Taiye and Bobby had managed to recover from the awkward phase of their friendship after he came on to her, and she came out to him. They stayed close. Although Bobby tried and failed to have firmer emotional boundaries, he was still very much in something with Taiye.
On his last night in Montpellier, they stayed up all night together. They drank many tiny cups of espresso and talked about what they would do next. Taiye planned to return to London, and then maybe go home to Lagos to be with her mother for a few months before looking for proper work. Bobby had been travelling for over a year by then, so he thought that he might go home to Brooklyn to see his mother. He definitely didn’t want to go back to working as an actuarial analyst, so maybe he would go back to school, or if he could manage to get a gig, work as a line cook somewhere in the city.
When it was time, Bobby said a quiet goodbye to Elodie and Guifré, and then walked with Taiye to Saint Roch train station. They sat together in silence at a café in the already bustling station, and shared a stale chocolate pastry and even more coffee, before heading toward his train. They hugged tight and for a long time. Taiye couldn’t keep her tears back.
“Well, love,” Bobby said, pulling away, “if you’re ever in Brooklyn, you definitely have a place to stay.”
“Likewise.” Taiye wiped away her tears with the back of her hand, which shook from all that caffeine. “I mean, if you’re in London, or Lagos, for that matter.” They smiled at each other, stalling.
“Bobby,” Taiye kissed him soft on his dry lips, “thank you for being my friend.”
“Thank you for letting me,” he responded. Then he turned and ambled toward his train.
“THANK YOU, ELODIE, I’VE, UH, THIS HAS BEEN A GREAT OPPORTUNITY.” Taiye wound her red knit scarf snug around her neck. The evening air was cool—nothing compared to the dampness of London, but still, she shivered. “I appreciate it very much. I’ve learned a lot.”
“De rien, Taiye. You are a very hard worker, thank you,” Elodie replied.
She’d seemed, to Taiye, curt throughout the semester, but with just the two of them here, Elodie’s eyes lingered on Taiye’s face, her body. Now and again, Taiye caught her looking, and she’d only smile, startled, and carry on with her errands.
Just over three weeks since the program ended and Bobby left, Taiye had stayed on to help at the restaurant. She felt that nothing awaited her in London and was in no rush to leave. But the restaurant was closing for a few weeks, and Elodie and Guifré were going to Barcelona to see Guifré’s family. They’d had a hectic summer and needed the rest, Elodie said.
Guifré took a train a few days before his wife, leaving left her to pack the car and take the nearly four-hour drive along the A9 autoroute. Taiye helped Elodie load her car with their suitcases. There were both leaving the following day and Taiye didn’t have a lot to pack—a satchel for her computer and papers, a duffle for clothes, and some presents for her mother and great-aunt—so she joined Elodie for supper that evening. They shared a duck confit cassoulet that Taiye found outrageously delicious, largely because it reminded her of Sister Bisi’s ewa agoyin.
Several glasses of red wine after they ate, Elodie grew blatant. On the sofa in the spacious living room with the south-facing glass doors that opened onto a flourishing garden, Taiye’s body clenched tight when she felt Elodie’s hand glide up her jean-clad thigh. Pausing her breathing for a moment, Taiye leaned in to discover how she felt about it, and then relaxed into Elodie’s touch.
“So, the American boy, Bobby, is your boyfriend?” Elodie asked, one hand still on Taiye’s leg, the other cupping a half-empty wineglass, its deep garnet contents swishing dangerously close to the rim as she moved.
Taiye shook her head. “Just friends.”
“I think he like you,” Elodie said. She let her eyes linger on Taiye’s lips. “I mean, no surprise. T’es tellement belle.”
“I’m gay,” Taiye said bluntly, awkwardly. She’d been practising saying those words out loud. “Elodie, may I kiss you?”
Elodie laughed, her whole mouth stained purple from the wine she’d been sucking down like water. In response, she leaned forward and parted Taiye’s lips with the tip of her tongue. They kissed voraciously on the sofa until Elodie said, “Upstairs?”
AS ONE WOULD EXPECT FROM A LOVER’S FIRST LOVING, Taiye was eager and clumsy. She asked before slipping her fingers inside Elodie, “Let me know what feels good, yeah?”
Afterward, Elodie, with a smile spread across her face, and her eyes closed, said, “Taiye, you are a very … sincere lover.”
She rested her head on Taiye’s bare lap and played with the ends of her braids, coiling them around her red-tipped fingers, unravelling and rebraiding them.
“Oh God, sincere?” Taiye said, self-conscious about her enthusiasm just moments before, her heart still racing.
“It’s very good. How is it you say ‘inattendu’? I didn’t … ah …?”
“Expect? Unexpected!” Taiye said.
“Yes, c’est ça. Because you are like, eh, timide, but not so shy. You don’t say too much, but in bed just now—”
“Oh God, I was talking too much?”
“No, no … you ask questions, pay attention. It was very nice.”
“You liked it?”
“Yes.” Elodie rolled off her back and stretched. “Your other lovers, they have not told you this?”
“I haven’t … really had other lovers.”
“Ah! I am the first?”
“A little bit.” Nervous laughter escaped her.
“Well, I think that you will have many.” Elodie got out of bed and stretched again before beginning to dress.
“Elodie?” Taiye said sweetly; from her mouth, Elodie’s name was a question.
Elodie smiled and raised her eyebrows.
“Will you stay in bed for a little while longer?”
Elodie pulled her T-shirt over her head and fell back into Taiye’s lap. She lightly traced a finger from the shallow cleft of Taiye’s lower lip, all the way down her throat and between her breasts, where she paused to tap a rhythm on Taiye’s sternum. She hummed a drowsy tune in time with the slow tapping. That melody again.
“What’s that song?” Taiye asked.
Elodie paused to think. “I don’t know. I just think of it now.”
“Elodie’s melody.” Taiye smiled the words.
She hadn’t known until that evening with Elodie just how intoxicating it could be to have another person engulf you with their scent, their self. She wouldn’t be able to tell you if it was merely the naked act of sex, the warmth, the pleasure of it, or if it was something else, equally as simple: to be wanted in return by someone you want. No obligation, just desire. To be chosen. It was her first dose of the thing she would spend a long time pursuing. A sense of belonging like with Bobby but viscerally enrapturing.
After Elodie, quite like falling off a narrow ledge, accidentally but perhaps a little intentionally, sauntering backward, with that soft impish smile spread across her dark face and her eyes half-shut sleepy moons, Taiye plunged deep into hedonism.
Kehinde
I AM LYING ON A TATTERED RED RAFFIA MAT under the palm trees in the backyard, only a few feet from Taiye’s hive. I can hear the steady buzzing of her bees, a lulling, low hum. Besides the foot and car traffic outside the gate on the opposite side of the house, the compound is silent. I don’t know where anybody is. It’s good this way because the painful throb in my temples has returned, and I don’t want to talk to anyone just now.
And Taiye’s letters …
I open an envelope dated two years ago. It isn’t sealed or stamped, but it’s addressed to my place in Montreal. It’s one of those small white envelopes that are blue on the inside, with red-and-blue striped borders along the outside edges. Taiye’s voice is distinct. I can hear it in my mind. Her voice is transparent; she hides nothing. In this letter, she tells me how she is learning to make sourdough bread. I can read her excitement in her handw
riting, which is slanted and sloppy, and some of the words aren’t entirely spelled out.
I’m a little bit in awe of how little this recipe needs. It’s simple and complete. Flour, water, and time. That it! Well, I think the real magic is the bacteria floating in the air and wild yeast in the flour. Breadmaking is my favourit part of Culinary schoo so far. I butchred a pig the other day, and it was intense. Intense is a good word.
Fresh sourdough and butter is everything
I also have a pig story. Isn’t that funny? Or strange? I’ll get to that.
I close my eyes, wanting to sync my breathing with the hum of the hive. By the mercy of shady trees, the air is almost cool. There is a patch of earth near the hive, about seven feet by eight feet; it wants to be alive with green. Someone took pains to prepare it, to weed and till the redtinged soil for seeding. Yet it is barren, waiting.
Barren, but waiting.
There is this cold envy slithering in and out of my ears; although I know it is misplaced, I cannot will it away. Taiye does not want Farouq, Farouq wants me, but the thing is that Taiye has always been lucky. I don’t want to be the sort of person who resents that; I don’t want to be the sort of person who punishes her twin for over a decade for something that neither of us could control. But I am; I have been. And this envy, perpetually pained, remembers everything, hisses the question: Why did it have to be you?
I shiver, though I am not cold.
It answers its own question: Because she left you.
Always the same answer.
I haven’t had a bad life. The privilege of our class, our money, shielded us from just how severe the pain could have been. To deny it would be dishonest.
And I’ve been so lucky in love.
Before Farouq, I loved a boy named Wolfie. Even now, in the rare thoughts that I keep from Farouq, I cradle my memories of Wolfie with tenderness.
We met during my fifth year in Montreal. I was still working on my undergrad degree in international development. The dark fog that had rapidly enveloped me that first winter started to lift slowly at the beginning of the second year, after I switched dorms and started living with new roommates who would become good friends. It lifted some more when my new friends suggested that I see a counsellor at the student centre. I saw the counsellor, a middle-aged white woman named Corinne, bi-monthly, and we rarely talked about where I came from, just where I was at the moment. It helped.
By the time I felt that I could see clearer, my grades were unsalvageable, and I had to start over. So I did. I was focused. It didn’t matter that the program was revealing itself to be rooted in neocolonialism. Or that there seemed to be no solutions for issues like child labour, human trafficking, or environmental degradation, or exploitative economic policies that didn’t breed more trouble. Or that those issues are rooted in the systems that are perpetually attempting to undo them, even if only half-heartedly.
These were melodramatic spirals I found myself descending into, but I did the work.
My scholarship money had run out after four years, and my job at the school library wasn’t nearly enough to cover tuition and rent. So I lied about having serving experience and dropped my CV at Milas, a tiny casual fine dining restaurant in Mile End.
Wolfie was a line cook at Milas, and for well over four months he barely said four words to me, and I pretended not to be sore about it. He had a scar on the right side of his upper lip, where the split from a cleft palate had been sewn together. He was fair-skinned, even for a white boy, so pale, and he blushed easily. He kept his blond hair buzzed short and let his beard grow in a dense reddish bristle just long enough that you could imagine grabbing it in a tight fistful. At family meals before the dimly lit restaurant opened for dinner service, the employees ate at one of the worn communal mahogany slab tables under mismatched vintage crystal chandeliers. The chef and owner, Luca, led a small staff of eight: sous chef Baptiste; line cook and pastry chef Saoirse; line cook Wolfie; bartender and Luca’s wife, Genevieve; three servers: me, Uma, and Billa; and the dishwasher, Ezra.
On hectic nights, when the Mile End crowd craved twenty-two-dollar smoked mushroom and chicken liver tarts, or eighteen-dollar head-cheese pâté with habanero basil jam on a fresh baguette, or any of Chef’s overpriced, undeniably delicious experiments, the kitchen line was tense. Chef barked orders like a drill sergeant, and Baptiste, Saoirse, and Wolfie turned out impeccable dishes with fury at the servers. On nights like that, Wolfie oscillated between harsh and indifferent, and I always took offence.
“I don’t know what his fucking problem is,” I’d mutter to Uma whenever we got a moment to breathe.
Sometimes she’d respond, “Back of house folk are always taking the piss. Don’t take it to heart, love.” Other times she’d roll her eyes and say, “Fucking cunt.”
She was my favourite.
On one of those nights Uma suddenly became violently ill. She draped herself over the staff toilet, heaving the contents of her stomach into the bowl and crying. Genevieve called her girlfriend to take her to the emergency room. Genevieve and Billa stepped in to help me whenever they could, but the narrow bar was crowded with the hungry, impatient, and aloof. I was a spinning top, and the night went by in a blur. I broke three wineglasses and emptied a whole bowl of beer-steamed mussels onto a patron’s lap. I was lucky she was kind, but I still had to pay for her meal.
When we finally closed for the night and I cashed out, I cried at the bar and sucked down a gin and soda with the rest of the staff before cleaning up the dining room. Everyone chipped in with the tidying and left one by one as they finished their tasks. I was mopping the floors, so I had to be the last to go, but Wolfie stayed with me.
“Good work today,” he said from the bar as he upended the thin-legged wooden stools.
“Thank you.”
“Pretty wild shift, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“You know if Uma’s all right?”
“No idea. I’ll give her a call in the morning.”
“Can I help you with the mopping?”
“No, I’m all right, thanks.”
He walked across the small dining room and took the mop from me. “Please, let me.”
“You know this is the longest conversation we’ve had?” I asked, stepping out of his way.
“Yeah?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Well, I’ve never really had a chance. We’ve never been alone before.”
“We don’t have to be alone to have a conversation, Wolfie.”
“You never talk to me either,” he said playfully, defensively.
“I do! You’re just too cool to pay attention.”
“Cool?”
“Indifferent.”
He looked right at me, his eyes such a pale grey they seemed almost clear, and flashed a devastating grin. “I’m not indifferent now, am I?”
“No.” I smiled back.
THE DAY HAD BEEN WARM AND HEAVY WITH HUMIDITY, but the late-August night was too cold for my lace sundress. Even with a thick pashmina wrapped around my bare shoulders, I shivered as we walked west of the restaurant, toward my bus stop. It was a little past two a.m., and I was hoping to catch the last bus to Shaughnessy Village. Quiet and still for a Friday, as if the night, with its blinking street lights, had blanketed the entire neighbourhood in calm.
“You all right?” Wolfie asked, breaking the silence between us.
“I’m good, a bit cold.”
He pulled off the black knit sweater he was wearing over a long-sleeved T-shirt and, despite my protests, handed it to me.
“How long you lived in Montreal?” he asked, shoving his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.
“Five-ish years.”
“And you still haven’t learned?” He chuckled and nudged me gently with his elbow. “Where do you live?” he asked.
“Concordia ghetto. You?”
“Just there.” He pointed to a two-storey red-brick house a few buildings ahead of us.
&
nbsp; “Oh, okay. You live pretty close,” I said, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice. I’d hoped for a longer walk together.
“Would you …” He gestured toward his building. “You want to come up for a bit?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
WOLFIE LIVED IN A SPACIOUS TWO-BEDROOM.
“Bienvenue chez moi.”
“Nice.”
The air was dense with a mixture of musky incense and the sharp, distinct smell of some sort of fermentation. The apartment was minimally decorated, with white walls and no drapes on the bay windows that looked out onto the sleepy street. The bareness of the room seemed curated, and I was surprised by it. I had spent many idle moments wondering about what Wolfie got up to outside of work, where he slept. I hadn’t pictured this.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said.
“You live by yourself?” I asked, curling myself into a soft corner of the sofa.
“No, I have a roommate. She’s away, though.”
“Where?”
“Thailand. Yoga teacher school, or something like that.” He pulled a stool right up next to me. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Maybe. What are you offering?”
“Wine, some pop probably.” He walked across the room to the kitchen, and I followed behind him. I jumped and yelped in surprise at the fat black and white cat that sped across my feet. Wolfie turned quickly, saw the cat, and laughed at me.
“That’s Lulu,” he said. “I found her scratching at my window last winter. She’s annoying as fuck.”
“You took in a stray cat?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “She wanted to live here.”
In the kitchen, a filthy jellyfish-looking thing floated in a large glass jar on top of the white refrigerator. The sour smell seemed to originate from there.
“What is that?” I asked in mild revulsion.
Wolfie laughed again. “It’s a SCOBY,” he said. “For kombucha.”
“I don’t know the meaning of any of the words you just said.” I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the funky jar.
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