Behind Closed Doors

Chapter Twelve

Ethnicity Studios had been hailed as the best movie production studio in Nigeria. It had been founded in 1993 by one American man, Anthony St. Claire, and two Nigerian businessmen who had subsequently sold their share of the business to the white man and split their own separate ways in 1997 and 1999 respectively, with the resultant effect that Anthony St. Claire controlled the studio now. It had four addresses, one in Abuja, the other in the city of Aba, one in the notorious Onitsha, and with its headquarters located in Lagos.

The studio was an awe-inspiring sight, soaring twelve stories high into the Lagos skyline, dwarfing the surrounding architecture where it was located at Victoria Island. There was a very spacious parking lot where the most expensive cars lined up and glistened in the hot sun, and there were huge dogs and security guys patrolling the grounds. When Phoenix entered into the foyer, he felt the wealth of the place hit him in the face like a physical blow. There were movie stars milling around and talking to each other; there were A-list directors who looked bored out of their skins, and there were the upcoming and struggling writers, all waiting to see the king and showcase their talents.

Phoenix showed the fashionably thin, elegant receptionist the script, telling her that he had a meeting with the Big Man, that he was to be announced the moment he arrived at the complex－ of course there was the signature of the Big Man signed at the back of the thing with a flourish. That should be enough to dispel whatever notion she may have that he was some kind of imposter, trying to wangle his way past her on some false premise. She directed him to take the elevator up to the tenth floor and then present himself to St. Claire’s personal assistant. Oh wow. How the rich and mighty live. Different assistants on different floors to keep the riffraff out.

Phoenix did as he was told, emerging on a floor with sepia-toned expensive tiles on the floors, expensive art paintings hanging on the walls and plush leather chairs on which reclined three slim, stunning women in their thirties, wearing snug-fitting Prada and Chanel gowns and real jewels that flashed in the fluorescent lights; they looked totally bored. Phoenix recognized one of them as the first runner-up in the 1996 Miss Intercontinental Beauty Pageant. The other two looked like the two immediate past Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria for the last two years.

The same formality of showing the script and explaining his mission was replicated here. He gave the bulky manuscript to the gorgeous secretary with the high-piled dyed brown hair and red-lacquered nails and then he waited patiently while she thumbed down the intercom and announced his presence. Looking up at him with a small smile on her lips which bore the red stamp of Indian Summer lipstick, she waved him into a plush office that was heavily and elaborately furnished more as a living room than as an office. A large, glass-topped desk filled one corner of the room and behind it, wearing a perfectly tailored blue suit, was the Big Man.

The man had steely grey eyes that were as blank as it was piercing, widely set eyes that sat above a small thin nose, and small thin lips that were pursed as if in annoyance or contemplation as he regarded Phoenix. He appeared broad-shouldered and muscular, even though he’d turned fifty-six, and his jet-black hair which had a few streaks of grey in it was still generously spread on his head. He was good-looking, and Phoenix couldn’t help thinking to himself that the man must think him to be some piece of shit that was begging for favors, for leftovers.

‘T. O. Phoenix,’ the man said in a crisp American accent that had old world courtliness in it. ‘My friend had told me all about you, and I must say that you weren’t what I had expected. However, I must tell you that in this business, there is no room for people like you.’

‘In this world, there is no room for anybody; all you have to do is to make enough room and then squeeze yourself into it. And it doesn’t matter that you’re not wanted there; you just do it.’