suggested, “why not just pay the forty thousand, you guys are even four.”
I warmed up to the woman, whom I felt was my kind of person. “Nwanyi oma, beautiful woman,” I said in Igbo, “we’re like your junior brothers, na. We have just twenty five here, and we’ll be swimming too. Just do it for us, biko.”
Her cheeks reddened. “These your friends don’t know how to talk,” she leered at Ikenna with a grimace. “Give them the room for twenty seven, and make sure two of them leave by evening,” she said to the receptionist, walking off towards the front door with gigantic strides that pronounced her rotund frame. As the electronic door opened, one saw the back view of the sculpture of a palmwine tapper guiding a bicycle, its ashen body slickened by the gentle rain coming down.
In part, the rain was the reason Ikenna had suggested a time out. Ifite was sodden in several parts and Yahoo Junction, where he stayed, was a mess of epic proportions. Evenings when we gathered to smoke, Ikenna would muse about being, even if for a day, at this splendid hotel in an obscure corner of Udoka Estate, where you could sometimes get to from a ride reaching Temp Site. From there, it wasn’t more than five minutes away, going straight through Kwata Junction and towards Amawbia.
When we got to the room, Jacob immediately threw his bag on the plush bed straightened in white duvet. He dug one hand into the side of the bag, shifting its contents, feeling for something. A smile formed on his face as he emerged with a shiny nylon, whose contents wasn’t difficult to decipher. Jacob was a proud stoner, and he never forgot his weed on such trips.
“Until police go hold you for road one day,” warned Chuka, who’d been quiet all through at the lobby, till now.
“E no pass settlement na,” said Ikenna, turning on the TV. Soon, the static blue screen gave way to the ambient sound of a Hollywood movie.
“This their AC cold o,” I observed, not realising immediately that I had spoken aloud.
“Na why I wan come here,” said Ikenna proudly. “Their rooms dey sharp. Na one of the best for here.”
We shuffled about the room; Ikenna invested in the movie; while Jacob swayed about dancing to the Trap music that was softly playing from a Zealot speaker. I lay on the other side of the bed with windows out-looking the swimming pool, the air tingling on my calves.
“I wan go find food,” said Chuka. And he left the room.
“You and food,” jeered Jacob, now sitting on the side of the bed facing the door.
“You sabi swim?” I asked no one in particular, still gazing at the fond blueness of the pool and the two ladies who waded in it impressively from side to side.
“I sabi but no be like that,” said Jacob. “Na my senior brother been dey teach me that year, but im come travel.”
“Be like this film sweet,” I said once I turned, seeing Ikenna so invested in the movie that he hadn’t taken a few drags of weed from Jacob as he tended to do. I went to Jacob, indicating with pinched fingers that I wanted some delirium to go with the cold. He passed me the damp leaf of the joint, and, three sucks in, everything shone a bit brighter. My feet shivered against the tiles.
“I no sure say I go swim again o,” I said to Jacob.
“Come mek we go joor,” he pleaded. “If you smoke well, you no go feel cold.”
Jacob was somewhat perceptive of how cold I felt, especially during August when rain was a persistent quality of our lives in Awka. The city had a way of making everything melancholic, and if it weren’t for the girls I’d seen down at the pool, I wouldn’t have gone. After some time, Jacob was ready to go, and he was right, the smoke had warmed me up, even though by then Ikenna had increased the heat of the AC.
AT THE POOL, ONE OF THE girls had retreated to a canopied seat, sipping a soft drink while looking at her friend inside the water. That one, a hazel-skinned girl with shiny eyes, splashed in the pool, making gestures obviously directed to the other. Jacob and I walked to the bathing area, where we washed ourselves and changed, returning with our skintight briefs.
Jacob walked with a flourish that informed me of his ideas; I wasn’t a stranger to his readily flirtatious manner, and how he fancied every girl as an opportunity to improve his conversational allure. Even if he didn’t get their number, he’d say no knowledge is wasted, and he’d go into the next approach as a smoother seducer. He walked some feet ahead of me, going to sit beside the girl whose slender legs stretched out in front of her. I turned away, looking at the pool. Two orange floaters bobbed on the other end, the deeper side, so I walked beside the pool until I reached there and leaned to bring one up. Then I returned, slowly lowering myself onto the pool with the floater around my neck. Once inside, electrocuted by the cold, I struggled to get the floater lower. After several pushes downward my frame, sucking my belly inside as I did so, the plastic object succumbed to human will and I was almost belly-flat in the water, stroking my way towards the girl.
I had come close enough but the effort squeezed a bit into my chest, so I couldn’t really collect my words quickly enough. She smiled as though waiting for me to speak, but I floated sideways, my vision catching the image of Jacob and the seated girl in conversation. Sideways to sideways, I made my laboured motions but deemed it swimming anyway, and once I bumped bodies with the girl swimming underneath, it seemed impossible not to talk to her.
She came up for air.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she smiled. “It seems you’re still learning.”
“I can’t swim to save my life,” I laughed. “If you take this floater away now, I’m gone.”
She laughed with me; her laughter, the brightness of an overripe orange, swollen with citrus goodness. It warmed away the cold from the pool’s solemn embrace.
“It’s not difficult swimming,” she said, wading over to me. I caught sight of her nipples rounded against the taut swimwear. Wooly hair stuck to her forehead. “You just have to learn how to float. Don’t be so stiff.”
She held my hand. “Let go of the floater,” she said. “Trust your body. Trust the water.”
Every word resounded with an ethereal echo. I let go of the floater. I tried to trust my body. I tried to trust the water. After some more affirmative bracing, as I launched for the first time into a swimming position, my fears suddenly became a fiery horse and my knees buckled under the weight of all that running; I flailed into the pool, drowning.
In what couldn’t have been more than five seconds, I was barely aware that someone else was there with me, thrashing under the pool’s blueness. But then she held me from the ribs, pulling me up. Rising to meet her face, I couldn’t tell if what I felt was shame or admiration. I reached for the floater, smiling as I did.
“I told you I’m hopeless,” I said.
“It’s probably your first time trying,” she said. “It took me more than a year to learn. But once I did, I stayed consistent. My friend was the one who taught me.”
I looked over to her friend. She and Jacob were sharing bottles of Desperado, the golden bottles shining from the distance. “So are you a student?” I asked.
“I’m in my finals,” the girl said.
“Oh, nice,” I said. “I studied Computer Science.”
“Can you guess what I study?”
“I’d say . . . Law. You give hot intellectual vibes.”
“Na so,” she laughed. “Try again.”
“Alright, let’s see . . . Biochemistry.”
“You’re a terrible guesser.” She laughed again. “Actually, I’m a music student. My friend studies English and Literature.”
“Nice to meet, miss . . .”
“Chinaza.”
“Chinaza,” I repeated.
“You?”
“Obichukwu.”
WE WENT BACK TO THE ROOM with the girls, having convinced them that our friends were there too and we wouldn’t try anything sexual. Jacob’s girl—fittingly named Jane—was a more laidback character, but she seemed to have connected with him, evident in the way she softly felt his triceps as we ascended the stairs to the room. Halfway through, I recalled the hotel had an elevator, but I kept this to myself.
We knocked on the room for about a minute until Ikenna came to the door, looking at the ensemble with bored eyes even though we knew he was surprised. He returned to his place on the bed, now seated comfortably against the patterned soft headrest. He was still watching the movie, and Jacob asked him what it was about.
“I can’t even describe it,” said Ikenna. “Do you know Al Pacino?”
“Does he act action films?” replied Jacob.
“Sometimes,” said Ikenna. “But this one is not an action film. Wait, does he want to kill himself?”
We all turned to the screen. A man dressed in an impeccable dark-blue suit held a gun to his head, charged by tears, as a teenage boy stood on the other side begging him not to do it. I was particularly enraptured because the dialogue pulsed with the weighted tones of familiarity. After the scene was over, Jacob returned to his bag of weed, somewhat informed on the stance of both girls.
Jane and Chinaza chatted as Jacob went through the familiar motions of crushing and lining the weed in an outstretched rizla, wrapping it up and bringing it to his mouth for gluing. I’d never bothered to learn how to roll since, like Ikenna, I was a social smoker. Once Jacob was done, he passed the joint to Jane, giving her a lighter. Soon, a woody scent filled the room.
“Let’s play a game,” suggested Jacob.
“No one should mention truth or dare here,” cried Jane.
“No truth and dare,” I agreed. “What about name, name, name?”
“Who remembers the game?” said Chinaza, clapping her hands in excitement.
“I should,” said Jane hesitantly. “It’s been so long since I played it.”
“Basically, you just mention names of a given person, place, or thing. As fast as you can, or else you’ve lost,” Chinaza explained.
“Oh, okay,” said Jacob, “I remember that one.”
“Could you guys lower your voice?” demanded Ikenna, yet focused on the movie.
“Is he always like this?” asked Jane, turning to Jacob with incredulous eyes.
“I don’t know,” said Jacob, careful not to draw our older friend’s ire. “He’s a movie guy sha. Me, I just smoke weed and chill. Obichukwu here likes to read.”
“Oh wow,” said Chinaza. “So you’re our own Achebe.”
“What’s the last book you read?” asked Jane.
Attention shifted to me and I fumbled uncomfortably on the bed. “Funny enough, the last book I read was by Achebe. No Longer At Ease. It’s a very interesting novel.”
Just then, we heard two knocks on the door. On the other side was Chuka, who held two white nylons in both hands. The weight of their contents made veins shoot up his arms, and once he dropped them, he let out a sigh he seemed he’d been holding in. He began to unravel the contents: a bottle of vodka, two Digestive biscuits, and plantain in a plastic container. Three bottled water and red drinking cups stacked together.
“Hello,” he said to Jane and Chinaza.
“You don eat belleful, na,” said Jacob, moving towards the spoils Chuka laid on a side of the bed. He reached for the plantain.
“Guy, something happened outside o,” Chuka said, keeping an eye on the girls to gauge their interest. Everyone’s attention turned away from the game of names. “Na these Ugo Ga Chi people o. They stopped one young guy in a Benz and were harassing him, slapping him here and there. Just beside the express at Radopin.”
“The supermarket?” Jane asked.
“Yah. The guy started making calls and one of them seized his phone,” Chuka continued. “The place was filled up when I left.”
“What’s wrong with these people for Christ’s sake? Haven’t we outgrown this barbaric handling of our youths?” Jane complained.
“That’s how they carried me and my friend to their station at Agu Oka the other day.” It was Ikenna. We noticed the movie’s end credits were now rolling, and once he’d shaken off his melancholic poise, he’d joined Jacob in picking apart the slices of plantain dried with peppery sauce shaking with light song inside the container.
“Just because we were coming from a party late at night and my friend was a little drunk,” said Ikenna. “Not that they cared. They just saw how afraid he was. I was ready to stand my ground but there were about nine of them, shining torchlight into our eyes.”
“These people behave like criminals,” said Chinaza.
“So who hasn’t had a bad experience with the police here?” I asked, wanting to open up the conversation more.
“I don’t think girls are harassed much,” said Chuka.
“Don’t even go there!” said Jane. “You haven’t met those ones on the highway who would scatter through your bags. My friend said one actually sniffed her pants when doing so. It’s so sad.”
Jacob had risen from the bed, going over to put on the Zealot speaker. Both girls ate the biscuits, while we all eyed the bottle of vodka, not unaware of its presence.
I noticed it was some minutes after five pm, and wondered nervously when the girls were going to leave. I hadn’t cozied up to Chinaza as I would have hoped to, but Jacob hadn’t done anything with Jane either, and he didn’t seem anxious about that. Chuka had gone into the bathroom to shower, and from there the sound of rushing water reached us.
Ikenna opened the vodka, tightening his face as he unscrewed its lid. Pouring a bit into one of the red cups, he brought the tip to his mouth and sucked, as though watching against a single gulp, his eyes yet reddened, aflush with the liquor’s entry down the gut.
“Pour me a cup,” said Chinaza.
Ikenna obliged, handing it to her like an experienced bartender. Their eyes caught each other’s and I thought I felt the stirrings of an old feeling forming with dedicated compulsiveness, even though I tried to shake it off. After some sips, Chinaza was speaking more, but with Ikenna, who sat on the side of the bed near her couch. Their knees touched and Chinaza laughed heartily at everything he said. Jane tried to engage me in literary yarn.
“African Literature was my favourite course in school,” she said. “Writers like Mongo Beti, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Tsitsi Dangarembga! ‘I was not sorry when my brother died.’ What an opener!”
“African writers are truly elite,” I said, suckling for air as the knot inside my belly tightened. I wanted to extend the conversation but my heart wasn’t in it. So after I mentioned that I also liked reading Japanese writers like Haruki Murakami and Kobo Abe, Jane had gone over to the dancing Jacob, grinding against him.
It was my turn to watch TV. I faced the device, grateful for its powers of distraction. Almost not seeing the images, I followed the flow of motion as one scene transformed into another, the faces white and pallid, the actions epic and heroic. There was a lot of shooting and soaring music.
Chinaza had sat on Ikenna’s laps, the two of them conversing in an almost humming sequence. Jane and Jacob poured more alcohol for themselves, and Chuka had retired to bed, obviously exerted by his outdoor activities. After some time, Chinaza received a call and said she had to be leaving, and Jane said her too, she had an assignment to write.
I waved an uncertain bye to Chinaza, remembering our time in the pool. Unsure whether to collect her number, I stayed on the bed, and all four of them went out of the room, the boys deciding to see them off.
WHEN IKENNA AND JACOB RETURNED, THEY spoke excitedly about how they had made plans with the girls. Jane had said no problem; they would be able to meet them somewhere in Ifite during the week. Jacob bounced about the space like a man who’d discovered a rare stone. Ikenna sat on the bed, looking somewhat pensive even after what I thought should have been a triumphant moment for him. Every one of us affirmed that he was the one with the most game.
“Why didn’t you follow her?” he said, turning to face me. “I thought you guys came in together.”
“Nothing,” I said, not even convincing myself. “She no be your spec?”
Ikenna sighed. “You know I don’t have a spec,” he said. “A beautiful woman is all a man needs.”
“This one you’ve been sounding like a philosopher all day,” remarked Jacob. “I hope say person no break your heart.”
“Actually,” said Ikenna, “I and Ihuoma are in a kind of situation. She doesn’t come over often as before. You know what that means.”
“That she’s seeing someone else?” Jacob asked. “Ihuoma is not like that, na. She’s not your typical Ifite girl.”
“Is Jane your typical Ifite girl?” Ikenna asked.
“Well, I just met her today. Ask me again next week.”
Both of them continued, and I kept to the TV, and only when a character was eating noodles in the movie did I realise—I hadn’t eaten anything all day! Still I didn’t feel hungry, just felt that tightening knot breaking into several million particles, reaching for the nerves of me, contracting into the very pulse of my being. I started to feel cold again and I sunk my legs deep into the white duvet, stealing a strip of space from underneath Chuka’s weight flopped on the other side. After some time, I went to the bathroom. There, my nose caught the scent of a citrus air freshener and camphor placed in the sink and corners. I stood before the mirror, looking at the person who faced me like a stranger. Dark splotches formed under his eyes and his skin broke with rough spots. If I didn’t know better, I would have assumed that he was returning from a hard day’s job, a man beaten by the impossible odds of an everyday existence. I touched my cheeks, pulling them apart to reveal the reddish underside of my eyes. Then I started slapping myself, first lightly, as though wanting to wake myself from a slumber, but then, the slaps got heavier and I did nothing to stop my hands, now moving with a will independent of myself.
I bent my head to the sink and turned the tap on. As water ran over my head and my face, those words returned to me, and, like an epiphany, the wet darkness revealed that I would have to continue trusting my body for as long as I could. I would have to trust the water.❦
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Emmanuel Esomnofu is a Nigerian writer and culture journalist. He was awarded Best Writer of 2024 by The Republic and was named among the ‘30 Under 30 Power Players in Nigerian Music’ by Turntable. Esomnofu currently writes on popular culture for OkayAfrica and is working on his debut manuscript.