Love. Trust. And Other Luxuries.

I hate harmattan. It is the period when oily clear skins turn to dry off-white sheets of flesh. Leave soft freshly-baked bread out in the harmattan cold for a few seconds and it turns into a cuboid cardboard with white fluffy air trapped inside it. It is the period when I have to put on my stockings to sleep and embalm myself with countless blankets just to survive the night. The mere air I breathe in is violent and frosty. Catarrh fills up my nose and my pretty left eye gets hideously swollen. It is the period when the sight of water freezes my veins. It is the period when people dig up their thickest clothing and never wash them for fear of touching water. It was also during harmattan that my house-boy, Jegede robbed me of all my belongings.

It was the first week in 2012. I had seen my fiance back to the garage to Lagos. Before leaving with Aisha, I remember noticing Jegede's unusually upbeat nature. I sensed something suspicious but paid not much attention to it.
"What is going on?" I had asked half-mindedly.
"Sir?" he had been smiling, standing on his toes.
"You seem..." I made for the keys on the living-room centre table. "Happy."
"I everyday happy, sir."
"I know. But this is strange. Did you win a lottery?"
"About to be almost do so, sir," his smile widened.
"Oh.". I shrugged. I had become used to his ridiculous brand of English.
"Darls, I'm all set," Aisha came out, still clipping the rings to her ears.
"So quick," I smirked.
"Don't you be sarcastic with me," she feigned anger and then paused. "Jegede, is all well?"
"All are very well, ma. I just happy."
"I see. Why is that?"
"I get dream on the night. The dream tell me that I coming soon to be rich man."
"It's sad how much I'm used to your grammar," Aisha batted her eyelashes as she spoke.
"Well, we have to move quickly," I said.
"Calm down. It's not like I have a plane to catch. They are just buses. I still have to apply lipstick. I mean, what sort of woman does not use lipstick."
"A natural one," I muttered under my breath.
"You said?" She asked.
"I said nothing."

As we made for the door, I tore off dead flaky skin from my lower lip and it got swollen. Aisha saw this and laughed. We were already a one kilometre away from the garage when she remebered that she had left her bath gel in my bathroom.
"Don't worry," I said. "You can get another one. There are many shops at the bus-stop."
"No, I need that particular one."
"Haba, you can get another."
"It is very scarce. You can hardly find it in Nigerian supermarkets, let alone street-side shops."
"Why that one? Other bath gels actually work as bath gels, you know," I quipped.
"I am allergic. That's the only kind I use. Others just make my body dry and the weather doesn't help much."

I gave in and we were soon back in my neighbourhood. I hopped out of the car and banged hard at the gate. It took Jegede about five minutes to open. As he hurried towards the gate, his voice sounded rattled. When he saw me, I chided him.
"What took you so long?"
"Err...I am having my bathe," his voice shook.
"You mean bath? And you look just as I left you. You definitely don't look cleaner," I sniffed. "Or smell fresher."
"Sir. I am almost about to be having my bathe," he made way for me and followed me breathily as I walked from the compound to the main house. "I think that you done said that you were going to the garage. You're back early."
"Aisha forgot to take something," I said as I stopped walking. "You seem agitated. Is it the weather?"
"Yes," he said rather too quickly, like a school-boy whose seatmate just whispered the answer to a tough question the teacher had asked him. "Let me get the thing for you sir."
"No," I resumed walking. "I'm almost at the door."
In a flash, Jegede jumped to my front and halted me. "Go there no sir! That house very very bad."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"Um..." he gesticulated by making a creepy half-whistling sound. "Eku, it is there!"
"Rats?"
"Yes. They everywhere. I'm fighting them since you go to garage. Let me go inside."
"All right. I just need the pink bath gel."

You see, one thing about keeping your worker too close is that they tend to learn too many things about you : your likes, fears and secrets. They tend to use them against you. I have had a phobia for cats since I was six when I fell into an unfinished soak-away at my parents' building site. Hundreds of rats kept me company for an hour before my father found me. Jegede used that phobia against me now. He did not want me to go inside the house, the reason for which I would soon bitterly find out in less than an hour. He returned with the gel wrapped with old newspaer sheets. I went back outside the gates, as I pulled the door knob of my car, I saw a lorry parked far away. Relaxed in the driver's seat was Jacob, Jegede's close friend in the neighbourhood. The fellow had a horrible past record. He had been in jail thrice and I had warned Jegede against their friendship. Jacob lamely hid behind the steering-wheel as he saw me. I ignored him.

"What took you so long?" Aisha hissed.
"I wasn't that long," I ignitd the engine and we were soon on the road.
"Anyway, you need to drive faster this time because I'm running late."
"Whose fault is that?" I said to myself.
"You said?"
"Nothing."
"I thought I heard something," she unwrapped the bath gel and threw it to the back seat. "Remind me to bring a gift for that houseboy of yours."
"I prefer to think of him as a concierge," I joked.
"You do know that's an inappropriate word, right?"
"It fits it. I mean, he looks after the house, he gets paid..."
"You make me sick," she popped out a cigarette and was soon smoking it all away. "Do you need a dictionary."
"I was joking."
"So whimsical," she shook her head.
"How's your father?"
"Don't ask me."
"What?"
"I've been in your home for three days and you're just asking me now? It's just sex for you. My father has cancer and you just remebered to ask after his health."
"No need to get so vexed." I placed one hand on the steering-wheel and the other on her shoulder. "I'm sorry. How's he?"

She didn't reply me. Even as we highlighted at the garage and transferred her luggage into the travelling bus, she remained mute. She kissed my cheek and said "goodbye". I watched as her bus slowly disappeared as if it blended into the dark tar of the road. When I got back home, it was a different scenario. The gate was wide open, so was the main house door. I walked in and saw my living room in disarray. The couches were upside down, the rug was no where to be found. The HD television had been removed from its hinges. The DVD player, the Pollock painting that had hung on the wall just above the three-seater couch, the small astrounant statue that had for many years been a tongue-and-teeth companion of my centre-table and my priceless Thriller album which my father had had signed by Michael Jackson when he had travelled to New York in the '80s. The rats were gone too, so was Jegede. In the kitchen, my small freezer, my pressure pot and micro-wave were nowhere to be found either. The football jerseys, Chelsea bed sheets my Italian shoes and all my shirts had also disappeared from the bed room. The ceramic pot, containing ten thousand dollars, which I had hidden under my bed had been sucked into the air of invisibility. I wished the banks had not been closed since the day I accepted the money from my mother. I hysterically ran outside the gates and noticed Jacob's lorry was gone too. I rushed to the backyard and my generator was not there anymore. The police came two hours later, blaring their sirens that eaily drew the attention of the whole neighbourhood. People came in twos annd threes with curious faces. While the police questioned me endlessly, I just sat on the floor in my compound pondering on nothing in particular. They asked for Jegede's description. Nauseated, I ran to the toilet and vomitted twice. I dialled Aisha's number afterwards but the connection was foiled by a feminine voice saying "The number you have dialled does not exist." I spat on the tiled ground and went back outside to meet the policemen. They asked since when I had hired him. "Sixteen months ago," I replied. They asked me if I knew since when Jaacob appeared in our neighbourhood. "Exactly a week after Jegede began working for me." I later found out that Jacob was not actually working for anybody. He only pretended so as to find an excuse to be close to my house all the time. Then it hit me. I had been set up. Those two had been planning this even before I knew who they were. Then my mind went to all the little-litlle change that often disappeared into the thick browness of my wallet. I thought of the time my ATM card had got missing and a withdrawal alert of fifty thousand naira had been sent to me. I never thought Jegede could be that kind of person.

Things got worse and grossly shocking when the police arrested Aisha thirteen days later for defrauding a man she had referred to as her "fiance" and it was not me. She had planned with some of the rich man's workers to abscond with millions of money from him. Then it hit me. Again. I was just one of her many pawns. She had planned with Jegede and Jacob to rob me. I remembered that I met her exactly three weeks after meeting Jegede. The police later confirmed after torturing her that I was just one of the many magas. She had insisted we went back to the house that day, not just for some stupid lotion but because she had forgot to give Jacob an address and she knew he would be waiting in the lorry near-by. As the police told me this, I took my coat and my leave. I walked off into the sunset.