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Richard read the next issue of Lagos Life, and when he saw her photo he searched her expression, looking for what he did not know. He wrote a few pages in a burst of manic productivity, fictional portraits of a tall ebony-colored woman with a near-flat chest. He went to the British Council Library and looked up her father in the business journals. He copied down all four of the numbers next to ozobia in the phone book. He picked up the phone many times and put it back when he heard the operator's voice. He practiced what he would say in front of the mirror, the gestures he would make, although he was aware that she would not see him if they spoke over the phone. He considered sending her a card or perhaps a basket of fruit. Finally, he called. She didn't sound surprised to hear from him. Or perhaps it was just that she sounded too calm, while his heart hammered in his chest.
"Would you like to meet for a drink?" he asked.
"Yes. Shall we say Zobis Hotel at noon? It's my father's, and I can get us a private suite."
"Yes, yes, that would be lovely."
He hung up, shaken. He was not sure if he should be excited, if private suite was suggestive. When they met in the hotel lounge, she moved close so that he could kiss her cheek and then led the way upstairs, to the terrace, where they sat looking down at the palm trees by the swimming pool. It was a su
"You can see Heathgrove from here," she said, pointing. "The iniq-uitously expensive and secretive British secondary school my sister and I attended. My father thought we were too young to be sent abroad, but he was determined that we be as European as possible."
"Is it the building with the tower?"
"Yes. The entire school is just two buildings, really. There were very few of us there. It is so exclusive many Nigerians don't even know it exists." She looked into her glass for a while. "Do you have siblings?"
"No. I was an only child. My parents died when I was nine."
"Nine. You were young."
He was pleased that she didn't look too sympathetic, in the false way some people did, as if they had known his parents even though they hadn't.
"They were very often away. It was Molly, my na
"Did you?"
"Many times. They always found me. Sometimes just down the street."
"What were you ru
"What?"
"What were you ru
Richard thought about it for a while. He knew he was ru
"Maybe I was ru
"I knew what I wanted to run to. But it didn't exist, so I didn't leave," Kainene said, leaning back on her seat.
"How so?"
She lit a cigarette, as if she had not heard his question. Her silences left him feeling helpless and eager to win back her attention. He wanted to tell her about the roped pot. He was not sure where he first read about Igbo-Ukwu art, about the native man who was digging a well and discovered the bronze castings that may well be the first in Africa, dating back to the ninth century. But it was in Colonies Magazine that he saw the photos. The roped pot stood out immediately; he ran a finger over the picture and ached to touch the delicately cast metal itself. He wanted to try explaining how deeply stirred he had been by the pot but decided not to. He would give it time. He felt strangely comforted by this thought because he realized that what he wanted most of all, with her, was time.
"Did you come to Nigeria to run away from something?" she asked finally.
"No," he said. "I've always been a loner and I've always wanted to see Africa, so I took leave from my humble newspaper job and a generous loan from my aunt and here I am."
"I wouldn't have thought you to be a loner."
"Why?"
"Because you're handsome. Beautiful people are not usually loners." She said it flatly, as if it were not a compliment, and so he hoped she did not notice that he blushed.
"Well, I am," he said; he could think of nothing else to say. "I've always been."
"A loner and a modern-day explorer of the Dark Continent," she said dryly.
He laughed. The sound spilled out of him, uncontrolled, and he looked down at the clear blue pool and thought, blithely, that perhaps that shade of blue was also the color of hope.
They met the next day for lunch, and the day after. Each time, she led the way to the suite and they sat on the terrace and ate rice and drank cold beer. She touched her glass rim with the tip of her tongue before she sipped. It aroused him, that brief glimpse of pink tongue, more so because she didn't seem conscious of it. Her silences were brooding, insular, and yet he felt a co
She sat up in bed and lit a cigarette.
"I'm sorry," he said, and when she shrugged and said nothing, he wished he had not apologized. There was something dismal in the luxurious over-furnished suite, as he pulled on trousers that might just as well have stayed on and she hooked her bra. He wished she would say something.
"Shall we meet tomorrow?" he asked.
She blew the smoke through her nose and, watching it disappear in the air, asked, "This is crude, isn't it?"
"Shall we meet tomorrow?" he asked again.
"I'm going to Port Harcourt with my father to meet some oil people," she said. "But I'll be back after noon on Wednesday. We could have a late lunch."
"Yes, let's," Richard said, and until she met him in the hotel lobby, days later, he worried that she would not come. They had lunch and watched the swimmers below.