Drug Addict

1

Chinyere says Love is like a drug, it wears off, and one needs to top it up to make the feeling last. Some days, I return to find steaming dishes on the dining and Chinyere's tiny frame wrapped in a new gown in a bid to recreate our multiple dates before marriage.

Other times, I return to find our room illuminated in a red glow and Chinyere clad in a voile dress. Most times, recently, she dresses as a police officer and says, “Whatever you say will be used against you on the bed of love,” and pulls me with my tie to the bed. For some months now, she has handcuffed me to the bed before mounting astride on me, swallowing my length in her warmth.

My phone rings and draws me to reality—to the blank screen of the laptop I am staring at, yet to write a word. The Caller ID makes me let out a tired sigh before I answer, "I am working on it , sir,” I say, “You will get it soon.” I fade his angry reply until he hangs up. He doesn't understand how difficult it is to explore something I don't understand.

Last month, I stopped at a jewellery shop and got Chinyere a gold necklace to level the effort she puts to kindle our flame, like fanning hot charcoal to produce fire.

Sammie, my best friends, says there is nothing like Love. Okay, he corrects himself, maybe there is Love, but it does not last. These girls are hoes! He believes. Regardless, his definition still collates with Chinyere's. For something to last, one has to keep rebranding it, keep topping it up.

Unlike Chinyere, I never speak about Love. I always wonder what I said to her and what she saw in me, apart from my career that tickled her fancy and made her love me to the extent of proposing to me in the midst of guest. I was happy because she did something I always thought about but was scared to try.

I start typing. Do you know what Love is?

I tap backspace, and the cursor eats the words. Another blank page.

Chinyere's heels clinks from our bedroom downstairs. She is clad in the same blue suit she wore last week. She circles the dining and stands behind me. “I love you,” she tells me after she bends and places a peck on my cheek, a ritual before she leaves for work. She looks at the blank screen of my laptop and says, “Don’t force it, hon. Words will come.”

I smile and say, I love you too.

Maybe the first time I said it, I felt something. Then, Chinyere's presence made my heart jubilate, made me lie to Peace, my then-girlfriend, that I was going for meetings while I met Chinyere in fancy restaurants and held hands across the white-clothed table, blushing over mundane things that were said.

Chinyere's phone rings just as she is about to step out, so she unzips her handbag and reaches for it.

It is her sister, Prisca. She wants to spend some time with us.

That is great, I say with a slight smile which Chinyere returns with a kiss she blows from her palm. She leaves.

Prisca is voluptuous, and now she is around, she sweeps the house, and since I work at the dining, I see a lot of her while she cleans in skimpy dresses, especially when she bends to sweep.

I begin to feel guilty at the sneak peeks I spare her, then later, about two weeks later, I start to like it. I sit at the dining and anticipate her presence instead of doing my work that is past its dead line.

Chinyere returns with a long face. What is it? She responds by stretching a white envelope.

What is this? I ask, but she only slumps on the bed and buries her face in her palm. I open the envelope, expecting to see a sack letter, but I see she has breast cancer. My heart stops and starts again.

When next we make Love, she handcuffs me so I wouldn't feel the lump in her breasts.

There is hope, I assure her.

But she starts losing strength, then starts losing her hair after the third round of chemotherapy.

3

Most times, after Prisca and I wear out from cleaning Chinyere's bedridden body, we sit in the living room and pretend to watch TV instead of stealthily taking glances at each other. Sometimes, our gazes collide. I feel for her the same thing I felt for Joy, for Peace, and for Chinyere. I know Prisca feels it, too, because when we are together, our souls have a kind of synergy that is hard to deny. Is that Love?

I stand up and head to my room, but sleep refuses to grace my eyes for the long time I lay on the bed looking at the ceiling. My throat gets dry, so I move downstairs but pause in my tracks on the sight of Prisca seated on my seat holding one of the abandoned papers scattered across the dining. The dining is the one place she doesn't clean or sits.

What are you doing?

She holds up a paper I wrote Love and circled it.

Personally, she says, Love is Love, it can't be explained, like God, but I know something for sure. She drops the paper among the disarray on the table and stands. Love is shared. You can't love only one thing...or one person, no matter the type of Love.

Chinyere dies.

I feel sad but not as sad as one who lost a wife should feel. Prisca already fills the void that Chinyere's sickness and death created. I stare at the men shovelling sand into her grave and wonder what she would say. Love is when she sees Prisca and me holding hands. Very faintly, I hear, “I wonder how long the drug would last.”

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