Little Rot

At 11:12 on Friday evening, Kalu pulls into the estate where Ahmed’s party is being held. He dons a mask as he climbs out of the car, feeling like a different man. He remembers the awful fights with Aima where she sobbed that she had wasted her life on a man who wouldn’t marry her. Kalu knew he should comfort her, but since returning to New Lagos, Aima has become a woman he no longer recognizes.

A masked doorkeeper greets Kalu and kneels before him to untie his shoes with an eroticism that catches him off guard. Before he can enter, she presses her mouth to his and passes him a pill on her tongue. In the apartment, he is greeted by a room full of “writhing, sweating, gleaming skins” (28). Ahmed spots him quickly, and the two embrace. He says the party is going well and suggests that Kalu forget Aima and eliminate some of the “weight between his legs” (29).

Kalu finds a drink and peruses the buffet of appetizers, watching as a man fills his plate. Despite his mask, Kalu recognizes the guest as an important senator, but discretion is key at Ahmed’s parties. He wanders out onto the balcony, watching the party go on around him but feeling distant from it, experiencing “a curious numbness” instead of the “belonging” he is used to (31). He meets a woman on the balcony who asks him without preamble if he sometimes wishes he’d never returned to New Lagos. He laughs, telling her you “just have to switch your mind over” (34). However, he secretly doubts this is “enough to fortify against the things New Lagos would proceed to do to you” (34). The woman tells Kalu that complacency makes him “complicit”; the “rot” of New Lagos will seep into him. They both look back in on the party and watch as the boy who came with the senator unbuttons the older man’s pants and begins performing oral sex on him.

The woman complains that “gays and pedophiles” are “everywhere” and tells Kalu that “some things shouldn’t be indulged” (35). Then she approaches him and touches his crotch, asking if he likes to “do things in front of people” (35). Kalu turns her down, still thinking of Aima, and the woman snaps at him as she goes back inside, saying that there is a child at the party he can have sex with if that is more to his liking. Kalu feels shocked and panicked at the thought of a child at the party. He tells himself that Ahmed would never allow such a thing, but he hurries back inside and starts looking through the apartment. He breaks through a locked door and is met by a bouncer blocking his view of a circle of men behind him. To the bouncer’s surprise, Kalu guesses the password correctly, and he lets him pass. Inside, Kalu finds the men circled around a girl handcuffed to a mattress. She looks to be around 14 or 15 and is crying as a large man penetrates her. Filled with rage, Kalu rushes at the man, pulling him off the girl and throwing him to the floor. The bouncer intervenes, seizing Kalu and throwing him into an empty office.

Kalu lies on the floor, sobbing and dry heaving. Ahmed enters and accosts Kalu for assaulting his guests. Kalu punches his friend, accusing him of letting men have sex with children under his roof. Ahmed insists that it is a misunderstanding: The girl isn’t underaged; she is a sex worker who looks young, and the men “pay loads of money for that fantasy” (41). He assures Kalu that the girl is very well compensated and that the tears are all part of the act. Kalu hesitates to believe his friend. He thinks that Ahmed is the only one of his friends who understands why he couldn’t marry Aima and “how he was struggling to hold on to who he was even as the city tried to strip him of it” (43). The “rot” of New Lagos hasn’t affected Ahmed like it does others because he “started from the gutter” (43). Kalu thinks of Ahmed’s string of relationships, none of which have stuck, and Ahmed’s complaint that women want a man and a relationship that follows “the formula.” Ever since boarding school, Kalu and Ahmed have been “a unit.” Kalu remembers one night sleeping beside Ahmed and masturbating when he thought his friend was sleeping. He was surprised when Ahmed reached around to touch him, but he reciprocated the touch until the boys orgasmed together. Although they never spoke of the incident again, Kalu still remembers how Ahmed had gasped his name.

Now, in the office, Kalu demands to know how old the girl is. Resigned, Ahmed tells him she is 17. Kalu laughs incredulously, but Ahmed demands that he remember where he is. He asks if the setup is really so shocking, insinuating that Kalu himself has wondered what it would be like to have sex with a child. He tells Kalu that New Lagos “isn’t fucking America,” and the “ugly things” aren’t hidden (47). The girl he hired is a sex worker and is “lucky” to have Ahmed taking care of her, paying her royally, and protecting her safety. He tells Kalu that “the other ones,” the sex workers he doesn’t see through the tinted windows of his expensive car, “get ripped apart and beaten into a bloody pulp” (48). Kalu is crying, and Ahmed presses his forehead against his friend’s. He tells Kalu that he doesn’t belong in the “gutter” of his parties and takes him outside. Before putting Kalu in his car, Ahmed tells him to call Aima and “surrender.”

In the car, Kalu thinks of all the times he came home to Aima after sleeping with other women, wondering, “Is this not Nigeria and was he not a man just like those men in the locked room?” (50). He closes his eyes to avoid seeing “the women who walked the night” (50).

It’s 12:45 am as Ahmed watches Kalu’s car pull away. He feels anger welling up and heads back inside, where he surveys the party, watching as the senator finally orgasms. He thinks what a scandal it would be if anyone had a picture of the important man in that compromised position. Ahmed knows it is his responsibility to “protect” his guests, and he takes this seriously. Eventually, he is approached by a designer called Timi. As her sister, whom he once spent a weekend with in Cape Town, looks on, he leads her toward one of the bedrooms. On the way, however, one of the guards stops him, telling him the men are finished with the young sex worker, and she is waiting for him in his office. Ahmed tells Timi to wait for him and goes to see the girl, Machi. She looks tired but clean, and Ahmed is grateful he didn’t have to see the state the men left her in. Unable to shake the image of Kalu’s distress, he tells her that his driver will take her back to his house so that she doesn’t have to make her way home in the dark. At first, Machi resists, thinking that Ahmed means to have sex with her as well. He insists that he only wants to give her a safe place to sleep and is alarmed to learn that the woman he arranged the girl’s deal with only promised her a fraction of the cash he paid. He tells her they will sort everything out in the morning and calls his driver, Thursday, to take her away.

Ahmed finds Timi waiting for him in bed. He demands that she take her clothes off, but she refuses, teasing him. Ahmed feels so “volatile” that he worries for a moment he might actually hurt Timi, but then she whispers what she wants him to do to her into his ear.

At 5:54 am, Ahmed is woken by a knock. He leaves Timi in bed and opens the door to find the bouncer, who tells him the party has wrapped up. He dresses and ventures out into the main room to survey the aftermath of the party. Thursday tells him that Machi is sleeping back in Ahmed’s guest room, and the cleaners are on their way. Satisfied, Ahmed tells Thursday to fetch the car and drive him to Ruqaiyyah’s house. Thursday is surprised, reminding Ahmed that the night before was the full moon, but he agrees. Arriving at the house, Ahmed thinks that visiting Ruqaiyyah is “an escape.” Sleeping with Timi hadn’t been enough to dull the “irritation […] scraping inside him” (69), and now he is seeking something else. Ruqaiyyah greats him. She has been inviting him to her parties every full moon for over a year, and now she takes his hand and leads him inside, where Ahmed knows the morning will “feel like a never-ending night” (70).

At 3:07 am, Aima and Ijendu make out frantically in the backseat of the car on their way home from the club. The driver doesn’t glance back at them, and Aima wonders how many other times her best friend has done this. Mostly, however, she is amazed that a “godless place” can feel so good. She feels like the driver is “unreal,” and her usual “restraints” are “broken open” (72). When they arrive, Aima meets the driver’s eyes for a brief moment in the rearview mirror and tries to rearrange Ijendu’s dress. Her friend giggles, and they slip out of the car together. As Ijendu closes the door to her room, Aima feels a moment of anxiety now that they are truly alone. However, as Ijendu undresses, the anxiety and fleeting memories of Kalu belong to a different world and cannot exist in this one, and the girls fall into bed together.

Aima wakes next to Ijendu at 5:15 am and stumbles to the bathroom where she relieves herself and then stands under the shower’s scalding stream of water until it starts to cool. She tries to remember what happened in bed with Ijendu, but her thoughts keep slipping away. She dries herself, pulls on a shirt hanging on the back of the door, and pads downstairs to find a glass of water. As she drinks, she notices someone out on the veranda. She slips out the door to find Ijendu’s brother, Dike, smoking a joint. Aima expresses surprise that Dike is awake, and he tells her it was impossible to sleep with the racket she and Ijendu were making. To Aima’s intense embarrassment, he mimics the sound of Aima’s and Ijendu’s moans, telling her he never took her as “that type.” Rather, he imagined she was “the type you have children with or put in your house” (77). He tells her she hasn’t changed since they went to Sunday school as children and asks if she is really the kind of girl to go out drinking and have casual sex. Aima is furious, telling Dike he doesn’t know her. As he walks inside, Dike murmurs that there is nothing wrong with being “this girl.” He tells her she is wearing his shirt and invites her to come to his room if she wants to return it.

At 10:34, Aima is woken again by a wave of nausea. She rushes to the bathroom, where she vomits uncontrollably, then curls up on the tile floor, sobbing. She feels devastated by the loss of Kalu and the thought of him in the city without her. She wonders if he has already found someone new to sleep with but then realizes she has done just that with Ijendu. She screams in grief and shame as she thinks of the “sinful” way she became intoxicated and had sex. Yes, she had slept with Kalu before marriage, but she had always intended to marry him, and she had never put herself on display as she did making out with Ijendu in front of her driver. She feels like her hangover is punishment for her sinful behavior, and she begins to pray curled on the bathroom floor. In Houston, God hadn’t felt as loud to her, and she had begun skipping church. However, back in New Lagos, faith had returned to the forefront of Aima’s mind, and now she cries and begs forgiveness for straying so far.