Amara’s tone soothed him. It was Amara who drove Obinna and Eze to the airport that humid evening eleven years ago, and she stood aside and watched as he and Eze hugged goodbye and later, in the car, told him in this same soothing tone that it would be okay, that Eze would just be a letter or phone call away.

“I hope so,” Obinna said now.

Amara brought out her compact and looked in the mirror. She put on more mauve lipstick, made smacking sounds with her lips. “What will you do today?”

“I’ll go to the gym. Then supervise that stupid boy so the food we serve Eze will at least be edible.”

Amara came over and kissed his lips and pinched his arm. “It’s good you’ve started going to the gym. This was getting a bit flabby, just a little bit.”

Her tone was light and teasing, as usual, and her kiss, her touch, was still filled with possibility. It was the thought of what they used to be and what they still could be that made Obinna so afraid when he looked at her, made him so paranoid about those young boys with their chiseled arms and bellies flat as hardcover books, who paraded the banks these days, hoping that a big woman would say, “How are you?” to them, because it was so easy for the recipient of a “How are you?” to then become a lover and even, God forbid, a second husband.

“I love you,” Amara said as she left.

Obinna should not have worried. It was true that Eze had changed: he now wore glasses and was bigger than Obinna remembered, a paunch sloping out just above his beltline. But they slipped, with an ease that surprised Obinna, back into the familiar friendship they had shared before.

“What a beautiful house. I did not know people had real hardwood floors in Nigeria,” Eze said when he first walked into the living room. Obinna listened closely for any tone of condescension, any of that American smugness, but he did not hear it.

“You look so well,” Eze said, reaching out to playfully slap Obinna’s shoulder, and Obinna admired the confidence it took for Eze to be so open in his admiration. Eze ate and complimented the food. “To eat fried chicken that is actually fried chicken again. You know Americans smother it in flour and call it ‘fried chicken.’”

They laughed; it was the kind of thing the old Eze would say. Later, as they sat sipping beers and talking in the living room, Eze’s American accent dissolved and he sounded once again as Obinna remembered. Eze talked about his life in America, his long work hours at an insurance company, his relationship with his last girlfriend.

“Three years together and she simply refused to propose. I tried everything. I did everything. But she wouldn’t commit.”

“Was she Nigerian?”