(PART II)
PCFA
CHURCH, MACHAKOS, 11.31 a.m, 17th December, 2016
Well, they say weddings are a woman’s golden moment, but this
right here? It’s doomsday for me. Karma is a bitch, so they say again. I am
lost of words as I stare at these two men. Words escape my mouth as I can’t
quite figure what to say at this moment. Yet, someone is waiting for answers.
From the dumb-me by now. The past comes to haunt the future.
“Hello Carl, Carl meet Elisha, Elisha this is Carl and Betty was
my nickname back in Campus.”
At long last a few words decide to make way through my mouth. Wait,
did I just introduce my two lovers to each other? Holy shit. I just did. On the
altar. And on my wedding day.
Then silence.
Carl stands there smiling and staring at Elisha like a buffoon.
A smile of jealousy clouded by bitterness, yet past sweet memories, and a
little whisper in there of, ‘I’m gonna punch you right in the face’. I’ve seen
that fake smile before. That is the
exact smile he always had whenever he told me about this girl he once loved but
she couldn’t love him back, because he was a poor boy from the village.
LEGENDS
LOUNGE, EMBAKASI, 20.22 p.m, 11th March, 2014
“You talk of trust yet you refuse to tell me about her, you know
that’s not trust. Right?” I insist.
“Haha! Says the hooker. Nice try.” Carl isn’t quite the
sweetheart of words.
“You know you are trying to spoil my luck in business by always
having me come here, right? Yet you can’t trust me?” I ask nervously.
“Were it me, I wouldn’t quite call that a business just to
sugar-coat it,” Carl answers making quotation marks gesture with his index fingers.
“What choice do I have to keep up with the class around the
media world. I just have to.”
“You know that’s not true. You can let me be your hero.”
“You forget that heroes don’t live long?”
“I know, but I would rather live a day only knowing that I will
leave you with every happiness you wish for as my wife. That’s something called
love, but I bet you don’t subscribe to that school of thought.”
“Huh! Love? You know that is something people just to get into
each other’s pants, right?”
“That is dependent on what is in those pants.”
“And you have gladly taken what is in my pants, thank you, yet
you can’t tell me that one damn story of your experience with love? Quite the
charmer I see.”
“Why are you always insisting on hearing this one thing? I’ve
told you time and again, it is not as sweet as one of those soap operas you
watch on Citizen TV.”
“If you really did love, you could trust as well.”
“You’re watching a lot of Mexican soaps that I can tell from
your words.”
“Well, what’s there to call love then if you can’t quite trust
me. So I bet my job here is done. Pay me so I can go catch the next bird before
midnight.”
“Okay, here you go.”
He fishes out some Ksh.3,000 from his trousers on the floor. I
hurriedly put on my clothes. I am pissed of course. I can see him stealing
glances at me from the corner of my eye. He always does that when he is remorseful
about what he has just said. He isn’t good in handling guilt unlike me.
He hands me the money and I turn to leave. Just as I turn the
door knob to leave he mumbles something from behind.
“What?” I ask.
“I really loved her,” he answers as he pulls a chair for me to
sit.
I act as if to hesitate taking the offer, but he stares at me in
such a way that I feel obligated to stay and listen to an old sad story. What I
have always asked for, yet never been given. I place my handbag on the table
then sit opposite him. He is still in his boxers only. He sits on the bed
staring at me, then continues.
“I fell in love with her while in my first year in the
university. A friend of mine had just snatched my high school girlfriend, but
since it was an high school thing, I thought it couldn’t hurt.”
“What love doesn’t hurt? God, I still remember the heartbreak of
class one when a boy dumped me because he met this girl with a mathematical set
and I had none. It hurts at all levels.”
“Now, will we listen to your childish thing or will you let me
tell my tale?”
“Go on bossman.”
“So after my girl is snatched by this friend, I just switched to
this girl who was interested in me. Better still, we were pursuing the same course.
That means that I could make all manner of excuses just to go see her. From
asking for notes which I already had, to asking her out in the name of private
discussions, then came the late night coding classes whenever I was lucky to
borrow a laptop from a friend. You know the whole freshers’ thing.”
“Damn right I do.”
“Then in no time she as well parted ways with her home
boyfriend. He said he couldn’t trust a girl who goes to the university…”
“I quite can relate, I couldn’t as well trust a girl who is in
the university miles away from me,” I say as I think of the same thing that
Elisha, my home boyfriend, could probably do in the future.
“My story please, can I finish it? Thank you. And so we begin
our thing. It was really beautiful. We were the envy of the rest of our course-mates.
We always held hands together on our way to class. We even finished each other’s
sentences. I couldn’t imagine a life without Stacy.”
That name sends a piercing shock down my spine. Could it be
coincidence that the girl who hurt him was called Stacy like me? Or is it fate?
Well, whatever it is, let’s just stick to Betty, the name Carl knows.
“Well, when it came to the subject of sex, she at last gave in
to my a million begs for a night. And she was a virgin. Then I knew that we
were meant for a lifetime together. She had given me her innocence. And I was
determined to make her the happiest woman the universe has ever seen…”
“Can we skip to the part where she turns out not to be the one
with you now?” I interrupt.
“So there is this guy who was living next door and had a crush
on her. I always told her to keep off that guy because, for some reason, I
believed he was an asshole. But she always entertained him, in the name of they
are going to watch this and that series which is out, she was going to code
from his laptop, her visits to my house decreased while the other guy’s room
experienced an inverse visit. It caused me a lot of worry that I could hardly
sleep. How could I match up the standards with which this guy was treating her,
yet I was this poor guy. So one day I decided to get all the monies I had
between me and poverty just to make her learn that what we had was special. I
booked us a table at one of the best hotels in Murang’a, just near the
university so that I could save on fare. We were to meet at 6.00 p.m, but she was
a no show up. I waited for and a half an hour but she never showed up. Her
phone wasn’t going through. I was worried because this had been her habit
whenever she was in this guy’s house. By the way, his name was David, a.k.a,
Dave, never trust a man with that name, he is a player. So after taking lots of
coffee while waiting for her, I decided to swing by her place and see what
happened to us meeting today. Arriving at her place I found two pairs of shoes
at her door, one for her, one for Dave. Funny story, they had not locked the
door, so I turned the knob. After all, why knocked yet I was her boyfriend, I
could get it at will. So I opened, and right there they were. Dave on top of
her. Her pulling him closer to herself. Him smashing her like he had a grudge
with her. She was moaning like she was under the influence of ecstasy. She
pulled the sides of the bed-sheets as if to tear them apart. She was
abso-fuckinng-lutely enjoying this moment, I could tell. What I saw made every
part of me lose the mojo to do its work. My legs caved in and I found myself
seated on the side of her bed. My hands were powerless, and that saw the bottle
of coke I had brought her fall onto the floor and break into pieces. The sound
of breaking glass made Dave jump out of the bed with his penis releasing lots
of thick creamy fluid all-over Stacy as he scrambled to cover himself. Disgustingly
as it was, I just sat there stupidly, staring at Stacy who now looked like a
newborn due to the liquid on her face. Was this what we had promised each
other?”
Carl makes this creepy smile as he wipes the little tears welling up on
his right eye. Then he continued.
“‘How long?’ that’s what I asked her. Two words, how long.” Then he paused.
