Friday evenings, at six, Romola balanced her account at MRS Filling Station and caught a taxi to Riverside Hotel & Bar, where she worked until midnight. She was a pump attendant every day, a waitress only on Friday nights, she told her customers when they asked why she wasn’t more frequent at the bar. The clientele was largely married men, their mistresses, and bachelors who arrived lonely, already half-drunk, planning to entice the waitresses with wallets placed on tables where disco lights illuminated them. 

At first, Romola told her Riverside customers that she was also a pump attendant because she hoped it would increase patronage and, in turn, her monthly bonuses at MRS. When this did not happen, she continued to say it anyway because it made them laugh. They would pause for a second as if she had insulted them, then open their drunk mouths wide, the noise out of them a train’s chugging. But Aisha wasn’t laughing even though Romola had found a way to shoehorn her other job into their pleasantries. She stared into the empty glass Romola had brought her and, on finding it crusted with washing detergent, inverted it on the table.

“I can get you another one,” Romola said.

“I can’t imagine how hard that must be.”

“It’s not difficult at all. We have cleaner glasses at the counter.”

“No, not that. I mean working two jobs where you never sit down.” Aisha drank her Guinness straight from the bottle. Gold, another waitress, liked to say that two kinds of people ordered the dark, bitter beer: diabolical men and women at rock bottom.

“I sit behind the counter when it’s not busy.”

“It’s not busy now. I want you to sit with me.”

“The manager won’t like that.”

Aisha bit her lip and stared Romola in the eyes as though she was irritated. She went to talk to the manager on the ground floor. Romola stood there, wringing her hands. She was tempted to dribble saliva into Aisha’s beer to see if the woman would notice. She was alone at a corner of the deck. It wasn’t yet eight and the early comers preferred the ground floor for its easier access to the drinks and the suya grill. The deck too would be full by the time it was nine, the plastic chairs and tables pushed together until there was almost no space left for the waitresses to walk between them. 

“I have bribed your manager generously,” Aisha said when she came back. “You must now sit down.”

Romola figured Aisha was the kind of woman who believed she could have anything she wanted for a price. She sat down. Aisha peered in her bottle with an eyebrow raised. She took a sip. 

“You didn’t spit in this, did you?” 

“And why would I do that?” 

“It must have occurred to you that you could.” Romola stared into her lap like a guilty child and this made Aisha laugh—a depthless and mirthless laughter, her face retaining its sharp form, her only distortion her open mouth, a gold incisor in the top row, proof that she had been on hajj to the holy city of Mecca. She nodded at Romola’s chest. “That’s not really your name, is it?” 

Romola inspected her name tag like she hadn’t pinned it on herself. Beauty, it said. None of the waitresses wore their real name; they all had hackneyed monikers pinned to their shirts: Vee and Modella on the ground floor, Fave behind the counter, Gold and Beauty on the deck. The manager had handed Romola the tag when she started working at the bar. The woman who had worn it before her had quit because no one thought she was beautiful and the name had become a jest. But Romola, the Riverside customers and staff agreed, was a true beauty. 

Aisha rolled Romola’s real name around in her mouth. She said it was a good one. She said it sounded like her parents’ hearts were in it, like they had spent the whole nine months of pregnancy thinking about it. Romola said that wasn’t true. She was named after her father’s mother who had died a couple weeks before her birth, her life a memorial to the dead woman. 

“How about you? Who are you named for?”

Aisha said she was named after the third wife of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. 

“Hmm, an important woman.”

Aisha smiled. “An important woman, yes, and I become an important man’s wife tomorrow.”

“Congratulations!”

“There’s no need for that. I don’t love him.”

Romola did not know what to say to this. She had a strange feeling that she had met Aisha’s fiance. She sent her gaze everywhere else. The deck was without walls, only thick concrete columns holding the roof up. On one side, behind the fence, was the eponymous river which wasn’t a river at all but a winding oversized gutter running through the whole town, constructed the year it rained for five days nonstop and the roads went knee-deep underwater, the casualties children who went to school on foot and the vehicles of important people like Aisha. From where she sat, Romola could see the road. Far behind her were the three floors of the Riverside hotel, detached from the two floors of the bar. She knew that Aisha could see the sliding windows of the middle floor and imagined that she wondered what was currently going on in the rooms. The clock had struck eight and the deck too was beginning to see traffic. When Aisha’s phone rang, Romola excused herself and asked if she’d like another drink.

“Guinness and a clean glass this time,” Aisha said before answering the call.

Romola took the other customers’ orders and went down to the counter where the other waitresses, between restocking tables, asked what the spoiled woman’s problem was. She shrugged and said she wondered the same.

*

Earlier, in the afternoon, an important man phoned the manager at MRS to announce that he would be coming to fuel his fleet of cars within the hour and he’d prefer that there was no queue when he arrived. It wasn’t an unusual request. Owners of luxury vehicles did not appreciate proximity to the tokunbo taxis that crawled the town’s roads. The pump attendants pulled the gates shut and waited until a motorcade came to a stop before them, black Mercedes-Benzes and Range Rovers and BMWs, their dulcet horns put indiscriminately to use, door handles and roofs and bonnets intricately beribboned, number plates covered with colourful posters that declared an impending matrimony, a Saturday wedding convoy as far as Romola could tell.

Ceremonies were good for business. The fueling was quick, nine vehicles at six pumps, the costs of full tanks and cash gifts passing to the pump attendants, the owner of the motorcade being in a bright mood, such a bright mood that he climbed out of a car, rearranged his agbada on his shoulders, and walked towards Romola like a minor politician canvassing for votes. The laugh lines around his mouth seemed perennial, his cheeks had the robust, buttery look of someone who had enjoyed an easy life, his neck coiled into itself in a way that made him appear neckless and, now that he was standing before her, Romola could see that he had recently had a shave.

“My dear,” the man said, a gold tooth flashing in his mouth, “is your name possibly Beauty?”

Romola squinted at him and wondered if he knew her from Riverside. “No, sir,” she said, “it is not.”

“With how beautiful you are, I could have sworn it was. Can I have your phone number? I’d like to treat you to a good time sometime.”

“I’m seeing someone, sir,” Romola lied.

“Of course,” the man said, “a fine woman like you should have a good man. But you can’t let that stand in the way of your pleasure. I’m getting married tomorrow myself.”

Romola said nothing. She stood there and stared at the man, hoping that her silence was eloquent enough. 

The man opened his mouth to speak again but decided against it. After an awkward second, he swivelled, his agbada flapping about, and disappeared into a car. His convoy departed promptly.

*

On the deck, some of the new customers scrolled through their phones, dialled the numbers of acquaintances and screamed for them to come have a nice time. Some hassled Romola to put on SuperSport 3 so they could watch Manchester United play Southampton. She was used to this and kept the composure of a diplomat. She provided beers here, cigarettes there, received payment in cash and stashed it in her fanny pack. She switched on the television and muted it, Davido’s gruff voice on the bar’s speakers an odd accompaniment to Wayne Rooney’s face on the screen. She looked at Aisha who now had a man sitting with her and mouthed an apology. She wanted to save Aisha’s order for last.

After she had served a round, assisted by Gold, Romola delivered Aisha’s Guinness, uncorked it and poured it in a new glass. The man tried to pay but Aisha said she could afford her own hedonism. “I think my friend wants her seat back,” she said. She stared up at Romola standing over them. “Don’t you, dear?”

Romola nodded. The tenuous claim of friendship made her feel warm inside. The man slid his business card across the table. “Call me sometime,” he said, and went to sit by himself.

“A gentleman,” Romola said, grinning.

“I paid your manager to have you to myself,” Aisha said.

Romola felt slighted. She wasn’t point-and-kill, a fat catfish Aisha could pick out of a pond, have gutted, seasoned, grilled to her taste and served to her on a platter. “I’m not part of the merchandise,” she said.

“That came out wrong. Am I drunk?”

“It’s only your second bottle.”

“Do you want one?”

“I don’t drink on the job.”

“Please, forgive me.” 

Romola let herself be appeased. She was curious about Aisha and would like to know how she wound up at Riverside on the eve of her wedding when she should be going over the details of the ceremony with her family. She beckoned to Gold and said, “Can you cover for me? I’d like to talk to my friend for a while.”

“Of course,” Gold said. Of course.

Romola considered asking Aisha to put in an order of point-and-kill for her. Instead, she said, “So, what are you going to do?”

Manchester United had scored a goal and the ululation around them made conversation difficult. Aisha leaned forward on the table, her chin cupped in her palms. Romola mirrored her. They recycled stale breath between them. 

“I’m going to marry him,” Aisha said. “I’m having my last night out as a single woman.”

“Why, when you don’t like him?”

“How old are you?”

Romola did not see what this had to do with anything but she said she was twenty.

“I’m twenty-nine,” Aisha said, “and my father no longer wants me in his house.”

“You seem like you can afford your own house,” Romola said. It had been three years since she left the house she grew up in and started living on her own in a cheap room.

“No, not like that. He will disown me if I’m not married by thirty.”

“We’re not in the eighteen hundreds,” Romola said, but her own father had disowned her for refusing to wear a chastity ring. “What happened to marrying for love?”

Aisha buried her face in her hands. “Love is not enough,” she said. 

This made no sense to Romola. She thought it must be the Guinness speaking, the bourgeois woman must not be able to hold her alcohol. When the music changed, Romola realised that the sound she had taken for the trail of Wande Coal’s falsetto was, in fact, Aisha’s sniffling, her composure dissolving, losing its cut.

“You’ve been in love then?”

Aisha raised her head. She blotted tears from the corners of her eyes with her little finger. “Yes, I have loved a fine woman.”

Aisha’s candour surprised Romola and opened a backdoor in her heart. This was a quandary she understood. She took the woman’s hand and rubbed it gently, kneading the knuckles, the joints soft and fragile unlike hers which were becoming stiff from overuse. She worried that if she pressed too hard, Aisha’s fingers would come apart on the table. Aisha noticed someone staring at them at the next table, whispering and nudging his companions, all of them turning to look at the two women with derision pasted all over their faces. She withdrew her hand from Romola. The music continued around them, Yemi Alade looking for her philandering Johnny on the speakers.

Aisha got her third Guinness and downed half the bottle. “I’ve been thinking about opening a bar of my own,” she said, “one that caters only to women.”

“How do you plan to keep the men out?”

“There will be bouncers at the gate.”

“Will those be women too?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so.”

“What if the women want to come with their men?”

“Well, it won’t be the right place. They can bring them to Riverside.”

“It sounds like a good idea.”

“Would you want to work in a place like that?”

“No,” Romola said, “I like seeing men and women together.”

“Look around you,” Aisha said, “what’s there to like?”

It was true, Romola explained, that Riverside was rotten—perhaps the same could be said of most of the bars in the town. The customers brought the frustrations of their home and work, and unleashed them on the waitresses, shouting or being snide, their contempt unmasked. The lonelier ones often mistook her professional deference for attraction and waited for her to close, begging that she go home with them for the night when what she wanted most was her bed. Once in a while, someone came along and commanded her to sit—she acquiesced when it was a woman, especially when she had ordered Guinness—and all they wanted to talk about were their problems, as though she were a licensed therapist or a priest trained in the sacrament of reconciliation. But, at least, people were transparent in bars, their hungers and greeds, fears and excitements, prides and prejudices out for everyone to see. 

“And I like looking at all of you,” Romola said, “men and women, and wondering if your lives are worth living.”

Aisha held still as though Romola’s monologue was the most profound she had heard and she didn’t want to miss a moment of it. “What do you think?” she asked. “Is my life worth living?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m not done wondering.”

“Is that why you work here, this search for someone whose living is worthy?”

Romola laughed. “I’m saving up to go to university.”

“Oh,” Aisha said.

*

Three days before, on Tuesday, Romola visited the state university on the outskirts of town after she closed for the day at MRS. She took in the cool evening air of the campus, walked across lawns despite the newly painted signposts that warned her not to, and peered into lecture theatres. She wandered into what the students called the love garden: a small parcel of land bounded by walls of boxwood, the carpet grass mostly dead at the feet of five small sheds set in a pentagon, all connected by concrete walkways that met in the middle. She sat under one of two sheds that weren’t occupied. 

In the shed nearest Romola’s, there was a girl lying on a bench, headphones covering her ears, her head propped uncomfortably on a metal armrest so that she could, with discretion, watch a couple under another shed, a boy reading to another girl from his phone—possibly poetry he had written for her, verbose and conceited, all pathos and no truth—his face lit by the blue light, an arm around his companion whose eyes were on a different couple who were grafted together by their mouths under a different shed, kissing urgently, sucking on each other’s lips like they were doing it for the first time, like they wouldn’t ever have the courage to do it again, like they wanted to barter all the fluids they had in their bodies before someone came to pull them apart.

Romola watched these people watching each other and found it interesting. She wanted what they had and she wanted more. Another year of work and she’d be able to finance her own education in a federal university in a city far from this sombre town. She imagined she would have a sound system in her room, the volume turned down while a girl read her some bad poetry. She would kiss her for a long time after, until their lips were sore and swollen. 

*

By eleven, the deck was past its capacity, men seating their lovers on their laps. A man came to pull the two unoccupied chairs at Aisha’s table, telling her she seemed too elegant to be drinking with a waitress. Aisha cocked her head and widened her eyes at Romola as if to ask if this was what she liked. She told the man she was so hungry that she could masticate him to the marrow. He chuckled. He was still thinking of a reply when a fight broke out elsewhere. Someone’s wife had gotten word of her husband’s nocturnal adventure and had arrived to take him home but, first, she said, she wanted to give his mistress a memorable beating, something to dissuade her from the affair. 

The wife took her scarf off her head, tied it around her waist, struck the mistress in the face and again. The mistress was too drunk to fight back, the husband unwilling to intercede. The customers crowded in the corners, making space for the fray to play out, interjecting with wicked encouragement. The waitresses offered their pleas for mercy from a safe distance—they knew better than to interrupt a wife’s rage. In the commotion, beer bottles and glasses fell to the floor and perished. When the wife picked up a broken bottleneck to stab the mistress, customers and waitresses surged forward, pulling them apart, averting a tragedy their consciences couldn’t bear. Romola wrested the bottleneck from the wife who wouldn’t let go of it until she saw that she had cut the waitress. 

Blood and an acute pain blooming bright in her hand, tears welling in her eyes, anger simmering inside her, Romola frowned at the two women panting on opposite ends of the deck now. She thought they looked similar. They were both fair-skinned, had cornrows and wore gowns that showed the fullness of their bodies. She imagined the husband going around town, hitting on women who bore a semblance to his wife. He had remained in his chair the whole fight, a slight amused smile on his face, as though he couldn’t believe his good fortune, couldn’t believe that one woman would attempt to mutilate another on his account. 

The wife took her husband’s car key and dared him to sit a second longer. He hurried after her without a glance at his mistress who was adjusting her dress, trying to cobble together what was left of her dignity. The other waitresses sat Romola down, offered her painkillers, cleaned the wound with methylated spirit and wrapped a rag around her hand. They clicked their tongues and cursed the husband. 

Aisha looked as amused as the husband had. Her eyes were dim despite the furrow of her brow. “Does this happen often?” she asked.

“Once a month, sometimes twice,” Vee said.

“Is it always this bad?” Aisha asked.

Modella snorted. “That was quite mild,” she said.

“It’s not fair,” Aisha said, “that the wife descended on the mistress instead of her husband.”

“Not much is fair in the world,” Fave said. 

“I’m not trying to get existential about it,” Aisha said. “I just mean that I would never do that.” 

The waitresses returned to their stations. Gold did the rounds again, joking with the customers, trying to restore the deck back to normalcy. Romola felt guilty for idling at a table when her colleagues were busy working. 

“Or, do you think I could?” Aisha asked. 

“What?”

“Do you see me fighting with my husband’s mistress in a few years?”

“I think it’s time for you to go home to your family,” Romola said. She was beginning to lose patience with Aisha. If she was so averse to matrimony, there was still time to call off the wedding. 

“In a moment,” Aisha said. “I’d like another bottle for the road.”

Romola got up to fetch the Guinness herself. When she returned, Aisha held her hand so she would not leave. Romola knew they’d be strangers if they met elsewhere, a service worker and an important woman, between them a wall that could only be breached in a bar. Yet, she let herself take a seat again. 

Staring in her glass, swirling her drink, Aisha said, “You know, you’ve talked to me like a child the entire night.”

“I think you wallow in your misfortunes like you’re one.”

“Well, what would you have me do?”

“Surely, you have not come to a bar for a second opinion.” 

“And what if I have?”

Aisha’s phone rang then. She watched the screen and announced that it was her father, although Romola could see this for herself. When it rang again, she said it was her mother, and the roll call of her family members continued, and for some reason this made her laugh, her eyes crinkling, her face flowering open like a night-blooming cereus, her hajj tooth prominent in the wide cave of her mouth, the laughter of an adult who had forgotten she was an adult, which passed to Romola like contagion, until the phone rang again and they saw that it was the Groom, saved like that, and Romola stopped laughing, and Aisha stopped laughing and inverted the phone on the table such that the screen was blind to them. 

Romola checked her own phone and found that no one had called her. “It’s almost midnight,” she said. “You really should get going now.”

“Listen,” Aisha said, “I’m going to sleep in the hotel tonight and I was hoping I could convince you to spend the night with me.”

Romola thought for a bit. “And your wedding?” she asked.

“It’s not until the morning.”

“It’s a terrible idea.”

“I know.”

“And yet?”

“And yet.”

*

Eight days before, the previous Friday, a man showed up at Riverside and ordered a bottle of Guinness. Romola was stationed on the ground floor then and the man took a seat alone at the centre of it. They had not talked since she was seventeen and did not remember how to be around each other, acting like strangers who weren’t made by blood, who weren’t unmade by blood. He called her Beauty like the other customers and she served him her customer service smile, no word shared asides what was needed for trade. The other waitresses noticed their awkwardness and said it must be the bug of attraction between them. When Romola told them to mind their business, Vee asked why, could she not take a joke? Modella sniggered and said it was fine if she fancied him too, he seemed to be merely three times her age. Fave said she had heard that older men, always eager to impress, made for good lovers. Romola was tempted to say that he wasn’t that old, his fifty-second birthday was still a few months away, but she was loath to reveal how she knew this. Gold supplied them yet again with her theory about diabolical men, women at rock bottom, and their affinities for Guinness. Romola turned to look at the man who had been watching her. He beckoned to her and she took another Guinness up to him. In his presence, her hands shook, her legs trembled and her heart thumped hard. She poured his drink until it overflowed the glass and spilled onto his lap. She fetched a rag and tried to soak up the spill but he snatched it out of her hand and cleaned himself, clucking, hissing, shaking his head, as though he had remembered why he hadn’t seen her in three years and regretted seeing her then. He paid for his drinks and declined to take his change which Romola spent on a bottle of Guinness at the close of work. She sat with it until Gold came to her and said, “That was your father earlier, wasn’t it?” 

*

The two women checked into the hotel. The bed was queen-sized against a wall, flanked by an armchair in a corner, the bathroom door in another. It was a quaint, blue space, the kind one might dream in. Aisha fell on the bed, her arms splayed at her sides. She looked crucified to Romola who, sitting in the armchair, wondered about the bodies that had laid in the white sheets before, their pleasures and shames, their sweats and ejecta.

Romola turned the television on, toggled between channels for something to watch and, when nothing caught her fancy, switched it off again. Outside, the music had gone silent. The wind bore into the room the nattering of the other waitresses as they went through the closing motions of the bar. Romola got up to watch them from the window.

“I think I might have met your groom,” she said, without much thought, to Aisha.

“Is that so?” Aisha asked.

Romola saw the disco lights go off on the deck, fluorescent tubes put to more practical use in their place. There was Gold in the near distance, alone, her back hunched, her hands grabbing around, sorting empty bottles into crates.

“I don’t know,” Romola said. “But an important man came to fuel his wedding convoy at MRS today.”

“Well, there must be dozens of weddings happening tomorrow,” Aisha said. She sat up to take off her shoes.

Romola saw Gold stand up straight, staring towards the window, towards her. She smiled and waved and, when she realised Gold’s eyes were not for her, felt a prickling in her chest.

“He had these robust cheeks,” she said. “They were smooth like butter.”

“Many people have good skin,” Aisha said. She threw a shoe at the door, the sound of heavy leather stern on the wood.

“And he had a gold tooth like you.”

“It’s a hajj tooth.” Aisha tossed her other shoe. “Many Muslims have it.”

Before long, Romola heard the clang and echo of the establishment’s gates slammed shut. The deck was now emptied of life and spirit, sterile and starkly lit where it was only recently a kaleidoscope. “I know,” she said. “Anyway, this man, he tried to pick me up.”

Aisha sighed. “Come here,” she said, patting the space beside her. Her eyes, Romola could see, were glazed with stifled tears. 

“Are you thinking about the woman you love?”

“I’m trying not to. There isn’t much use for thought these days.”

“You know, I won’t judge you if you cry.”

“I know. Have you ever been in love?”

“There used to be some girl,” Romola said.

Aisha laughed, surprise curling her lips. “Who was this girl?” 

“We used to study for the university entrance exams together at my house. She brought me presents sometimes: a rake comb, an electric toothbrush, ankle socks. If she was attracted to me, she did not say, being shy and timid, but my father thought that she was. He made her promise to never speak to me again and told me I had to start wearing a chastity ring. When I said I wouldn’t, he said I might as well stop studying because he wouldn’t pay my university tuition.”

“Did she stop talking to you?”

“She did. I liked her.” In the silence that followed, delicate and full, Romola searched for her reflection in Aisha’s pupils, her face peeking back at her from two dark places. She felt raw with new emotion. She felt hot in her belly and in her chest. “I was wondering,” she said, “would it be wrong if I kissed you?”

“In a number of ways,” Aisha said, “but I’d like that very much.”

Midnight had passed and Saturday had slunk in, vernal and thick with possibilities. Romola straddled Aisha and reached forward to caress her face with her good hand. She leaned in for a kiss, slow and gentle at first, a coy, intermittent nibbling, then full-mouthed, long and wet, Aisha’s lips parting to receive her tongue. Aisha wrapped her arms around Romola, pulled her flush to herself, as though she wanted them to meld together, to become one, now and forever. There was a wedding in the offing but they put it out of their minds. They held each other tight, with tenderness, with something like affection, as it is at the beginning of an affair when it means everything, as it is at the end of an affair when it means nothing at all. 

About the Author:

Adams Adeosun is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a 2023 MacDowell fellow.

*Feature image by andrew welch on Unsplash