WHAT BILLIONAIRES TASTE LIKE

At dawn Azuaka’s eyes opened, madly dashing for sight. He sat up, stretched and yawned and then stifled another yawn before he looked interestingly at Agu who had a sizeable towel across his neck as he unzipped his bag. Opula’s rose perfume still hung around him. Her chiffon nightie in bed came in sight and he looked away to the hundred dollar note and a white paper on the rack.

“Seems you’ve had your bath.” he said, reaching to the money and the paper. “How is her bathroom?”

“What do you expect from a poor girl like us? Anyways her bathroom is not bad at all.”

Azuaka Jnr. glanced at the note:

I’m on the day shift. The money is for your breakfast. Catch you guys.

He squeezed the paper and tossed it at the door before he wore his boxers and came out of the blanket. He snorted at the musty room and watched Agu squeeze into his T-shirt.

“What’s up?” he asked, fully conscious of the Monkeys’ software and how it would snowball in the days ahead.

“You need to check your phone.” Agu looked into the mirror, brushing his beards. “Nku has sent a message, sleepy head. Sleepy spree,” he called him.

Azuaka Jnr. looked around for his phone. “What did he say?” His impatience grew as he found his phone:

The Monkeys will meet at 10 o’clock at S and S Hotel. From Ferguson.

Azuaka Jnr. read it out and asked with curious blinking eyes. “Did he send same to you?”

“Yes,” Agu replied and looked into his phone.

“What do you think?”

“Nothing than a hardworking Nku nurturing the machine that would render the world broke. I don’t need to tell you he has been staying up all night on this software. We are about to be rich.”

“Oh not that.” He punched into the foam; his anger was unchained. “Let me see your message.” He took Agu’s phone and read through. “Look at this. Your message has no Ferguson as the sender but mine has. I think Ferguson told Nku to add his name in my text message.”

“What about it then?”

“…A lot about it. That shag-eared swine shouldn’t come in my way. Since you guys have made him a Monkey I wouldn’t want to see him on my path. I don’t want to kill him, I tell you, Agu.” He was capricious now. The veins in his neck wired out as he spluttered. “That guy is a spiv. Ferguson is a spiv. He is doing it for us now. Watch out some day he will do it to us.”

“Come on, it hasn’t gotten to that, son of man. It is just a text message. You shouldn’t always see a vulture in every crowd of birds, son of man.”

“And as soon as a bird dies in the crowd the vulture must wheel overhead to take what he didn’t work for. My eyes are on Ferguson and if he dies you guys should hold me responsible.”

“Heh, watch your words, walls have got ears. You have to stay calm and low until we achieve our dreams. Remember what we invested in this and the money plantation we are looking towards.”

Azuaka Jnr. wanted to say something but he hissed, snorted, stared into the floor, tossed away Opula’s nightie so he could lie on the bed. Ferguson was growing in his head while Monkeys software stagnated in his mind. He sat up. “Take this money and buy pizza while I prepare for the meeting.”

“Pizza again? Is it rehearsal?” asked Agu and he collected the money.

“What can we buy then? I thought we could use this money to buy condiments for jollof rice and prepare it ourselves.”

“Hell no. I have checked around. Opula doesn’t have a gas cooker.”

“Now you know the outstanding California girl who doesn’t know she is already a woman.” Azuaka Jnr. hissed, staring at the poster of Tupac Shakur on the wall opposite. It seemed the paused smiles of Tupac brightened at him.

Agu had a brief smile. “I think bread and tea would do, since we are going for a meeting that may last too long. I can easily go out there and run into that mart across the road and buy them and food is ready. What do you think?”

“Please add butter and if there is any change you can buy cigarette,” said Azuaka Jnr.

Agu made out, leaving the curtain in the door swaying.

When he returned he met Azuaka Jnr. sniffing in the mirror, in it he saw tears standing in his eyes. Azuaka Jnr. only tried to retrieve them by wiping as much that trickled to his chest. He started to sob uncontrollably, shaking his head in disagreement, surely with the troubles that addressed his mind.

“What’s it, AZ?” Agu dropped the bread on the floor, held his shoulder and spoke into his face. “Why are you crying, son of man?” A tear dropped in Agu’s palm while he tried to hold his face.

Azuaka Jnr. couldn’t mutter a thing. His tears brewed on, streaming on the foot of motion.

“Whatever it is you can share it with me. I mean it hasn’t been long I went to buy bread and now you are all tears.” He shook him on the shoulders. “Could you please talk to me, son of man?”

Azuaka Jnr. managed a weak tone. “All is but meshed fingerlings. There is nothing interesting in mortality.” He sobbed on, shifting his phone to Agu.

Agu opened the text message. It was from Texas. “When did this happen?” he asked after reading through and his eyes gazed on the phone to read all over.

When he spoke this time he spoke from a lost voice. “When I called the number it was our neighbor. He said my father went to bed happily last night and unlike him, he didn’t wake up early this morning. He was curious after unanswered knock on the door. Teaming up with other neighbors they broke into our flat and saw my father … my father …” His voice was punctuated by burst of sob.

“Come on, perk up! Perk up!” Agu wiped his tears. It was warmer now, as though his inward troubles had started heating.

He knotted himself together. “My father was hanging from a noose in the ceiling. The suicide had lasted through the night when he wouldn’t be stopped.”

“Oh Christ!”NôvelD(ram)a.ôrg owns this content.

“Who can endure this world where romance and suicide, wealth and penury, unemployment and graduation happen in a moment, who?” he was sobbing again, pummeling his palm.

Agu answered, “The toughie. Come on, put yourself together, AZ.”

“No,” Azuaka Jnr. said, searchingly staring in the space above the mirror. “I killed my father.”

“No, you didn’t.” He looked up the ceiling before he said, “No, I did. I did, Agu,” as he spoke further, catarrh webbed in his nostrils. “If I hadn’t stolen his gratuity he wouldn’t have committed suicide.” Agu gave him a handkerchief and he sneezed a morsel into it. “He entrusted me with his life.” His eyes charmed with redness when he looked at Agu. “He said the only thing he wanted to hear at death was my name on the payroll of a nice job. But did he hear that? Did he, Agu?” His hands masked his face as he sobbed harder now.

“Put yourself together, son of man. I know you didn’t anticipate suicide. But with securing your stand with the Monkeys’ software his gratuity was the only thing you could steal.” He sat on the bed when he sensed Azuaka’s eyes seeming dried, he wasn’t sobbing anymore. “Rendering the world broke is worth more than any job. That is our trophy. As soon as we become billionaires it will seem as though no other person has become one. You may even forget the day your father died.” He stood to Azuaka Jnr. “Perk up. For now everything in the world halts, only Monkeys’ software moves.”

Azuaka Jnr. sat on the floor, lounging his back on the wall. He could hear the throbbing of his heart as thoughts like the ticking of a timed bomb, ran in his head; no one must know about this. “Agu,” he called. “No one must know about this. I mean no one, not the Monkeys, even Opula.”

Agu shook his head. “You can count on me. Heh, I bought Agege bread, but the tea is from aboki. This is smoke.” He tossed the pack of cigarette at him. “We need to run. It’s already past eleven. I think Nku has good news for us.” He loosened his bread.

Agu poured his tea into a cup while Azuaka Jnr. puffed his cigarette; a broad cloud of smoke around his face. As the smoke gave way, Agu could see the dried tears on his cheeks and he wondered if same dried tears appeared after he murdered his father, after throttling him to death in his sleep. He was thinking; but why did he tell me not to tell anyone? Azuaka murdered his father, kept it secret till this moment so as not to look suspicious. I know he murdered the poor man. He can do it.