Married But Available. B. Nyamnjoh

of covering the face, hammering the base and hoping for the best. He is well reputed to pay girls with university petrol coupons, which the girls are forced to exchange for cash at various filling stations.” Then, as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear him, he whispered, “The Talking Drum is building a dossier on him, and we’ve made friends with all filling station attendants to take down the names of all the girls who come with petrol coupons to convert into cash.”

      “Why are you doing it?” Lilly Loveless asked.

      “Because we are a newspaper with a social responsibility mandate,” he replied. “And because we believe that the petrol coupons are meant for the university to function properly,” he added. “The man’s cell phone, bought and serviced by the university, has more room for the cell phone numbers of girls and female colleagues than it does for the numbers of his male administrative colleagues, deans and lecturers.” He spoke with such conviction that Lilly Loveless was amazed.

      “And there’s another reason, which should please you, I believe. We want to render his poor wife a service. The fellow is known to have far more children out of wedlock than he can recollect. We don’t want his legitimate wife and children to suffer…”

      “What does his wife do?”

      “Her name is Victoria Aa-Shing. She’s also an academic. She used to teach at the university as well. But too many fights pushed the man to engineer her transfer to Nyamandem, under the fake pretext of a promotion to head the directorate of Degree Equivalence at the Ministry of Knowledge Production. Now he is free to go and come from home as he likes, except for the weekends his madam is around, or during public holidays when a former maid of theirs, with whom he has a child as well – the child that pushed his wife to push the maid out of the house several years ago, keeps an eye on him… It is an irony, as she had employed the services of the mannish-looking nanny precisely to stop him from playing hanky-panky with the maid in her absence. But when Dr Simba Spineless is determined to think with his penis, he thinks with his penis. He begs to differ with those who insist there must be more to a woman than being a writing pad,” laughed Bobinga Iroko.

      “There is nothing the wife hasn’t done to stop him from noticing and embracing the charms of other women,” he continued. “She has framed and displayed photos of their happiest moments, told him stories about the pleasant past, cooked him his favourite dishes, spiced his meals with popular love charms, and loved him the way she believes no other woman can. But he is what we call ‘woman wrapper’, a man who darts from one woman to another like a nectar-seeking bee. Even then, she would rather give up on life than on her marriage: ‘I cannot back down now, no matter how unwanted he makes me feel,’ she tells her sympathetic academic sisters who in turn scream: ‘Men – terrible creatures!!!’”

      Bobinga Iroko was certainly the investigative journalist he claimed to be. Or was he more of a rumour monger? Where did he come by his damning details on the private lives of others? Did those eyes and ears of his see and hear beyond the ordinary? These, of course, were questions Lilly Loveless could only ask herself in silence. She however wondered what Bobinga Iroko would say to her mom’s famous cautionary words: ‘the one who gossips to you about others, gossips to others about you.’

      “What we hate most about him is the air of impunity he carries around. If only he were a bit modest, even his staunchest critics that some of us are would understand him and soften up,” said Bobinga Iroko.

      “So he is a sort of arrogant bastard?” asked Lilly Loveless.

      “Much worse, I assure you,” said Bobinga Iroko. “You need to see him. Imagine what he would say in the hearing of his own wife: ‘The mistake men make is to give all their love to one woman. This contradicts even the eating habits of the most poor amongst us. We all eat a variety of foods every week. Why should it be any different with love and loving?’”

      “And what does his wife do?”

      “What can she do? He threatens her with having the yam and the knife, and she knows just what he means. This is a lion’s den and he is one of the master lions. What I can’t understand is what women find irresistible in this master lion. I’ve always heard what makes a man appealing is good looks, sincerity, honesty, humour, intelligence, passion and tenderness. I’m yet to be convinced he has any of these qualities. And don’t tell me beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”

      “Bobinga Iroko,” Lilly Loveless said, a note of tenderness in her voice, “have many people told you that you have a sharp, impressive and sympathetic mind?”

      “A few,” he replied. “But I’ve learnt not to trust what people tell me, until I know what they’re sniffing for.”

      “So what am I sniffing for?”

      “You tell me.”

      “Nothing. Just your sharp, impressive, sympathetic, creative, rebellious mind. With a dish like your mind, I could eat until my tongue complains.”

      “You see what I mean? Because you desperately want such a mind, you are determined to find it in the first man you meet in Mimboland.”

      “You are not the first man I’ve met in Mimboland.”

      “Really? How unfortunate. I was beginning to think of me, myself and I…”

      “That proves my point…”

      They both laughed knowingly and toasted their glasses. Dr Wiseman Lovemore could see the two were really getting to know each other. From the way they talked, no one would imagine they were only meeting each other for the first time.

      “To be fair to the university administration, there’s at least one of them who doesn’t look at girls all the time. That is, if his declarations in public are anything to go by, although The Talking Drum is yet to uncover something about him. He is known to make every woman understand he is like bitter kola – not easy to eat…”

      “You can say that again,” said Lilly Loveless, about bitter kola.

      Bobinga Iroko laughed, crushed another bitter kola delightfully, and ate as if it was the best nut in the world. “And this is what women find intriguing,” he continued of the exception in the university administration. “Each comes determined to change him, to make a difference, but they all end up disappointed, as he is such a staunch Christian, and has made of the Holy Mother his entire obsession. To be frank though, no one quite knows the extent to which his heavenly Madonna could facilitate his ambitions of challenging the ‘Candle Light of the Devil’ on the topmost position at the university.”

      “Wow!” said Lilly Loveless. “You really are all for this guy.”

      “Not exactly,” replied Bobinga Iroko. “He doesn’t drink, and for someone from Mimboland not to drink, that is very suspect. It is like being big and not being PIP. Many people are good at hiding poisonous ambition until the time is right, then, like an angry mountain, they explode, devastating life and the creative effort of people for miles and miles without end.”

      “Is Mount Mimbo volcanic?” asked Lilly Loveless.

      “Yes, mildly volcanic, but dangerous enough to us who inhabit its sides.”

      “What is PIP again?”

      “Party In Power.”

      “So everyone who is anyone must be in PIP?”

      “What do you think in a country headed by the gifted, the one and only President Longstay?”

      Lilly Loveless was tongue-tied.

      “PIP means RIP for all else…”

      “If you mean whom I think you mean,” began Dr Wiseman Lovemore, who had all along watched in amused silence Lilly Loveless and Bobinga Iroko get along. “I’ve heard a couple of women say he is the way he is because his battery does not charge…”

      Just then, Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s cell phone rang.

      “I must go,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore. “Urgently