PLEASURE

TWO

Rasheed

STAY, RASHEEDA, PLEASE!

Go back, Rasheed.

She tilts dangerously close to the cliff.

You can't save me. No one can.

I sprint towards her, grab her fingers as she slips off the edge, hold fast but lose grip as our hands grow slippery.

Hold on, Rasheeda. Don't let go, please!

She slips.

I stare in petrifying numbness at her flailing arms as gravity pinions her, stretches her eyes and mouth in gawking shock, and sucks her in.

No!

She falls, a free fall heavy with such weightlessness it paralyzes me.

Rasheed!

I jolt awake, skin fizzing with goose flesh, sensing her lying next to me. Forcing air into my lungs, I slowly turn towards the other side of the bed and puff out a shaky breath.

She's gone. Dead.

I roll off the bed, click multiple switches, squint as bright lights flood my two-bedroom apartment, and give in to the violent need to ram my fist into a wall at spotting her image on the newspaper clipping. A burbling film of red mist clouds my vision, keeps me ramming my fist as it tears into her disfigured body in that tub, and doesn't stop until I slump in a tortured mess of choking sobs and bloodied fist.

I'm sorry, Rasheeda. I'm so sorry.

Wrecked with grief, I pull off the floor and walk into the kitchen. My throbbing fist makes me wince; its bleeding tint incongruent with my shadow-dark skin. I put it under the kitchen tap and let the cold water run.

Sade Adu's By Your Side rents the air. It's Faridah's choice of call notification.

"So you'll know I'm always by your side," she'd said as we hugged goodbye at the airport after Rasheeda's funeral. I let the phone ring while turning on the coffeemaker, let the symphonic pluck of guitar strings settle my troubled spirit, and take the call on the third ring as I lower into my work desk.

"Sis." Faridah, my elder sister by ten years, lives with her husband and two children in Kent. "What's up?"

"I wasn't sure I'd find you awake, Rasheed," she says.

I grin. "Yet you kept blowing up my phone."

"I saw the news."

"I'm handling it."

"It's so similar, Rasheed. Exactly like..."

I let out a raspy breath. "Faridah, I said I'm handling it."

She sighs. The look on her face, an uncanny resemblance to Rasheeda's, is of one distraught but trying not to show it. Lifting the coffee mug to my lips, I power my laptop, gulp down the rushed grief the image on my screen evokes—a picture of Rasheeda—and set to work.

Faridah scoffs when a power supply cut turns the room dark, then makes a sneering remark about Nigeria still living up to its power interruption reputation. I toss more gulps of coffee down as the roar of the service generator comes on.

"You're still coming over for the holidays, right?" She says.

"Mm-hmm."

"Clyde said to say hi and ask when you're moving in."

"Soon." I caress the trackpad to blow out the day's news while listening to her ask questions about my health, mental state, and job. After Rasheeda's death and my obsession with news about women found burned in hotel rooms, she'd appointed herself my therapist.