Bola stood up and undressed to his boxer shorts and inner vest. ‘I am groggy already,’ he said.

I cleared the bed and waved him into it. He fell asleep almost immediately. The morning was still fresh; my watch said ten o’clock. But I felt so weary, as if I had not slept for days. I got up and began to pace the room, stopping to stare at Bola whenever he shifted. His mouth was open. He snored. His brows were knitted, as if he was trying to make sense of all that had happened, even as he slept.

*

My friend, my friend. How I wish I could ease your pain somehow.

The first time we met, over a year ago, we were both freshmen. He was immediately behind me in the queue for accommodation. Somehow we discovered that we were both in Theatre Arts. And when he discovered that I was not from Lagos, he immediately adopted me.

‘We’ll stay in the same room. You need a Lagosian like me to show you what time it is, you know what ’am saying?’ he said in his best American accent.

And before two weeks were over, he had introduced me to his family. ‘My northern friend,’ he said. So trusting, so guileless, so loyal. I started spending my vacations with his family after the first semester.

‘What are you going back to the North for? Ain’t nothing happening there but goats and cows and deserts. Chill, man, chill.’

His mother and sisters joined in to persuade me. From then on I found I had a home from home, another family.

The doctor appeared suddenly at the door, his bag in his hand.

‘He won’t wake up soon,’ he said, staring at Bola. Then he blinked at me behind his thick spectacles and asked, ‘Were they close, the family?’

I pondered the question for a while, jolted by his use of the past tense. Perhaps he wanted a reason why Bola had not cried.

‘Very close, all of them.’

When he left, I pulled out a chair from the reading table and sat at the window, staring out. Brightly coloured birds flitted about in the frangipani bush behind the neighbouring house. They chirped merrily to each other. They were picking straw to build their nests. Their movements were jerky, sharp. They looked so vital, so frenzied, as if in a rush to burn out their short, avian lives, as if trying to get it all over with before the evil shape lurking in the darkness emerged fully.