Chapter 3

Heavenly breaking. Shattering war. Bändit and Boko Haram. Politics skyrocketing. Citizens behaving like idîots. I looked at them all. Eventually I closed the news and leave the damn lunatics out there keeping on their maniac acts. You can’t beat government. They show you exactly what they thought you should believe.

About twenty minutes after my phone rang. It was Emmy, my far away manager.

“Sir,” he said. “Should I send her payment for this week?”

“Who?” I said.

“Your girlfriend, sir.”

“Do I have any?”

He smiled. “Yes boss! You have as many as you want.”

I nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Send it.”

“Yes boss!” he replied and ended the call.

I checked my WhatsApp messages. Ten unread and six archived messages. I ignored the open messages and checked the achieved, they are more important people.

From LahLah: “When will you get home?”

From Aderonke: “I will come to check you at your office today.”

From Funmi: “Why are you taking longer to reply?”

From Funmi: “Are you there?”

From Aderonke: “You don’t reply me?”

From Funmi: “Are you with someone else? Are you busy?”

I ignored all the messages and locked my phone. I told the lady beside my shop that I’m coming. Then I took a long walk.

Life is beautiful. But only if you make it be. You added more problem to yourself? You added more problem to your life. The best way to unfuck your life is to know when to fuck up with people. And the best way to do it. And definitely how to do it.

I branched at a barber shop. The place look a little bit outdated. But I don’t care. Can you barb? Yes! I go in. You give me nonsense haircut? I turned it to a new style. I will tell people it was on purpose, that I told you to do exactly just that. Everyone even thought I was mad sometimes.

“It had been a long time sir,” the barber guy said.

I looked at him. What are you talking about? I’m not sure here. Is this a new tactic to make me look familiar.

He had about ten different employee. Oh sorry, apprentices. I wonder if they’re all crazy. Learning in a tiny shop like this? Is the guy claiming to be their boss running a computer brain? Even the damn computer was invented by a human skull and mendula oblaganta. Or was it not called mendula oblaganta? Hard to tell. Science and chemistry and biology all do the same thing: make an ass out of everyone and give us some shitty names we wouldn’t be able to keep up to no matter how hard we try.

Out of the ten apprentices there was two girls among them. Somewhere around twenty and twenty three years. The two of them seem okay. A little bit eye catching. I ignored them.

“Have we met before?” I asked the damn guy playing some silly tactic. But he grinned in return.

“Am sorry about that sir,” he said. “I just love to be friendly.”

“That’s good, I guess.”

He nodded. “The same style on your head sir?”

“Definitely.”

He ordered the girls around and one guy out of the remaining seven dummies. I glanced at them all. I wanted to ask them: Is any of you bold enough to make any of these girls your girlfriend? But I kept it to myself.

My style was always half-dallas. Still is. I liked it. It gave me some interesting look. Couple with some occasional retouch. Black and signing.

One of the girls walked up to me and said, “Sir?”

I looked at her and waited. Sir what?

She smiled with a little bit of cautious side glances at me and continue. “I will be the one to give you the best haircut sir.”

“I don’t need it to be the best,” I said. “And whoever do it is not my problem. Just cut the damn hair and I’ll get out of here.”

She smiled again and did that thing of glancing at me sideways. “Okay, sir.”

And I enjoyed it. She got the style perfect. And she was fast. And I didn’t fall asleep.

I paid and left their organization behind. The boss ran after me. I waited.

“My little girl said he wanted to be one of your students, training. For some time before she always mentioned someone she wants me to talk to,” the barber guy said.

I checked him all over again.

“Your little girl? Training? What is that all about?”

He cracked his knuckles. I thought he wanted to punch me. Which I figured would be a silly mistake. You don’t walk up to someone and talk to them and then crack your stupid knuckles while the person is staring at you with their two eyes opened. Except you’re an idiot. Or the person you wanted to punch is the idiot. But it turned out the guy was a little bit unsure how to say what he’s trying to explain.

“It’s like this,” he said eventually and went on about two minutes explaining all kinds of different scenarios to me.

First the girl that barb for me is her sister. And her mother died when the girl was twelve. But to me it felt normal, at least people die every hours in a day. Second the girl love to be a marathon runner. Right from secondary school she’d be putting herself out there trying and practicing, but no results. But one day she saw a tall guy running fast. She claimed she was tired and couldn’t keep up with the person.

“And that person happened to be me?” I asked the barber guy who is now turning himself to a narrator. He nodded.

“Yes!” the guy said. “She said you’re the one. And since that day she want you to ber her coach.”

I shook my head.

“She saw wrong. I only practice long distance jogging. And no way I’m an expert. There are thirty billion guys out there who could jog faster than me.”

The guy didn’t know what to say to that. So I patted him on the shoulder and walked on.

“Sir,” it wasn’t the guy. I looked back and saw the girl that barbed my hair crying.