By Tuesday afternoon, the city had settled into its dry season rhythm. The Harmattan dust clung to window panes and eyelashes, turning everything a shade of brown. Henry sat at a roadside bukka, slowly taking occasional sips from a relatively warm bottle of Sprite and wiping his glasses with a handkerchief that was doing a rather poor job against the harmattan’s powdery wind.
He wasn’t sure why he had agreed to this second meeting with Chika. She had called that morning, sounding all businesslike but also warm. She said she had a few more questions to ask. He’d hesitated before answering, playing in his head the many ways that this could go wrong, then he muttered, “Okay, fine. I’ll be free around three.”
But the truth was that, he wasn’t doing anything. Not really. His tech work was rather slow because the companies headquarters in Lagos hadn’t sent in any jobs this week, but that didn’t bother him. His finances were stable for now and money was not much of a problem for him. His soul on the other hand? That wasn’t something you could describe as stable.
A familiar voice interrupted his thoughts. “I hope you like Sprite. That’s all they had cold.”
Chika slid into the seat across from him, notebook in hand, sunglasses perched in her braids. She wore a dark green blouse tucked into jeans that reached up all the way from her waist to her stomach, and brown slippers that she still somehow managed to make look formal. It was amazing how little effort she had to put in to look that presentable.
Henry smiled faintly while raising his own warm bottle of Sprite and his gaze to meet hers, “I’m learning to love it.”
She opened her notebook, flipped past a few dog-eared pages, then looked up towards Henry, who hadn’t stopped staring at her. “Okay, let’s start easy. Tell me your full name?”
“Henry Ikechukwu Agu.”
“And your age?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Now your profession?”
He paused for a bit. “Software designer.”
She kept staring at him as if waiting for him to finish his answer. A short silence followed before she gestured at him to go on as she nodded her head with a soft smile and raised brow.
“oh aaaand I’m a dancer”, he responded with a smile and soft chuckle.
She smiled. “You sound like you’re still convincing yourself, or like you’re not still sure.”
He inhaled deeply and then shook his head while looking at the sky.
“Maybe I am.” He said, as he let out the air and focussed his gaze back on her.
Chika scribbled, then leaned back in her chair. “Tell me something people tend to misunderstand about dancing or dancers.”
Henry’s eyes sharpened. “Well, I think for me, it would be that people tend to be more focussed on the performer and not so much the performance, you know? Like looking at the messenger, but not really understanding the message. When I dance, I’m saying the things that I find very difficult to put into words.”
She nodded slowly as her eyes narrowed. “And what is it that you can’t put into words?”
He looked at the ground and then back at her, and then, not flirtatiously, not defensively. Just honestly.
“Loneliness…”
A short silence followed, his gaze did not shift, but his face fell into a vulnerable awareness and he knew he couldn’t stop there.
Chika sat up in her chair as her breathing seized for a moment. She stopped writing.
“…Doubt. Regret. The way you can be surrounded by people who clap for you and cheer but still feel unseen, unheard, invisible.”
The café around them had faded into stillness, no car horns, no tires screeching down the road, just that one sentence hanging between them.
“That’s definitely going in the story,” she said finally, breaking the tension.
“I figured.” He said, grateful for the break as he chuckled.
He took another sip of his sprite, and for the next few minutes, she asked more questions. About his childhood. About how he taught himself JavaScript from YouTube tutorials in a cyber café. About the moment he realized dancing made him feel something that his codes never could.
And then, somewhere in the middle of a question about choreography, she slowed down, her voice softened.
“You’re very… open.”
“Bad thing?”
“No-no,” she said. “Just… rare.”
He laughed. “Maybe I should be more cautious.”
“Maybe. But then you wouldn’t be you.”
They sat in silence again. But this one was different. It wasn’t awkward, it was comfortable, like they were both remembering something familiar at the same time.
“Do you ever feel like… you’re waiting for something but you don’t really know what it is?” she asked.
Henry looked at her.
“Literally all the time,” he said, smiling.
Chika closed the notebook.
“I think we’re done with the interview.”
He blinked. “Oh really?”
She nodded, her eyes not leaving his. “This… this wasn’t the interview. This was just me wanting to know you.”
Henry felt the ground shift beneath his feet.
The wind blew dust across the plastic tables, swirling around the Coke crates and empty pure water bags.
The world went on, as it always did but something had changed.
And neither of them dared name it…yet.