She arrived at Bruno’s shack. The door was padlocked, meaning he was out somewhere, which Emma had been afraid of. She had texted him earlier and he had told her he would be home, but Bruno was flaky much of the time. She looked around. A woman with a baby secured to her back was throwing dirty dishwater from a pan into the gutter. Emma approached her. “Good afternoon, Madam. Please, do you know Bruno?”

The woman had a dead, milky eye on the left and the pinched face of a grasscutter. “Bruno?” she said. “Yes, I know him.”

“Have you seen him today?”

“I saw him going that way,” she said, pointing vaguely. Emma followed the woman’s direction more or less, wandering into a spot with a crumbling brick wall, from behind which wafted the sharp, unmistakable smell of wee—marijuana. Perhaps Bruno is here, she thought wryly, because Bruno and the drug were as inseparable as best friends. She circled the wall and found a grimy gap to squeeze through into the compound within. The marijuana in the air hit her airways and she coughed a few times.

About six guys sat around the perimeter of the compound, some sharing joints. Emma spotted Bruno reclining against the wall in a spot of shade next to a young man he appeared to know. Bruno sat up as he saw her and furtively pocketed his smoke after extinguishing it with his fingertips.

“Ei, sis!” he exclaimed, jumping up. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” she said, dusting off her clothes.

He bent to embrace her with his six-foot frame of dense musculature. He had a diagonal scar across his forehead from a knife fight when he was sixteen or seventeen. He wasn’t handsome until he smiled, and then he appeared a different man. “Who told you I was here?” he asked.

“A woman back there,” she said. “How are you, Bruno?”

“I’m good, sis,” he said, his voice softening. “But I’ve missed you, paa.”

“Don’t lie,” she teased him. “You don’t even think about me.”

“Ohh, sis!” he said, flashing that smile. “How can you say that?” He followed her glance at the guy he had been sitting beside. “That’s my boy. Hey, Nii Kwei, moddafocka, make you stop smoking and greet my sister Emma.”

“Sorry, oo!” Nii Kwei got to his feet and approached. “Good afternoon, Emma.”

Nii Kwei had coarse Ga features and was slight in physique—Bruno’s exact opposite. Emma shook hands, saying little as she took him in quickly. He had a gold loop in his ear and two gold chains around his neck hanging low over his exposed chest. His black-and-red checkered shirt matched with tight black jeans, which stopped at his bare ankles above apparently brand new red and white Nike trainers.

“Can I talk to you outside?” she said to Bruno.

He accompanied her out of the compound. “So watup, sis?”

She caught an odd inflection and frowned. “What is this American boy accent you’re trying to do?”