Excerpt culled from my unpublished book, The Bringer of Dawn.
©Emmanuel Ifediata 2014.
28: The dead weight
Christabel saw her relationship with Wesley as a job opportunity. She had many needs and Wesley, her boyfriend, must bear up to the responsibility of satisfying them. Wesley was, as expected, squaring up to the hard task of having to satisfy most, if not all, of both her needs and wants. Nevertheless, his efforts were like a drop of water in the ocean because Christabel was the land of the dead that never had its fill of human corpse. The more money Wesley pumped into her, the more broke and in desperate need she became.
A time came when Wesley became insolvent with his bank account in the red. Barely could he afford a three-square meal in a day, not to talk of the numerous textbooks that were critical to his studies which he couldn’t meet the expense of, solely because he was squaring up to Christabel’s persistent demands. Christabel never got enough of anything, and now, he had gotten completely worn out.
There were more troubling matters about Christabel that he didn’t seem to have taken seriously when the going was good. For it happened that some order of men would rather not take seriously certain attitudes in a relationship that would have suffered a fast and furious tumble were it not for the fat size of their wallets. Their eyes only opened to certain abuses when they had no more left. When he had so much money to expend, Wesley didn’t join issues with Christabel on certain things. At the hands of Christabel, Wesley got into the habit of being apologetic whenever they got into a rift or something of that ilk, even if he wasn’t directly at fault. Perhaps he valued his peace so much. Besides, no one who breathed the air under the sun could put up with Christabel under the same roof whenever she got angry. On occasions when they had disagreements – of which the usual bone of contention was money, as Christabel always came for it – Wesley would quietly go to the bar at the far end of the street or to Strauss’ room just to have a comfortable sigh, all because he was trying to resist Christabel’s shouting down the room or his being nagged to untimely death. Living with Christabel was one hell of a practice.
There were many things she did that Wesley considered wrong but dared not complain of those things lest he wanted to touch that irate lioness by the tail, thereby making his room boil. His lodge mates often made fun of him and his nagging girlfriend, and sometimes, got tactless by calling him a joke. Strauss impressed it upon him time without number to break up with Christabel because he thought that his relationship with Christabel was abusive, hence its demoralizing impact on him. Strauss said it would be the wisest decision he would have made at that stage of his life. But how could he achieve that wonderful ploy when it was so apparent that Christabel had a way with him that left him feckless and indecisive. There was no gainsaying the fact that from all indices, she was the domineering man while Wesley was the woman, not just any woman but also the kind that was absurdly submissive in a servile sort of way to all of her whims.
There was one sunny afternoon that Wesley decided to spend in the cloistered comfort of his ventilated room while reading a book as he lay in his bed. Christabel came unannounced. She wore about her the usual air of possessive countenance; after all, it was her boyfriend’s house. Therefore, she thought it would be insensate for her to keep him in the know that she was coming to his house before setting foot on the road. Wesley was surprised and he didn’t fail to express it.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” he said as he opened the door.
“Do I have to tell you that all the time? Eeh? Or have you been up to something?” returned Christabel, raking down her hair with her fingers, to keep in shape. It had been frizzled by the breeze while she navigated the long, narrow path to his house.
“That’s not the point.”
“So what’s the point? Tell me, what is wrong with your girlfriend visiting her second room whenever she feels like, if you have nothing to hide?”
“It’s not that.”
“But what?” she snarled. “Tell me! What?”
Wesley shut his mouth at his point just to steer clear of heating up the furnace of her tantrum. But his plan failed. Christabel took it up from there and went on a ranting spree. It was as if she enjoyed nagging Wesley because the boy was uxorious and at the same time, doting. Wesley never failed her in that aspect, not in the past, not in the present, for no sooner had she finished with her caustic caterwauling and slouched forcefully into a chair – her face frowned in disgust – than Wesley crept up beside her, placed his left arm over her shoulder and held her right palm in his. Christabel sighed disagreeably and tried to shake him off in a futile effort.
“I’m sorry,” Wesley said. “You are free to come whenever you want to.”
Christabel didn’t say a word. Her face was flushed with anger. She protruded her mouth momentarily to let out occasional long-drawn sighs. Wesley cuddled her and tried to pamper her by stroking her arms and trunk gently. Now and then, he pecked her chin and said sweet things in her hearing. Still, Christabel was not pleased. She grumbled that his words were biting her ears, that they were bitter words.
“So what other sweet things in the world do you want to hear?” Wesley asked playfully.
“I need you to look into my eyes, hold my hands the way you are holding them now and say emotional things like baby, please manage this fifty thousand naira for the weekend,” said Christabel with an air of cruel seriousness.
Wesley was taken aback. His eyes widened in bewilderment.
“Why?” he asked in exasperation. The next minute he was laughing at her.
“Why are you laughing now?” pursued Christabel hotly. “You are laughing at your own irresponsibility, at your own stupidity. What exactly do you mean when you say you will take care of me? Wasn’t that what you said to me when you proposed to me? Now I have seen how you want to take care of me!” she shouted with a loud bang of her furious fist on the table, sending all the items on the table into a movement of split seconds gravitation.
“You are shouting,” Wesley said calmly. “Stop shouting let’s talk it over quietly. You don’t even consider that I’m a student like you. Okay. Where do you want me to get that sum of money?”
“Are you asking me?” she retorted sharply. “Come and get it from my ass since you don’t know what others do to get the money they use in maintaining their girlfriends,” she barked.
Wesley became sad over her words. He thought that she was not only being inconsiderate but also greedy, and wondered if she loved him at all.
“Is it all about money?” he said to her in a subdued, shredding voice.
“What do you mean?” Christabel fired back. “So you prefer me looking old-fashioned and outdated to me looking updated and in vogue. I won’t take this from you! I swear it! Other girls, their boyfriends buy nice dresses, necklaces, rings, bracelets, the latest shoes in town, and many other things for them. My friend’s boyfriend just got her a pinging bag and a gold wrist watch worth fifteen thousand naira the previous day. But you, you are a never-do-well. All you do is have sex with me. You don’t take proper care of my needs. I’m tired of living like this.”
With that, she buried her face in her spread palms and sobbed. A fog of confusion came upon Wesley; he was at a loss what to do at that point because it wasn’t true that he didn’t take proper care of her needs. For the past few weeks, he had spent close to N40, 000 on Christabel. She was the reason why he had suddenly gone broke. He sat on the floor haplessly, sweating profusely although he conditioned the room with cold by means of his air conditioner. Incidents like this made him start missing Flora, the girl he was determined to forget all about for the rest of his life. Flora didn’t have demands at all. Could it be that Flora loved me just for love’s sake? He wondered while he squatted on the floor, lost in his thought.
But on the other hand, may be, just maybe Christabel was right, he thought. Maybe I’m not doing enough for her. If I truly love her, I would do anything for her, he thought. Already, he had started believing that his best was not good enough. If, indeed, he had that amount of money, he would have given it to her straight away. He so much hated seeing her feel sore, let alone sob and drop tears. So, he motioned her to stop crying. Gently, he nudged her head delicately to exhume her lovely face from the grave of her palms where she buried it. When she raised her head, a glistening tear or two trickled down her eyes.
The tears prevailed over Wesley and he felt for her. At once, he knelt down just before her, held her chin with his hands and kissed her deeply so that he seized her breath for a while, making it impossible for her to continue with the sobs.
“Wait. Wait,” she said. “Will you give me the money?”
“Yes,” Wesley replied suavely.
Christabel’s face brightened up cheerfully. Then, their tongues rolled up in a deep kiss. When she caught her gasping breath, she pressed him tightly against her bosom and sucked the life out of his mouth, now kissing his lips, then kissing his throat.
“Kiss my throat,” she said in gaspingly Hot voice, in-between the steamy contact.
Wesley took his mouth down to her throat and began to kiss her guttural stretch like a vampire sucking a meal of fresh human blood. She moaned softly. She was all over him. Her eyes were shut in that erotic frenzy yet she felt around his body and located his erectile organ with her left hand. She unzipped him, grasped the elongation firmly and fondled with it in an orgy of wild voyeurism. Wesley undid her blouse, plunged his hand into her bra and fondled with her plump mound of flesh.
By some magic, they landed in the bed where they stripped each other naked and Wesley began the vigorous thrusting that accentuated a steamy sex romp. Christabel moaned and writhed in bed like a demonically possessed woman while she got shagged. At a point, she panted like a female dog, at some other point; she opened her mouth widely in a moment of implosive inhalation of breath.
Wesley’s ardently religious next-door neighbour was ill at ease with the sexual noises coming from Wesley’s room. He was reading at that time but soon lost concentration in his book. The moans coming from the other room were putting him under temptation. He closed the book he was reading and started praying in utter refusal to give in to the pleasures of the flesh, when he realized that he was getting roused.
**
“I will give you the money,” Wesley promised her again after the sex romp.
Christabel’s face lit up in delight. She hugged him and said she would be very grateful.
“You’re such a darling,” she said to him, while pouring a quantity of brown powder on her palm as she stood before the wall mirror. She rubbed the powder over her face with great skill, combed her hair neatly and wore Wesley’s fragrance mist so that she could smell nice. Then she left.
To Be Continued.