Day 5

It is night. The club is full. An all-girl music band is playing. The five women in the band are wearing just G-Strings, nipple tassels, white stockings and black long-heeled shoes.

Girls wearing only panties are dancing in glass booths around the interior. Some well-dressed men are around the booths, watching the women and dropping cedi notes into the booths when the women dance dirty.

On the dance floor, couples are dancing lewdly.

There is a long bar with tall bar stools where men and women are sitting and drinking.

There are also glass-topped tables and chairs where expensively-dressed people are sitting, eating and drinking.

The waitresses who are serving are wearing tiny white skirts and white bras, and their bodies are young, firm and sexy.

Sitting inside the interior, in one corner, are Steve Hollison and Jonathan Afful.

Steve is still in his suit, but Afful has taken off his coat and loosened his tie. The first three buttons on his white shirt are unbuttoned. Steve is drinking wine, whilst Jonathan is eating lamb chops and spicy duck meat and washing that down with chilled vodka.

Steve sighs and pours more Baron de Campos into his tumbler. He uses a long metallic palette to scoop little chunks of ice into the glass. He picks up the drink, swirls it round for a while, stares into it morosely, and puts it back down with a great sigh.

Afful laughs and almost chokes on a juicy lamb chop.

"My God, Stevo, why are you acting like you screwed the Virgin Mary? Man, you're not the first dude to screw a woman and her cousin. Get over it, man!"

"You have done worse before, right? You've messed with a family before, right?"

"Yep! You know how I play, dude. Was a time, shortly before I married Eyram, when I played a divorced woman and her two daughters!"

"For real?" Steve asks with a wan smile.

"For real, man. When they found out they kicked me out, but to hell with them, I played them. Even wanted to add the grandmother, but I saw she had fake teeth, her boobs stretched from her chest to her knees and her ass was like an untarred road. What the hell, I ran for my dear life!"

The two of them laugh very hard, and then Steve drinks half of his wine.

"But I hurt Effe bad, bro," Steve says sadly. "There I was, intensely making love to Elaine, and suddenly Effe is there, looking at me! Lord, the pain on her face killed me, bro. And when I went to her at her Dad's place, her raw pain cut me so bad! I'm not like you, Jon. I love Effe, I love her with all my damn heart!"

"Yeah, so love her. No one is saying you shouldn't love her, but she got to understand she's barren. She couldn't get a belly bulge, and so you got one, not with an outsider, but with her family member. Sure, she's gonna hurt, but she got to settle down and let you make it up to her somehow."

"My God, Jon, you're damn disgusting! You don't have a heart! Effe came to me pure and unblemished. She hadn't been with any other man but me. She has sustained our marriage, made sacrifices for me, taken care of me, and been there for me all the time. I betrayed her, man. I broke her divine heart, and there's no way I can atone for what I've done to her!"

"But she's barren, bro. In the end, that's all that matters! She can't give you kids, her cousin can. Simple. End of debate."

Steve drains his tumbler and sets it down. With angry gestures, he scoops ice into the tumbler and pours the last bit of wine into it.

"No, that's not all that matters. If I had been sterile, Effe wouldn't have turned her back on me and gotten pregnant with another man. I did her wrong, man. I've got to find her, beg her not to leave me."

A waitress approaches their table and puts a plate of steaming assorted noodles in front of Afful. Afful leans back and runs his hand up her naked thighs and under her short skirt. She giggles and leans forward so that Afful can fondle her nipples with his free hand.

"Ohhhhh, Mr. Jon! Don't be naughty!" she gasps.

Afful pushes a Twenty Ghana Cedi note into the waistband of her skirt, and she leans forward to nibble his right ear and thank him in a sexy voice. She walks away wriggling her tiny buttocks.

"My God, Jon! Is that all you think of? Sex, sex, sex?" Steve asks indignantly. "That girl could be your own daughter!"

"But she's not, dude, she's not. The younger the tighter, the sweeter, so goes the Players Jingle. But back to you, what about Elaine? You don't love her? You're gonna abandon her? She's carrying your son, dude! She also deserves better."

"Elaine was an adrenaline rush, man. I don't know what came over me, and of course, once it began maybe the thrill of the forbidden kept it exciting, but seeing Effe like that, seeing her pain, seeing how much I hurt her...it was too much. I can't forget that! And I don't know how I'm gonna make her trust me again."

"You're stressing yourself over nothing, Stevo. Men cheat. It's a story of old. Some are lucky and never get caught, but all men cheat. You were unfortunate to get caught, but Effe gotta understand that! Sometimes out of evil comes good things. Now you're gonna have a kid, and your folks wouldn't worry Effe so much, and you two can concentrate on your marriage. So, you see, a win-win situation for all, except Elaine, of course."

"Goddamn it, Jon! Isn't that a bit too cliché? Would you understand it if your wife cheats on you?"

"Nonsense, why should I understand that? She dares cheat on me, I'll kill her!"

Steve shakes his head in exasperation.

"So why the hell do you want Effe to understand me? Women feel pain too, just like us, and we should protect their hearts! That's the essence of love!"

"Bullshit, who told you women feel pain? They can withstand pain, more than us! Look at childbirth! How many men can stand the pain of having a baby pulled out of their dicks? My God, men would go crazy if they go through labour pains! Listen, women are like honey flowers, and men are like bees. A bee can go from flower to flower to take nectar for sweet honey, but a flower that flies in the air from bee to bee would be cut down and burnt because that's unnatural and an abomination!"

"That is a totally selfish way of looking at things, Jon!" Steve says with a smile.

"Selfish? Did you say selfish? Damn it, Stevo, that is the absolute truth. A man can marry two wives, but a woman with two husbands would be an abomination. Now, throw in this angle...do you know the Bible says there's gonna be a time when seven women would take one man as a husband? Have you heard that quotation ever?"

Steve laughs.

"Yeah, I have, but obviously you're gonna misrepresent that quotation to suit your perverse and selfish inclinations, Jon."

Afful takes a long swallow of his drink and bangs down the tumbler.

"Misrepresent my ass! Just wanna draw your attention to a simple computation of that Biblical statement. Seven women to one man, and now do you know what is happening?"

"Tell me."

"Gays! And now the equation is totally messed up. You see, when two men fall in love that means fourteen women are without men, because the Bible says seven women to a man, right! Add that fourteen to your seven, and what it means is that every man should have, at least, twenty-one women because the more men become homos, the more women are left behind. So, my friend, you're entitled to seven women, and fourteen more if you know some gays. So, if you made love to only your wife's cousin, you still have twenty more women to take!"

Steve bursts into laughter so hard that he spills some of his drink.

"Jesus, Jon. You're one crazy fool! That's simply the worst chauvinistic statement I've ever heard!"

"Just giving you a simple analogy, bro. You've started a damn revolution. All men need to emulate you. If I should have my way, I'd advise any man to marry all the unmarried women in a family when he goes out to find a wife. Imagine getting married to three sisters and their cousins. You would end up with, hopefully, a mixture of fair, dark, short, tall, slim, fat, medium, beautiful, ugly women who are related and understand each other. No more excuse to cheat because you have a fine damn collection of women in your bed. It would solve a lot of the problems in the world. So, don't stress yourself. If you love Effe, stay with her and let Elaine have your baby. If Effe can't understand that, kick her out."

"You've never been faithful to Eyram, have you, Jon?"

Afful looks Steve in the eyes and speaks softly but with great conviction.

"I can never be faithful to any woman."

Steve pushes back his chair and stands up.

"I'm rolling out, Bro. Gotta find a solution to my mess."

"Good night then. I'll stay awhile. There is a new woman upstairs I'm going to roll with her. I paid a lot of money for her, time to get my money's worth. Bed tumble, bro! I hear that one is super in bed, you know, Kung Fu style and all!"

Steve laughs again and takes out his wallet, but Afful shakes his head.

"I have this tab covered, bro. Go home, but remember, don't let this stress you out. Everything shows Effe can't give you babies. If Elaine is capable, just explain it to Effe, and if she still fails to get the point, show her the red card and stay with Elaine."

Steve puts on his coat and sighs. He tries to speak, hesitates, shakes his head and turns away. He takes two steps, stops, and turns.

"I wish I can see things the way you see them, Jon, but I can't. I love Effe that much. And I'll always love her. Goodnight, and good luck with the whore."

"Go to hell, bro!"