A Good Lie

“Don’t tell me you were half naked, only in your underwear while they talked to you?” said Joan, standing by the door.

“Are they not my parents? There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Well, there will be a party at the lounge a month from now. I hope you make this one.”

“Sure, I will. I will make it this time around.”

“Okay then. I want to go to bed now. I have a lot to do tomorrow. I hope you aren’t leaving tonight. It is late already.”

“I will spend the night, then go to work from here.”

“Alright, goodnight John. It was nice seeing you after a long time. I hope we get to see more often.”

"Goodnight, sis.”

By morning, my mother came to wake me up to prepare for work, and because she needed to catch her flight by 9 am, she offered to give me a ride to work with her convoy, it was a convoy of 3 cars, and she proceeded to the airport afterwards.

There were lots of eyes on me as I came down from the car, but my mother didn’t come down, and they wondered who I was to come to work in a convoy. The best I did was act cool and walk into the bank.

Side talks were flying everywhere throughout work, but no one came to me directly to ask. I kept my cool still because it would have been a bad idea to let anyone know who I was or who my parents were.

When it was the close of work and the customers had all left, a colleague asked me about it.

“I can swear that I could recognize the car you came to work in, any day, anytime, and anywhere.

“That was the Central Bank Governor’s convoy. Are you in any way related to her?”

“No, I am not. I happen to be a friend to the driver,” I lied, and it wasn’t such a good lie.

“Why would the driver drop you off at work when she was in the car? Who would permit him to pick up a random stranger? I guess he’d lose his job immediately.”

“Why are you lying? Do we look stupid to you?” asked another colleague.

Our discussions kept going back and forth, and they didn’t want to drop it until I admitted the obvious.

And I instinctively sent a text message to the driver without them noticing.

Me: Joe, I will call you in less than 3 minutes, but whatever the discussion is, do not address me as sir, respond like we are normal friends. Play everything cool.

Joe: Okay, sir.

He replied almost immediately after the message was delivered. I called him and put the call on loudspeaker.

“Joe, how far?”

“I am okay, what’s up?”

“There are some doubters in front of me right now. Can you please explain to them how I got into the convoy this morning?”

Joe laughed so loud because he understood that he had to come up with a lie fast and a good lie as well. If there was such a thing as a good lie.

On the other hand, I was tensed and hoped he would take that advantage to bail me out.

“Now I understand. Because you came to work with a convoy belonging to the Central Bank Governor, they think you are related to her.

"Do not waste your time on people who don’t believe your words. Let us assume you are her son, I am sure you would have been the manager of that bank because of her connections, but you are just an ordinary bank teller."

"He just called me an ordinary bank teller," I thought and laughed out loud.

“Thank you so much, Joe.” I ended the call, and everyone left to their stations.

I was set to leave work, and I hadn’t seen or talked to Rachel. It was unusual for us to be at work and not see or talk, so I went into the bulk room to look for her, but she wasn’t there.

I later got to find out she was called by Ms Josephine and I couldn’t just walk upstairs into the office to see her, I instead went to her car to wait for her.

Rachel was out of the bank and walked to the car. “Oh, now you want to see me?” She pressed the remote control of the car to unlock the doors. “I heard you’ve been looking for me, what’s up?”

“We haven’t seen or talked for most of today. I wanted to see you, but nothing much.”

“Are you sure that’s all? Or you wanted to see my pretty face? Mommy’s boy.”

Of course, she was beautiful, I would not deny it. The way she always rolled her hair into a doughnut at the back made her face glow, radiating with beauty.

She was among the top prettiest women in the branch, followed by the branch manager.

The question she asked me about her pretty face, put a lot in my head about her beauty and I was in a different fantasy altogether.

“Don’t hide it. You know I am beautiful, you know. ” She read the way I looked at her.

“Okay, you are beautiful, but I just wanted to see you, that’s all.” I threw my face away and focused on opening the door.

We both got into the car and for that short period, none of us said anything to each other.

She turned on the ignition of the car and said, “Thank you john.”

“You called me by my name. That almost brought tears to my eyes.” I made a joke out of it and we laughed.

We were having a good connection, better than we did on other days and I wanted it to keep going on, and as she drove out of the bank premises, I told her to drive to Abuja Central Park for us to hang out for a while before we went home.

"You want to take me out? That's nice."

"You always make efforts for us to hang out when you have the chance, so I thought to do this one."

"Central Park is a good place to be. It has such great scenery. I have been there twice and I must say, you chose a good location."

"I know lots of places, you know," I said.

"But the cost of things there is on the high side, are you sure you can handle it?"

I forced a smile and said, "Don't worry, I've got that covered."

The smile died down when I realised I hadn't got it covered, I didn't even think it through, I only thought about hanging on to the connection and moment we were having.

As the car drove on, I looked away into the distance to think critically about what to do before she found out later on that I got nothing covered.