Newspapers were strewn on the floor, job listings circled in ink. She picked one up and flipped through, looking at advertisements she had already seen. escorts caught her eye again. Ginika had said to her, “Forget that escort thing. They say it isn’t prostitution but it is and the worst thing is that you get maybe a quarter of what you earn because the agency takes the rest. I know this girl who did it in freshman year.” Ifemelu read the advertisement and thought, again, of calling, but she didn’t, because she was hoping that the last interview she went for, a waitress position in a little restaurant that didn’t pay a salary, only tips, would come through. They had said they would call her by the end of the day if she got the job; she waited until very late but they did not call.
AND THEN Elena’s dog ate her bacon. She had heated up a slice of bacon on a paper towel, put it on the table, and turned to open the fridge. The dog swallowed the bacon and the paper towel. She stared at the empty space where her bacon had been, and then she stared at the dog, its expression smug, and all the frustrations of her life boiled up in her head. A dog eating her bacon, a dog eating her bacon while she was jobless.
“Your dog just ate my bacon,” she told Elena, who was slicing a banana at the other end of the kitchen, the pieces falling into her cereal bowl.
“You just hate my dog.”
“You should train him better. He shouldn’t eat people’s food from the kitchen table.”
“You better not kill my dog with voodoo.”
“What?”
“Just kidding!” Elena said. Elena was smirking, her dog’s tail wagging, and Ifemelu felt acid in her veins; she moved towards Elena, hand raised and ready to explode on Elena’s face, before she caught herself with a jolt, stopped and turned and went upstairs. She sat on her bed and hugged her knees to her chest, shaken by her own reaction, how quickly her fury had risen. Downstairs, Elena was screaming on the phone: “I swear to God, bitch just tried to hit me!” Ifemelu had wanted to slap her dissolute roommate not because a slobbering dog had eaten her bacon but because she was at war with the world, and woke up each day feeling bruised, imagining a horde of faceless people who were all against her. It terrified her, to be unable to visualize tomorrow. When her parents called and left a voice message, she saved it, unsure if that would be the last time she would hear their voices. To be here, living abroad, not knowing when she could go home again, was to watch love become anxiety. If she called her mother’s friend Aunty Bunmi and the phone rang to the end, with no answer, she panicked, worried that perhaps her father had died and Aunty Bunmi did not know how to tell her.
LATER, Allison knocked on her door. “Ifemelu? Just wanted to remind you, your rent check isn’t on the table. We’re already really late.”
“I know. I’m writing it.” She lay faceup on her bed. She didn’t want to be the roommate who had rent problems. She hated that Ginika had bought her groceries last week. She could hear Jackie’s raised voice from downstairs. “What are we supposed to do? We’re not her fucking parents.”
She brought out her checkbook. Before she wrote the check, she called Aunty Uju to speak to Dike. Then, refreshed by his innocence, she called the tennis coach in Ardmore.
“When can I start working?” she asked.
“Want to come over right now?”
“Okay,” she said.
She shaved her underarms, dug out the lipstick she had not worn since the day she left Lagos, most of it left smeared on Obinze’s neck at the airport. What would happen with the tennis coach? He had said “massage,” but his manner, his tone, had dripped suggestion. Perhaps he was one of those white men she had read about, with strange tastes, who wanted women to drag a feather over their back or urinate on them. She could certainly do that, urinate on a man for a hundred dollars. The thought amused her, and she smiled a small wry smile. Whatever happened, she would approach it looking her best, she would make it clear to him that there were boundaries she would not cross. She would say, from the beginning, “If you expect sex, then I can’t help you.” Or perhaps she would say it more delicately, more suggestively. “I’m not comfortable going too far.” She might be imagining too much; he might just want a massage.
When she arrived at his house, his manner was brusque. “Come on up,” he said, and led the way to his bedroom, bare but for a bed and a large painting of a tomato soup can on the wall. He offered her something to drink, in a perfunctory way that suggested he expected her to say no, and then he took off his shirt and lay on the bed. Was there no preface? She wished he had done things a little more slowly. Her own words had deserted her.
“Come over here,” he said. “I need to be warm.”
She should leave now. The power balance was tilted in his favor, had been tilted in his favor since she walked into his house. She should leave. She stood up.
“I can’t have sex,” she said. Her voice felt squeaky, unsure of itself. “I can’t have sex with you,” she repeated.
“Oh no, I don’t expect you to,” he said, too quickly.
She moved slowly toward the door, wondering if it was locked, if he had locked it, and then she wondered if he had a gun.
“Just come here and lie down,” he said. “Keep me warm. I’ll touch you a little bit, nothing you’ll be uncomfortable with. I just need some human contact to relax.”
There was, in his expression and tone, a complete assuredness; she felt defeated. How sordid it all was, that she was here with a stranger who already knew she would stay. He knew she would stay because she had come. She was already here, already tainted. She took off her shoes and climbed into his bed. She did not want to be here, did not want his active finger between her legs, did not want his sigh-moans in her ear, and yet she felt her body rousing to a sickening wetness. Afterwards, she lay still, coiled and deadened. He had not forced her. She had come here on her own. She had lain on his bed, and when he placed her hand between his legs, she had curled and moved her fingers. Now, even after she had washed her hands, holding the crisp, slender hundred-dollar bill he had given her, her fingers still felt sticky; they no longer belonged to her.
“Can you do twice a week? I’ll cover your train fare,” he said, stretching and dismissive; he wanted her to leave.
She said nothing.
“Shut the door,” he said, and turned his back to her.
She walked to the train, feeling heavy and slow, her mind choked with mud, and, seated by the window, she began to cry. She felt like a small ball, adrift and alone. The world was a big, big place and she was so tiny, so insignificant, rattling around emptily. Back in her apartment, she washed her hands with water so hot that it scalded her fingers, and a small soft welt flowere
d on her thumb. She took off all her clothes, and squashed them into a rumpled ball that she threw at a corner, staring at it for a while. She would never again wear those clothes, never even touch them. She sat naked on her bed and looked at her life, in this tiny room with the moldy carpet, the hundred-dollar bill on the table, her body rising with loathing. She should never have gone there. She should have walked away. She wanted to shower, to scrub herself, but she could not bear the thought of touching her own body, and so she put on her nightdress, gingerly, to touch as little of herself as possible. She imagined packing her things, somehow buying a ticket, and going back to Lagos. She curled on her bed and cried, wishing she could reach into herself and yank out the memory of what had just happened. Her voice mail light was blinking. It was probably Obinze. She could not bear to think of him now. She thought of calling Ginika. Finally, she called Aunty Uju.
“I went to work for a man in the suburbs today. He paid me a hundred dollars.”
“Ehn? That’s very good. But you have to keep looking for something permanent. I’ve just realized I have to buy health insurance for Dike because the one this new hospital in Massachusetts offers is nonsense, it does not cover him. I am still in shock by how much I have to pay.”