Easy Motion Tourist Read Free Page B

to the man in white.
    ‘So, what do you do?’
    ‘I said you could sit next to me, not talk to me.’
    ‘Someone seems to be in a bad mood today.’
    She watched the man in white end another call and go for another helping of nuts then she turned to the man by her side.
    ‘Let me get this,’ she said, ‘a girl tells you she doesn’t want totalk to you, and of all the possible explanations you think she must be in a bad mood?’
    ‘Well I…’
    ‘Well what? You just felt like saying something stupid?’
    ‘You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?’
    ‘There you go again. I’m feisty simply because I don’t want to talk to you?’
    ‘Hey, I’m only trying to buy you a drink.’
    ‘I’ve got mine.’
    ‘OK, I’m sorry if I came on strong’
    ‘You didn’t. You came on weak.’
    He smiled. ‘Fair enough. I guess I set myself up for that one.’
    ‘You did. Look, give me your card and maybe I’ll call you.’
    She checked on the man in white. He was munching away.
    ‘Here. Do call.’
    She took the card and without looking at it put it into her handbag. ‘I will. And you’re right, I’m not in a good mood tonight, so understand if I don’t feel like talking.’
    ‘Does it have anything to do with that bloke?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Him.’
    He thrust his beer hand in the direction of the man she’d been watching.
    ‘No.’ She turned her body away from him.
    ‘I’m Ian. What’s your name?’
    ‘Iyabo.’
    ‘So, Iyabo, what do you do?’
    ‘I’m a prostitute.’
    He choked on his beer, and before he could recover, she was walking towards the man in white. She’d just found her opening.

3
    It was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. They removed her breasts? ‘What the fuck?’ I didn’t realise I’d shouted it till everyone stopped to look at me.
    ‘They removed her breast. Just now. Outside,’ Waidi said. Surely he’d heard it wrong, whatever that girl told him. I looked for her and instead I saw petrified faces all around.
    ‘They did what?’
    He held one hand cupped under an imaginary boob and did a slicing motion with the other. ‘They cut off her breasts,’ he said.
    ‘Who cut off her breasts?’
    ‘Ritual killers.’
    ‘Ritual who?’
    ‘Killers. They removed her breast for juju, black magic. It is those politicians. It is because of elections. They are doing juju to win election.’ He wrapped his arms round his body and hunched his shoulders upwards, burying his neck.
    ‘They’re out there?’ I said.
    ‘No. They just dumped the body and ran away.’
    I fetched my phone and realised my hands were shaking. I pulled out a cigarette, lit it in a hurry and burnt the tip of my finger. Then, staring at my brand new phone with a Nigerian SIM card in it, I wondered who to call.
    The morning I checked into Eko hotel, Magnanimous had, with a knowing smile, given me his card and said to call if I needed anything. I pressed the home button and realised I’d meant to store his information but never got around to it. I searched every pocket on me – twice, even though I could picture the card on the bedside table in my hotel room.
    The only number I’d stored was for a bloke called Ade, a stringer my company hired to be my fixer in Lagos. So far, he’d sent two text messages to say he was held up in Abuja, the capital, and every time I called him his phone just rang forever and he didn’t return the call. I tried again all the same. It rang once then I got a busy tone. Then the phone was switched off.
    ‘Fuck.’
    ‘Yes,’ Waidi said.
    I looked up from the phone. He was staring at me and nodding emphatically. He looked so serious that I almost didn’t recognise him from before when he’d been so blasé.
    ‘Every time there is election we find dead bodies everywhere,’ he said. ‘They will remove the eyes, the tongue, even the private parts. Sometimes even they will shave the hair of the private part. Every election period, that is how it happens.’
    The faster he spoke the