Revolt

19. Broken Glass

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.” – Oscar Wilde.

•••

“Remind me of how you roped me into coming for this, again?”

Lekan grumbled for probably the millionth time, after they got cleared at the gateway of the residential estate and given the green-light to proceed to their destination. It was Friday evening, three days since she had proposed the idea of the mini-retreat to Tiolu, and they were here—heading to a private property of Dayo Tijani, which according to Tiolu was a lavishly furnished, three bed-room bungalow, they had decided to purchase for future emergences sake, in case the urge to lay low and stay off public’s radar, materialized. The house wasn’t located in the middle of nowhere, as Lagos was a megacity—the commercial hub of the nation as a whole and so had most of its landmass, occupied, which therefore, made it improbable, for the state to have an abundance of residential space.

This estate in question was situated on the outskirts of Lagos, on faint bearings with its neighboring state—Ogun. And so it was indeed in a secluded, isolated place, albeit not thousands of miles away from the city, and off the map. When Lekan had asked, why they couldn’t converge at a location in the city, Anjola had iterated that it was pivotal that the location wasn’t prone to the manic, uproar of the city life, so they could immerse themselves in tranquility, which was a therapeutic benefit of the retreat. He hadn’t protested further after that, because he didn’t want to assume the role of the killjoy, but she knew he was still scheming ways to terminate the entire trip, up until this morning, when he woke up to his glaring failure and resorted to whining all through the car ride instead.

“You mean, I should remind myself of how much of an ass you’re being by reminding you constantly of the fact that you don’t want to be here.” Anjola snapped, and gave him a baleful look, which she knew he caught despite his gaze being fixated on the road.

It was evident in the milieu of the estate that it was relatively new and was still in the development phase. There were houses, luxurious ones in fact—from high-rise bungalows, to villas and semidetached duplexes—that lined the streets by their side, but they were sparsely distributed, as unoccupied, unadulterated land with shrubs and grasses, were distributed amongst said houses in irregular intervals.

To call the atmosphere, serene was a colossal understatement—the silence it had could almost be likened to one at a graveyard, and Anjola almost feared that rapture had come and most of the life around them had ascended into the skies, leaving them alone on earth. But then her phone on her right thigh, dinged with a new incoming text from Tiolu—implying that indeed, the saints hadn’t departed yet.

Tiolu wanted to know how close they were to the apartment, as she had arrived already the previous night with Dayo and some maids, to set things into order and transform the place into somewhere adequately conducive. She replied her friend, informing her that they were only a few meters away, before tucking her phone back into her flap bag.

“That was Tiolu, texting to ask if we’re almost there.” Anjola said, when she realized Lekan wasn’t going to reply to her earlier lash out. Probably because he didn’t want to stir up more conflict. “It’s not too late for you to get out of the car, and board a taxi that’d take you back to the city, if that’s what you want. I’d choose third wheeling of an epic scale, like spending the entire week on a private property with a newly married couple, over you being whiny all through the weekend and complaining that you’d rather be licking the shoes of your dad, than spending time with your girlfriend, twin sister and brother-in-law.”

“Fine, fine. No more whining from my end.” Lekan surrendered, with his hands in the air. “You know half of the reason why I’m whining is to keep up appearance, and not make Tiolu and Dayo wonder if you forced me to come by drugging me or something, and not because I actually agreed to go. If I go there behaving like a Marvel fanboy, promised that Stan Lee would be resurrected just to meet me for one final time, before returning to the grave…then they’d know something is wrong somewhere.”