Chapter Twenty-nine

There was an old mansion there at Billings Street in Lagos Island which was one of the sets for the new movie Phoenix was working on. The house had been built in the late eighteen hundreds, and Phoenix fell in love with the colonial-style décor and look of the place.

But there was a cloud over this: because of the fact that the house was located in the Island, whenever Henry came there on business, he would pack his car in one of the public parking garages where you paid hourly, cross to the CMS bus stop to board a ferry to the Apapa wharf, and when he was done, he’d come back, pick his car up, and then he would seek out Phoenix. The guy wanted some distance now because he did not want to be constantly reminded of the fact that he was loved more than the wife of the man who was doing him, and he felt bad when Henry complained that he felt stifled by his marriage to Fiona.

One day, the darling Rosalie Johnson paid a visit to the set. The cast was out in the manicured lawn on the cold July afternoon, and there was a light drizzle. They were all in a very foul mood because of the obnoxious director, one who was fond of making the lives of those around him a misery. And that was when the glittering red BMW sports car drew up to the gate, and for the moment, all attention was reverted to the sleek machine, right before the brief look turned into an outright stare as the stunning Rosalie stepped down from the car. She was turned out in a fitted knee-length gown that accentuated her slim figure, with the color matching perfectly with the color of her ride. She knew how to make an entrance, all right.

‘I hope I am interrupting nothing,’ she said as she walked towards the assemblage, her Chanel No. 5 wafting before her.

Phoenix tried to stifle the small smile that rose to his lips at the vision of this feline femme fatale; she was the nightmare of every married woman with a husband under the age of seventy, this forty-six-year old who was a go-getter. She was a woman who was set to conquer the world with her ruthless ambition and knack for doing the exact right thing. And it was what he wanted: the power she had.

‘Rosalie, darling, you look ravishing,’ he beamed at her, extending his arms right out to her. And she walked right into them with the theatrics of a theatre actress.

She kissed him on the cheeks, and when she withdrew, there was the blush stealing right into her cheeks. ‘Thank you, darling.’ And then she was talking about lunch with him, and he was agreeing to her suggestion immediately because he had to be with her and feed her ego. He had to massage her ego so thoroughly, she would be amenable to whatever he wanted her to do for him.

They went to Monique’s for a lunch of green salad, green vegetables, accompanied with red wine. In a roomful of young, beautiful women, there were sidelong glances being cast on her, and Phoenix pointed this out to her.

She waved it away as she was long used to the attention and often pretended that it wearied her. ‘By the way, there is this new article I have been seeing on the internet for some time now,’ she said as she took a dainty sip of her Chianti.

Phoenix became instantly wary. ‘Don’t tell me about it; I don’t want to hear it.’

‘And the Actors’ Guild has convened a meeting once again to decide on whether or not you should still be allowed to continue acting in the country, what with all the controversy you generate even with your ordinary breath,’ Rosalie continued airily as if she hadn’t heard him speak or seen the pleading look in his eyes. ‘I know the members of the Guild with the juice over there, and I have pulled few strings, so I think they intend to leave you alone. But that Ali Hassan－ we’ve got to talk about him now.’

Phoenix heaved a ragged sigh, and he thought that he should have known that Rosalie Johnson was a woman who did not have the time to seek out the company of people like him just like that; she was after something.

‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

Rosalie drummed her French-manicured nails on the tabletop, a smile curling on her lips. But her eyes looked like marble; hard, flat, expressionless. It was like looking into a pool of opaque liquid. ‘What exactly does the man have on you?’ she asked, her voice cold. ‘Why is he squeezing you? What has he got on you that will make you to fear what he has to say about you?’

‘The man wants me in his bed but I have said no to him,’ Phoenix said simply, and through his intense brown eyes he watched the face of the woman for signs of revulsion or shock.

To her credit, she remained impassive. ‘I see; the man wants your ass in his bed and you’ve rebuffed his advances. He’s hurt, so he’s aiming to hurt you the way you hurt his vanity. That is very low, but there’s the way it is. Is that going to be a problem?’

Phoenix looked down at his plate, saying nothing, his brain working at answers.  She wants to know if the man has the capacity to hurt your career, his mind yelled at him. He was elated that the woman had chosen to champion his cause, but he knew also that the woman was not doing it purely as an act of friendship; she had her own reasons to do what she was doing. He prided himself on being very well-informed, so he knew that Rosalie had gotten a huge chunk of Ethnicity Studios out of the hands and management of St. Claire. That was the reason why the woman did all she could do in her power to get him all the publicity he needed, why she was trying to help him get the problem of Ali Hassan out of the way. It meant more money for her in her account if he was in the good graces of the public.

‘Will Ali Hassan be a problem to you?’ she asked again.

‘Yes,’ Phoenix replied, looking the stunning woman straight in the eyes as he said this. He knew that this was a very dangerous moment because he could sense the coldness that seemed to be emanating from her in waves. And he felt the fear prickling at his consciousness, raising the hairs at the back of his neck. He was afraid for the man who had chosen to make an enemy out of him, because he knew that extremely beautiful women could be either extremely stupid or extremely dangerous. In this woman, he suspected the latter.

‘Don’t worry, darling,’ she said, patting his arms gently, a perfect little smile pasted on her lips. ‘Ali Hassan will be taken care of sooner or later.’

The words seemed to echo in Phoenix’s consciousness like the boom of a canon echoing down a deserted valley. He knew what those words meant; he knew that those gentle words spoken by the most beautiful woman in the country had an evil connotation to it.

‘And Henry seems to be so taken with you,’ Rosalie continued airily, as if she had previously discussed something as mundane as the weather with him. She was smiling now, and she was fanning her face with a red handkerchief, as if she was going to banish the July chill from her face. ‘It’s very good to have someone who cares a lot for you, but sometimes it can be such a burden, love is, getting you into a web you can’t seem to get yourself away from when you wish to do so. It can make you act irrationally; it can make you destructive.’

Phoenix shuddered, and the thoughts still was with him when he lay down on his bed that night. His room was steeped in profound darkness, and rain pelted down to the earth with feral force, lashing unmercifully at the windows. In the parlor he could hear Derek Ossai and Lawrence talking to each other, and he envied them the freedom they had to laugh at the world and be without a care. But in his own case, he was burdened down with the weight of being T.O. Phoenix, with his face and half-naked body splashed across billboards and the different range of products he had modeled for. He knew that he was loved by many people, but he had no illusions about the fact that he was hated by many more because of the stereotype he represented.

And what was it that Rosalie had said again? It can make you very destructive. It was a warning from the woman, but about what? Was she planning to do something irreparably bad to Ali Hassan? If that was so, then he had to warn the man, at least for old times’ sake.

He picked up his phone from beside his head and called Ali Hassan.

The man answered the phone on the second ring, as if he was really expecting the actor to call him. ‘I told you that the next time, you’ll come to me of your own volition,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘Have you seen the pictures?’

Alarm bells were already ringing in Phoenix’s mind. ‘What pictures?’ he asked, his eyes squeezing shut, his heart hammering in his chest. He felt like the Cartoon, Jerry, trapped by the Tom cat.

‘They’re all over the internet now. Have a happy viewing, and remember what I told you some time ago. Are you scared yet of what people will say? Or better yet, of what they will do if they got really angry at you?’

Phoenix hung up in fear, and then sat straight up in his bed, staring sightlessly at the glowing screen of the phone. A shiver whispered through him, and he couldn’t tell whether it was from the cold of the pelting rain or from the cold words of the man he had just called and hung up on.