Mercy Me.

I was in a restaurant the last time he found me. I gasped in surprise when my eyes traced dark sinewy arms to his face. I was with my date, a nice man called Adam with who I was pretending to be ordinary. Adam was basking in me. I could tell he was hoping I would help him release the pressure building in his loins. He had offered to give me a tour of his house twice already. A wily euphemism for sex. These were the code words permitted in our mating dance, so I feigned a modicum of interest, politely widening my lips into a faltering smile. There were many spacious high-ceilinged lofts in Midtown Houston, and I imagined his to be grand but unimaginative.

He was what my aunties would call a good man –rich, tall, genteel. I could hear their heavily accented soprano voices in my ear telling me to act accordingly, goading me to give Adam the version of myself that he would want to marry.

Just before he found me, Adam had taken out his phone, his manicured thumb scrolling through pictures of his home, his animated smile revealing good dentition and old money. He'd told me he used a decorator his sister recommended, and I’d nodded politely, my lips widening into a small faltering smile as I admitted to myself it was far more tasteful than I expected.

Now I was more concerned by the man standing by our table. His eyes roamed my face, hungrily taking me in. Our seven years apart had darkened his complexion. It suited him, made him look distinguished.

“Ada.”

He still said my name the same way. As if it laid heavy on his tongue. As if the syllables were not sufficient to express his need.

“...Ugo…wow”. I cleared my throat. “How are y...you…um yeah, Adam this is my friend Ugo”. My eyes remained fused to his. I was afraid to look at anything else, afraid to take in the entirety of his face, afraid to look at his lips, afraid I would remember the things he had done with them.

“You came for dinner?” I asked

“Not really, I own the place…”

He saw me steal a glance at his wrist and I felt my stomach constrict painfully. He was still wearing it. The glow in the dark rosary I had given him. It was a cheap little thing I had bought in the quaint giftshop of the small chapel where I attended mass in London. When I got back to Lagos, I’d given it to him and he’d vowed to wear it like a talisman.

“I just wanted to say hi, have a nice evening.”

He walked away as Adam signaled the waiter for the dessert menu. I sipped my sauvignon blanc, my mouth dry with emotion, and swallowed unsteadily.

Once upon a time I had held his heart in my hands. We'd laid in bed, his breath hot on my face as I clasped his head between my palms and he professed love and other things. He told me he wished he could take our love to a world far away. A place that didn’t feel so desperate, where people did not walk around with gaping mouths and hungry eyes. Where even the flies behaved with desperation, each swarm converging unto a glob of black on every rancid morsel of food on the roadside, bobbing and buzzing as they engorged on rot. Summer then was a year long affair, and the air reeked of strife and decay. Back then his favorite daydream was the one with our child in it. That we would do things like evening walks on spotless streets with the crisp chill of winter frosting our breath. That we would skate clumsily over frozen ponds while his child grew in my belly.

Those were times I had been sorely tempted to surrender to him. But they were only fleeting interludes between fits of rage, and his seething anger was as certain as the setting sun. He would scour through my phone in search of seedy secrets that did not exist, and indict me of wild unsavory things. Phones would crash against the wall, and with hands perforated by shards of glass, he would point at me with bleeding accusatory fingers. With him, happiness was punctuated by frequent episodes of stormy unrest. I was weary and aching for tenderness, a tenderness I still eagerly dispensed even when he was undeserving. Even when I knew I was going to leave him forever.

“Hey babe” Adam said, jostling me from my reverie. I excused myself to go to the restroom. And there he was, leaning against the wall, looking all at once like my home and a foreign place. He entered the door marked for women behind me. Wordlessly he took my hand and pressed his card into it, holding my hand to his chest, my pulse resting against his wildly fluttering heartbeat.

“Ada I’m sorry. For everything. I love you. I never stopped. I’m sorry.” I opened my mouth and felt the words hitch in my throat. There were many things he did not know now. That I was stronger but irretrievably broken. That I woke up one Sunday morning and felt my heart crack into two. That the parts that used to be soft and pink had blackened with despair. That I had begged for God and was met with deafening silence. That I still beg God often. Not for money nor mercy, but for the relief of death.

I turned away as my face contorted with emotion, my eyes reddening with tears. Ours was a poisonous romance, and I willed myself to feel apathy. I straightened my back and walked back to Adam. It was then I heard myself lying through my teeth. I looked at Adam with shifty eyes and muttered something about an emergency. Yes, I nodded sagely, I must leave. He looked at me quizzically, wondering how to account for the turn in my mood.

After Adam left, I walked to the front as if bound by a witches spell. He was in a black car, waiting, knowing I would come. I stared at his rosary gleaming in the dark of the night, a soft halo of green around his wrist as I opened his car door. We both said nothing as he drove off into the night.