Behind his lenses, his eyes looked startled. “Of course we are,” he said. “Or aren’t we?”
Olanna said nothing. A foggy sadness overwhelmed her, thinking of what they had allowed to happen between them and yet there was the new excitement of freshness, of a relationship on different terms. She would no longer be alone in her struggle to preserve what they shared; he would join her. His certainty had been rocked.
Ugwu came in to clear the table.
“Get me some brandy, my good man,” Odenigbo said.
“Yes, sah.”
Odenigbo waited for Ugwu to serve the brandy and leave before he said, “I asked Richard to stop coming here.”
“What happened?”
“I saw him on the road near my faculty building, and there was an expression on his face that really annoyed me, so I followed him back to Imoke Street and told him off.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t want to tell me.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Was anybody else there?”
“His houseboy came out.”
They sat on the sofa in the living room. He had no right to harass Richard, to direct his anger at Richard, and yet she understood why he had.
“I never blamed Amala,” she said. “It was to you that I had given my trust and the only way a stranger could tamper with that trust was with your permission. I blamed only you.”
Odenigbo placed his hand on her thigh.
“You should be angry with me, not with Richard,” she said.
He was silent for so long that she thought he was not going to respond and then he said, “I want to be angry with you.”
His defenselessness moved her. She knelt down before him and unbuttoned his shirt to suck the soft-firm flesh of his belly. She felt his intake of breath when she touched his trousers zipper. In her mouth, he was swollen stiff. The faint ache in her lower jaw, the pressure of his widespread hands on her head, excited her, and afterward she said, “Goodness, Ugwu must have seen us.”
He led her to the bedroom. They undressed silently and showered together, pressing against each other in the narrow bathroom and then clinging together in bed, their bodies still wet and their movements slow. She marveled at the comforting compactness of his weight on top of her. His breath smelled of brandy and she wanted to tell him how it was almost like old times again, but she didn’t because she was sure he felt the same way and she did not want to ruin the silence that united them.
She waited until he fell asleep, his arm flung over her, his snoring loud through parted lips, before she got up to call Kainene. She had to make sure that Richard had said nothing to Kainene. She didn’t really think that Odenigbo’s shouting would have rattled him into confessing but she could not be entirely sure.
“Kainene, it’s me,” she said, when Kainene picked up the phone.
“Ejima m,” Kainene said. Olanna could not remember the last time Kainene had called her my twin. It warmed her, as did Kainene’s unchanged voice, the dry-toned drawl that suggested speaking to Olanna was the slightest of bothers, but a bother all the same.
“I wanted to say kedu,” Olanna said.
“I’m well. Do you know what time it is?”
“I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Are you back with the revolutionary lover?”
“Yes.”
“You should have heard Mum talking about him. He’s given her perfect ammunition this time.”