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Simon Nwankwo's interest in music inclined a little too steeply toward radicalism: he liked Olamide (even though it was his enduring belief that the boy was infringing too liberally the rule of musical aestheticism, not to talk of understanding, with the generous infusion of Yoruba into virtually all his songs), he could abide Ruggedman ( even though he agreed with those who asserted that the guy was too acerbic, but, music he could sing) and he loved M.I. (even though he had never taken the pains to remember what the letters stood for). These were his people in the universe of music. He had no consideration - no time, no patience, in fact, no tolerance - for P. Square (sissies), Tuface (one-dimensional), Iyanya (too amenable), D'Banj (treacherous), Wizkid (no versatility) or Banky W (couldn't place the guy). He loved his music to be hugging the outer limits of the zone established by the society for musical acceptability.

Therefore, that day, as he ignited the engine of his car in readiness to take it (or let it take him) in the direction of the state headquarters of the police and - by extension - Hugo and his exceptional maladroitness, he slammed on a selection of the accepted. M. I.'s voice came on forcefully to upset the sonic distribution of the interior of the car.

Simon Nwankwo, the private eye into whose care Hugo's mum, in both her haste and her trust in her son, had entrusted the life of Hugo thought M.I. belonged in the class of the Beattles - or even Buddy Holly, Kurt Cobain, Morrison and - damned right! - John Lennon. He thought those Grammy's overlords needed to bivouac in Africa - in Nigeria, specifically - with their awards and do the right thing for a change. They should give the awards to the fellow who deserved them, and here he was, coming out of his speakers with pain-dulling, assholes-kicking, fools-trampling lyrics with the discipline and regularity of a well-drilled regiment. But, would they? Those ninnies wouldn't, and that was the fact.

Simon's class teacher was too busy making sure that the bespectacled specimen of anthropological disorder - handsome, though - sitting in the seat opposite her did not have the better of her privates to remember to tell the man about what she, the class and the whole school regarded as the boy's singularly vexatious habit: lying. The boy lied with the ease of a pro. He lied when he had a cause for it; and, he lied when the lie was least warranted. If Miss Imota had told Simon's father about the boy's remarkable talent for prevarication, the man would have had another occasion to think the boy was his son. Which boy did not lie? Which man did not? He didn't seriously think he told Miss Salimot (his new girlfriend who could not lay claim to the ownership of the brain that the good Lord gave a bug) the truth when he said his prick rose earlier than he did in the morning. The little erroneous appendage rose, but with an effort.

The senior Mr. Nwakwo departed that morning with only the best intention of cursing the sh-it out of Mrs. Stritatu, his widowed neighbour, who then had the infuriating habit of kicking his cat all the way to Antanarivo every evening.

*

Simon rose from his meeting with Hugo's mum, giving her a partial compliment of what someone told him was the best turning of his visage: a frown, and told his hands:

"I will undertake this difficult case!"

The mother was happy. She did not see the heart of the man nor see deeply into his thoughts. He was quite satisfied that he had been given a case that would chisel off all of one hour from his available working time. He would then bill the woman for, maybe, a hundred in order that she might appreciate the difficulty of the case.

"Thank you, sir!" She rose.

"Have no fear," he said. "He's bound to be released into my care." He thought if the boy was released, it was, probably, into the care of the most anxious hand of the law.

"I'm glad that you'll see this through!"

See?

Of course, he would see it through, but what nuance was capable of achieving something that no English, nor any African, word was capable of achieving? What gesture of his could best tell this woman that he had this inkling that her son would be done a great favour if treated to the bullet? Hanging not only took time, but also painful, not only to the hanged but similarly to those watching. He totally detested hanging.

"No problem at all."

*

.

"I gave him zero because he's not apt enough to stop his eyes from looking inside the skirts of girls!" The comment was buried and utterly sunk in a lie. She caught Simon once. She caught him staring in her own skirt.

Simon's father, for the second time that hour, thought the boy was his son. Who could blame a young boy for looking inside the skirt of a girl? He did it all the time when he was young.

"Not good," he shook his head, "not good. He deserves a real knock on the nogging."

The class teacher, Miss Imota, adjusted her skirt. Like father, like son, she thought. She just caught the man's eyes (embedded, as they were, in silicate) straying beyond the most cloying kind of depth - straying into her most pivotal and, of course, private region.

"That's why I gave him zero."

Simon Nwakwo made the best use of his eyes and became a Private Investigator. Before Hugo's mum approached him with what she assumed to have the devilish uncanniness to deprive her of her earned subscription to the product of nine months of irrepressible unpleasantness, Simon had, in the process of his engagements, won three accolades, a broken tooth and thirteen black eyes.


* *

Simon Nwakwo was the best student in his class - no one told him, mind you. They told his father.

"Your son," said his class teacher, "has the best eyes in my class."

The father keyed in immediately to the word 'best'. Come to think of it, the boy was his son. He, the father, was the best in his class too, the best in, like, everything other than brilliance.

"He should be. I pay his school fees regular like."

"Yes, he is," the class teacher was conceited enough to be persuaded that she had a large audience of one, and smoothened her slightly wrinkled skirt. "He has the best eyes, but they look at only wrong things."

Simon's father guessed he hadn't heard correctly.

"If he is the best," he reasoned, " and he has the best eyes," he adjusted his spectacles, "why, then, did you score him zero in aptitude?"

The police - as represented by Inspector Yisa, Sergeant Ankwobi and Constable Bala - did arrest Hugo, seeing as the man implicated himself and they did not have a better culprit. Hugo's mum - that stolid, solid, upright and strong woman who gave meaning to fortitude - explained to her husband that the whole thing was a joke. The man did not have to be told. He knew. He caught the s-t-up-+id boy in the very practical, not particularly jocular act of stealing - yeah, stealing! - his #100. The wife, who could have told anybody that the interpretation best given to the matter, the money stolen and, in fact, her husband, was in a word ludicrous - thought the husband was taking the matter with the sort of levity that could see the boy very close to the hangman's noose. Thus, she sought Simon Nwankwo.

'Which gun?' He asked.

The sergeant spent five seconds staring at his subordinate before turning to the inspector. He smiled.

'Oga,' he said, 'this boy is a fool o. He no even know say when dem shoot someone na gun dem use'.

The inspector looked at the constable and made a mental note that the boy should be demoted. For a moment, he thought there was nowhere else - no place else, no other level - to reduce the boy to.

Hugo had not drunk. Nobody, at that instant, could convince him otherwise. However, he believed he was still more sober than these nincompoops trying to arrest him. Even in his jadedness, he did not allow his understanding of premise and conclusion to be corrupted. The plot was clear.


The sergeant was fixated on the affair of the gun.

'Oga, talk now,' he told the inspector. 'Tell this, this - ' he measured the constable from the hair of his head to his toenails, 'this boy to bring the evidence.'

The inspector took another look at the constable and thought the ASP should be demoted. Giving him this boy was indeed the summit of the indescribable.

Constable Bala looked at his two seniors and told himself that he was a better man.

When they finally decided that it was time to make this - well, abominable introduction to crime-making - this criminal continue his uglier grieving in a cell, they took a moment to reflect. The constable thought the sergeant was drunk. The sergeant thought the inspector was drunk. The inspector thought the ASP was drunk for assigning these two SOBs to him.

Hugo thought everybody on the scene was drunk!

He believed Femi had been shot but there was no gun in evidence.

'Where's the gun?' He wiped his nose. He asked the inspector. The inspector realised that he just might have taken a tad too much of Iyalaje's tansho. He ought to be the one asking the questions.

He turned to the sergeant.

'So, where is it?'

The sergeant thought the inspector was not only drunk, but foolish. To mask, and also master, this interesting level of foolishness exhibited by the Inspector, he turned to the constable.

'Give oga the murder weapon, the gun. You heard him."

Constable Bala took two steps away from the sergeant, thinking that the drunk had started again.

However, the constable could not say no to the sergeant (who was his better) nor could the sergeant say no the inspector (who was his oga) nor could the inspector say no to the ASP who thought they were all too drunk for their own trouble and put them in charge of a case that not even three fools - three muckracking, soiled and unbelievably asinine bastards (which was what the ASP thought of the three) - could fail to solve.

These three policemen, unknown to the ASP (who was on a different case at the time), were together on a case that was botched. Each of them believed the other was the reason for it. None of them was ready to admit that someone saw him holding his gun, sitting at Iyalaje's place and drinking the last of his six senses out. Yet, they drank on their way to the case, botched it, shot at nothing (including criminals they saw in the air), blamed one another, went back to the station, lied to everyone and told whoever was ready to listen that they had a very good day.

Therefore, when they got to where Hugo was writing an entirely new script on remorse, they paused, felt sober, agreed that they should allow the young man his moment of grief. Nobody, the inspector thought, could be happy that he shot his friend.

I typed I.d-i.o.t.

Am I that drunk or what?

When policemen came - they came in the persons of Inspector Samaila Yisa, Sergeant Paul Chisom Ankwobi and Constable Titus Bala - they were not prepared for the problem that confronted them. Ordinarily, they were told that someone had been shot and they were ready to apprehend someone - after all the i-diot who did the shooting did not have the immediacy of rationality nor the sharp decision-taking needed by all criminals to run away. But, right here at the point of the crime was a young man - truth be told, not good looking (but who said even ugly fellows couldn't, as well, by their actions, by their presence, stop one from breathing?) - crying and begging the deceased to wake. People standing ten kilometres away were pleading with the law to take its course. This ugly addendum to English Language turned Femi to a word used in past tense.

This was, come to think of it, an easy case.

The inspector, the sergeant and the constable hated one another with something akin to bile. If Cromley, Jesus Christ (I think), could hate someone who handed him over to death, then, that kind of hatred must be similar to what these agents of the law had for one another.

When Hugo came in, Femi stopped talking. He turned to someone who had not been paying attention to them.

'When was the last time you took your bath? Seriously?'

The man looked at him, looked at the fellow in front of him, looked again at Femi and tucked the meat in his hand in his mouth.

Hugo knew he was the one insulted.

If not for Chukwudi, please remember, this whole story would have ended.

'Hugo', Chukwudi addressed everybody in the bar, 'this beast thinks you smell.' Naturally, that was what he thought too, but why place any weight on it?

'Who?' Hugo asked. He had always been insulted on the heaviness of the miasma emanating from him. Nobody - not even Shakespeare, if he woke up today - could trip him on that score. ' Femi?'

Femi, who hated his mum, all insults and his name, rose with the fluidity that must gladden the heart of K.K. Ovosun and wasted his entire drink on the very ugly face of Hugo.


Afterward, the events that took place were in this sequence: a loud noise, like a shot, rang out; Femi toppled over without any theatrics; the cup in Chukwudi's hand dropped to the floor, remarkably retaining its glassy, unbroken essence but losing over 99 percent of its content; drops of alcoholic beverage fell from Hugo's chin with pleasing serenity.

Please bear with me if you've endeavoured to open, as I have, like two million and seventy seven times (respect to Jesus) this post. I'm not posting this as fast as I hope I should 'cos I'm using a phone. My notebook, much as I like the damned thing, chose this moment to prove better than I am.

His breath stank. He stank. Nobody could hold this against him if he did not take the dictionary, Oxford, and turn it upside down on this little assemblage of alphabets: ugly. Hugo's mum had fortitude. She was born strong, solid and upright. However, she broke down when she saw the bundle she had given birth to. When the man who gave her this punishment came into the labour room, she actually turned to the midwife and asked her - in very lucid, clear and most annoying English - what was wrong with HER. The midwife, Mrs. Fehintola, who thought Hugo's mum was her worst case yet (after all, she gave birth to something that took all of twenty eight hours), told her she was only sick. She just gave birth.

Hugo looked like his father.

Igbahilofemi had several reasons to dislike his name, and several reasons to hate his mum: he was not given any option - none - to have his birthday like all other normal human beings. He was given birth to on the 29th of February. His mum, then, went ahead to name him after the date she met her husband, his father.

Let's go back to the story.

Chukwudi wanted to kill Femi. Femi was, after all, insulting his father. If he had done this, this story would not get written.

While they were there drinking, Hugo came in. Hugo (please, hold your breath!) defined halitosis.

.

senbonzakura_kageyoshi: Reading this was like reading something from Tom Sharpe....really well written! From start to finish, this story flowed naturally and I must say I did pick up a thing or two from you. Hope that's not an end to your writing.


(pretty awesome end to the story too!)

I wrote this two years ago. After it, I wrote four full novels and seven short fictions.

I hope it doesn't stop.

Thanks, sir. You won't believe how much I appreciate your comment.

Madam speaker: dis is really nice...i lov it,nyc 1

Thanks, ma'am.

Femi - his full name was actually Oloruntobiloba Igbahilofemi Marcus Oguntuwashe - but, he hated it... he hated his full name and he hated his short one -

Femi rose that morning without knowing that it was going to end for someone - him. He hated his name, and that started it. He was drinking with his best friend, Chukwudi (who, of course, liked his own name) , chewing tobacco and bawling his brain out.

"He told me," he shouted again, "but I'm telling you, he's a fool!"

Chukwudi agreed that there was a fool in the matter. The only difference was that he felt the fool was sitting right in front of him.

"Stop calling him a fool," Chukwudi said. "He's my father!".

"So what?"

"So stop calling him a fool!"

Femi chewed tobacco and drank

"I'm sorry," he said, " he's a big fool."

Chukwudi felt like killing him on the spot. If he had, this whole story would have been pointless.

I hope - now scratch that! - I wish you, my ogas, will be forthcoming with criticisms. I'm typing this with my phone. I've got a lil problem with my notebook.

The SoothSayer: [color=#550000][/color]
Dude you're a pro, the humour in the story is terrific in gargantuan standards. I loved it!

You did not only make my day, you made my whole YEAR.

Thanks, bruv.

alizenbohr: Wow! Now all jukebox has to do is convince d malpractise panel that he has started using the bleaching cream again.

But, bros, what about the handsome side?

I loved reading your feedback, sir.

ijezie4: very interesting story. i am setting up a literary online magaze, i could publish dis on it if you dont mind. send the story to africanliterarytimes@gmail.com. thanks

You're free, sir.

I'll send you an email shortly.

phabulux: Prof Iyiegbuniwe qo catch you. Abi you think say no be him you use as Willy?

I have a feeling that you're not only an Akokite but also FINSA bred.

Well, people, there you have it!

Naturally, your comments, criticisms, observations and recommendations will be appreciated.

Thanks for embarking on this short trip with me.

There remained the question of the difference in features. Rahmon explained to them with increasing note of irascibility that their knowledge of photography – which obviously needed sharpening up – was an unbelievable lesson in coarseness. If they could only take the time – the time – to observe that a good placing of the camera, maneuverability of lighting and apt positioning of the object to be captured could work a miracle in photography that no plastic surgery could work in real life, all would be well.

“Interesting!” was the only observation Prof. Rakia made.




Juke was waiting anxiously for news beside the porter’s lodge when Rahmon strolled out casually from the FBA building. Rahmon’s composure alone was enough to give Juke a reason to believe all had gone well. Juke, however, would like to be sure. He was on him at once.

“How did it go?” He asked.

“Fine,” casually.

“How fine then?”

“Oh, very fine.”

Juke could not hold his relief.

“Thank God!”

“Can I have my balance now?” Rahmon showed him his palm.

“Balance?” Juke was surprised. “But, you were unable to finish the paper.?”

“It will be finished.”

“When?”

“After the Exam Malpractice Panel sitting.”

Juke was completely thunderstruck.

“You are still going to appear before the School’s Exam Malpractice Panel?”

“No,” Rahmon told him calmly, “you are.”








The end!

Rahmon looked at him as if he could not believe that a lecturer with a doctorate degree could be that stupid. The contempt the two professors saw in Rahmon’s look made them wonder if perhaps Adelami could be guilty of a little idiocy.

“Could you,” Rahmon returned with remarkable condescension, “be insinuating that a man could possibly impersonate himself?”

For an instant, even Doctor Adelami doubted his own good judgement.

Prof. Rakia stirred from his boredom and asked Willy to let him have one more look at the picture. He wanted to be sure which stand to take.

Here was the face in the photo card, truly, all well-rounded, good-looking and fair complexioned. Here was the fellow claiming to be in the picture, well, disproportionately-featured, ugly even beyond revulsion and, well, dark as they come. Here was the crux of the issue: how did one account for this glaring lack of symmetry?

He cleared his throat and the other three men in the room turned to him as one. Prof. Rakia tried to fix his gaze on Rahmon’s face but because he was not aware of the discrepancy of nature that registered scorn on Rahmon’s face as a permanent fixture of his countenance whenever he felt a flicker of hope where there ought to be none, Prof. Rakia could not succeed.

“Young man,” the Professor said, shifting his eyes from Rahmon to Adelami, “there’s a problem here. There are some things here that certainly don’t agree. For instance, this man in the picture,” he held the card up for the benefit of the room, “is obviously fair-skinned while you’re of darker tan.”

Rahmon would not have it.

“That can be explained,” he said. “The change in complexion is as a result of my experiment with some facial creams.”

“That’s nonsense!” Doctor Adelami bellowed. “There’s no cream yet that changes a man from being light-skinned to dark-skinned!”

When Rahmon turned the compliment of his abominable squint to the Doctor, the two Professors could see that Adelami needed rescuing.

Willy took on the role of a life-saver.

“Explain to us,” he said, “how you achieved this feat.”

“I never said I was originally fair-skinned,” he moaned. “I changed my complexion from dark to light using a bleaching cream. That was when I took that passport. When I stopped using the cream, I went back to dark. Easy.”

“In the space of what time?” Rakia wondered.

“Two weeks.”

“Remarkable!”

One hour later, he was in a mini-conference with three lecturers: Doctor Adelami, Prof. Rakia and Prof. Willy.

The demeanour of each of the lecturers was at variance with the others’. Dr. Adelami was smug. Prof. Iyiemagbor was furious and sad. Prof. Rakia was both disgusted and bored.

Rahmon looked on with unhidden indignation.

Iyiemagbor held the photo card a mile away from the foot-thick lens of his spectacles. He looked from it to Rahmon’s face and back to it.

“Why did you do this?” He asked Rahmon. “Why did you do this in my course?”

It was obvious to all that Willy was not as much pained that Rahmon had violated the School’s examination rule as he was that he could do so in his own course.

“Do sir?” Rahmon wondered. “With all due respect, but do what? As far as I can see, I wasn’t allowed to finish my paper. I don’t think you can sit there accusing me of doing what you’ve not allowed me to do fully.”

“Oh, you see,” Dr. Adelami literally jumped in barely concealed happiness, “you see, sir, he’s admitting it. He’s admitting to examination malpractise!”

“Of course, I admit it.”

“You admit it?” Willy was almost in tears. “You admit to being caught performing an act of examination malpractice in my course?”

Rahmon shook his head.

“You got it wrong sir,” he told the three of them. “I admit that there was an examination malpractice. Yes. He,” nodding in the general direction of the Doctor, “didn’t allow me to finish my paper. If that’s not an examination malpractice, sir, then, I’ll like to be enlightened on the theme.”

Adelami could have slapped Rahmon on the spot if he was standing within a foot of him. His hand itched; rage tore at him from every point of his physique. The tautness of his sinews bore testament to how much he felt riled. What unpardonable insolence!

He took a step toward Rahmon.
“Could you,” he began, “possibly be insinuating that you were not impersonating somebody in that examination hall today?”

The lecturer wriggled round the boy (who was again chewing on the end of his pen frantically), round the empty seat and grabbed Rahmon’s question paper and answer booklet with his left hand where he had the photo card while at the same time grabbing the collar of Rahmon’s shirt with his right. All these he accomplished in less than five seconds.

“What, sir, is the meaning of this?” Rahmon queried biliously.

“The meaning of this,” the doctor said, yanking up the student without warning, “is that you are about to see first hand what respect examination cheats command around here. Step out, my friend.”

“Examination cheats? Nonsense!”

But Rahmon, who at that moment felt nothing at all like the Doctor’s friend, did step out

They brought the paper for the sake of the students at10:00 amprompt. The moment Rahmon got his, he delved into it. To every ‘Psst!’ of the boy, summoning him for assistance, Rahmon could not afford the generosity to give him even a cranky squint.

“Photocard, please.”

Rahmon continued writing furiously, completely disregarding the palm which the invigilator, a lecturer from another department, thrust in his direction. He looked at the question and wrote some more.

“Photocard!” the lecturer bawled with forced authority and hurt dignity.

Rahmon gave him the card with crooked arm, thus forcing the lecturer to stretch painfully, almost tumbling across the boy and the empty seat to get it.

The lecturer was totally mad with annoyance. He stood there glaring at the ugly head of Rahmon, but for all his effort, he only managed to win utter indifference from him.

There were a few titters in the room, adding to the lecturer’s embarrassment and fury.

Damn it all, the lecturer said to himself and snatched a glance at the card. He should toss the card on the floor. That would teach the impudent, ugly, little sod to disrespect a lecturer in the future.

Actually, the lecturer almost suited his action to his thought before he unceremoniously realized that there was something odd in the whole affair. This time, he took a long look at the card and a longer one at the supposed bearer of the picture in the card. The lecturer, Doctor Adelami, just could not help it: his whole face contorted into a wide smirk.

“Luke James!” he called. Rahmon continued writing. He had forgotten his name. He had forgotten that in that room, he had swapped Rahmon for Luke. “Luke James, or is that not your name?”

Something, call it intuition if you like, warned Rahmon that he was indeed the one addressed, and he squinted at the lecturer with a combination of ill temper, anger and fear.

“Yes?”

Doctor Adelami had his fill of Rahmon’s features, subconsciously compared it to the smiling face staring up at him from the photo card and told himself quite satisfactorily that here at his disposal was an examination cheat.

The paper for which Rahmon Salami was staking his career was FIN 321, Qualitative Analysis of Financial Decisions, facilitated by no less a personage than the illustrious Professor Willy Iyiemagbor. Professor Willy had a reputation in University of Lagos, or in the Faculty of Business Administration where he held sway as a departmental head: he had more expulsions to his credit than any other lecturer in the whole faculty.

Rahmon’s decision, taken rashly and at the urging of his devastating hunger for those trips to Jesus Embassy, was a foolish one at best. He was in his final year. If he got caught, the four years he’d spent in the school, the money, the pride and the influence which his parents now commanded on their street, all would come to naught.

As Rahmon squeezed himself into a seat in FBA Room 10, these thoughts cruised round his mind. As yet, it hadn’t occurred to him that he had undertaken to commit an offence, what in the conservative sphere of religion could be termed as an evil deed. Although, to be fair, he had an inkling that what he was about to do could be foolish or else what was he dreading being caught for? Now, that was a scary thought, right there. What if he was caught? What if one of the lecturers suddenly recognized him as a student of the department, certainly, but not one that had any business being in Room 10 at this time? What then?

Some beads of sweat formed on his huge upper lip. He came to a decision: he wouldn’t let that happen.

He sat by the railing. Two seats to his right (at least a seat was always left unoccupied between candidates during exams), a scruffy, sweaty boy – he couldn’t have been more than a boy, say 17, Rahmon determined – was chewing frantically on his pen. He looked worse than nervous.

“Get a hold of yourself, man,” Rahmon snapped at him.

The boy turned to look at Rahmon and mumbled ‘sorry’. Rahmon shook his head and looked at his watch. He was nervous too but he wasn’t about to become a shot of a rolling nervous ball over it. When would they bring the paper for Mary’s sake?

Rahmon squinted at him.

“Sure. You could get rusticated. And if you were to be one down against luck, you could get expelled. Look, Paul, the police were bound to release you sooner or later. All you need is to know what palm to oil. But Paul, you get sent out of this school and you don’t get the benefit of a second chance.”

“But at what price? N10000?”

Rahmon scratched his chin once more.

“You are very passionate about this, huh?”

“Passionate?” It was almost as if Juke only just heard the word for the first time in his life. Passionate! Can you please look at this guy?

“Yes, passionate. Look, Paul, there is nothing to be ashamed of …”

“I’m not ashamed.”

“I haven’t said you are.”

“And my name is not Paul”

“Look, Paul, this is taking rather too much time. Pay the money now and then sit back and watch your result roll in.”

“I’m certainly not paying you N10000,” Juke turned round. “I’ll get somebody else.”

A sudden storm of panic seized and nearly swept Rahmon off his feet. In that instant, his left ear actually got smaller and his right got bigger. Fifty trips to Jesus Embassy…

“And just where are you going?”
He asked strongly, feelingly.
Juke paused.

“What kind of question’s that?” he said “I’m going to get someone who is ready to do the job and who isn’t going to bill my head off.”

“Now, Paul, now, a moment, a moment,” Rahmon stepped closer to him, squinting at him irascibly, “I hate being cheated out of my fee.”

“What cheat? What fee?”

“Look, Paul,. Look…”

“My name is not Paul!”

“I know, Paul. Pay the five. That’s what I said. Pay the five grand and watch your result roll in. what’s wrong in that, Paul?”