He was still wearing his blue tie in the first morning, Emeka went out of the house with no job to attend.
He had knotted it, as he had been doing after three years, tight at the neck, the narrow bit cuddled round at the backs of the wide, and he had taken his black briefcase in the back of the bedroom door and kissed his mother on the cheek before going out into the yellow Enugu morning.
His mother, Mama Ngozi was making akara at the window. The oil crackled and spat. She did not look up.
Go back with something good today she said. It was what she told every morning.
"Yes, Mama," he said. It is what he never replied to.
He proceeded to the cross-roads and got himself into a keke going nowhere.
The truth was simple and ugly. Three weeks before that, he was summoned into a small room by his manager at Interlink Consulting that smelled of old paper and informed him that he was being sacked by the firm.
It was restructuring, they referred to it. He had left this building with a cardboard box in his hands and a meaningless handshake.
He had not told anyone.
And not Mama Ngozi who had sold two parcels of land in the village to fund his university education. Not Ada, his fiancee, who was already beginning to announce their December wedding to her friends. Not a single person.
Rather, he had developed a second life within the first one. Every morning he was out of the house at seven-thirty. He came back in the evenings at six.
In between he sat in Café Supreme on Ogui Road and sipped one bottle of malt in two hours, reading newspapers, applying to jobs that never replied, and faking, to himself, about the fact that everything was okay.
He still had three months of savings.
Ada came on a Saturday.
She came with a small cooler of egusi soup and the color of her dress was yellow which made her appear as though sunlight had come in the shape of a person.
The mother of Emeka embraced her with both hands at the door, the manner in which she embraced very few people.
The three sat in the parlour and Ada was discussing with them the wedding hall she had viewed at Independence Layout.
The deposit is two hundred and fifty thousand," she said, and she put a spoon of soup into a bowl before embarking it on Emeka. It should be easy covered by the promotion of Emeka. Abi, Emeka?"
Emeka looked up from his food.
His mother turned to him. "What promotion? You did not tell me."
He experienced the room moving a little, as a canoe does when a person is moving too fast within it.
"It has not yet been confirmed," he said. He kept his voice steady. The paperwork is still being worked out.
Ada smiled at him. "You are always so humble." His boss informed him that he is the best analyst in the department, she informed Mama Ngozi.
His mother beamed. She got up to get more drinks and Emeka stared at the yellow of the dress Ada was wearing and could not look anywhere.
The next Tuesday Ada telephoned when he was sitting at Café Supreme.
"I had an encounter with Chidi today," she said. She spoke with caution, as one is afraid to walk on a floor, which she was sure was not firm.
Chidi worked at Interlink.
Emeka dropped his malt bottle.
Ada went on, "He inquired me, how you were getting on. He told me he was sorry that you had not made a proper farewell. A pause. "Emeka. What is going on?"
The noise in the cafe went on around him, a generator whining, a woman laughing at the table beside, Afrobeats on a phone somewhere. He wrapped the phone on his ear and flipped his eyes.
"Go to the cafe in Ogui Road," he said to himself. "Café Supreme. I am here."
She was silent for a moment. "You are there now? During working hours?"
"Ada, please just come."
Forty minutes later she sat across him. She had not taken off her working clothes, a grey blouse, little gold earrings. She did not order anything. With wait-eyed eyes she looked at him.
He told her everything. The cardboard box. The handshake. The three months of savings. How he had spent his mornings at this same table. He spoke much and she heard him without interruption, something Ada never did.
She remained silent for a very long time when he had finished.
"Your mother," she said finally. "She does not know?"
"No."
Ada looked through him, out the glass window to the road. One of the women sold groundnuts. One of the buses was throwing a heavy plume of smoke. Life was proceeding on without theatricality or comminture.
"You will tell her today," Ada said turning round to him. It was not a question.
"Today," he agreed.
She took the menu up and looked at it and commanded, bring me a bottle of water. I am not ready to leave yet."
So they sat. The ceiling-fan had been whirled over their heads. Outside, the afternoon was slowly fading into evening, and Emeka gazed at her own face, and realised, without their uttering a word, that something had been forced open between them, not ruined per se, but ajar in a manner that could never be closed again.
He had ordered water and another malt to himself.
When it came the bill was his to pay.
