• Makini finds himself missing the good old days of courtship and Sophia’s flirty ways
Since Sgt Sophia and I started cohabiting, life had been great. Better than in my wildest dreams. The kind of life that made me wish I had friends I could share a drink with and make jealous.
As it happens, I only have two friends: Mwendaa, our resident madman, and Kimende, the most unreliable of God’s creations. Sometimes I wonder which one between them is crazier.
But I digress. Every morning, Sophie would wake up and put my bathwater on the stove. Then she’d wake me up, towel in hand and slippers on the ready, and do a variation of, “Your bath is ready.”
Often, she would be playful or sarcastic, depending on which side of the tracks you hail from. “Your highness, thy wash portion doth await you in the bath quarters.” And at times, she would hit me on the head with the towel and I’d wake up from a dream where a perp is clobbering me in the head with a rungu. “Are you taking a shower today?” she’d ask. “Or do we wait until Saturday when the sun is warmer?”
Whatever the case, I would return to the house to find my uniform pressed and lying on the single worn sofa that graces the living room section of our one-room flat. Or it would be crumpled and in a heap inside a basin if Sophie woke up in one of her snits.
Or worse. Like the day she found a scrap of paper inside one of the trouser pockets and realised the digits on it were a phone number. That day I found my uniform crumpled into a heap, inside a basin and soaking wet.
As I got dressed, Sophie would make us a sumptuous breakfast. If you could call burnt toast and tea that tastes like horse piss sumptuous. But as a good roommate living platonically with the love of my life, I’ve always reminded myself that I love Sophie for her good looks and magnanimous heart and not her cooking. Though, if truth be told, the good looks mostly carried the day.
Sophia’s magnanimity is usually touch and go, depending on her mood of the day. And God knows the woman has a rich catalogue of temperaments to choose from.
After breakfast, it would be Sophie’s turn to take a bath. Once she got back into the house, I would be subjected to one of several torture devices in her arsenal. Sometimes, it was a naked thigh as she applied lotion on her legs, the towel around her riding dangerously close to her crotch.
On another day, the towel would slip as she picked her blouse off the rack and I would be treated to the cruelty of one naked boob and a hastily whispered, “Oops! Sorry.” Or, on the occasion that she felt especially gratuitous, she would bend over and the towel would float to the floor, affording me a full view of her naked backside and excruciating fantasies of what could be. On such days, I would escape and await her at the police post.
If I’m lucky, she would forget to tease me about what I saw but couldn’t touch. If not, I’d spend the day listening to her innuendoes. “Body of evidence.” “Chest of drawers.”
On the morning of the first day after we decided we’re married, I wake up and Sophia has already left for work. I hurry up and draw my own bath, eat dry toast and plain milk and join her.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I ask.
“Why should I?” she says. “I’m your wife now.”