Chapter 44

Stephen waited patiently in the sitting room as Violet had instructed him to before she left him and disappeared into his bedroom while he wondered what he was up to. When she finally returned from his bedroom, she had her makeup kit, pair of heel shoes and bikini with her.

"Um..." Stephen slowly began now as he glanced at the items which she had set on the couch. "...what are you doing?"

"Just wait and see." She had a mischievous smile on her face which made him quite uncomfortable but he relaxed anyway.

Violet went to work immediately and began to apply makeup on his face. She would occasionally pause to give him an assessing look before continuing. By the time she finished applying makeup on his face, she took a step back, examined his face and smiled in satisfaction. "Perfecto!"

"I feel weird, my face feels all clotted and heavy... Violet, what are you up to?" He asked with a slight frown, now looking like a beautiful man.

"You'll find out soon." She answered and when she grabbed a pair of long artificial eyelashes, Stephen gave her a look and drew his head back in partial resistance.

"Is that really necessary?" He asked now.

"Trust me, you'll like it." She said and fixed the eyelashes on his upper eyelids. When she was done, she took the bikini and handed them to him along with a pair of heel shoes.

"What am I supposed to do with these?" Stephen asked, bemused. 

"Put them on of course." She said.

"You are kidding right?" Stephen glanced down at the items. "You want me to put on a bikini and heel shoes?" He asked in disbelief.

"Yes."

"Why would I do that? I already feel like a clown already, don't make it any worse by making me look like a bimbo." He said, blinking his eyes and feeling the long artificial eyelashes fan his cheek slightly. "How do you women even wear all these things?" He asked in distress.

Violet pouted now. "You promised that you would do anything!"

"Yes, anything but not this! I didn't cut out for this, Violet."

Violet placed her hands on her hips now. "Well, this is part of anything and remember that your word is your bond, Stephen!"

"Fine, fine, I'll do it, before you start with the attitude again." He grumbled. "But I'll need some privacy though. There's no way I'm taking off my boxers in front of you." He said, got up, walked into his room and shut the door while she eagerly waited for him to return.

A few minutes later, the door slowly opened and Stephen carefully and sheepishly stepped out clad in the bikini and heels and when Violet saw him, she suddenly fell back on the couch with her feet partially up, laughing hard. She laughed so hard that she slipped down the couch to the floor, still laughing.

"Yeah..." Stephen said, coyly covering his crotch with his hands. "...have a good laugh all you want. Hope it makes you feel better." Then he glanced down at his feet and said, "These shoes do not fit at all."

"As long as you can stand in them, we are good to go!" Violet assured him. "But damn, you are tall!" She said over her shoulder and as she got off the floor, walked past him and went to switch on the home theatre. As music began to play, she told him now, "I want you to dance sexily."

"Why?"

"I want you to dance and tease like a stripper would."

"This is payback, right?" He gave her a suspicious look.

"Sure it is, now dance!" She ordered, grinning.

Reluctantly, Stephen began to move awkwardly to the tune of the music, and as he did, Violet laughed harder and harder. "Now, whenever you call me a stripper, you'll have to remember that you are one too... Now, shake that ass of yours!... ish! Too stiff and somewhat dry!" She said as she observed his buttocks now. "Perhaps, too much bone or muscle!"

"This is so humiliating!" He mumbled as he awkwardly continued to dance, imitating a stripper.

"C'mon, twerk that stiff ass for me, Stephen! Twerk it for momma!" She urged him as she moved in circles around him, dancing and laughing. All of a sudden, he stumbled in the heels and staggered forward a bit. Violet suddenly tried to catch him to prevent him from falling but he was too heavy for her and he ended up falling on her while she landed on her back on the floor and right under him. She couldn't stop laughing even though her back hurt. When her laughter slowly died out and she lowered her chin to look at him, to her surprise, she found him staring down at her in a weird way. This way, they both quietly stared into each other's eyes now with several thoughts going through their individual minds.

His thoughts: "I've never seen or heard her laugh before, especially this much, and damn; she looks breathtaking when she does...those lips though..."

Her thoughts: "Why is he staring at me like that? Should I be concerned about this look in his eyes or not? This feels like history repeating itself when he had fallen on me at the club on the night that he had gotten drunk. Why does this feel so weird and good at the same time?"

"Violet?" Stephen whispered now, his face slowly lowering towards hers, his gaze now shifted to her lips.

"What?" She asked in a soft whisper too and just when his lips were almost upon hers, she suddenly flinched now and held his arm as she felt a twitching between their lower bodies and her eyes went wide with shock. "Do not tell me that you are having an erection right now in my bikini and on top of me!" She stated, although not offended.

"Oh shit!" Stephen softly exclaimed and suddenly scrambled off her, covering his crotch with both hands as his growing manhood tried to peek from one part of the bikini panty and expose itself.

Violet sat up now, flicked her hair backward over her shoulder and gave him an amused look. "Do not stretch my bikini panty with your thingy! They are still new, Stephen!"

"I had better go change now!" Stephen said in embarrassment and awkwardly hurried on the heels back into the bedroom. Violet smiled, shook her head as she stared at the closed door then she got on her knees, clapped her hands once above her head and resumed her slow dance in circles, ignoring and discarding what had almost transpired between them which she had concluded that it had only emanated from the spur of the moment and meant nothing more.

                                                                                   ★★★

Violet was pounding some cooked and peeled cocoyam in a small mortar outside the apartment in order to prepare Oha soup when Esther who was just returning with a big bucket of empty bottles of Soymilk, Kunu and Zobo on her head from where she had gone to sell them in school, sluggishly approached her apartment now. 

Her little girls followed behind her, dressed in their uniforms and as she brought down her burden from her head, they greeted Violet while their mother handed a bunch of keys to the first daughter and instructed her to go open the door for her sisters to go in.

"Welcome o." Violet greeted and continued pounding.

"Well done." Esther greeted and sat down on the elevated floor in the front of her apartment with her legs sprawled in front of her while she leaned back on her hands and adjusted her wrapper over her big stomach.

"How market?" Violet asked, sensing how tired the woman was.

"Market was fine o... but these teachers in the school where I sell my drinks are just spoiling business for me anyhow." Esther said in weariness and displeasure.

"How?"

"They keep buying on credit and I'm getting fed up already. Most of them have not even offset their former debts but they keep buying more on credit." She complained.

"Then stop selling on credit to them." Violet simply said.

"I have tried o, but before you know it, they start to beef me and even go as far as convincing some teachers and students not to patronize me."

"Can't you report to the school principal?" Violet asked.

"That woman is something else jare… Someone that doesn't even patronize me. She claims that she does not know just how hygienic the preparation of my drinks is. Imagine such words. She go dey do like say she no dey shit. (She behaves as if she doesn’t pass excretion)."

"So, what will you do now?"

"I'll keep praying to God na. Not that I've much of a choice sef."

"Okay o... but it baffles me why you are still hustling this hard when your husband is a Lieutenant? I'm sure that he's well-paid to sustain you and your daughters. Now that you're heavily pregnant, you are supposed to be resting. I don't think stress is good for the baby, Esther."

Esther snorted. "That one? If he's not drinking, he's claiming that there's no money at all. I cannot come and starve my children because of their father's stinginess. I have a feeling that once I give him a male child, he'll change."

"Indeed." Said Violet in skepticism.

Esther smiled a bit now as the usual glint which usually appeared whenever she was in the mood to gossip, appeared in her eyes now. "So... How far na, Violet? What are you not gisting me these days? I usually hear the way you and Oga Stephen play inside this your apartment."

Violet shot her a look now. "Do you eavesdrop and spy on all your neighbors, Esther?"

"No o... Not at all..." She quickly defended, shaking her hands in front of her. "...but sometimes I just hear things na like every other person would." She winked at Violet now and asked again. "So, have you two started..."

"Sex?" Violet asked bluntly since Esther refused to mention the words.

Esther nodded. "Of course, sex na or what do two adults who live together do? Maybe soon, you'll join me too by getting pregnant." She gestured down with her eyes at her bulging belly in front of her. "Like my husband, Oga Stephen will also do one small thing on your head too and you'll remain here permanently and be neighbors with me."

"Esther, we are not having sex." Violet stated. "And even if we were, I have no intention of getting pregnant, not to mention that I'm not the kind of girl whose head a man does small something on. I don’t believe in such. If he is not going legally marry me, I am not going to play the role of a wife."

Esther frowned now. "What? So, you are now stylishly insulting me, ko? You're now entering me indirectly because I told you about myself, ehn?"

"I'm responsible for what I say, Esther, but you are responsible for what you choose to hear." Violet said.

"Don't you know that most women around Nigeria are living with a man whom they are not legally married to? Is that not better than delayed marriage or a waste of time in a relationship? As for me, as long as I've given birth for a man and I live in his house, then I'm automatically a wife already o and I'm not going anywhere! Even God will understand! I cannot be part of those women who have different children for the different fathers that might not even marry them."

"So, the one that has been coming in the afternoon too is also a co-wife, ko? Or is that how you people do it in this barrack?" Violet asked now.

Esther slowly sat up now as she asked with a puzzled frown. "What co-wife? What afternoon?" When Violet refused to answer and began to fiddle with the pounded cocoyam, Esther refused to let her off easily. "You must tell me o. You must. Violet, if you are indeed a friend, you won't keep anything away from me. Who has been coming to my apartment in my absence?"

"Your husband." Violet finally said after a slight hesitation, then she stood up, carrying the small mortar and pestle in her hands. "Maybe he's really that desperate for a son after all. That's all I'll say." Violet finished and immediately walked into her apartment before Esther could ask her any more questions.

                                                                                    ★★★

Three hours later in the evening when the sun was slowly setting, Violet stepped out of the apartment to collect the dried fish she had sunned but paused in surprise when she found Colonel Anthony sitting on the bonnet of his car which he had parked in Stephen's parking space. He was facing the apartment with his hands put together in front of him and his ankles crossed too.

"Hello!" He said calmly with a smile, taking off his dark sunglasses.

Violet suspiciously glanced down both sides of the block then asked, "How long have you been out here?"

Colonel Anthony glanced at his wristwatch and answered: "A little over twenty minutes now."

"And you just presumed that I'd eventually come out?" She asked, noticing that this time, he had come alone without Nosa.

"Well, yes." He said confidently.

"I can see that not only did you choose to come yourself this time but you also came alone too. What do you want?" She asked.

"You." Col. Anthony stated as he got off the car bonnet now, stood with his feet apart and slipped his hands into the side-pockets of his camouflage pants. "I'm glad that you have been taking my gifts... By the way, I got your message, I hope you got the package I sent to you yesterday?"

"The big box?" She asked.

"Yes." He replied.

"Haven't opened it yet." She told him.

"You are not curious to find out what's in it?" He asked.

"No. I've got all the time in the world so why should I be in a hurry?" She placed her hands on her waist.

"Okay, I'll give you a hint about why you don't have all the time in the world to open the package..." He said, "I actually want you to wear whatever is in the box and go out with me tomorrow night."

Violet scoffed. "Because I accept your gifts doesn't mean that I've accepted to go out on a date with you yet, Colonel."

"Well, I'll keep sending you more gifts till you change your mind, how about that?" He refused to be dissuaded.

"Does it not bother you that I live with a man? How do you stand there right in public asking a woman who lives with her man out?"

He smiled, "C'mon, are you still on this? I'm still not buying that crap that anything is happening between you two. Besides, I have plans of your moving out of here very soon so that you can have a place of yours, fully paid for and well-furnished."

"And who said anything about moving out? I'm fine right where I'm, Colonel." Violet said firmly.