THE PIPE DREAMS OF TONI BADMOS

Toni Badmos can't wait to leave her small town and make it big somewhere in the wide, wide world. She reckons her first stop is London, England, and Mr. Lewis, a music video director, holds the keys to the castle. Time will tell how far she will go.

    

    

She had to get through to Mr. Lewis.  Anxiety had reached a peak.  She could not risk taking chances with the awful network and have the connection go off mid-sentence.

 

     She strode out of the house purposely, veering off to the left. Left towards the sunrise that grey harmattan morning and the unpainted six-foot high brick fence that barred her from the low yellow grass covered hill beyond it.

     Height.  Elevation.  Crystal clear connection.  She hoped.

     She scaled the fence effortlessly.  There were crumbling castaway bricks piled next to it that aided her climb.  Jumping off the other side was a little more dangerous and she did so gently.  She dropped down on to the dry brown earth.  Some of it was still in lumpy clumps from the raining season before, and then most of it covered in bristles of the dehydrated vegetation that spread over the small field.

 

     Only a few paces forward brought an immediate view of the huge compound she had left behind and the other two the continuous grey wall bordered.  Huge because for the most part the space between the bungalow where the family lived and the two-storey building that had been converted to a chicken house was a wide green, brown or yellow; depending on what grew and what didn’t, patch, that could easily have accommodated four more buildings, but didn’t, thank God.  She liked the way at dawn, just before the chores began, she could step out of the glass front door to see the sunrise on the earth around her. 

 

     She had explored the length and breath of the compound a million times.  She knew its sounds.  She knew the way the chickens squawked louder, hungrily, when they heard footsteps approach up the jagged path through the now wilted corn and vegetable garden.  She knew the loud croaking of the toads in the backyard on quiet nights after showers of rainfall, when all the lights were out, when the power was out.  She loved the peaceful spots like the old tire tied up to the guava tree.  It was near the gate but sheltered from its view by the banana tree leaves around it.

     The dull sun was rising in the sky.  A chilly wind blew at her skin.  The night had been colder.  Distant sounds from the cars on the street beyond the hill reached her from where she stood shivering slightly.

     She held out her phone and was soon scrying for network signals without much thought.  She fell into habits of necessity quite automatically when she was anxious.  There was nothing to indicate that this exercise had done any good, the service bar on the screen remained full as it was even when it was dubious, but it was time.  

 

     She scrolled down a few lines through the names in the digital phonebook to that oh-so-important number she had saved, gotten from a message board somewhere in cyberspace.  Those were some of the lengths she would go, yes. 

 

 

     There was nobody here to judge her.  The privacy and silence in this abandoned space away from the house were priceless. 

 

     With tension vibrating inside her, she dialed the number and waited.

     It went through instantly.  She listened to it ring, hardly thinking about how smart it was that she had decided to get out of the house and climb over the fence et al like she usually did when determination paid off.

     What she was doing was racking her brains all of a sudden, wondering what she was going to say, why she was calling at all.  Nobody had said call.  Nobody had given out phone numbers.  Everything had been her idea.  This was crazy, but hell, she was crazy!

     “Hello?” said a hesitant male voice across the line suddenly, interrupting her thoughts.

 

     “Hello? Em… Dael?” she stammered, and then kicked herself.  Gosh, did her accent sound strange?  Of course it did.  “Mr. Lewis?” she continued in a firmer voice. 

 

     There was a pause.  How was it possible to feel him slipping away even though he was not saying a single word?  Because she knew, she was going downhill fast. “I’m not sure if you’ll remember who this is but my name is Toni - Toni Badmos. I sent a video submission for the presenter search but wasn’t sure if you got it?  I mean, well I’m not sure if you did.  I’m calling from Nigeria and I was wondering if the distance …”

     The line went dead.

 

     She could not believe it!  As much as she was relieved he had not hung up, and hung up sooner, she felt mini-devastation at the sudden interruption she had dreaded so much.  She had to call back immediately before she was too embarrassed to.  Stalker, stalker, crazy person, she tried unsuccessfully not to think.  He had to remember her!  He had sent an email in reply to hers.  C’mon! 

 

     This time it took a few attempts to be connected and hear the steady ring of a phone in the office across the world.  Around her, the dry grass blew a gentle breeze on her bare legs.  She hardly noticed it of course.

     She heard a pick-up and began to speak immediately, pronouncing her words as articulately as she could make them sound, which was not bad actually.  “I’m sorry.  My name’s Toni Badmos, I was saying.  You sent me a message and I was hoping you’d remember if I called …”

     “I understand you’re calling about the presenter search?” a crisp female voice on the line said.

      “Yes.  I’m not sure if you got my video,” Toni replied at once, not missing a beat.  She was a little crushed.  Dael was a … familiar stranger.  This woman was not.

     “We are still processing all of the submissions.  If you sent us a video then you will most certainly be contacted if you are considered.”

 

     “Okay.  Thank you very much!” Toni replied. 

 

     There was nothing much else she could think of to say.  ‘Consider me, consider me’, would be too juvenile, even for her.

     She hung up the phone and slipped it into the back pocket of her shorts as she tried unsuccessfully to not feel that everything had been a waste of time and resources, which were quite scant at present.  It was time enough to care how much her pipe dreams had cost her so far.

     They did not get the video; they did not get the video, she thought dismally.

     Then hope surged in.  Coz if they did - if they had - then what?

     They would contact her, consider her … Hmm.  She would be invited into their glorious world of music television!

 

     She stood there on the hill staring off into space.  She indulged again in that pastime that brought the crazy idea into her head in the first place. 

 

     She got lost in her thoughts, daydreaming again, not seeing the scanty bush and earth, the zinc-roofed houses scattered for miles around her in the distance and black birds flying high in the sky up above, or feel the rising sun begin to beat on her smooth coffee bean skin.

     She sat down on the hard earth and leaned her back against the gritty wall she had climbed over, and daydreamed.

 

 

 

 

      Everyone thought Dael Lewis was a very, very cool guy. 

 

     He always looked super cool, always dressed fashionably, nice dark blazers, casual pairs of designer jeans; he was very music TV.

     His blonde waves of hair were always slick and stylishly cut into his latest snipped and moussed helmet.   

     He had grey eyes.  Nice eyes.  You could tell he didn’t want to be nice most of the time, not unnecessarily anyway.  Who could blame him?  He was not in business to be nice.  Shrewd piercing eyes he would definitely prefer, obviously, but he had not quite gotten them yet.  So he avoided eye contact with people he did not know, wearing dark shades when he could and using the blunt expression of his thoughts when he couldn’t.

     “I want the best you have to offer,” he told the group that sat around on tables in the colorfully lit bar.  He spoke in a firm soft-spoken voice.  It was raised only enough to be heard by those who were concerned.

     They were an artsy, hip crowd of young people.  Their silence did not become them.  Some of the girls were in tank tops, with long hair down their shoulders and slim hips in tight-fitting jeans, some of the guys looked like them save for their shorter hair, leaning against the red wall and listening intently, all barely touching their drinks, certainly not when Dael Lewis was speaking.

     He was here tonight with Colin and Amanda from the scout team.  They were such a contrast, the both of them.  Amanda was having one of her business suit days and Colin looked like a bum.  Neither of the two fit in with the others.  Dael supposed they liked it that way.

 

     “And the best of you to offer,” he continued as his eyes moved over their faces impersonally.  He stepped forward, walking in between the tables as he studied each of them.  “I’m not here to stroke any egos or be politically correct.  I’m here to pick good TV and choose what can work,” he said simply. 

 

     Amanda nodded at his words.  Then her mobile phone rang silently and she answered it, speaking quietly into the receiver.

     “I don’t want boring, I don’t want cliché and I certainly don’t want amusing.  The games are over.  This is business.  I want a package people will keep looking at, keep listening to, keep thinking about when the show’s over.  I guess you could say I am looking for a good-looking life-size memory package.  I'm sure you all agree with me that TV is nothing without its come-back factor... I'm working with the idea that your best is on display?”

     His eyes darted across the tables.

    “Well, I’m not looking for a random train station crowd face,” he said, suddenly pointing his chin at a guy in a black jacket wearing shades he would have worn, “or a hot friend for a friend to make a double date for a night out,” he continued, stepping forward to look at a blonde girl in a pink T-shirt who immediately stared down at her hands self-consciously.  He looked back at the rest of them.  “I want the star that never made it, the talented kid that never got a big break.”

     His voice dropped a little lower.  “And guess what?  I’ll tell you a secret.  I am not the big break guy."  He shook his head. "No guys.  I’m the one who will use up that kid’s great energy till his lights go out and he’s no good for anyone else, if I can get away with it.”

     Colin chuckled into his pint of beer.

     A girl grinned from a table a few feet away from where Dael was standing.  She caught his eye and looked back at him confidently, taking a slow drag from her lit cigarette.  Her large rhinestone bracelet glittered in the red light over her pale white skin as she moved.

     His eyes ran over her.  They lingered briefly on the tattoo on her arm.

 

     And then he shook his head slightly at her.  No, she didn’t make the cut either. 

 

     Her eyes widened at this, she almost glanced around to see who had caught the gesture, and then she seemed to try to conceal her reaction in another, now quick, drag of smoke.

     Colin chuckled again.

     Dael’s eyes had already snapped on elsewhere.  “Work the room,” he told the two guys and a girl leaning on the wall next to him.  “Let's see how you move?  See how you carry your soul.”

     They moved immediately, in a file, the first guy with his curly black hair done up in big corn rows.  Dael stepped forward to stop him suddenly, a hand on the guy’s broad T-shirt clad chest.

     “Your look doesn’t work for me,” he said simply before turning to address the girl and guy behind in the same breath, “keep walking guys.”

     The guy swore under his breath, given Dael a dirty look,  as he stepped back from the tables.

     Dael’s eyes instantly fixed on him, teeth flashing in a quick smile.  “See, you I can’t kill and get away with it.  Who wants to work that?”

     Despite the growing tension the group laughed.

     Dael’s smile was already gone.  He pulled out a chair at the table where the girl with the tattoo was sitting, pulling out his Sobraine slims.

     The girl held out a light for him when he put a cigarette between his lips, lit it, and then continued to smoke hers without saying a word or even looking at him.

 

     He did not say anything either.  Instead, he turned to watch the guy and girl walk around the tables, searching for perfection he just couldn’t see. 

 

     He caught Colin’s eye finally and shook his head.  Colin held up his hands, shrugging his shoulders.

 

     Amanda was snapping her cell phone shut.  She looked up and looked from Colin to Dael expectantly, the brown ponytail behind her head bobbing.  Colin shook his head at her. 

 

 

     Dael could feel her disappointment from across the tables.  Well, he had given them a shot, hadn’t he?  There was no magic. 

 

He was not that much older than the oldest guy in the group, they were all as ordinary as he felt that night, yet it was funny how they thought he was ‘super cool’.  Funny, coz they thought they were too.

     He smoked his cigarette, eyes falling back to the tattoo on the girl’s arm, the most interesting thing his mind could dwell upon at present.  It was a tattoo of Bambi.

     He stared at it as he blew the smoke from his lips and then rubbed at his temples tiredly.

 

 

 

     ‘He’s waiting for me,’ Toni Badmos mused as she got up from the ground, dusting off her shorts and turning to the grey brick wall.  ‘I just know it.’

 

     It would be harder to climb back from this side without the discarded bricks to use as steps.  Yet with the image of Dael Lewis lodged firmly in her mind she suddenly felt she had so much to look forward to a crummy old wall wasn’t going to deter her. 

 

     She stretched her arms to the top of the wall, put a foot to it and lifted herself off the ground.

 

Author's Note

I'm playing around with this idea for a full-length novel. Harmattan is one of the two seasons in Tropical Africa when wind blows in from the Sahara desert and dries up everything.
I'd like readers to come away wondering how things'll turn out for Toni, and keep guessing.

Thank you very much for your reviews! - I've reduced the font size Lauren :).
Forgot about this story for a bit, which is why took a while to get back, good to be reminded...
Thank you x

Reviews

[Lauren Xena Campbell]

Ok first things first, I don't want to sound picky but the largeness of the font is, for me personally, somewhat distracting. But then as I have said it's probably just me being picky :-)

Something I liked very much about your work was the ease in which you mentioned little details and histories in your work, such as things like what the earth was like after the rain.

I also really liked the main character. Upon reading I began to feel like I knew Toni from the personality you have painted her with. I was attracted to her character, her observations, her enthusiasm, it is all very well depicted and she makes for an interesting read.

I certainly am wondering how things will work out for Toni and I very much enjoyed this story. I'm even wondering how these characters would grow if this was a full-length novel, which I do hope one day it will be, and you will undoubtedly have an avid reader of it in me. I really love this. Great write!

[Ice QueenJen]

At first it sounded like she was on a compound from a cult group that she was trying to get away from. But then as you inserted the other characters, it was clearly something different she was wanting to escape. I am eager to see how she gets away and whether she is chosen likes she hopes to be. I to was distracted by the size and change in font, but other than that it sounds like a great story.

[Robert Bean]

I am waiting to see what twists come next. Enjoyable fiction; and entices one to learn more about the author as well.

[Richard McLin]

Well I think this has all the makings of a good novel. This was some good stuff. Thanks for sending me a readers request. Very good.

Richard.