The Wife ESCAPED!

Caro was now back with her orange seller friend and had forgotten all about returning to Aunty Rosa or confronting her family. There was no way on earth that she could abandon the opportunity to be with this kind soul for her heartless family members.

She now lived in a house again – the orange seller’s large house. She had learned that the woman’s late husband had left her with the compound and no children, so she had resorted to fruit selling to keep herself busy since the rents from the one or two tenants could well take care of most of her needs.

Now that she had changed focus to fruits that were not very common and yet, fast selling, Caro no longer needed to hawk. All she did, alongside the woman, was to man the shop, and business continued as usual. Quite better than usual though since the woman believed that Caro’s good luck was attracting much more customers. But Caro on the other hand, judging from the sex and ages of the customers and the way they looked at her, was sure that the source of the supposed good luck were the fast growing perky twin globes on her chest.

But she would never forget a particular young man that came one hot fateful afternoon to buy some cucumbers. He was handsome, sounded educated and very well dressed. The annoying part was that he focused much more on her face than her breasts or any other part of her body and it made her very uncomfortable and wary. Even after she had packed the cucumbers for him and handed them over, he was still staring at her face.

“Hi beautiful, you look really smart and hardworking,” he said at last. “By the way, my name’s Timmy, short for Timothy. What’s yours?”

Caro simply presented her open palm to him.

“Your money,” she said, ignoring his attempt at starting a conversation.

“Right,” he smiled. Reaching into his pocket for his wallet, he looked up at her and asked, “How much?”

“Five hundred.”

He brought out his wallet and pulled out a 500 naira note, attached a card to it and stretched it to her.

“Call me some…” His mouth fell open in shock as Caro took only the note and deliberately let the card fall to the ground. She tucked the money into her waistbag and turned her face away from him. If he knew enough about her, he would have known that the chains holding her temper were close to their breaking point. He chuckled and then bent to pick the card. To her surprise, he went ahead to drop it on one corner of her table.

“I’ll leave it here just in case you change your mind.”

With that and a dimpled-cheek smile, he turned around and began walking away.

After taking a few steps, he decided to turn around and take one last glance at her. But just as he did, he was forced to dodge immediately from the flight path of a white object. Caro had thrown his card after him! He chuckled again and picked it up from the ground and this time, he put it into his pocket.

“See you later, I guess,” he waved and then walked off, closely followed by a powerful glare and hiss from her.

It was with anger, surprise and a sudden switch to foul mood when about a week later, Caro looked up from her table of fruits to see Mr. Cucumbers smiling genially at her. She pursed her lips and exhaled in frustration.

As with the first time he came, she was alone in the shopfront, her ‘Madam’ having gone out to arrange for a replenishment of their stock of cucumbers, so that meant she was stuck with this annoying guy who had so much boldness to try making friends with her.

“No cucumbers,” she snapped at him before he could say anything.

“Okay,” he shrugged. “That’s not the only reason I’m here anyway.” And then he added that annoyingly charming smile.

When she didn’t say anything, but continued to glare at him with narrowed eyes, he continued.

“I just thought I should know a little bit more about you. Can I sit here?”, he asked as he walked toward her unoccupied bench. That was when she lost it.

“Look here, you this guy,” she began suddenly and hotly, startling Timmy. “Let me warn you very well. You better leave me alone or else…”

He raised his eyebrows as she came to a stop. Clearly, she had no ready threat to supply.

“Just leave me alone!”, she resumed. “I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Do I look like a prostitute? Just get out from here, I don’t want to see you again. Get out!”Property belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.

“Okay, okay,” he smiled, raising both hands in mock surrender as he backed away from the shop, closely followed by Caro’s furious eyes.

“I’ll come back some other time.”

“I swear, if you ever come back here eh… in fact, if you have two heads, wait for me.”

She rushed into the shop and Timmy, knowing fully well that he had only one head, beat a hasty retreat. When she came out with the matchete they used in carving out coconuts from their pods, he was nowhere to be found.

Later that day, when she had retired to bed at night, Caro found it worrying that she could not get Mr. Cucumbers’ face off her mind. She was not surprised though. On his second attempt, he had clearly been equipped with powerful magical charms, little wonder his increased level of confidence and audacity. Good thing she drove him away before she could fall under the total influence of his satanic spells. But why on earth could she not still fall asleep? Why could she not get his stupidly handsome face out of her mind?

After so much tossing and turning on the tiny mattress in her room, she laid on her back and stared at the ceiling. She allowed the image of his face to occupy her mind again and this time, she mentally picked up a razor and tore viciously at his smiling visage.

She slashed, nicked and rent the face to pieces, even bringing both hands to join in the action, tearing at the air in a frantic attempt to throw him off her memory. When she had exhausted her energy and achieved no significant success, she slowly drifted to sleep with a puzzled expression on her face and one thing on her mind: Timmy’s smiling face.