Chapter Thirty-one

Throughout the remainder of that year Henry refrained from calling Phoenix, and he did not see the guy. He considered the guy to be a dangerous thing, and so he was taking the necessary precautions to set himself safe. And to his consternation, Phoenix returned the silence with zero phone calls, nor were there any emails he sent to Henry like he had been doing when on the set of a movie.

But what he never reckoned was the fact that he was going to miss Phoenix. He missed the guy with an intensity that scared him half to death, and he hated it, this feeling of dependency he had on this guy who had upset the balance of his life. Phoenix is like a ghost; he’s haunting me, he thought. It was complete torture for him, this unholy, secret passion he had for Phoenix, and when the guy had walked away from him at the police station, he had taken a part of Henry’s heart with him into the sun.

By early December Fiona gave birth to another set of twins, another boy and a girl, and Henry was now a proud father of four kids. Though happy, he still craved the touch of that guy, and he knew that if he were to quantify the emotions and thoughts he had expended on Phoenix in monetary terms, then he would be a richer man because Phoenix had stolen all his thoughts from him.

That year, he refrained from heading down to Anambra with his family, and Rosalie locked up her Ikoyi home and came down to VI to stay with them. One day the woman went out for an outing with a group of her girls, and when she returned, her sports car screeching to a halt before the entrance, she got out, saw Henry reclining on a chair in the manicured lawn, and then she moved to join him. In her hand was clutched a magazine, and on the cover was Phoenix.

Henry sighed, for he knew that now was the time for him to talk about his lover with his mother and possibly warn her off if she had designs on him. ‘Mother, do you like Phoenix?’ he asked.

‘Of course I do. He’s got the kind of looks that will melt a woman. And besides that, he’s the nicest thing in shirts to be seen.’

‘Stay off him, mother; the bastard is not good for you. He is not what you think he is.’

Rosalie looked him squarely in the face, and she was all beauty and all knowledge, with that knowledge glowing in her eyes. ‘Are you warning me, Henry?’ she asked, her voice cold, icy. It was the ‘I am your mother, so don’t you dare play with me, kid!’ voice. She was pulling the Mother card now.

‘I care about you, mother.’

‘Phoenix is very different from other guys,’ Rosalie said in a low, voice, her eyes shining with excitement. ‘He has this way of turning his entire attention on you as if you’re the only person in the universe. It makes a girl feel special, wanted.’

Henry was smiling when he heard this. It was so true. Phoenix had a way of making you seem like the only thing in the universe when he was with you. He could give attention like no one Henry had ever met, and he was magnetic, full of charisma when the mood was upon him. It was what had added up to make him what he was at that point in his career.

Henry leaned forward, his long tapered fingers on the tabletop. ‘You may like Phoenix, not as a friend but perhaps as a lover, but I am telling you with good authority that the guy is not good for you. He is a predator, not someone you should want in your life. Stay away from him.’

Rosalie’s face was clenched with a cold emotion that Henry could not decipher for the life of him, and he felt really sorry that he was butting his head into the affairs of his mother, but Phoenix was his lover, the person he loved and also despised more than he despised any other person in his entire life. So he had to do that, to warn his mother away from the abomination they were both committing; and then the thought crossed his mind: had his mother been having sex with Phoenix? It was unthinkable that Rosalie should be touching that body.

So he continued with each word, all of them like a hammer blow. ‘He’s too young for you, mother; he‘s even younger than I am, and at such, can even be your own second son.’

Rosalie was staring at him, her eyes hard and glassy, her smooth face a mask of blankness that was a shield that hid what she was really feeling. ‘You’re not my conscience; you cannot tell me what to do.’ Her voice was hard, like a whiplash.

‘I can, mother, and I will. What the hell are you thinking?’ Henry threw up his hands in a show of exasperation at her. ‘I don’t want you to corrupt him, or him, you. I don’t know what made you lie for him at the police station－’

‘What makes you so sure I had lied for him?’ Rosalie snapped.

‘I know that you weren’t with him on that night because I don’t believe that he could have come to see you so late at night. I was the person who had been with him, and I could have just said so at the police station. And what if he really had been the person who had killed Ali? Would you have covered up for a murderer?’

He was looking straight at Rosalie as he said this, and he saw her face twist in on itself in what appeared to be uncontrollable fury as she glared at him. It was hatred that he saw in those eyes, one as pure as it was deadly, and he thought that she knew so much about death and murders, after all, her own husband had been murdered.

And then there was the thought too that had been swimming around his mind for years, that Rosalie knew more about the death of Chinua Johnson than she let on. He suspected－ he held it tenaciously－ that she had done something about her husband and had gotten her son what he wanted. At such, she understood about death, all right, did Rosalie. She knew a lot about the business of death and how to get the nasty deed done.

‘And what were you doing with Phoenix on that night?’ Rosalie asked, and her eyes were flashing with a knowing look that almost had Henry backing up. ‘Why had you been to see Phoenix at night when you should have been in bed with your wife?’

‘I have my own reasons for seeing him on that night, and also my own reasons for not saying something at the station,’ Henry snapped.

Rosalie glared at him, and it was as if she had something on the tip of her tongue to say to him, but she said nothing, and without another word, she rose to her feet and walked off, her spine straight, all thanks to her Bikram yoga routines and her anger, a proud woman who would not be beaten into submitting to something she did not want.

As she retreated, Henry allowed his face a small smile of malice. If she wouldn’t retreat and hands off from his lover, then he had the perfect victim for his blackmail, one who would not dare to disobey him. Perhaps he could not tell his mother what to do, but he sure as hell could tell another somebody what to do. He picked up his phone and called Phoenix.

The actor answered with his customary cool hello, and Henry plunged straight into what he wanted. ‘Phoenix, are you fucking my mother?’

‘Am I doing what? I beg your pardon.’ Phoenix sounded incredulous.

‘Well, honey, it sounds like this: are you sleeping with her, as in, she strips herself nude for you while you kiss her and touch her everywhere, and then you stick your penis into her?’

‘Why, no,’ Phoenix answered, and it was obvious that he was rattled. ‘Whatever on earth made you to think that?’

But Henry did not believe the beautiful liar one bit, after all, he was a seasoned actor. ‘She is my mother, and you’re getting too cozy with her for my liking. I want you to steer clear of her.’

‘If I don’t stay away, what will you do?’ There was the challenge in that silky voice; the old Phoenix he knew was back. The actor was daring him, like he always did, and it brought a small smile to Henry’s lips.

Quite calmly, as if he was talking about something mundane, Henry said coldly, ‘I will destroy you. I will get some of those Yoruba boys from Obalende, Oshodi and Itafaji and they will cut that your pretty homo face to pieces with a knife. I will have them rape you first, then cut you so badly, you will never want to see your own face again.’ It was stated very calmly.

‘All right, if that’s the way you want it,’ Phoenix replied. Then there was silence, and after some interminable moments of it, he continued. ‘Merry Christmas, Henry.’ Then he hung up.

And Henry knew that a part of him was gone, swept away like particles of ashes in the wind. He was losing his lover, the only person he had ever fallen in love with, and it was all for what had happened and the jealousy that had poisoned him. What was wrong with him? Why had he chosen to drive a wedge between the two persons he loved most in the world? Why was he unable to bear the thought of the two of them becoming intimate even though he knew that he had no right to feel that way?

He was a married man, with four lovely kids, and easily one of the richest tycoons in Lagos who controlled the fates of hundreds of workers, and he was losing his equilibrium to just one person. And that one person was the person that was the secret fantasy of so many men in the country who were bound by the chains of their culture.

And all thanks to Phoenix, his vision had sharpened, his mind clarified to the passions of same-sex love, and it was the sweetest. God! The forbidden fruit is the sweetest! At least that was what he thought. Phoenix had regaled him with tales of other guys like him, all of them married like he was, who rushed off to their offices and got one half hour out of the way in the arms of their male lovers before they began their day’s work. And how many times had he spun lie upon lie to Fiona just so he could go out and be with Phoenix?

He still wanted Phoenix in spite of all that had happened, so he waited for his lover to call him.

But throughout 2003 Phoenix never called him, and it threatened to drive him crazy. He lost count of the nights he lay awake in his bed beside his wife, who, readily influenced by Rosalie’s stunning glamorous looks, spent well on her sophisticated wardrobe, bought fitness and yoga videos, and some other gym equipments and worked out with him, thinking about the lost lover. He remembered vividly the red lips of the guy, the satin smooth, firm skin, and there was of course the hot sex that transported him to uncharted territory.

Driven by a very deep-seated sense of despair, he settled into his work, channeling his energy to his work and working out in his gym to exhaustion when he returned from work so he wouldn’t have to think about what he was missing. He bought more businesses, acquired more properties which he refurbished both in Isolo and Mushin and even as far as Ebonyi State. These he leased out at extremely profitable prices, but still, he found no fulfillment.

One day, he saw his secretary with a glossy magazine, and there on the outer back flap, was a picture of the stunning lover he missed every day. He was furious, and, two hours later, he was on the phone to the manager of the magazine.

‘I saw your magazine and I liked it, so I want to buy it,’ Henry told the man without preamble.

‘Sorry, but it’s not for sale,’ the stupefied man said.

Henry was furious with the man, but he kept his feelings under control. ‘I am willing to pay anything. What do you want for it?’

‘Nothing. Sorry.’ And the man hung up.

Henry called his secretary into his office and directed her to fish out all the competitors Joy had and when it turned out that he had only one serious competitor, he was on the phone to the manager. A week later, an alliance was formed with the man, and he made them slash the price of their magazines by half, and when they complained, he told them succinctly, ‘I am a very rich man. Forget about loses and do what I told you to do. Leave the rest to me.’

They did, and within a month, Joy was a white elephant no one would touch, and Henry knew the owner would call soon. The bastard did, and he purchased the outfit for less than half what it was worth. Then he merged the two together, bought it off entirely, and increased the prices of the magazines. He had a seasoned team of editorial staff to revamp the different brands, and in spite of the hike in the prices, people still bought. He’d made the magazine brands elitist, and people loved eliticism.

When Phoenix appeared in a TV ad for a small-time macaroni manufacturer, Henry was furious because he hated it that others could have access to the guy he no longer had any access to, so he went and bought off the outfit from the owner.

‘Honey, you’ve been erratically,’ Rosalie told him. They were having their lunch at a restaurant, and she was looking at him with concern on her face. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course I am fine,’ he answered automatically, though he had to admit that his mother had cause to be concerned about him because he really was acting strangely.

So the woman shut up and made no mention of Henry’s recklessness again. He tried to call Phoenix severally, but each time he lost his nerve and ended up hanging up the call or just listening to the guy say hello over and over and again until he hung up. It was sheer torture on his senses and he knew it, but he welcomed it anyway as he punished himself, for he loved to think that this was his lover he was talking to. The women who wanted him, all the hangers-on who wanted a piece of the guy were just wasting their time, for Phoenix was his.

Henry knew that Phoenix lived a celibate life because he had eyes and ears everywhere that monitored everything the guy did and reported to him. For a well-known celebrity in the decadent celebrity stratosphere of the country, Phoenix was a Virgin Mary, and Henry was proud of him. That was what he told himself on the nights when he feasted his eyes on his computer screen, staring at photo slideshows of the guy and sometimes jerking off to them as he conjured up the fantasies of his lover.