either balanced on their heads metal “China” pans coated in chipping plastic, weighted with the purchases of patrons they were muling for, or scanned for customers with pouncing eyes. Some worked with babies strapped to their backs with faded cloth. Ken noticed AMA inspectors chatting some kayayei up, grazing them, patting them, blocking their paths.
Maneuvering through the walkways like the reluctant market boy he once was, Ken found the Munhwɛ setup with relative ease. Four rows of pink plastic chairs faced a wooden stage, and the clipboard-wielding woman on it was directing a camera crew into position. Ken moved behind the platform, hoping to find a supervisor to note his punctuality.
He quickened his gait when he saw Inspector Quarcoo. The senior officer was engaged in what looked like a serious discussion with another uniform. Ken slowed his steps, surprised to see Duah with him, holding a pair of boots.
“I found someone on the roadside trying to sell them,” Duah said. He placed the boots on a table and peeled back one tongue, revealing Charles’s name.
“Maybe he gave them to the seller?” Ken said. “Charles is too big for someone to steal them off his feet.” He turned to Inspector Quarcoo to see if he agreed.
“Look at them,” Duah said.
Then Ken saw the blood.
* * *
Returning to her stall after a brief walk down the row, Muni dabbed her trickling hairline. A musky odor was aloft, and she knew Asana was now in the tight confines of the storeroom. She used her Munhwɛ flyer to wave away the smell, then dipped her nose in her handbag, inhaling the mingled notes of used perfumed strips.
“You’ve been using the deodorant I gave you?”
Asana looked up from the pan she was hurriedly filling with water sachets. “Yes, Auntie Muni.”
Then why your foul smell? Muni didn’t ask because she wanted to know instead if Asana had entertained Ibrahim in her stall. With impatience, she squinted at her employee and tenant. “Your pan will be too heavy.”
The girl, still packing on her knees, looked up again. “Sorry?”
“Asana, did you have someone in my shop overnight?”
Muni watched Asana spread her arms, fasten each hand on either side of the pan, and raise it to her head in one motion.
“Never, Auntie Muni,” she said almost too coolly. “Please, can I go? I saw that the Munhwɛ people brought bottled water for the crowd, but the sun is growing hot. People will need more.”
“You cleaned this place very well, Asana. You used a different soap. Where did you get it?”
“Mr. Selifu.”
“The butcher? Or one of his assistants?”
“I knew the AMA people would be here this morning so I couldn’t just sweep. I had to scrub. But the Dettol was finished. I’m always seeing Mr. Selifu’s boy scrubbing, so I asked him for some cleaning solution.”
“Which boy?”
Asana’s eyes bored into Muni’s. “Jonathan.”
Muni watched her kaya girl stagger slightly under the weight of the pan as she reached for the bottle.
“I’ll take it back to him.”
“You go and sell. I will return it to Mr. Selifu.”
Asana stepped out of the stall into the bright hot chaos, before turning her head gingerly to face her landlady. “Oh, Auntie Muni, I have to go home for a few days. Someone has died.”
Muni hated to lose Asana even for a short while. “Maybe your friend can step in while you’re gone?”
“I’ll ask.”
As Asana retreated, Muni’s phone lit up with her son’s picture. “Abdul, where are you?”
Background noise answered.
“Did I tell you and your sister to come here for Munhwɛ TV? Come at once!” She would go to Ibrahim when the children relieved her. She resumed fanning herself as a woman walked into her shop.
“Hello, madam,” Muni sang the greeting, hawking the customer’s hesitation at a diamanté-studded bolt of teal and fuchsia fabric cut into connected leaves. “Swiss lace. Authentic.”
When the woman walked out, Muni took out her phone and opened WhatsApp.
Where r u?! She shook the soap bottle impatiently until her son and daughter startled her.
Muni immediately left the kids to watch the shop, bounding outside. Her hairline sprouted more sweat with the exertion, the trickles streaking her foundation, beading under her chin. She mopped the drops, stopping absently to finger a pack of plastic-wrapped yaki weave dangling from the hair-braiding stall she passed. Her profuse sweating cost her so much in hair and blotting papers, she lamented as she walked on, fluffing her synthetic curls.
She took the long way to Mr. Selifu’s, asking herself why she was so shaken by the prospect of Asana lying; that Ibrahim, not Jonathan, had given her the cleaning solution, and perhaps something more. If Ibrahim had done something with Asana, he was free to. Muni was a married woman with children close to his age. And if he hadn’t done anything with Asana—her heart beat with hope—then it was just as Asana had said.
When she reached the butcher’s, Muni’s eyes immediately sought Ibrahim.
“Mr. Selifu!” She projected for Ibrahim’s benefit.
“Auntie Muni?” The old man looked up from the warped wooden table he was carefully slicing goat flesh on. Ibrahim and Jonathan stood at opposite sides of the table behind him.
It seemed impossible to Muni that Ibrahim was the same age as his fellow apprentice. At seventeen, Jonathan looked like a child playing doctor in his blood-spattered butcher’s coat as he scrubbed a shaved lamb. But Ibrahim made her slick with longing, even under a cloud of flies, hacking at a mountain of meat.
It wasn’t just his nearly two-meter height—tall even for the taller northern people—it was his carriage. He never slouched. Meanwhile, Jonathan stood half-folded into an almost fetal stance, practically begging for permission to exist.
“How can I help you, Auntie Muni?”
She retrieved the bottle from her bag. “I wanted to return the detergent your boy Jonathan loaned my tenant Asana.” Her eyes darted to Ibrahim’s face, to see if he showed any emotion. She exhaled when he didn’t. “I ran out of Dettol and she needed to clean. National Sanitation Day and all.”
Mr. Selifu nodded dismissal, taking the bottle.
“Isn’t that an awful lot of meat you have these boys taking care of, Mr. Selifu?” she said, her eyes still on Ibrahim and the meat he was methodically chopping.
“These days people like smaller cuts. They’re cheaper.” He turned back to his work.
Ibrahim winked at Auntie Muni.
Can I c u 2night? she texted him when she left. Asana has traveled.
* * *
Asana squeezed her throat and raised her pitch as she milled through the crowd of onlookers who hadn’t been able to afford tickets to the live episode of Munhwɛ TV’s new reality dating competition, Am I Your Size?
“Pyoooor water!” she cried, passing a group of dusty boys performing an elaborate sideshow of dance moves to beats blaring from the sound system.
“Ma me nsuo mmienu,” a man ordered.
She traded him two sachets for sixty pesewas and called again, her voice wavering slightly as she passed a huddle of police officers. Her eyes nearly jumped from their sockets when she saw Charles’s boots. She locked eyes with one of the policemen, the single jagged stripe on his shoulder conjuring the bloodied stripes on