CHAPTER ONE - A Cocktail of Double Life

Chapter one

I am walking away, from troubles in my life

I am walking away, oh to find a better place

-          Craig David

That the office was shabby, that the occupant appeared unapologetic about its state should not have surprised her, but when she walked in and took in the room, it surprised her so much, her eyes dilated and her throat contracted, causing her to quack like a distressed baby duck when she tried to swallow saliva. She forcefully downed the saliva, thankful that the man was too preoccupied with the phone to notice her discomfort. Had he been looking at her, he would have been forgiven for mistaking her for someone about to die of asphyxiation.    
Before she entered, she had knocked the door two times. An impatient and frustrated sounding voice had commanded her in. She had gone in, but immediately attempted to go back, thinking perhaps the come in had not been meant for her. He was seated, but his torso was sprawled on the table, one hand across the table over a confusion  of papers, the other one holding the phone to his ear. "Come in lady..." He had said again, confirming to her the come in was indeed hers. He still had not looked up.
Awkwardly, she stood by the door for a minute or so until the phone conversation, his only contribution to it being 'ya...ya...' was over. "Sit." He said, skipping any sort of preamble, stretching out his hand to relieve her off the brown A4 envelope.
First impressions, it is often said, are correct, and the impression she had the first time she had driven into this address two weeks ago should have been enough clue on what lay within. And perhaps, on the character of the people who occupied the building. 
What she had seen two weeks ago.

A structure, one that would look like an abandoned house from a great distant, stood at the centre of a very chaotic compound. The dry grass surrounding the structure had potential of beauty, but it lacked the basic need; water. The structure itself was a simple idea; makuti thatched roof held up by what looked like five hundred year old wooden poles. She was sure that under all the dust covering the poles was some protective wood varnish. She had wanted to run her finger along one pole, like one would do when checking dust on some surface, but a closer look at the pole was enough to convince her there were hidden, undiscovered diseases just waiting for a brave soul to disturb them. She decided she was not brave. All the windows were cracked – at least the ones she could see. They were also very dusty.

Across the structure’s front, someone had made effort with potted plants, but someone else had forgotten to water them. They were all dead. Erratic grass was growing around the pots. She used her booted foot to touch one of the pots and it disintegrated right in front of her eyes. Looking around to make sure nobody had witnessed the vandalism, she had walked quickly into the building.

Inside the structure was a very large room, lacking in any sort of creativity. It was the pub sitting area. The furniture was a mismatch of obviously cheap plastic seats and expensive looking wooden tables, tables that were screwed onto the ground. She paused to look at the mismatch, made a face as she wondered if, once upon a time, there ever were wooden seats. Somehow, she could see the idea of a rugged looking decor, but either money had run out, or the decorator was out of their mind. 'This place could look attractive with a little tender loving care, she thought'.
There was no one in sight, but there was some country music playing at low volume. The counter, located at the far end of the pub, was lit. She  walked there, mainly to ensure that the bottles displayed had drinks in them. From her side, she saw back of a head. She coughed as a warning, startling the head owner, a young man who stood up so fast his seat and phone fell, hitting the ground in a cacophony of noise.  He didn't pick either, just stared at her with what she concluded was a resigned expression.
"Sorry..." The young man started straightening anything and everything within reach, including his trousers, nose and bottles. He looked like someone who had been caught in mischief. Kamaria frowned, wondering why a barman would be startled for being found behind the counter. 
"That's okay...what liqueur or wine do you have?" She leaned on the counter, studying  the counter display. Her preferred drink was not on display. When  no answer was forthcoming, she looked at the young man. His facial expression had changed from resigned to that of a man who had witnessed something unbelievable - like four rainbows. He also seemed to have lost his ability to speak. "Are you okay?" She asked, wondering if it was time to panic. She looked around the pub, luckily spotting a waitress walking in. "Excuse me lady. I think there is something wrong with the barman..."
The waitress hesitated for a few seconds, even looked like she was about to take off. 'What is wrong with these people? Are their regular customers ghosts?' "Excuse me, could you please come..." Eventually, the waitress cautiously walked towards the counter, just in time to witness the barman recovering. 
"Sorry madam...what can I do for you?" He stuttered, still shifty and unable to look her straight in the face.
"Thank goodness you are okay. I would like wine. Do you have wine? Or liqueur?"
"We have wine, no liqueur. It is out of stock..." She did not know it, but he was unwilling to admit he had no idea what liqueur was. Eventually, the two workers seemed to trust she was not there to cannibalise them, especially when she told them she would buy them two of their favorite drinks. Kamaria, with her money, knew only too well how easy it was to win people's trust by displaying  an ounce of generousity.  
After using the toilets, which to her pleasant surprise were clean and well maintained, she settled on red wine that tasted so bad, she was sure some malicious person had added garlic and onions in it. Struggling to keep a straight face with every sip, she drank it anyway because it was better than nothing, and her thirst had been stubborn. And she was strangely getting attached to the dilapidated building and any reason to spend a little longer there, even drinking bad wine, was welcome. 
The waitress, to Kamaria's pleasant surprise, had stuck around to explain the reason for their initial behavior. It turned out that her type did not visit the pub. She did not want to fish for a possible disappointing answer by asking what her type was, so she let it slide. It also turned out they had been sure she was a government agent out to make an arrest for imagined crimes, 'these county people come harassing us when they are broke and accuse us of all sorts of things'. It also turned out lone women did not go to that pub.

She still wondered about the fake bravado that had made her drive into the shabby compound those two weeks ago, except that she had been desperate for a drink, and the slanted, dust-covered billboard at the entrance had indicated that it was a pub. 

As soon as she had driven in through the open, unmanned gate, she had decided she did not feel safe and the only reason she had driven all the way to the dusty parking lot was to look for a place to turn. Then curiousity had taken over, and she had needed to use the toilet.

Now, two weeks later.

Past the pub area, through an unlit corridor with a floor so rough it would be perfect as an obstacle course, was where the office was located. The occupant was a strange man, as she had worked out within two seconds of meeting him.

The same bravado that had possessed her the first time had brought her back the second time, this time round, in disguise. She was certain neither the waitress and the barman she had met on her first visit would not recognize her. She was different in demeanour, dressing and even purpose.

Desperately trying not to look too shocked, she continued to take in the room. Its walls were the ugliest hue of blue she had ever seen. Or maybe the blue was innocent, but the paint was too old. Most likely just plain dirty. The walls, safe for a portrait of the current president, were bare, but there were random nails poking out of the walls. That was not what bothered her; it was the fact that the paint was also chipped haphazardly, exposing bits of whites.

The seat she sat on was creaky, cheap, chipped-once-white  that resembled the ones in the pub. Five seconds into her sitting and she had realised it would be dangerous to shift about on the seat, especially with her current weight. Opposite her was a man who sat on a new and expensive looking leather swinging chair that looked totally out of place. In between them was a brown table that was too big, selfishly taking half the space in the room. On the table was a demonstration of a bedlam of papers, all sizes, mostly bills.  

Except for a mobile phone with a cracked screen lying at no particular angle on the table, the one he had been speaking on when she entered, the same one he had dropped on the table so hard and no wonder the screen was cracked, there was no other visible sign of modern technology. She could imagine an office in the nineteen fifties that must have looked exactly like this.  

Two grey filing cabinets, equally lacking in oomph and character, stood against the wall behind the man. 'Those cabinets must have been very fashionable in the sixties', she thought with a measure of amusement. The two cabinets had several drawers open at different levels. 'Was it so hard to shut them after use'? She hated disorder, and this office was getting under her skin. 'Here, chaos thrive'.

On one corner of the room was a plastic dustbin of indistinct colour that could have been pink or red. Judging by how many crumpled papers were around the half full bin, she concluded the man was a terrible shot. 'I wonder if he recycles these papers'.

The man occupying the swinging chair, Kamaria reckoned, displayed some signs that in his youth he had been an above average looking man. His dignified on and off pose was enough evidence, and he had a lovely square jaw - but now, he bore signs of a frustrated middle aged man, probably coming to terms with the most likely probability that his life had hit a concrete ceiling, that it would not get better, but hoping it would  not get worse.

His folded brow and general facial expression made her think of someone who was expecting, at any moment, pain from a part of his body. 'I wonder if he has arthritis'. His head was balding and his tummy was protruding, obviously faster than his shirts could handle. For both their sake, she hoped the middle button would hold the imminent burst until she was gone.

She could hear and feel her heart beat as she struggled to look shy and nervous, miserably failing at both, especially because her eyes kept following a fly hovering above the man's head, like a beloved pet that could not bear to leave its owner’s side. He did not bother to swat it; 'maybe it really is his pet'. Too, she had been brought up to be confident, to conquer, to be fearless, to believe she was a cut above many – yet, to get this job, she needed to shelf all that training.

Meekness, desperation and helplessness were feelings she was not familiar with, but she dug them out of the black hole and made them dominant over any other.  She even had the costume for it; a pair of reading glasses bought at the supermarket helped mask the true story in her eyes. Everything else she wore was bought cheaply at Toi Market.

Malik was her interviewer’s name, and he was studying her academic testimonials in obvious disbelieve. A couple of times, he removed his thick glasses, rubbed his eyes, nose and bald head in that particular order, then went back to the papers. “I don’t get it…” he said rhetorically.  She could swear she saw his ears flap.

She responded anyway, carefully shifting on her seat and hoping the weight would not make it cave in, but what ended up happening was probably worse than falling off; the seat made several convincing farting sounds that made her want to giggle. The sounds did not seem to bother him - perhaps that was what the seat did all the time, nothing to do with her weight, she thought with a measure of optimism. “What don’t you get, sir?”

Peering at her above the thick glasses, he used his index finger to softly beat over her papers. “This. I don’t get why you want to work as a waitress. You are overqualified." He delivered that statement like someone giving breaking news. "You have more education than all my waiters and waitresses combined". He continued poignantly. "Why would you want to work in a pub.  Such a pub?..” he swept his hand, wrinkling his nose, like one aware of the dire state the pub.  “A pub with unruly drunks as customers and colleagues with often bad attitude and manners?” He seemed hurt on her behalf. She stifled another giggle, rubbing her nose with her palm to hide her mouth’s intention to betray her.

If Malik did not look so comical, she would have answered his question immediately and with a straight face. When she got her giggle under control, she hunched her shoulders, rubbed her forehead in feigned sadness, crossed her arms defensively and looked down at her second hand bought skirt.

“I have no choice.” Even she was impressed with her broken voice, complete with a sniffle. Perhaps she should have gone for lead roles in high school. “I have been looking for a job that befits my qualifications, sending job applications every day, but nobody seems to want to hire me. I need to eat and pay rent – I swear, if you give me this job, I promise to work very hard. I learn very fast…” She felt tears from her left eye warm its way down her left cheek. She was the only person she knew who cried with one eye. The closest the other eye went was to moisturize and twitch.

She wanted this job, desperately. But not for the reasons she was giving. If she lived as long as Methuselah of the Bible, she would live in extreme luxury without ever working or worrying about money. But no one knew better than her that money did not dilute boredom, or take away loneliness, or mask the lack of purpose, and the three were slowly driving her insane, eating her from the inside out, and making her fat. This job, she had convinced herself during a prolonged moment of madness, was the beginning of her journey to self re-discovery. Possibly self discovery.

In the last one year, she had piled on ten kilos. The why was not a mystery; her alcohol and junk consumption, topped with complete lack of physical activity that involved walking for more than fifty meters, had doubled, and it was putting her on perpetual self-shame. Her social habits were putting her to shame too. More times than she cared to remember, she had shared weed with random strangers in random parties and that, for someone who had never smoked weed before, was bad, very bad, in her  opinion. Her weight was not the only evidence of her lifestyle; there was the acne. She was a demonstration of junk in, junk out. 
She believed she was born to be svelte, but she had never found it easy to remain svelte. When she was, it was a result of conscious effort and self denial of the sweet things in life and spending hours in the gym. The past year had nearly convinced her she was losing her perpetual battle with the flab.

Her tears were genuine, and she figured Malik did not need to know the reason for her desperation had nothing to do with money, but everything to do with wanting to save herself from looming self destruct.

Malik sighed and sat up. Like most men, the sight of tears on a woman disarmed him. “Don’t cry. I will give you a job – goodness knows we need more staff - I just lost a barman who was spending too much time on the phone. In fact, I have banned phones at work. I am just wondering how I will sleep at night knowing how much, or little, I am paying someone with your qualifications…” He laughed, Kamaria wanted to laugh, but she didn’t. “It should be illegal to do what I am about to do…”

“It is okay sir. I just want a job.”

“Don’t worry. I suspect the tips will turn you into a millionaire. Some girls have done very well for themselves here. You are a very beautiful woman and the men should fight for your attention.” He laughed at her flustered face. She gasped, and her eyes dilated again. Luckily, her throat did not contract. “Oh dear, that embarrassed you? Wait until you hear the kind of things customers will propose to you…”

She was a light skinned woman and her now red face was illuminating her embarrassment.

“Right… I will give you a job, but you have to promise that you will keep sending job applications out. Heck, if I remember to, I will help you send them…”

“Thank you…”

He threw his hands dismissively, studying her very closely for the first time. He could not put a finger on it, but there was something about the girl sitting opposite him, something that did not add up. It may have been the qualifications, but he found himself unconvinced about her claim of hunger and desperation.

He could tell her clothes were either second hand or she had worn them for too long; the black woollen trench coat she wore had picked so many other fabrics and colours in its obviously long life, it looked like a multi coloured polka dot.  None of the other clothes she wore seemed to belong. If he was one to think conspiracy, he would have thought that she looked like she had worked too hard to look desperate.

And her hands? He had seen them when she used them to rub her forehead. Those hands, in his opinion, did not know hard labour. They were too delicate, too manicured. They had no nail polish, but they looked like a pair of hands that were used to being pampered. And her hair? Was that not a human hair weave on her head? He had seen a lot of cheap ones on his employees and expensive ones on his high maintenance daughters, he knew the difference. She had it tied back with a pony tail, but he still noticed it. Perhaps she was a runaway rich kid? He shivered, imagining one of his daughters pulling such a move.

He sighed, intending to keep his eye on her in case she was a criminal planning to rob him dry.

“Anyway, I think I will have you man, or woman,” he laughed at his own joke. Kamaria smiled kindly, she did not particularly find the joke funny. “… the counter. You can handle a counter, can’t you?”

“I have never done it before, but I learn fast…”

“I will pair you with one of the bar men, let’s see how that goes for a week. I have to warn you, we work long hours, and Wednesdays and weekends are particularly crazy. Don’t even mention end month…”

                “I understand.” She said with genuine enthusiasm

                “Right, follow me then…” He rummaged through his papers, found a small padlock and used it to lock the desk drawers. The open filing cabinets were ignored and she had to fight the temptation to offer to shut them. She nearly laughed – the man was still using padlocks. She had a feeling she would like him for the simple reason he was an eccentric stuck in eighteenth century.

                The name of the pub was Runda & Ruaka Lounge, but it was nothing like the lounges she knew and frequented. All the furniture, except the plastic seats, was brown and old, all of it needed replacement, all of it was dusty, the thatched grass roof and ceiling matched the furniture, so did the wooden walls.  It did not matter to the regulars. Kamaria would later learn that the patrons had protested when the management had threatened to refurbish. The regulars were, she also learned, all too lazy to call the pub by its full name. To them, it was R&R. Or the Local.

                She liked it. The rugged look of R&R had character. It also had a musky smell, one that would have driven away all customers at the lounges she was accustomed to, lounges whose air smelled of vanilla, expensive whiskys and brandy, but one that perfectly suited R&R.
 ________________________

Story by: Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki
My guinea pigs: Nyambura Michuki, Ceh Gichimu, Shiku Carole
My nip and tuck dude: Anthony Luvinzu

Tune in Next week, same time, same place, for chapter two- share away please