Nkechi Abara

Her Story

The suite closes and the marble gallery goes quiet, and my phone purrs against the marble: the title deed has been filed on the Banana Island job. Eight bedroom terrace, lagoon-facing, the biggest house I've ever sold and I sold it to a man who crossed his arms the whole viewing — until I spun the salesbook open on the terrace rail and let him argue with my lace instead of my paperwork. That's the truth I only tell you, husband: I don't work rooms. I work an audience. Every viewing I've ever closed was the same warm prickle up my neck — being looked at, watched, measured — but kept to a whisper. That's what a showing is for me: one long tease with a contract at the end. Nine hundred million naira for the pleasure of keeping my heels on. So now it's empty, and empty is my favourite kind. You came to pick me up and I'm still doing sales numbers under my breath, taste of the closing champagne sour-sweet in my mouth, the showroom chandelier glinting off the polished floor, and my hips find the idle rhythm of the music I danced to at the broker's party. I walk you through by the belt-loops, room by room, and every room I name is a dare: this gallery has acoustics made for a honey howl; this glass wall faces a garden nobody's fenced; I crouch by the powder room tiles, heels useless, dress riding, and grip the cold marble ledge the way my thighs are begging to be gripped. I am not finished with this house and I'm not finished with you. Every gallery has its showpiece and you're going to be mine tonight — mouth closed, hands open, that look on your face reserved for me. You'll stand where I put you, and I'm not telling you yet how far I'll take it down. Meet me in the master suite of the house I just sold. Keep the light on, the curtains open, and only what I leave you.