Broken tables.
T. K Global was on the 15th floor of the Transco Office Building. Tseyi’s office was done in white with windows running from the ceiling to the ground. With the few paintings they bought from Venice on their Honeymoon, she had transformed her office into an exquisite but powerful sanctuary. It looked dominating; with the bold work table done in black she had in the middle of the room and the countless awards glaring at visitors from the shelf on the left. Her favorite quote hung on the wall:
“Want it? Then, go get it!
And she sat in the middle of all this white and power, seething. Nothing could calm the storm that was raging within her. Even her Assistant knew better than to disturb her especially after seeing her reaction to the gossip featured in GUESS WAT??
The knock she was expecting came.
“Come in,” she said.
Without waiting for him to close the door, she asked him “how was breakfast?”
kunle was probably trying to figure out her question as he knew she was not an affectionate wife but her anger had no time to wait for his brain to catch up. Without any warning, she threw the magazine at his face.
His facial expression went from confusion to realization and to shame.
‘How could you?” she asked him with hatred and disgust in her voice.
Coming round the table, she continued;
“You went through young girls like wind through a storm and I covered it up. You switched taste to older women and I still covered your ass but this, blow jobs to things that look like they still in their puberty? Kunle! You disgust me!
He was still staring at it in silence. Quiet like a puppy they had let the shower on without any warning.
“Why so quiet?” She came to stand beside him with her hands on her waist, spoiling for a fight.
Poking her head into his silent conversation with the magazine’s middle page, she asked:
“Kunle! Wetin you dy look? Abi you no dy see? Na you dy give pikin blow job!”
She was mad, it was obvious and she had a right to be. Several board members had called her this morning to say that before the end of the week, the board would be having an emergency meeting to vote them out of sit. Her hands were flying everywhere, her shoes gone, resting under her table. The look in her eyes was feared by her staff for it meant someone was getting fired or verbally thrashed.
“I’m sorry” he finally managed.
She laughed. A long and crazy sounding one with her back bending behind to show the extent of her amusement by his apology.
“Sorry?” Kunle, you say “sorry” when you break a porcelain object done by a long-dead artist or when you miss a meeting, not when you appear in front of the №1 Gossip Magazine in Lagos with a dick in your mouth! Kunle! They are coming for us! A board meeting is going to be called soon to vote our asses out of sit and sorry baby”, she said making air quotes “but “sorry” is not going to cut it”.
Silence descended on the office. Nobody said a word. He tried to gather his thoughts and she tried to calm her nerves down.
Finally a little bit calmer, she stood facing her long windows and asked “what happened Kunle?”
He knew she didn’t mean last night, with the puberty kid and his indiscretion. He knew she meant with them; their marriage and the once upon a time passion they had for one another. How they fell from being in love to being mere strangers who had not seen each other’s nakedness for more than 3 years.
“I tried, I really did” he said. “To get you to love me, to remember me even as we rose to wealth. To not let your ambition make you ignorant of the fact that you were married but I couldn’t, and when I couldn’t, I found a new past time”.
“Are you telling me that my going after the things we dreamt of having TOGETHER drove you to cheat?” she laughed.
“Come on Kunle! Even you can do better than that”.
She was already calculating a way out of this, the drumming of her perfectly manicured nails on her large office table said so.
“What can I say? You left me alone”-
“Oh shut up”! She yelled, cutting him short. Coming round the table to look him in the eye she said:
“We stood eye to eye, saying “I do” in front of all those people, not only to love one another or go grey together. You wanted to prove your nasty two piece of shit father wrong and I needed to get away from the loins of poverty I was born from. We came together to build an empire like both families have never seen, to give to children we were going to have, the best and make it known to our enemies that, what we want we get”.
She was in his face, spitting her anger and conviction on him. Her hands were going everywhere again, she usually did that when she was trying to make a point.
“We knew it was going to be difficult, we knew we would have to take a lot of heat and shit from others but we VOWED to have each other’s back but your steady string of hookers and your recent breakfast preference is anything but having my back and that of the company we built from scratch”.
It seems trying to keep her anger under the wraps had not worked. Her breathing was the only thing that dared make a sound in the office. Even kunle was stunned. He had never seen his wife so angry before.
“So what do you want me to do”? He asked.
she gave him a full wicked smirk.
“Firstly, you will call a press conference, put on one of those your authoritative suits and remind the board and the general public that irrespective of what you like to put in your mouth, T. K Global was created on your blood and intelligence. Now 12 years ago, the advertising and legal sector were in ruins but we; WE fixed that. You may not have made the right choices in sexual partners over the years but the intelligence in your head is the reason why T. K Global has all these” she said, gesturing to their awards and medals kept in the chest to her left.
“Secondly, you are going to have to explain to the kids why from now on, they will have to pick which parent they spend holidays and school periods with because Kunle”, She said with emphasis, “I am done. I am tired of cleaning up your mess, covering up for you and looking like a fool to the public for sticking with a man that cannot stick with me”.
She knew he wanted to beg, he always did. The time she caught him with the tiny 21-year-old she later discovered was an intern, the sex worker that almost caused a scandal until they paid her to shut up and even when he threw a sex party in their house because he thought she wasn’t coming home till the next month, he begged and she forgave him but not this time. This time, she was done, and somewhere deep down, he knew it as well because he didn’t say anything except “okay”.
He turned to leave and she watched his back, remembering the days when all was well before it all went to hell. She remembered them walking into this space with so much glee and excitement. She didn’t know what she was going to do to her office, having never decorated a place before but he looked at her with that his killer smile and said “all yours baby, all yours.”
Lost traveling down their memory lane, his question “did you ever love me?” sent a jolt to her brain.
She thought for some time before replying;
“Maybe once upon a time, when we were younger and different but not anymore Kunle, not anymore”.
“I am sorry I couldn’t give you want you wanted. I wish you the best of luck Tseyi”.
He tried, he really did but Tseyi and her demons made it impossible to love her. He hoped she will get the help she needs. He failed her, yes he knew but both of them knew that was not the only reason their marriage was now in pieces.
When he was finally out the door, she let the flood out. She cried; for the little girl that once upon a time believed in love, for the man who she managed to convince that he wasn’t good enough for her thanks to her insecurities. Also for her children whose lives they were about to change and for the loneliness that was about to become a part of her future. She wept like a baby; void of all her walls, forgetting the protection and power her white office provided on a normal day. She cried like she had lost it all because a part of her felt she had. At that moment, T.K Global With all its prestige and awards meant nothing to her.
After a while, she remembered that she didn’t have the luxury of time to cry like a baby or throw a pity party, she had a company to protect. Standing up from the floor where she had fallen to in tears, she dried her eyes and called her Secretary.
“Ma”? She answered in trepidation.
Tseyi smiled. Yes, she thought, feeling like her normal self, you all should be afraid. With determination and a wicked plan forming in her head, she said:
“Call Vintage Cleaners. We have a PR mess to burn to the ground.”
