The Dice#4

Dunni had been trying to reach Emma all Saturday morning, but her line was not going through. She had left several voice messages for Emma to return her call.

After several more tries, she decided to call Greg, Emma’s husband, hoping he would be at home and not at the gym. Fortunately, he picked the phone on the third ring.

“Dunni, how are you doing?” Came his jovial voice over the phone

“Mowa pa o! And you?”

 “I am doing great. Thanks to your friend, what more can I ask for?”

“She is the one I want to speak to. I can’t get her on her phone.”

While Greg was speaking to Dunni, Emma came into their bedroom with a scowl on her face.

“I better give it to your friend, she has this scowl on her face that may disappear when she speaks to you,” Greg tried a lame joke, handing his mobile over to his wife who did not look too happy.

“Why is she calling you? She has my phone,” sighed Emma, taking Greg’s phone from him.

“Dunni said your phone was off.”

Emma quickly checked her phone and confirmed it was off notwithstanding she was still not happy that Dunni had called her husband’s line.

“She should not be calling you,” Emma complained to her husband.

“Babe, please don’t get me in the middle of you and your friend’s squabble. One day you are upset that I am too distant from your friend and sister. Today I should not be receiving calls from her. I am no robot that you just press a button and say do this and tomorrow you press another button and say do that. Keep your friends to yourself and let me be. Please let me have my phone once you are done.” Greg stormed out of the room.

“Hello babe,” she greeted her friend none too enthusiastically, angry with herself for overreacting and venting her frustration on Greg.

“Hallos Emma, gosh girl I have been trying to reach you all morning. I took a blind call on Greg’s phone and was surprised he was at home?”

“Where was he supposed to be?” Emma asked sullenly.

“Silly for you to ask,” Dunni replied.” Gym, of course, that is where he spends his Saturday mornings,” she continued all in one breathe.  Very typical of Dunni to try to say as much as she wanted to say. The thought put a smile on Emma’s face.

“What’s come over you? It’s like you are in one of those your sour moods.” Not waiting for her friend to answer, Dunni went on.

“I have this movie ticket I was given, and I wondered if you and Greg would want to go. I could watch the kids if you want.”

Emma’s mood lightened. “You kidding me! What’s the movie title?” That was why she loved her friend but remembered Clara’s warning. She cursed Clara for putting doubt in her mind. She had to decline the offer.

“Be careful of your friend, Dunni. You know she is not married. The way she comes in and out of your house with ease, she may soon start doing the same to your bedroom with the same ease. A word is enough for the wise. Guard your home.”

“The last flight!” Shouted Dunni over the phone. She knew Emma was dying to watch the premiere of the movie and was so excited when she got a ticket for two.

“I will let that pass. Greg and I have decided to do something together this evening,” She lied. Not without a tinge of disappointment

“You sure you are okay?” Dunni prodded. “You sound off.”

“Tired and the hormones.” Emma forced a peal of laughter.

“Talk to you later. I have to run hubby things.”

Emma dropped the phone and turned to leave the room as she bumped into her husband.

“What was that about?”

“Nothing,” she shrugged.

“You refused the ticket to see a film you and I have been dying to see?”

Greg and Emma could be different as day and night on a lot of issues but were they agreed together on most time were films. They loved the same film genres, actors, directors and film producers.

“I have a mind to ring Dunni back and take my ticket if you don’t want to go. I could go with her.”

A knot loosed in Emma’s head.

“You would do no such thing, Greg,” she winced shocked at her own outburst. She was letting Clara’s words take seed in her mind, which was also affecting her actions.

“Why are you spoiling for a fight? If you have an issue, rather than go about in circles, let us sit down and talk about it.”

“I am sorry,” Emma apologised. She knew she had stepped out of her boundaries with Greg and was wise enough to realise she needed to retract her steps before the situation got out of hand.

She wondered how she could explain to Greg her fears. It was not something you could voice to a spouse. She’ rather keep it to herself and not talk about it.

“I think it’s just the hormones and I am a little tired,” she explained, glad he did not pursue further.

Dunni dropped the phone bewildered at Emma’s coldness on the phone. She did not believe it had anything to do with hormones or tiredness.  Dunni hoped Emma was not having problems with Greg.  Earlier in their marriage, it had been a war zone, especially when they started having children.

Emma focused all her attention on the children and neglected Greg, who in turn felt she did not care if he existed or not. Dunni was always the sounding board for Emma to voice all her frustrations. However, they came to a full circle after attending a counselling session, and things were more than good between them both, almost perfect.

She stifled a yawn, a signal she was tired, and sleep had come calling. It took all her will power to check the door was locked and all windows closed. Switching off her phone and lights, she climbed the stairs and fell into her bed fast asleep before her head touched the bed.

The shrill ring from the landline woke Dunni up. She wondered who was calling at this ungodly hour. Trudging down the stairs grumpily, she picked the phone not too happy her sleep was disturbed.

“Dunni!” shouted her mother through the phone line.

 “Mami, are you alright?” Dunni asked, confused, half asleep and half awake.

“I have been calling your mobile. I just remembered you had a landline.”

Dunni always switched off her mobile phone when going to bed. She hated interruptions in her sleep as she most often was unable to sleep back. 

She rubbed her eyes, squinting with one eye open to read the time on the large grandfather clock across the room. It was 2.00am

“I want you to go to Kemi’s house now. Ahmed ti fe pa o! Her mother just called me. You need to go and save her,” commanded Mrs Adesida.

Kemi was Dunni’s first cousin on her maternal side. Although she lived two streets away, they never visited. She was much younger than Dunni, and they really had nothing in common while growing up. She only got to know Kemi lived close by when Mami mentioned it in one of her visits and Kemi came to greet her.

Not sure what Mami meant by saving her but Dunni knew if she wanted peace of mind, she had better do as she had been told.

She quickly changed into a pair of black jeans and slapped a wrinkled pink t-shirt, removing her hairnet as she switched on her mobile phone and called Moses, who picked the call on the second ring.

“Hi Dunni, you are okay?” he asked with a tinge of alarm in his voice.

She did not blame him, who would not be when you receive a call in the middle of the night from your partner. On the contrary, she was not surprised; he picked the call.  He was most likely working on one of their projects.

“Hate to bother you, please can you meet me at my house as soon as possible? My cousin, who lives two streets away, is being beaten by her husband, and mother wants me to go and rescue her. Really don’t know what she expects from me. I am neither Jackie Chan nor Bruce Lee.  So before the husband beats both my cousin and me, I need a guy to intimidate him.”

Moses groaned, “I thought you have finally seen the light that I was your one and only just like my dice predicted.”

“You and your dice can jump into the Mediterranean. I am not leaving such an important decision to your dice. Shouldn’t we know by now if anything should happen between us? I have known you all my life, in between all the girls who frolicked around you and the ones you chased yourself, there seems not to be any heart left for the unlucky woman, you will end up with.”

Moses laughed over the phone. He loved to rile Dunni with the issue of his dice and their marital status, she had never taken seriously. He hated to admit it, he wished she did.

“I am parked in front of your gate.”

Dunni squealed with delight. “You know why I love you?”

“Yes, for my money and my looks,” Moses replied drily.

Dunni was out in a second. Knocking on the glass of his car window as Moses unlocked the car for her to come in.

“Thank you” she mouthed as she directed him to the address.

Nothing prepared Moses and Dunni for what they met when they got to Kemi’s residence. The house was in disarray, sofa and chairs tumbled over, TV and all the pictures on the wall smashed to the ground. The scene looked like one an earthquake had raged through leaving everything broken in its wake. Dunni gasped and ran towards the woman on the floor who looked nothing like the sophisticated Lagos banker she knew.

Swollen eyes closed shut with her left arm twisted at an odd angle, blood pouring out of her nose and mouth, breathing laboriously.

“Kemi,” she gently tapped her, willing her to answer. A sign that she was still conscious. The broken woman on the floor groaned, but it sounded musical to Dunni’s ears.

From the floor where she knelt beside her cousin, she lifted her head, looking around for Moses, who was at the door with Kemi’s husband trying to calm the man. His eyes were all bloodshot and wild. He was panting and raving. He also had a gash on his head with blood that was turning dark a sign it was drying up.

Where they on a suicide mission? Both determined to kill each other before daybreak?

“Moses, please help me, we need to get her to the hospital,” Dunni’s voice shook with emotion.

“He also needs to go,” Moses pointed out.

“He is not our problem,” a small frown spreading across her pretty face.

“I will be fine, take her out of here,” Ahmed shouted gruffly.

Moses looked helplessly at the man who also needed help but left to join Dunni as they carried Kemi as gently as they could into his car parked outside.