TWISTS AND STONES (Episode 4)

There’s a knock.

The door opens.

Seconds later, I find myself staring at black gleaming boots.

But before I can bring myself to ascertain if this is a friend or foe, I hear the words that’ll ruin my life forever.

“There’s been a murder and I know who he is.”

***

THIRTY MINUTES EARLIER…

“How dare he slap her, Beeko?!” Naya railed. “I have my boots polished, and no, it’s not because I’m hitting the club, but because I’m about to go kick his balls in! The nerve!”

Beeko sighed. Naya could get really dramatic sha. “And here I was thinking Moira is the dramatic one,” he said into his phone.

“And I am admiring your blonde skills from over here,” she retorted.

In the wake of Charles backhanding Moira at the shrink’s office last weekend, Naya had threatened the entire fury of hell to make him pay for hitting a lady. But Beeko doubted she’d do anything. Moira believed and had always said she Naya was all bark and no action.

He sighed again. “Calm down, hon,” he soothed. “Think about this whole situation. You’re his babe, and boinking his sister, my girlfriend. I should –”

“Puhleeze!” Naya cut in derisively. “I was never Charles’ babe. We were only fucking. And that only happened four times. That doesn’t make him my man. Apparently, the thought of his ‘assumed’ good dicking clouded his senses to make him think we had something more going on. Dude could only go on for two minutes. Yes, I timed him. How can someone with a perfectly curved schlong hump away for two minutes? I mean, who does that? What is he?! A tadpole with the excitement of a horny man? Please!”

“Naya, calm down,” Beeko said, sighing yet again

“Don’t tell me to calm down. He went as far as hitting her. Why? Because he was jealous? The closed-minded fuck! Okay, I get it… We betrayed him, but that doesn’t give him the right to hit her. It could have been a prank for all he knew.”

In just two minutes and some seconds, Beeko had sighed about nine times.

He said, “You should talk to him, you know?”

“Talk? Why would I want to do that?”

“You said it yourself that you betrayed him. He deserves an explanation. Don’t you think?”

“A good beating is what I think he deserves. For the whole eight minutes of awkward lay I’ve endured. Although to be fair, he does this thing with his tongue when he’s eating my pussy. He –”

“Spare me. I don’t want know what he’s good at in bed with.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to know? You could learn a thing or two o?” Beeko could hear the smirk in her voice.

“Cow! You won’t change, abi? Put make-up on a pig, it’s still a pig. Oink-oink-oink.”

Naya laughed hard at the rejoinder.

Feeling some pride in his succession diffusion of her mood, he continued, “Joor, come and be going. I want to rest. I have some blog posts to catch up on before sleep comes to me his afternoon. I love you, shogbo?”

Before she could say anything else, he cut the call. Naya could be exasperating sometimes, he thought. Knowing her, she’d probably call back in five, four, three, two –

His countdown was interrupted by his Beedu Minion ringtone.

See?

Ugh! This woman should rest na, he thought. Clearing his throat, and without looking at the Caller ID, he swiped his finger across the screen to take the call.

“Yes?” he began promptly. “This is I-don’t-want-to-hear-what-you-have-to-say dot.com. We don’t need any of your venting at this ungodly hour of 12pm, when we’re supposed to be enjoying the quiet the weekend is meant to usher in. In other related news –”

“Beeko, will you shut the fuck up!” Charles’ slurred speech interrupted his flow. “You dey house? I gass see you.”

Ever since he got that phone call from Charles two weeks ago, he had been avoiding him like a plague because, seriously, he didn’t know what to say to the guy. Their girlfriends were sleeping together; he was supposed to be hurt and angry, but Beeko couldn’t for the life of him understand why he wasn’t. Okay, maybe he did know. But truth be told, he was happy Charles was in a messed up situation. A little open-mindedness and sense wouldn’t hurt him to have.

“No, I’m not –” Beeko began answering.

“I’m here already and I see your bike,” Charles snapped across his words. “So don’t make up any excuses. Open your door before it becomes splinters!”

Arrgh!

Beeko unsheathed the bolt on his door and unhooked the chain. Charles walked in. He looked like he’d had enough alcohol in his system to cater to the thirsty needs of Bode Thomas’ residents.

“What’s going with you, bro?” Beeko enquired. “Are you alright?”

Without slipping off his dirty loafers, Charles dropped himself on the carpeted ground, and snapped, “Do I look alright to you? How is it that you’re not affected by this betrayal sef? How can you be so calm and so…so…”

“I think the word you’re looking for is open-minded. Look, Charles, I understand how you feel, and believe me, I’m appalled. But these ladies are adults. They have every right to enjoy their insatiable libido. And moreover –”

“Hold it right there!” Charles barked, his eyes firing up as he held a hand out to halt Beeko’s words like a traffic cop. “We’re talking about your girlfriend and my girlfriend here, and you’re talking about libido? Are your senses underdeveloped?”

At his referral to Naya as his girlfriend, Beeko raised his brow. In light of Naya’s admission to him just minutes ago over the phone, Charles’s cluelessness was incredulous.

“Let me ask you a question” – he sat down on a sofa – “would you be repulsed if the said women weren’t our girlfriends?”

“No, I wouldn’t. But –”

“So it’s safe say,” Beeko interrupted him, “that you’re not upset by their homosexual act but because they played you – er, us, yes?”

“What’s your point, BK?” Charles said querulously. “Because you’re not making any sense at all. Two ladies can make out, but not guys. That’s insanely demonic.”

How the hell did this learned man sitting in his living room end up becoming his best friend? Beeko thought incredulously.

Feeling provoked by Charles’s homophobic and ignorant remark, Beeko said, with a sweeping gesture of his hands, “In all this rage you have going for you, I have to wonder if you even realize that Naya isn’t your babe. Well, I wondered, but with the way you’ve been throwing the word ‘girlfriend’ around, it’s clear to me that you don’t know.”

Charles scowled. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You can’t lay claim on someone, something that isn’t yours. You both had sex and according to her, you were a bad lay. And since your twin knew her way around the female anatomy, Naya turned to her for pleasure. You are or were fuck buddies. So for chrissakes, get over yourself. It wasn’t that serious.”

Before he could properly finish his berating, Charles leaped up and was on him. His hands scrabbled for Beeko’s neck, seeking to strangle, and his hot alcohol-drenched breath steamed Beeko’s face. With a forceful jab, Beeko shoved him off him, causing the inebriated man to topple over backwards.

Then Beeko got to his feet, now properly angry, and continued hacking at his friend. “You were so absorbed in satisfying yourself that you failed to realise you’re a bad fucker. Naya told me all this, and going by the description of your curved penis, you’re pretty well endowed. Why then –”

“That bitch talked to you about our lovemaking?” Charles snarled.

“No, she talked about your two minutes of eternal excitement, which shouldn’t be called, in my own books, lovemaking. Hell! It shouldn’t even be called sex. So get over yourself, my friend! Knowing how to satisfy your partner in bed is right up there with knowing how to change light bulbs, killing cockroaches, going to the movies and expensive dinner dates together.”

Swaying a little, Charles got to his feet as well. He was shaking with impotent anger at his friend as he said slowly, “I think I should leave.”

“I think so too,” Beeko said grimly, suddenly remembering that this man had also hit Moira. “Do. Leave. Sod off with your homophobic-woman-beating tail between your legs. That’s what cowards do. They run with their heads hung in shame.”

Charles snatched up his phone from the ground and moved toward the door. Without looking to make sure he got out okay, Beeko started out of the parlour as well, in the direction of the kitchen. And then, he stopped when he heard the faint beep of his phone, one which notified him of a message from an app he downloaded three days ago. Turning to retrieve his phone from the ground where it had fallen during his scuffle with Charles, he saw that Charles had stopped by the door.

Hopefully, he was thinking of apologizing, and not to say something dumb, Beeko thought, while still looking around the room for his phone.

***

I look at the phone in my hand and wonder what the hell Grindr is and when I downloaded it into my phone. I swipe at my screen and tap on the message notification from a Biola. Who the hell is that?

Jerk off to this, says the message attached to the images.

Huh?

This feels like déjà vu all over again.

My eyes threaten to explode from my head when I behold the images. A guy’s dick and his ass!

Wait, WHAT?!

Taken aback, I look closely at the phone, turning it this way and that. And then I realize it’s not mine, but Beeko’s.

I turn swiftly to face the man I thought I knew, who is now holding my own phone in his hand and wearing an expression of agitation on his face.

Oh no! It can’t be. Beeko?! No, it can’t be!

I grit my teeth as my confusion gives way to anger. And then I say in a tone frosted over by my wrath, “Beeko, are you gay?”

Written by Vhar & Eros