• All eyes are on the bachelor when cases of theft without a break-in arise
Diary,
Following a few reported thefts in our gated community, someone came up with the “brilliant” idea to start a Community Welfare Group. More like a vigilante organisation, if you ask me, but of course, no one did. So, I sat at the meeting and listened to all sorts of ideas on how to combat the deteriorating security.
“First thing is to fire the current security company, of course,” said a boring-looking CEO type I hadn’t met before. “To kill a chicken you have to cut off its head, right?”
“None of the thefts has been the result of a break-in,” said the security company rep. “That means one of… a member of this community… signed the bad guys in. As a security company, there is nothing we can do about…”
“He’s right.” Every head turned towards a pretty but frazzled woman who had stood up at the back. “Some of us are always bringing strangers through the gates regardless of our opinion.”
Memories gushed into my brain like a flash flood. Aluoch, married, one kid, tiresome husband, kept showing up at my door bearing baked goods. Her rye bread tasted like mud pie. “They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” she had told me, “but my husband won’t quit being a cheating, good-for-nothing bastard regardless of my efforts.”
Needless to say, she hadn’t found her way into my heart, either, and now the chickens had come home to roost.
“Our problem is the bachelors,” Aluoch went on, her eyes fleeting over me momentarily. “I mean, who’s to tell the sort of characters they parade in and out of their houses of sin?”
Gakere the Grouch shot to his feet. His name might mean “small muscle”, but whatever muscles this man has are hidden under copious layers of adipose tissue. Body fat, to the uninitiated. “That’s right. And now that Yaro is about to get hitched, that leaves one bachelor in our midst.”
When every pair of eyes in the room zeroed in on me, I willed myself to wake up from the nightmare. It didn’t happen because I wasn’t dreaming, but I have a dream that one day, the walking heart attack that is Gakere will walk into my practice complaining of chest pains. We’ll have some issues to settle before I administer nitroglycerin for his angina.