Young Single Girl

“What’s your name?” the lady at the reception desk asked.

“Tinuke. Miss Tinuke Adebayo.”

“And what is this regarding?” The lady picked up the phone and dialed an extension.

“Oh, Mr. Wasiu is expecting me,” she replied, rubbing her shaking hands together.

“I see.” The lady gave her a knowing look then listened in to the receiver.

Tinu, as her friends called her, would have been a little confused by the look if she wasn’t sure that the lady was accustomed to meeting girls like her on a daily basis… if she didn't know that she wasn't the first whore to walk up to her.

Not that she was sure that whore was the right definition. After all, she didn’t stand on the street corner looking for tricks, nor did she work at a brothel waiting for customers to service. In fact, she had a legitimate job as a financial advisor at a renowned bank in the city. It just happened that selling mutual funds and creating retirement plans were not the only duties she was expected to provide to her clients.

It hadn’t been hard to find a job after graduation. Graduating at the top of her class had gotten her invited to interviews and her slim figure and delicate features had ensured that she received call-backs. A great location and a lucrative compensation package made the decision to sign a three-year contract with First Citizen’s Bank of Lagos quick and painless.

“You can go up now, Mr. Wasiu is in Room 1312,” she said, putting the phone receiver down. Tinu’s heart rate quickened as she dragged her feet to the elevators. She’d hoped that he wouldn’t be around, that he’d be busy, that there’d be an earthquake, that the ceiling would cave in, that something, anything would stop her from going into the twelfth room on the thirteenth floor but as the elevator steadily moved up, she knew that her prayers had gone unanswered.

Her skin had crawled a little on the day she signed her contract. Mention of her sex life did not belong in the same sentence as the explanation of the fine print. Apparently, for the duration of her stay, she wasn’t allowed to get married. And if she had a boyfriend, he was not allowed to visit the office. Why? They explained that they wanted their clients to feel that they were receiving 100% of their agent's time. She didn’t think she planned to get married before she turned twenty-five so it didn’t seem like a huge sacrifice to her. If hindsight was indeed perfect, she wouldn’t have hummed in celebration as she signed on the dotted line.

She’d only knocked once when the door opened. His white teeth shone as he stepped aside to let her in. The expensive-looking furniture was arranged in a very simple pattern and the plush carpet looked new. Papers were strewn across the desk, his coat flung across the couch in front of the television and it looked like the bed hadn't been touched since the cleaning woman had come in earlier in the day.

“You can put your bag over there,” he said, pointing under the desk.

He said it so matter-of-factly that she wondered how often he did this. He wasn’t exactly terrible for a first time, after all, he wasn't too fat, he didn’t have a pungent smell and according to his file, was only 32, unlike that old, toothless man her boss had tried to make her visit a few months earlier.

They’d always had a good working relationship so she didn’t think anything of it when he'd called her into his office that afternoon.

“Chief Olatunde is in town this week," he had informed her.

“Really?” she had said. Even though he had a huge account at the bank, he seemed to have a problem keeping advisors. She’d wondered why he kept changing them because from what she saw in the records that had been put on her desk two weeks earlier, everything seemed to be in order.

“He’d like to discuss something with you.”

“Great. I’ll look into my calendar and try to give him an appointment.”

“Tinu, there’ll be no need for that. He’s staying at the Meridien and he’d like to see you tomorrow evening.”

Her lungs had stopped inflating -she'd suspected that that day would come. She wasn’t blind – she saw the other girls carrying designer bags that matched the shoes they could not afford and even saw some getting picked up by clients in their BMWs. She paid no attention to it, in fact she didn't care -she just didn’t think she’d become one of them. Her salary paid for her apartment and enabled her to make steady payments to her parents for the used car they’d bought her, and her simple life suited her just fine.

She didn’t want Chief Olatunde or Barrister Okotie or Dr. Igbokwe or any of the other men her boss wanted her to have after hours ‘discussions’ with but after a while, he got frustrated and gave her an ultimatum: do it or get fired. And according to the contract she signed, if she got fired, she'd receive no severance pay.

She’d sneaked away to interviews during her lunch breaks but from the way the men gawked at her long legs, she knew that her experiences wouldn’t be any different elsewhere. Her friends told her that she’d be stupid to quit, pointing out that after tasting freedom, returning to the confines of her parents’ home would be hell, that it wasn’t such a big deal, that there was nothing wrong in getting paid for something she didn’t mind doing for free. They pointed out that it was not ‘prostitution,’ that it was not like she'd be going around looking for clients but that it was something a young, single, Nigerian girl had to do to survive in the damaged economy former president Abacha and his cronies had created. They said that with the 25% unemployment rate in a country where some college graduates had resorted to selling roasted corn to drivers in cars at traffic lights, that it was only smart to do all it took to keep her job.

She refused, declared that it was beneath her, that it was against all her principles, that she was not that kind of girl, but as his long, dark, body lay on top of her, thrusting deep inside her, she thought of the wing her parents were able to add partly because she’d offered to take care of her little brother’s school fees, of the many nights she could spend with her boyfriend, without her parents’ disapproval, of how, unlike her mother, she didn’t have to keep an account of every single penny she spent. As he moaned in pleasure and his body heaved on top of hers, she decided that it really wasn’t so bad, that it was only natural, that God wouldn’t have created sex if it wasn’t to be enjoyed, that she was only being smart, that she wasn't doing anything new, that Utopia only existed in dreams.

On her way home, she drove by Bevista on Allen Avenue and saw a bright red leather bag in its window. If her calculations were correct, she now had about two designer bags and a pair of shoes in the bag her mother had gotten her for her 18th birthday. She felt the frays as she ran her fingers over its corners. It amazed her that she'd never noticed how old and beat up it looked. She figured that she could keep using the ugly thing, but couldn't come up with a reason why a young, single, Nigerian girl trying to survive in the damaged economy couldn’t enjoy a nice, new designer bag. Especially when she’d worked her butt off to get it.