Chapter Twenty-eight

Henry must have really talked to Anthony St. Claire for the big man called Phoenix and fixed a lunch date with him at Ikoyi. And then the two of them went about talking about what new dig he may possibly have for the actor. The man agreed to star Phoenix in a new production, but the payment fell below what the actor was used to. When Phoenix complained, the man reminded him that he was taking him on as a risk.

Phoenix had no choice but to agree, thinking in his mind that Anthony St. Claire was a mean bastard who used whatever leverage he had to fuck with people. When he was done with the man, Phoenix drove straight to the offices of the Vanguard for a press conference he had scheduled with them, and then he told his story over coffee and cakes, calling Hassan a liar and a cheap rumor-mongrel whose stock-in-trade was character assassination. He then emphatically denied that he was a homo－ which was really the truth even though he had slept with men in the past and was still doing Henry because the guy had the keys to make him or break his salary in the industry.

Having gotten that out of his mind, he went back to the White Phoenix, took out his laptop and then he typed out a few other emails to some gossip online rags who had been after him for a long time to give them a comment about the rumors that was flying out of Ali Hassan. When he hit the Enter key and the email flew off into cyberspace to the over fifty email addresses he’d sent it to, he picked up his phone and speed-dialed Ali Hassan.

‘Well well, if it isn’t the delectable Phoenix,’ Ali Hassan said on the third ring. ‘You disappoint me, my love; I was expecting your call sooner than this. Where have you been?’

‘I’ve been out of town for long,’ Phoenix said wearily. ‘I just got back and so I had to go and talk about what you’d said about me.’

‘Why on earth would you do that?’

‘It is because you are a liar. You had lied about me to the press, and they had lied about me to their readers. I may yet sue all of you.’

‘It was a very bad idea for you to think you can cast me out of your life and cast me out like scum,’ Ali Hassan snapped, and he sounded really pissed off. ‘I don’t have a guy to warm my bed at night, and you of all people should know how hard it is to find willing partners in this town.’

‘I can hook you up with a number of the guys that come to White Phoenix and I know that many of them are waiting to get laid. They’re waiting for big cocks, for tops like you to come and get them and fuck them. All you have to do is to come there, make your choice, and whoever you want will be yours for the taking.’]

‘No.’

‘What exactly do you want from me?’ Phoenix exploded, his fist banging down on the tabletop with great force.

‘I want you, my dear. You’re the third person I had the pleasure of sleeping with, but you’re the very best I ever had, and I ever want. Come to me, or there are always pictures to send to the newspapers and the online bloggers. Those pictures tell the story of your life at the Drummer Club. Come to me, or you will regret it.’ And the man hung up.

Phoenix held the silent phone to his ears, and there were tears in his eyes, misting his vision so that everything appeared blurry, and he was also shaking, as much with trepidation as with anger at the way the man was now blackmailing him. How could Ali plot to destroy him and everything he’d worked so hard with his pure display of malice? He had worked so hard; he had sweated like a pig in the heat, turning up the full talent he had by practicing roles before the mirror for no less than four hours every day, perfecting moves and looks, studying the old Hollywood players that were the very best stars from as far back as the forties and the fifties, knowing what had made them the symbols of power that they were. Now, this Hausa animal wanted to have him wash all that down the drain just because his uncircumcised penis was in need of his ass.

The day passed in a blur as men and women trooped in and out of the establishment, and then it was the time for him to go and see his old friend. In spite of the fact that it was raining heavily, with raindrops as big as bottle caps peppering down, he got into his car and drove from the club down to the Lagos Island where the Northerner lived. He snapped open an umbrella, climbed down from the car, and the bitter cold of the April evening bit into him, making him shudder.

Ali Hassan’s property was fenced round, a rarity in Lagos Island since the price of properties here was quite high, but the man had been very lucky because the house had passed down to him from three previous generations of Hassans. It was cordoned off the main street with a wrought-iron gate and the actor stepped into the compound which was lined with coconut trees, and he hurried up the lighted driveway up to the front door.

Phoenix lifted his hand to the brass knocker on the door but before he could pound it to the wood, the door was thrown open by the tall Northerner. The man smiled, revealing a set of strong white teeth in the Northern darkness of his face. ‘You decided to come,’ he said.

‘I am not that stupid.’ Phoenix snorted. ‘If I had chosen not to come, what would you have done next? Had me killed?’

The man nodded, amusement written into every line of his face. He waved the actor in, and the younger guy followed the man into the warm house that was lighted up by yellow bulbs suspended on the white-painted ceilings. They went into the comfortable, overstuffed living room with its modern décor and a sepia-toned picture of the man in a roomful of snakes which hung over the dining table. An episode of Jessica Alba’s Dark Angel was playing on the TV screen, with the volume turned down, and there was a half-full bottle of sherry on the table in the middle of the room.

‘What exactly is it do you want from me?’ Phoenix demanded as he folded his arms across his chest and glared at the older man who had settled down into a comfortable-looking cane chair. ‘Did you want me so desperately that you had to go and start to pull such a stunt? That is so unfair.’

‘Life is so unfair,’ Ali Hassan reminded him. ‘By the way, aren’t you going to sit down?’

Phoenix scowled because he could not trust the man with anything again. ‘No, I am perfectly fine where I am. I have a lot of subjects to discuss with you and if what it’ll take is a month for us to discuss the weather before you listen to me tell you what I really want from you, then fine. But you must promise to stop what you are doing to me.’

‘Then come back to me, Phoenix. Let us continue things from where we had left off and forget all about this enmity we’ve had. Come and sit down.’ Ali Hassan patted the space next to him and beckoned to Phoenix.

Phoenix felt his eyes narrow to slits as the thought went into his mind that he had merely wasted his time by coming here and hoping to talk some sense into the man. There was the sheer folly of his attempt; Ali Hassan did not want to get back on friendly terms with him. What the man wanted was to get him back into bed, and he was not going to allow that.

Without so much as a word, he turned to the door, and then the clear voice of the other man halted him in his tracks. ‘Tonight I ask you to come back to me so we can make love and forget about the things that had happened in the past. Next time, you’ll be the one coming to me and crawling on your feet asking me to take you. Make no mistake about that, Phoenix.’

Phoenix turned to him, a small cold smile turning up the corners of his mouth. He could play this game; he had invented it. ‘To love and to war,’ he said, and then he turned and left.

He had made a declaration of war against the man, and he knew that he had to steel himself, get ready for the explosion that may ring out at any moment from then. It rang true that you should learn to treat your best friend as if he might one day become your worst enemy. He had made that mistake with the Northerner, but he had gotten wise; he would never make that mistake again.

The next morning, when the newspapers hit the stands, the news was all over the front pages that Phoenix had bluntly denied ever being involved in a sexual relationship with any man. By the end of the week, the episode was all but forgotten, and the actor was once again in the fold. But he knew Ali Hassan very well: the first had been the preliminary into what he could do － a joke. The second would be the real doze of acid.

He called Henry and told him what he thought, but the love-struck man brushed it aside, telling him not to worry. Phoenix hated it, this dependence he had on the young married man, a person who was separated from him by a very wide gulf that may never be crossed.

And the fact that he was now a movie star gave him much power, even more than many rich families could boast of having. There were people flocking to him from all angles, budding want-to-be actresses who wanted to be seen and snapped with him in the public. Of course, to please the paparazzi and those who said that he was a homo and wanted his head on a platter, he’d get the girl, and there would be fun appearances in the happening spots in town, and there would be pictures everywhere later on for people to eat up with their inquisitive eyes, and then if the girl was talented enough or good-looking enough, he’d help get her a spot into a new music video by some music star shooting some brainless crap in the VGC, or a modeling job, and then there would be the next girl waiting.