That was quite intense, wasn’t it? so good! Tunde says, smiling and panting. He lies on his back in an oversized bed, talking to Ròrie, who is also on her back. She is not smiling or panting. She lets his question fall into the staccato hum of the air-conditioner. When Tunde asks again, was that good for you too, darling? Ròrie turns to face him, head propped on her right hand. She wants to ask him why he’s recently taken to asking that question, but she knows why: they were yet to talk about or acknowledge how he’d been a strong youthful-looking man one day, and the next, a complete old man, slow, saggy and grey. It is as though age has caught up with him mid-stride and now he does not know how to balance his gait. Ròrie does not ask him though, instead she meets his gaze with a full smile, and despite what time has told her, her hand moves of its accord, wiping the beads of sweat gathered along his hairline. That is enough answer for Tunde. He reaches out, pulls her into a tight embrace, wrapping his long spindly arms and legs around her, trailing kisses along her shoulder blade. But soon, the catches in his breath becomes full blown snores. Ròrie remains still for a bit, waiting for him to settle into his nap. When his limbs slacken around her, she untangles herself first from his hands, then from him entirely. Newly lonely, his arms protrude slovenly from his body, the gold band on his middle finger glistens under the dim glow of the bedside lamp.

Ròrie watches him sleep, snoring softly. She feels a small pressure in her chest, a sting in her eyes. For godssake, she thinks, pressing two fingers against her eyes, pushing back the brimming tears. She gets off the bed and walks into the adjourning bathroom, to the grand white tub at the center. She plugs in the drain and opens the faucet. The water hesitates, sputters for a moment, then it gushes. Ròrie empties the mini soap containers into the tub. When the tub is full and covered in bubbly pearly white suds, she climbs in; the water takes her weight, she is floating, but the pressure in her chest is heavier. From the other end of the tub, her toes peek out, starkly dark against the bubbly cloud of suds. Like clockwork, she thinks dark like polished ebony. On the first day they met, he said she was so dark that her skin shone like polished ebony. Then later, in bed, as he trailed kisses down her back, he whispered it like a prayer: Ròrie, dark like polished ebony.

Now she stares at her toes, trying to ignore the growing discomfort in her chest, her eyes filling up. She knows she will soon give in; it is part of the routine. Yet she drags out the moment she knows she’ll have to look up at the flowers, at the majestic red rose and tall lean lilies that are etched onto the POP ceiling: a bouquet of purples and pinks, reds and yellows, with strokes of blues and greens and browns. When she can no longer hold out, she looks up. The flowers purr, spread out their petals.

Hello Ròrie, says the majestic red rose.

Hi, Ròrie whispers, lips quivering.

Oh, don’t cry says a purple lily. Come. It spread out its petals even wider. Ròrie shuts her eyes and walks into the soft petals of the purple lily. The other flowers circle her; they wave and flutter and caress her arms and face. They wipe her tears.

You know we are always here for you, the flowers say in melodic unison.

True, the flowers have always been there for her. They were there on the ceiling the first night Tunde scooped her limp body from the bed and carried her into the bathroom. Then, Ròrie had used her eyes, like fingers, to retrace the lines, the dips, and curves, that formed a flower. She counted the dots that created a petal as Tunde cooed to her, gently washing her body. But all that was four years ago and the flowers are still there, in bloom. Sometimes, she has been overtaken by a fervid curiosity to know if the flowers were in other bathrooms in the hotel, blooming for strangers, for girls like her. But she has only ever been in Room 407. She could have asked Tunde why they used the same room, but she was afraid of knowing; her fears are irrational; they stand on nothing and everything. Besides, Room 407 now holds too much of her.

***

They had met on the pages of a newspaper: she, in her final year of secondary school, him, already an established lawyer and sometimes writer. He maintained a column in The Sunday Weekly, where she, bristling with teenage boredom, had stumbled upon his column, Chronicles of a Lagos Lawyer. Ròrie planned to study law in University. She’d made the decision when she was eleven, after winning a national debate competition and one of the judges of the competition, an old, retired judge, said she’d make a fine lawyer someday. His comment had stood out to her like a revelation. It was what remained, long after her parents had spent her prize money, long after the photograph of her holding up the gold cup that was enlarged and pasted at the entrance of her school had faded; the retired judge’s voice remained. She would make a fine lawyer. And since the competition had been held in Lagos, Ròrie only saw herself being a lawyer in Lagos even though she, and everyone she knew, lived in Warri. When she saw the title of Tunde’s column, Chronicles of a Lagos Lawyer, as she was flipping to the back of the newspaper for the crossword puzzles, Ròrie stopped. She read him that Sunday, the next Sunday, and the one after. The life Tunde lead utterly fascinated her. He wrote about the difficulties of being a lawyer in Nigeria but the stories she loved most were his pro-bono cases: stories of widows he helped to get their late husband’s property from extended male relatives, stories of missing persons found languishing in maximum security prisons on the flimsiest of charges. Her favorite story though was the one about why his firm was successful. Because of women, he’d written. He bragged that his staff was ninety-five percent women and contrary to the opinion of his learned colleagues who complained that maternity leaves, marriages, and childcare swallowed brilliant women lawyers whole, Tunde insisted that despite all of that, women got the job done. Reading his column in The Sunday Weekly became a ritual for Ròrie. Once her dad, a Fine Arts teacher at the local public school, was done with the newspaper, Ròrie would take it up to her bed, in the bedroom she shared with her five siblings, three older brothers born one year apart, and twin girls born when Ròrie was already in primary three. Before the twins, there was only one bunk bed in the room which Ròrie shared with her brothers, after the twins came, her father commissioned the local carpenter down the street to build a second bunk bed. The twins slept on the bottom of the new bunk bed, Ròrie slept on top. Her bed was the only space in their two-bedroom flat where Ròrie could be alone without someone’s arms or legs touching her. The time she spent on her bed, brooding, reading, doing her school assignments, and sometimes even having her meals alone, was a constant source of angst for Ròrie’s mother. Why won’t you stay with everyone else in the parlour? Eat with us on the dining table? her mother would ask. Sometimes, Ròrie would say she just wanted to be alone, or she couldn’t stand her brothers chewing so loudly. Other times she would just shrug and take her tray up to her bed. Her mother, mostly tired from her day job as a cleaner at the state general hospital, would let her be. There was a time in Ròrie’s childhood when her mother pretended to be her twin. They would do things together, Ròrie helping out in the kitchen, or just sitting by her mother at Church, but as the twins got older and her mother grew even more tired, their twinship subsided and Ròrie retreated from her parents and siblings.

The more she read Tunde, the further her retreat. She found older editions of the newspaper in her school library and took out the pages containing Tunde’s column home, up to her bed. Slowly, she wasn’t certain when it happened, but Tunde morphed into an uncle figure in her mind, like someone she’d always known, someone she could trust.

One day on a thoughtless impulse Ròrie sent Tunde an email. She had gone to the cybercafé to check her emails and browse the internet, which she did once every month, saving what little snacks money her parents could spare to buy one hour of time at the café. On that day, almost nine months after she started reading Tunde, Ròrie sent him a short message saying she was about to finish secondary school, was planning on studying law, and asked if he had any advice for her. Although she did not expect it, he replied. They sent each other emails back and forth. Ròrie completely stopped buying snacks in school, saving every bit of her snacks money for the cybercafé. She went from going once per month, to weekly, then twice a week. Sometimes she could only afford to buy ten minutes of time, just enough to check her emails and respond to Tunde. Since she was no longer close to her parents or siblings, no one paid attention to her frequent visits to the cafe. And, because she came first in her class year after year and won regional and national awards, there was no reason for anyone to worry about her. One year after she stumbled on Tunde’s column, the University of Lagos, UNILAG, offered Ròrie admission to study law. No one blinked, not her teachers, her parents, or her classmates. They all assumed she deserved it, being so intelligent and all. What they did not know was that it had not occurred to Ròrie to apply to Lagos that was so far away from home until Tunde convinced her through a slew of emails that UNILAG suited her better.

I know people who will ensure you get admitted into the law department, he’d said in an email, and there are so many good law firms for you to intern during holidays. Including mine. Think about it, where would you intern if you attended the University of Benin? Or Delta State University? Those who become serious, important lawyers, study and work in Lagos.

Everyone Ròrie knew either went to the University of Benin which was two hours away from Warri or better still, Delta State University, only an hour away from home. She did not personally know anyone who’d gone all the way to Lagos, almost eight hours away. But the thought of working with Tunde, of being among his ninety-five percent female staff who got the job done felt like the greatest compliment to Ròrie on that year she turned seventeen. So, when she filled out her University Matriculation Exam forms, she wrote UNILAG as her first choice of university. But years after, Ròrie would doubt if her intelligence had gotten her into the University or if Tunde had manipulated the admissions office. She would have that doubt when she graduated at the top of her class. A quiet but ever present voice that quelled her pride for fear that she would be found out, that people would know that it was because of Tunde she had excelled.

***

She saw Tunde two months after she arrived in Lagos. The city was exactly how she’d imagined it from her visit many years ago when she was eleven and the way it was described in the novels she’d read: harried, smelly, a blur of yellow buses, conductors hanging on the doors, shouting destinations in well-rehearsed and rushed melodies: Yaba, Iyana-woro, Ojuelegba, Shomolu, Obalende. It was November; the stench of the city was gradually subsiding as the rains receded. Lagos was only just beginning to feel a little familiar, like a place Ròrie could get to know when Tunde sent his driver with a note in a glittery blue envelope. The message had read: Come spend the weekend with me. Let’s discuss your courses. Elo, one of her roommates, and the only friend she’d made in Lagos, snatched the note from her hands and read it aloud. Elo had also grown up in Warri. They instantly became friends when they discovered that they grew up not too far from each other. Elo was one year older and because she often visited her aunt in Lagos during holidays, she knew Lagos better and designated herself the leader of their little friend group. She was the only person Ròrie told about Tunde. She had to, after Tunde sent her a welcome to Lagos hamper basket through his driver the weekend she arrived. Then the next weekend, he sent more presents and when she turned eighteen about three weeks after she arrived, he sent her a brand new blackberry phone.

Hmmm, he really wants to spend the weekend with you, Elo said. She was smiling too, as though the envelope was meant for her. The blue envelope, the delicate pink ribbon tied across it and all the glitter seemed to tickle Elo and Ròrie. They giggled as though they couldn’t believe that a big man like Tunde had deemed them worthy of his note.

Does he really want to spend a weekend with you? Elo asked again, turning the envelope and the note around. She couldn’t understand why a man like Tunde wanted to spend time with her silly friend. Ròrie didn’t respond. She did not think. She was so giddy to finally meet Tunde, she couldn’t stop smiling. She ran into the shower while Elo packed a few clothes and books for her in a small bag. Exactly two years to this day, while lazing about in the apartment Tunde bought for her a short distance from campus, the girls would laugh at their innocence, their naivety, and Elo would add, our stupidity! Really? Discuss courses, she would say, snorting through her laugh. After her shower, Ròrie wore her favourite dark blue jeans trousers, a yellow sleeveless top, and flat black shoes adorned with a small rusty silver bow at the top. She piled her braids into a bun, brushed up her edges and eyebrows with an old toothbrush, and applied thick clear gloss on her lips. She hugged Elo and hopped into the black Lexus waiting for her outside the hostel. 

Let me know when you arrive, Elo called out, waving. Ròrie nodded, still smiling; her cheeks were starting to hurt. She settled into the car and greeted the driver, a quiet old man who had delivered Tunde’s gifts to her. The driver acknowledged her greeting with a grunt and said, please put on your seat belt. As the driver steered the car outside, past the lines of okadas parked at the gate, the hawkers selling fruits and gums and pastries in trays and wheelbarrows, Ròrie scrolled through her old chats with Tunde, making mental notes of retorts and smart things to say to him. He’d once said he found her insights and intelligence charming, and Ròrie wanted it to stay that way.

But then the driver delivered her to Tunde and he took her to his room and removed her clothes, slowly, like he was exhibiting rare art; her tongue collapsed in her mouth, refusing to wag and be smart.

Call me Papa, will you please? he asked, voice soft, pleading.

Rorie uttered the word, barely above a whisper. The sound of it must have done something to him for he quickly lowered her on the bed and took what she did not offer. The shock of him inside her seared Ròrie, pulling her out of her body. She could not, in that moment, understand what was happening. She stood at the side of the bed, watching Tunde on the unmoving body beneath him, eyes shut tight, his lean back curved, taking and taking until he trembled calling out her name. He cuddled the body and whispered sweet nonsense into its ears. Later, when his breathing had steadied, he gathered the body in his arms and carried it into the bathroom. Ròrie walked behind him. She watched as he gently placed the body inside the tub, still cooing at it. He ran warm water over the body, hands softly caressing. She could not watch him anymore; she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was back in her body, and there on the ceiling was the majestic rose and the tall lilies, smiling at her.

***

Watching your flowers again? Tunde asks. He’s leaning on the bathroom door, watching her. Under the overhead fluorescent light, his scant greying afro looks to Ròrie like a sparse tree in harmattan, stripped of its essence.

Ròrie smiles, not trusting her voice. She looks down at the tub, almost all the suds has dissolved; Tunde must have slept for a while. She wonders how long he’s been watching her. For a man his age, he is light on his feet.

I have told you, one day you’ll catch a cold in that tub. Get up. Tunde says, walking to her, and gently pulling her out of the tub. Ròrie pushes the drain plug with her toes and watches as the water rushes down the drain, the pipes gurgling. Each time she does this, she likes to think that whatever made her cry after every meeting with Tunde drains out with the water, that she is whole and full again. Like a rebirth. After all, isn’t that what baptism is about? Water and faith? 

Tunde plucks a robe from a hanger. He puts it on Ròrie and ties the sash into a weak bow. 

 Let me take a quick shower. I’ll be out in a minute, darling.

He always calls Ròrie darling; he never uses her name except when they have sex.

***

Welcome to The Waterside, darling, Tunde had said the evening his driver dropped her off. He was alone at the outdoor lounge overlooking the ocean and the trail of cars stuck on the Lekki-Ikoyi bridge in rush hour traffic. He was sitting on a matte-black cane chair and a table of the same colour. Ròrie was taken aback by Tunde. Not by the look of him; it was the way he towered over her when he stood up to hug her – he had not looked so tall in his Facebook pictures. It was his strong heady perfume that rushed to her brain and made her dizzy. It was the deep purr of his voice that she had heard over the phone almost every week for months, his full uniformly grey hair and long wrinkling freckled face she’d seen in dozens of photographs. He looked as she expected, yet he was different. The way he sat, legs spread apart, and took her in, smiling what she would, years later, describe in her journal as a lazy but ominous smile. A brew of panic soaked up Ròrie’s excitement. She couldn’t quite meet Tunde’s eyes, this man she had talked with on the phone for months and exchanged text messages and emails with for over a year. She looked down at the rusting silver bow on her shoes. Her eyes darted about as though she was a caged bird, and she forgot every smart thing she’d thought to say to him.  

How are you, darling?

Fine. 

Did you get into traffic?

No.

A boat skidded by at that moment and Tunde asked, have you ever been on a boat? 

Ròrie shook her head. 

Tunde leaned close to her; he whispered “bush girl” as though it was a compliment. He would call her bush girl a couple more times in the following years: the first time she got on an airplane and couldn’t strap on the seat belt, the day he found out she only bought used clothes from the night market in Yaba, and that same evening after the waiter dropped a menu by her and she could not correctly pronounce the jumble of constants and vowels which she learned was an Italian menu for pasta and various sauces. Tunde ordered pasta and shrimps in a creamy sauce with a side of grilled salmon. After that dinner Ròrie met the majestic red rose and the tall lilies on the bathroom ceiling.

***

The bathroom door opens and light floods into the room. Tunde comes out wearing a thick white robe, his hair clumps around his head like wet cotton wool. He removes the robe as he walks towards Ròrie. His gait was slow.

Come and give me a message, darling, it’s been ages.

I massaged you last month. 

A month is a long time, my darling. You’ll know when you get to my age.

Ròrie takes a mint oil bottle from the bathroom, pours oil on her hands, and begins to gently rub his shoulders. Before Tunde, she did not know that she could massage bodies. On one of their weekends together, he’d egged her to pour oil on her hands, to try. She did, and when she began to softly knead the muscles on his shoulders, back and thighs, his taut muscles loosened under her fingers and he moaned, “this feels so good; you are a natural, a natural.” Then, Ròrie had wanted to tell him that she only knew what to do because she had watched Igede, her grandmother, massage hundreds of bodies. But whenever she was with Tunde, speech was a task and how would she even explain the mystic that her grandmother was? She’d simply smiled and nodded.

Darling, did you hear me? 

Hmm, Ròrie’s fingers pause at the small of his back. 

I think we should order a light dinner.

By we, he means her. She wipes her hands on her robe and calls room service. She orders pasta and stir-fry chicken sauce.

***

The night they met, when Tunde ordered pasta and a creamy sauce, he showed Ròrie pictures of his family on his phone, pictures that she had already seen on Facebook. Tunde had a wife and two children—a girl and a boy.

I know, Ròrie said, she felt the tie on her tongue loosening. Tunde’s daughter was called Enitan, and they—Ròrie and Enitan— uncannily resembled each other: skinny, averagely tall, with ordinary-looking oval faces and light brown eyes. The only distinguishing feature between them was the mole dot on Ròrie’s upper lip and the fact that she thought Tunde’s daughter, who was studying law in the UK, was more sophisticated than she was.

Oh, you know? Tunde said, he was still smiling. Do you know that her name is also Ròrie?

What? Impossible, Ròrie said. Her name was unusual; all her life she had never heard anyone called Ròrie. The full name was Eròrie.

Tunde nods, beaming now, proud of himself for keeping this fact from her. Do you remember when I asked for your full name and what tribe you were? I wanted to confirm. My wife is also Okpe.

Ròrie recalled an email, she’d thought he was just curious about her background.

I named my daughter Enitan, after my mother, but her middle name is Eròrie. It means thoughtfulness, right? To be thoughtful. I think it’s a beautiful name.

Ròrie nodded. She felt her tongue relaxing, the anxiety slipping away. A warm breeze from the ocean swirled over their table, a sense of calm settled into her.

It’s more than to be thoughtful though, Ròrie said, speaking a full sentence for the first time that evening. My mother explained that it means the parents thought about the child, they wanted the child and were thoughtful about it. In a way, it’s a child that was really wanted by their parents.

Oh, Tunde said. I didn’t know that.

Ròrie nodded again, impressed that she had told Tunde something he didn’t know.

Anyway, Tunde went on, my family is important to me. They shouldn’t concern you because I will take good care of you. After you complete your first year, you can come intern at my firm. That’s if your grades are good though.

He went back to his food like what he said was ordinary, wonted. Ròrie dropped her fork on the tray; she was elated. She was really going to be a lawyer and work at his prestigious firm! She wanted to tell him too, that she knew he was married. Of course, he was married. There was also the resemblance between her and his daughter, but she felt her tongue collapsing again. She was overwhelmed by his presence, by the gold-rimmed glass she was drinking from, and the too creamy pasta. She felt frustrated by her inability to talk; talking was what she did and she couldn’t understand why she was suddenly so quiet, unable to speak to him, a man she was familiar and comfortable with. She picked her fork, stabbed a fat shrimp and shoved it into her mouth.

***

Room service delivers the pasta and stir-fry chicken sauce. Ròrie lays out the food on a silver tray and plops pillows on the headboard for Tunde to rest his back on. Her phone beeps midway through their dinner. 

Who is texting you? Tunde asks.

Ròrie rolls her eyes, irritated. He always wants to know where she is, who she is taking to, but never reveals that much about himself to her. Recently, she’s been thinking about how little she knows of him. She does not know where exactly he lives, his friends or what he does outside of work.

When he asks again, who’s texting you my darling? His eyes doleful, looking almost rheumy, Ròrie exhales away her irritation.

You know who is texting me. She turns the screen to him without looking at the phone.

It’s Elo.

It’s always Elo!

Both of you are thick as thieves, Tunde says, smiling.

***

The morning after Ròrie met the flowers, Tunde sat by her on the bed and told her that he couldn’t spend the weekend; he had an emergency at work. But he made her promise that she wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened in Room 407.

What we have is special, my darling, he’d said. Do you understand? 

Ròrie nodded and promised him. His driver took her back to school. On her way, her phone beeped, a bank alert of one hundred thousand Naira from Tunde. A text message followed the alert, let me know when you get to your hostel, darling. And don’t forget the promise you made.

Ròrie dropped the phone into the bag of clothes and books she didn’t open at all. She freed her braids from the bun, closed her eyes and there again in her mind, was the majestic red rose and lilies, their forms solid. The flowers swayed, they waved and smiled at her, they caressed her face and arms with their petals, enveloping her in the softest embrace, singing her name in the lightest melody. When Ròrie opened her eyes again, the car was parked by her hostel, the entire weekend blurred out of her mind. 

Elo ran to her. How was it? How are you? Was he nice? Why was your phone switched off? I was almost ready to call the police or someone but my elder sister said I should wait until morning today.

Did you tell your sister who I was with?

Elo shook her head.

Okay please don’t tell anyone, Ròrie said, handing over a plastic bag of fancy chocolates and biscuits Tunde bought at a supermarket outside the hotel.

He was nice. We had dinner, nothing much happened, Ròrie said.

It would take another three months before Ròrie could actually tell Elo about meeting the flowers.

During holidays, Tunde permitted Ròrie to stay home for only two weeks. He made her an intern at his law firm in Lagos Island, and because he knew somebody who knew somebody else, Elo also got an internship position at a consulting firm on Victoria Island. The day Ròrie showed her parents the letter Tunde wrote, offering her a paid internship of fifty thousand Naira, her mum raised her hands towards heaven and said, “Thank you, Jesus.” She was one less child to feed, one less child to send monthly allowance. Ròrie’s parents, with their stable government jobs, weren’t poor; they just straddled the line above poverty and only sunk when the government failed to pay salaries. In the days after she showed her parents the letter, Ròrie had hoped that her mum would see that something had happened to her, that she would notice that she no longer talked back to her older brothers and teased the twins, that she spent her holiday on her bed and didn’t hang out with her childhood friends. But her mother only thought that Ròrie had not changed one bit.

At the end of Ròrie’s second year, Tunde gave her a one-bedroom apartment near campus. He put the deeds, everything, in her name. She and Elo were a little wiser then, and they knew that men like Tunde did not buy apartments in the names of the girls they slept with. Tunde was unusual, kind, generous; he genuinely wanted Ròrie to excel. He was already telling her about GRE exams for a masters in the US or UK. Every time he brought it up, he would say that Nigeria has gone to the dogs and Ròrie must get herself out. He was not the norm. And although time had told her that what he’d taken without her permission was not equal to his generosity and that everything about their relationship was too unusual, she couldn’t help but feel tender towards him. Whatever was too hard for Ròrie, she handed over to the majestic red roses and the tall lilies.

***

Now, Tunde is done eating. Ròrie removes the tray from the bed. She picks the oil bottle. Should I continue the massage?

No darling, I can’t spend the night. I have to go home, Tunde replies.

He gets off the bed and pulls on his trousers. His daughter, his “Eni baby,” as he called her has graduated and returned home. Ròrie made the connection earlier in the day when Tunde’s daughter updated her Instagram with a photograph of Tunde kissing her head which she captioned, “seeing my Papa soon!” Ròrie had opened Tunde’s daughter’s profile, careful not to accidently like any of her post. She stalked the page, often wondering if Tunde’s daughter knew that her father bought them the same clothes, perfume, and underwear. If she knew that Tunde insisted she calls him Papa and that once, while in the throes of sex, he’d called her Eni baby.

Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you, Tunde goes on. He tucks the tail of his shirt into his trousers and stretches a hand towards Ròrie. It takes a moment for her to register that he wants her to fix his cufflinks. She clicks them in place. He stretches his other hands to her. 

What time is your exam tomorrow? 

9 A.M. 

The driver will be here at 6. You have to leave early to beat traffic. 

Ròrie nods.  

Tunde steps back; he studies her face and concludes that she is sad because he is leaving. 

Don’t be sad my darling. I promise we’ll spend a week together after your graduation. I’ll attend your graduation ceremony, and from there, we’ll go somewhere nice, Tunde continues. He slips his feet into his shoes and finger combs his hair. Although this would be their last time together, neither of them knows it.

Tunde made plans, confident, like a man who had a deal with The Fates to elongate his life, to strengthen his thread. He would die in his sleep the night before Ròrie’s graduation ceremony. She would look for him during the ceremony, scanning the entire hall for his head of grey afro, then she would receive her award as the best graduating student with her eyes on the hall entrance, expecting Tunde to walk in. Tunde had never reneged on his promises, so as Ròrie walked back to her apartment, she would sense that something had gone wrong. Then while crossing the open gutter into her apartment building, she would see on Twitter that hours before the commencement of her graduation ceremony, his heart had simply stopped beating. 

“We have lost a brilliant mind, an activist, a fighter for gender equality,” people would say. His photographs flooded the internet. Ròrie wouldn’t believe that he’d died. She would go to his daughter’s Instagram where she would see a picture of Tunde standing in front of Zuma rock, laughing, his hands spread about like an eagle in flight. She had taken the photo during a brief visit to Abuja and did not know that Tunde had sent the photograph to his daughter, who now captioned it with a line from one of Ròrie’s favorite poems: My right hand is broken, and the tree on which I lean on is fallen.

Then, Ròrie would scream, she’d let out a primal visceral howl, and collapse on her bed. But she wouldn’t be able to stay in the apartment. She would throw off her graduation gown, go outside and get into a cab. The Waterside Hotel, she would say. She would not know why she was going there, but that room where they’ve always been was the only place she felt she should be. At the hotel, the receptionist would recognize her and perhaps, hadn’t heard of Tunde’s death, handed over the keys. Inside the room, Ròrie would go to the bathroom, she would fill the tub and without taking off her clothes, climb in. Floating. The flowers would give a light shake, a slight shudder. They would let her into the garden but once she was inside, the sun would go down, the garden completely dark. The majestic rose and the purple lily would hold her face in their petals.

Sweetheart we have to go, they would say.

We have to go, the other flowers would chorus.

Then they would wither and fall off their stalks.

Ròrie would scream and beg and cry. Please! But the flowers would continue withering. The entire garden vanishing, stalk by stalk, before her eyes. When Ròrie opened her eyes again it would be late evening, and she would see, standing by the tub, her eighteen year old self, lithe and bright-eyed, smiling at her.

Don’t cry for the flowers, eighteen year old Ròrie would say, stretching out her arms, pulling Ròrie from the tub, and together, with her clothes dripping, they would walk out of room 407.

***

Now, after concluding that Ròrie is sad because he can’t spend the night, Tunde attempts to lighten Ròrie’s mood before he leaves. He goes to a corner where he has dropped the gift bags he brought her. 

 Darling, have you seen all the gifts I brought you? 

Ròrie opens the bags. She brings out dresses, shoes, and a set of gold and silver necklaces and earrings. When she reaches for the last bag, Tunde mouths ta-da! It is the latest iPhone, the iPhone 6. 

Do you like it?

What? I love it!

Come here then.

He hugs Ròrie and leaves a wet kiss on her forehead. 

I love you so much, my darling.

I love you too, Papa, Ròrie replies, beaming.

Tunde hurries to the door. Darling, please study and send a text when you get to school tomorrow. Then he blows her a kiss, bows from the room, from her life and to a place from where his thick drawl cannot summon her. 

END

About the Author:

Lucia Edafioka is from Warri, Nigeria. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona MFA program in fiction. Her essays and stories have appeared in the Boston Review, Catapult, Popula, and the Lagos-Limbe Anthology. A Ph.D. candidate at Vanderbilt University, Lucia is working on her debut novel.

*Feature image by Aakash Malik on Unsplash