HOTEL ROOM 5
It is a cool evening at the hotel club, busy as usual, bustling as ever. The men are looking at the ladies, the ones on hats, at their phones. Most of them do not wear wedding rings.
I and the girls sip from fluted glasses. Once in a while, one of the men would wink at one of us, and she would wiggle her voluptuous self to his side. He would buy her a meal, a drink, anything she wanted and later, with his hand flat across her strapless back, he would lead her upstairs, into his hotel room for the night. Very few of the men ever left without one of us, and we didn't leave the hotels, the same way we came-alone. It was nothing to be ashamed of, the wait, the flirtation, the meal, the leaving and whatever happened afterwards, it was all business transaction. It was also nothing to be proud of, I mean, for a few shekels, whatever the price, or currency in pounds or Euros, we would let down our hair and let them play with it, we will build them fantasies from between the succulence of our thighs and erect them monuments they will never forget, from years of practice. In a night, we would build them dreams and dreams are lies you live when the lights are off.
"Get me another drink," Linda says to the bar man. Linda is a nice girl, but she drinks a lot and some of the time, she goes home alone, except she finds another drunk to stagger upstairs with. She calls herself Linda but I doubt that is her real name. None of us ever give our real names. For example, they call me Tasha but my real name is Funmi. Nobody knows, and nobody cares. It is business and we are all trying to survive.
"That guy on suit has been looking at you, Tasha." Linda slurres. I had noticed him too. The stranger too young to be married, and too responsible to be here at the hotel club.
"Linda stop drinking. Madam will not like it o."
She laughs, her sarcastic, fearless laughter. "Madam should go and sleep. She thinks doing this job day and night is easy? She should come and try it."
I drop my voice to a mischievous whisper. "Even if she comes, nobody will know she's even human. She looks like a gorilla."
We both giggle and then burst into laughter. Suddenly, it occurs to me that we are conversing in correct English, that somehow, we might have exposed a part of our identity. I look around fearfully but nobody seems to have taken notice.
Linda sips her drink and looks to me. "The police found Susan's body. She was dead."
I covLindamy mouth in horror, my eyes wanting to pop out of their sockets. Linda remained detached. Only she could deliver a bad news with a nice drink to go with it. "When was it?"
"This morning. It was in one of the rooms, under the bed. She was already smelling. She had been raped and beaten several times.....that is what the police said."
Susan!
The quiet, naive girl. She was barely nineteen and madam had lured her from the village. It was not the first time something like that was happening, in fact, it was a little common place. Prostitutes got into fights with their patrons all the time and one of them, could end up kiilled or maimed. We accept it as an occupational hazard, which could happen to others, but hopefully not you. And you could never tell which of the customers to suspect. You would never know, they were so well dressed and polite. They tell us to be careful, but of what, of whom, we do not know.
"I go stop today," I said, reverting to pidgin. "Today, today, I no do again."
Linda regarded with with a sarcastic twitch of her nose. "Na so...na everyday you dey repent.'
I shook my head rigorously. " I swear am, after today I no do again. I don tire sef."
"You no go fit stop," she said casually and drained her drink. That hurt my feeling and ego.
" Na lie, make we bet?"
"Ten, ten thousand naira."
"Okay...after now, you no go see me for here again. I dey go find work."
She stood up and dusted herself. "This one, na my work o," she said and sashayed to meet up with her new client.
A few minutes later, her seat was taken by the well dressed man who had been ogling all evening.
"Pretty lady-" he began, but I cut him off.
"Sorry Sir, but I don retire. I dey go house"
He stopped to think for a moment, I stole peeks at him from the corner of my eyes, his beards were were groomed, his hands and fingers were well kept, his suit was classy and his shoes gleamed.
"Good for me," I heard him say. " I am on a business trip here and I don't have any friends around, so I was just looking for company."
"Girls plenty." I said rudely. I was determined to prove to Linda that I was serious this time. I would soon be done with school, I had to start thinking seriously about my life. Nothing was going to make me change my mind or so I thought until he said,
"I will pay anything you ask."
That stuuned me. A blank check?
. Blank checks are a rare occurrence in our line of work. They were like the crown of your work. Some people are lucky to get it once, twice or thrice, some, like me have never smelt it before and I have been in this job for years.
"Anything?"
He nodded, "yes, anything."
Suddenly, my right palm began to itch. I could say nothing. The stranger dropped a single key in front of me.
"I am Danre, Room 5," he said and left.
For a long time, even after the scent of his perfume had long ceased to tickle my nose, I sat there. I thought of Susan and her well dressed, polite killer, I thought of those customers that didn't pay, those that made you do ugly things, those that were rude. I thought of Linda, the daring sneer on her lips, the sarcastic brow that meant life didn't bother her. I thought of my mother and my sister, Waju, and then I thought of hell. I just stared at the pretty, golden key, leading to my blank check. I turned it this way and that, I examined every angle of it under the light. It was authentic, like the stranger's shoes. So gleamy, I had imagined there were mirrors made of leather.
It was all too good to be true.
Then, I thought of the thoughtful lines of his beards, and the smile when I told him I was done. He was handsome, he was well dressed and he chose me for a blank check.
I picked up my phone, and texted Linda.
"Babe, abeg send me your account number..."
Even a prostitute, can hope.
Kitanna.
