The talk
838 Words
He called at eight PM.
She was on her kitchen floor — her thinking spot, her honest spot — with her tea and the pharmaceutical license report she had been pretending to work on for three hours and had written approximately forty words of.
She picked up on the second ring.
"The market woman," he said. No greeting. Just straight to it.
She had expected this. She had been half expecting this since he left the market and she had been deciding what to do with it for six hours.
"What about her?" she said.
"She called you my woman."
"She made an assumption."
"You said not yet."
Silence.
"Kamsi." His voice was quiet. Careful. The real version. "Not yet implies eventually."
She looked at her tea.
"It was a figure of speech," she said.
"Was it."
Not a question.
She pressed her lips together.
"Zion—"
"I'm not pushing," he said. "I want to be clear about that. I'm not asking for anything you're not ready to give." A pause. "I just want to know if I'm reading this correctly. Because I've been wrong about things before and I would rather be honest than assume."
She closed her eyes.
This man.
This careful honest infuriating man.
"You're not wrong," she said quietly.
Silence.
"Okay," he said softly.
"Okay," she said.
"But Kamsi—" he stopped.
"Say it," she said.
"This is complicated," he said. "What I'm doing. Okafor. The evidence. The people watching your street." A pause. "Getting close to me puts you at risk in ways the arrangement has reduced but not eliminated. I need you to understand that."
She looked at her kitchen.
At the life she had built in this apartment. The pharmacy downstairs in her heart. The independence she had constructed carefully and fiercely.
"I understand it," she said.
"And?"
"And I'm a grown woman who understands risk assessment." She paused. "I'm not a person who needs protecting from information Zion. I told you that."
"I know."
"Then stop warning me away from things I've already decided."
A longer pause.
"What have you decided?" he said quietly.
She looked at her tea.
She thought about a grey car across the street. A compound with books on the shelves. A laugh that filled a car. Hands on a table that chose not to touch.
Not yet.
"That some things," she said carefully, "are worth the complicated."
The line was very quiet.
Then: "Kamsi."
"Yes."
"I want to see you tomorrow."
"That's not a question."
"No," he agreed. "It isn't."
She felt something bloom in her chest — warm and wide and entirely without her permission.
"Sunday," she said. "I go to church in the morning. After that I'm free."
"Where do you go to church?"
She told him.
"I'll be outside at twelve-thirty," he said.
"You don't have to—"
"I want to." Quiet. Firm. "Let me."
She looked at the ceiling.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay," he said.
She could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. Just that. Just him existing in an Abuja — no, in a Lagos Island compound, she corrected herself, he was here, he was in the same city — breathing quietly on the other end of a phone call at eight PM on a Saturday.
"Zion," she said.
"Yes."
"What happened with Okafor today?"
A pause.
"He moved some documents," he said. "We anticipated it. We have people where the documents went." A pause. "He's getting nervous. Nervous people move evidence. When they move it they expose it."
"You're letting him panic himself into a mistake."
"Yes."
She thought about that. The strategy of it. The patience.
"How long have you been doing this?" she said. "Building the case."
"Four years."
"Four years."
"Since the month after my mother died." His voice was even. "I had a lot of grief and I chose to do something useful with it."
She felt her chest tighten.
"That's not—" she started.
"I know it's not healthy," he said quietly. "I've been told. I'm working on separating the grief from the mission." A pause. "It's easier recently."
"Why recently?"
A long pause.
"You know why," he said softly.
She did.
She looked at her kitchen floor.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she said. "Twelve-thirty."
"Twelve-thirty," he agreed.
"Goodnight Zion."
"Goodnight Kamsi."
She held the phone for a moment after the call ended.
She looked at her half-written license report.
She looked at her tea.
She thought about not yet and eventually and some things are worth the complicated.
She opened her report.
She wrote eight hundred words in forty minutes.
Amazing what clarity did for productivity.
She closed her laptop.
She went to bed.
She lay in the dark thinking about twelve-thirty and a man who had spent four years turning grief into purpose and had said it was easier recently.
She knew why.
She closed her eyes.
She slept well.
For the first time since a hotel corridor changed everything.
She slept very well.
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