Chapter Twenty-six

Over the next few weeks, the anxiety and frustration over the affair with Phoenix in the papers mounted because there was no way he could get in touch with the guy either on phone or in person. Even when he’d asked Lawrence, the man had claimed he had no idea where the actor had vanished into. Henry then left several messages in Phoenix’s voicemail, but he received no return calls from the guy. It was as if the actor had vanished into thin air.

Henry felt the frustration settle on him like a heavy, crushing weight, weighing down his mind. He felt betrayed by a lover who did not care enough to at least tell him that he was going to be unavailable. And if what Phoenix was scared of was the public opinion that Ali Hassan was turning against him, all the guy had to do was to say the words and the tall, no-good scoundrel would be taken very good care of so that he would never disturb Phoenix again.

Henry wanted to be the source that would protect Phoenix, and be the one to do anything that would be necessary to be done to stop the press from harassing him. And there were the people who were really out for his blood, who were saying all sorts of terrible things about him, though of course there were those that were sympathetic to the actor and would not let their opinion of him be muddled by the accusations of one man. These were the group that asked why the actor should be crucified for something nobody was sure about; they demanded to know why the people were just kicking up a storm for something that was irrelevant. Why not turn the attention to the politicians that stole billions of Naira from the Nigerian economy and laundered these monies abroad to banks in Switzerland while the masses suffered? Why not worry about the fact that the existing health infrastructure was crumbling and people were dying because there was lack of adequate health care?

The roads were in a deplorable state, and there were people dying because of that. The health care in the country was a joke, with the persons who are the powers that be flying themselves and their children outside the country for even the most inconsequential illnesses while the masses had to make do with what the hospitals had to offer. The power supply was abominable, with there being a resultant inflation in the prices of goods and services because of the fact that the manufacturers were using fuel and so had to recoup their costs. And yet, they had to focus on Phoenix only and the gay question, leaving out the really important stuff.

By the middle of March, Henry had gotten frantic, and the media had gotten whipped up into frenzy. The guy was nowhere to be found, and there was speculation that he could be dead or that he had left the country. And all these drove Henry wild with anger and fear. He must be really obsessed, for he found out that he was thinking about the guy all the time, and perhaps, he was also calling the guy’s name in his sleep, for one day, Fiona came up into their room where he was staring at the screen of the TV in which played the 1961 Hollywood oldie, Whatever happened to Baby Jane? She snapped the TV off and turned to stare at him, and there was an icy coldness etched into the lines of her face.

‘We have to talk, Henry,’ she said in a cold, flat voice, a tone that had Henry’s alarm system turning on full alert mode. ‘For several nights in a row, you’ve kept me awake with your incessant babbling about that stupid homo actor.’

Henry feigned nonchalance and a deep concentration in his thoughts but his mind had turned to overdrive mode with fear and worry. ‘What actor?’

‘Do not ask me what actor because you know what I am talking about!’ Fiona snapped. ‘I had always wondered where you get that strange exotic perfume that cling to your clothes when you come back from work, and now you’re babbling about the guy－’

Henry sat up with a look of shock and rage at her tones, and she shut up instantly. ‘What bloody nonsense are you talking about?’ he hissed.

‘I now remember why you looked so guilty when the guy walked up to us that evening at the Blue Hyena,’ Fiona continued icily as if she’d not heard him speak. ‘There was that scent on him, and all the time it kept on nagging at me until just recently. Then it struck me: his perfume－ that’s what’s been clinging to you all the time. You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?’

For the very first time in his entire life, Henry felt his bowels turn to ice. He felt the fear digging into his spine. ‘Sleeping with who?’ he asked in a low voice as his mind envisioned his life crumbling and disintegrating before his own eyes into irrecoverable pieces that would be blown out to the wind and scattered to the four corners of the earth.

‘Phoenix must be your lover, you bastard!’ Fiona hissed at him, her voice filled with pain and hurt, and disgust. ‘You are a homo!’ and then she was clapping her hands in his face for emphasis. ‘You have been fucking him because he needed you and your mother to help him with his career, haven’t you? That’s why his perfume clings to you all the time. I dare you to deny it!’

Seeing how enraged his wife was, Henry swung his feet down to the floor and faced her squarely. The cold, icy look on her face chilled him to the bone, and he felt that no amount of weapons could have packed more venom and fire like she did at that moment. There it was; a confrontation was imminent between them.

‘What do you want me to say?’ he asked wearily. ‘Do you want me to say no to your accusations when you’ve already made up your mind before you came into this room that I was sleeping with the guy? And he is my fellow man－ why should I sleep with him?’

‘Oh God,’ Fiona muttered, her hand clamping down on her mouth to pull back a sob. Tears welled in her eyes, and then her body was trembling with the force of the strong emotions that were swirling through her. ‘Who did I think I was deceiving?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘Here I was, thinking that I had the best man in the world as my husband, but that is the biggest lie I can ever tell to myself. I married a gay man.’

Henry’s guts twisted in pure anguish at the pain he had unwittingly inflicted on her, for he had never meant to hurt her in any way. Their marriage had been devoid of rancor, of the petty domestic quarrels and squabble and the violence that had been the trademark if his own parents’ marriage. But now, everything had fragmented, disintegrated into a million pieces because of the forbidden passion he had for Phoenix, a guy he knew he should run away from; a guy he knew might one day be his undoing if he wasn’t careful.

‘You are a bastard!’ Fiona hissed at him, making him jump as if she’d attacked him with a weapon. She looked furious, almost manic as her eyes blazed at him with the fury of a ferocious lioness. ‘How dare you? How could you do this to me? What has that bastard got that I cannot give to you?’

Henry was already backing up physically. ‘Nothing was going on between us,’ he said, though his voice lacked conviction. ‘I don’t even expect you to understand that.’

And it was true; there was nothing for his wife to understand.

‘I can’t understand; is that right? What is it I can’t understand?’ Fiona’s voice had risen in volume. ‘Answer me, you bloody devil! I thought that it was only people like him that were gay, not strong, handsome men. You can’t really be into that act.’

What a misconception, Henry thought, his shoulders sagging with misery and profound weariness. How could he be able to explain to Fiona that there was no correlation whatsoever between homosexuality and effeminacy; that being gay entailed being sexually wired towards the guys around you? He had realized a long time ago that the visible masculine traits he displayed, had often been the savior he had pertaining to the issue of his sexuality, and it was something he thought that could be hidden under the sun for as long as was humanly possible. But now, because of the fact that the only lover he loved was nowhere to be found and he was now babbling in his sleep, he was about to be revealed for what he really was. His life as he knew it was really doomed.

‘I hate you!’ Fiona continued, her voice rising in her anger and her derision. ‘You are a freak! A homo!’ She then let loose a string of obscenities in Yoruba at him through her clenched teeth.

‘That’s enough!’ Henry snapped at her, now getting angry. He knew that he had to cut down the crap she was dishing out because it was obvious that the slightly crazy young woman was not even sure of what she was saying, that she was talking out of the suspicions she had deep in her mind about him and Phoenix. ‘The servants in the house and outside can hear you.’

‘I will not keep my voice down!’ she shrieked in response, and then she lunged at her husband, her long, painted nails extended to his face so she could claw his eyes out.

And for the first time in his life, Henry struck a woman. He slapped her hard across the face as she came charging at him with the front of his right hand, and that sent her reeling back and falling to the mattress. Then he was on top of her, his strong arms holding her down as she tried to charge to her feet. Still, she struggled like a trapped tigress, and she was incredibly strong; that’s what you get when your wife tortures her body with a daily one-hour fitness regimen at the gym, Henry thought wryly.

She was still screaming at him, and then she managed to extricate one hand and hit him hard across the face. They were both panting, and then he felt the lust stirring within him, and then he was ripping her robe off savagely, his powerful, muscular arms pulling her down to the bed, and still she struggled. She was wearing nothing underneath the robe, and when he ripped the last of the thing she wore from her, he pulled down his pajamas and then he kissed her. It was a very hard, brutal kiss, one that made him taste blood on his tongue, and whether it was hers or his, he had no idea. She struggled against him, but yet she seemed to be touching him, her long nails raking over his naked back, sending slivers of thin pain through him.

‘I am not gay!’ he roared into her face.

And then he was spreading her legs, and he could see that she was already very wet, the soft red mound of her womanhood oozing with juices. He felt the painful erection he had, and he knew that he must have some release, and then he was driving his tumescent penis into her, and she was calling his name, crying out even as she writhed against him, and from her mouth poured forth a string of expletives at him. Their anger and hunger for each other’s flesh moved in flashes, pure white strokes of anger and desire and fear and pain etched into the face of the tortured young woman as she moaned and called his name. Their kiss was hard and brutal, and it was as if they were trying to suck the life out of each other, and then she was cursing him, and then she was ordering him to fuck her harder, to show him what a man he was if indeed he was not a homo.

He drove into her deeper and deeper, and her legs were wrapped around his lean hips, her fingers exploring his back and buttocks. He fondled her swollen breasts, and smelled the scent of the soap that still clung to her hair after her bath. He pounded her with a fury such that almost matched the fury that Phoenix could incite in him, and then he was seeing stars explode before his eyes, and he came, shuddering as his seed seeped into her.

She was now crying, and she was calling his name softly. ‘I am sorry,’ she was saying, her voice tiny and muffled into his shoulder.

She had come too, and she was now rubbing against him and purring his name like some needy chick.

He was kissing her breasts and saying nothing as she continued to say that she was sorry; he sucked on the full ripe mounds and she was responding to him. He started to move again, his hips dancing in the ancient, timeless rhythm and language of sex, for his penis had become engorged once again, and he was watching her intently. Her eyes were closed, and she was responding to him, to her gay husband, though she did not know that. He had deflated her accusation even though she had been right, and now she was sorry for that was trying to make it up to him.

He wanted to cry, to pour out his anguish and his sorrow right out through his eyes, because he’d come close to being doomed. Fiona had pounced on his one deadly secret, and even though he’d managed to fuck the silly notion out of her head, he knew that the seed was now sown in her mind, that she would never see the actor the way she’d been seeing him again. She would always see Phoenix and remember that she had fought her husband because of him.

God, how he loved that guy more than he loved even his own self. But he felt certain that if he had a gun, he would take it and put it against the forehead of the guy and pull the trigger, blasting that stunning face to a million pieces before the guy destroyed him totally. He would destroy that forbidden fruit before it destroyed him.