"Lagos Does Not Say Sorry"

In Osapa London, the day starts when the first generator does. Six days since the night bus from Enugu, six days since I'd arrived with a wrapped laptop and a promise I wasn't keeping, and already the city had swallowed me back into its noise.

The neighbour's goes at six. Two coughs and a catch, like our borehole in Enugu, but with a grudge. Steve's answers it from the balcony. Then the building behind us joins, then the street, until the whole of Osapa is running at once and the sound has no edges left.

Nobody has light. Everybody has noise. That's the arrangement, and the arrangement is four million naira a year.

I'd been in Lagos six days and hadn't called anyone. That was the point. If nobody knew I was here, I could still pretend I wasn't.

Every morning I folded the mattress in half, leaned it behind the couch, and became a guest in my own existence until dark. The couch, a small table, a television that hadn't been on since whenever. At night the ceiling fan clicked once per rotation, every rotation. Steve stopped hearing it years ago. I counted. Three hundred and something, most nights, before the counting stopped on its own.

Steve came out of the bedroom scratching his chest through a t-shirt from a tech conference that no longer exists, glasses parked on his head where they lived.

He looked at the folded mattress a long time.

"You fold am like say you wan return am," he said.

"I like corners."

"Nwoke, na corners spoil your life." He went into the corridor that the landlord calls a kitchen and put the kettle on. "Count the indomie."

"Six."

"Six. It was nine." He came back out with two packets and dropped both in the pot anyway. "Person wey owe three packets indomie no suppose dey waka dey carry shoulder like you."

"Take it from my salary."

"Which salary?" He pointed the fork at me. "See this one. In this house, na me be federal government. I dey owe everybody... still dey run things."

I laughed. My shoulders came down somewhere in it, the way they only do in this register, and the smile arrived on time for once.

"Oya, before you baff," he said, serious now. "The geyser. You go switch am on, then you go count reach forty. Slow forty. No rush am, no insult am. That geyser dey get moodswing. Last tenant shouted at it one time and got old water for eleven days."

"You want me to respect your water heater."

"I want you to respect my in-law." He turned back to the pot. "This flat na family."

"It's one room, Steevo."

He didn't even turn around. "Self-contain. In Lagos? My brother, if I can afford this, I'm already a king."

He carried his noodles into the bedroom to eat over the keyboard, because a session file was "calling him," which is what he says when he wants to eat without sharing his hot pepper.

I plugged my phone at the socket by the window to catch the morning's electricity while it lasted.

The chat sat where it had sat for five weeks. One voice note, unplayed, the little microphone icon patient beside it. Fifty-nine seconds. I knew that without opening anything. The preview shows you the length whether you ask it to or not.

I set the phone down on the sill with the screen against the wall, and went to negotiate with the geyser.

I counted my slow forty. The showerhead had about nine holes working out of thirty, and the pressure came in instalments.

At twenty-four I had a bathroom with marble I never chose and water that could bruise. A window over the sink framed the Lekki-Ikoyi bridge like it belonged to me. Twelve floors up in a different building, a man slid paper across a table, and the name at the bottom was the one I'd invented for myself at nineteen, and after I signed it, it stopped answering when I called.

I put one hand flat on the tile. The water found the back of my neck and stayed there.

The geyser clunked. The instalments went cold. I finished fast and came out of the past shivering, which is one way to do it.

⁂

By late afternoon the sun found the gap between our building and the next one, four feet of it, and laid a blade of light on the wall above Steve's keyboard. Twenty minutes a day, that's the show.

"Golden hour," Steve announced from the bed, arms spread. "People dey pay resort money for this kind light."

"It's a wall."

"Na canvas, bro."

"It's your neighbour's wall, Steevo."

"Rent-free view." He put his glasses down over his eyes to enjoy it properly. "Lagos dey try for us."

Lagos lying to you again, I didn't say, and watched the blade shorten until the wall went back to being a wall.

In the evening a truck went by on the main road and the wall gave its small tremble, and we ate indomie on the couch with the pot between us because plates are for visitors.

"So this artist," Steve said, mid-gist, fork moving, "insist say him must record with him sunglasses. Night session o. Studio dark. I say, oga, how you wan take read the lyrics? Him say, vibes. My brother, we do eleven takes. Eleven. By take-seven the man dey sing another person song entire---"

His phone rang.

He held up one finger to keep his place in the story, looked at the screen, looked at it again with different eyebrows, and stood.

Network lives near the window in that flat. He held the phone slightly up and away like a man raising a lantern.

"Steevo... Yes... He dey. He dey here now now... Hm... Hmm... The same ones?... You dey serious... Okay... No, I go ask am. I go ask am myself... Okay... Bye bye."

He came back to the couch. Sat. Picked up his fork.

"So. Take seven," he said. "The man dey sing another person song entirely, with confidence---"

"Steve."

"---full chest, wrong song---"

"Steevo. The call."

He put the fork down. From somewhere---I have never once seen where---the pen appeared in his hand.

"Work dey," he said.

"What kind?"

"Writing. Production, maybe, if e sweet." Click. "For one duo."

"Which duo?"

"You no go know them. New new." Click. "Brothers."

"Brothers, or twins?"

He looked at me over the glasses that had come down at some point without my noticing. "Twins."

"Why me?"

"My guy dey book their studio time, Lekki Phase 1. Dem dey search writer wey get ear." Click click. "Correct money, from wetin I hear."

"And?"

"And wetin?"

"You're clicking that pen very very suspiciously."

He stopped clicking.

"Dem don use how many writers this year?" he said, as if I was the one with the answer. "Three. January till now. Three award winning writers oh, in and out, gone."

"Maybe the money's bad."

"Money no bad. I check." He picked up his fork, put it back down. "The music sef no bad, from the small I hear. Na the rest."

"The rest being what?"

"Family dey involved," he said. "Involved involved. Everything wey those boys sing, family go first approve am. Papa get money---the kind wey get gate before you see house. And person dey run the whole thing for them wey---" he waved the pen instead of finishing.

"Wey what?"

"Wey no dey smile anyhow." He shrugged like it cost him nothing, and started clicking again like it cost him plenty. "Anyway. I don tell my guy make dem expect you Thursday."

"You told him before asking me."

"I know you," he said, and reached over and took the last of my noodles off my fork, which in this house is a signature on a contract. "But make I warn you sha. Forget the bastard-money. This one---wahala dey inside."

I ran my hand over my jaw.

"Which kind wahala?"