It is raining cats and dogs in hustler-land

As it turned out, my first cousin Safari became a statistic in this season of terrible floods in the country – one of 72 people marked ‘missing’ (better than being marked ‘dead.’).

And because time and tide wait for no man, I did not even have the time to properly mourn my beloved hustling, missing cuzo, even as the news that he had been swept away in the floods threw the wider family into a tail-spin.

“We bury our mother, then our brother drowns, Safari?” his half-sister moaned.

“We don’t know that for sure, sis,” I said, trying to keep her hopeful. “They haven’t found his … Mazda.” (I had been about to say ‘his body’ but I stopped myself).

But it wasn’t his car anymore. It belonged to the Ports wheeler-dealer, Mr Mutua.

“I am very sorry to hear about Safari,” Mark Mutua had called me the day after the accident, myself having been air-lifted to Nairobi by Medi-Vac from my flooded crib to higher land refuge that cold Tuesday evening, a trip I barely remembered.
“But hun-till we recover the motor vehicle, in n-good condition, hi need haf the money back…”

For a second, I was tempted to tell Mutua the duffel bag with the Sh1 million had been swept away. But now the guilt of having saved the money bag at the back instead of helping my cousin (I had really believed he would get out of the car too in one piece) was eating away at my soul, with the scene re-playing itself in my dreams at night.

This was a chance to show myself I had not completely sold my soul to Mammon.

“Where should I drop off the half milli, Mr Mutua?”

“Hi I’m still in Mombasa,” he said. “Meet my wife at Mayas Hinn and give hit to her.”

Which is what I did – Mrs Mutua being one of those round jovial people, in her mid-50s, with the glowing skin that comes with good eating and living.

The remaining half a million went to Mr Li, owner of the Gang Dong Mall, who I met at Galleria Mall.

“I likey to see how my competition it is doing,” he said, waving vague chopsticks in the air to circumference the vogue mall, a far more elegant space than his nuts-and-bolts operation, but which had incredibly affordable goods.

After I had given my tale of woe about why I now only had half the dough for my investment in ‘Safara Mascara,’ the mall mandarin shook his head sorrowfully.

“I likey you Mai-Korr,” he said. “But it is either a million shilling or nothing, met!”

“Please Mr Li,” I begged. “It was an Act of God that took that Mazda. Please?”

Picking up the duffel bag reluctantly, the multi-millionaire sighed: “Rook,” he said. “I give you until Friday, May 31st, cross of business, to get the other 500 thousand. Best deal!” Where on earth was I going to get 500K in three weeks?

What an insane week it has been, I thought on Friday evening, as I prepared to go for the ‘Top 40 Under 40 Female Entrepreneurs’ Recognition Awards (FEAR 40),’ taking place at the Delta on Waiyaki Way.

No, I hadn’t had a sex change and become ‘Michela’  in two days!

I was going as the guest of one Desiree Simaloi, my ex-colleague (head of marketing) in the crappy manure company we’d both worked for. Long before I got laid off last year, Simaloi had seen the light during Covid-19 when she accidentally entered digital marketing, saw its potential, and quit to start ‘Desiree Digital Simulations’ PR firm.

Talking up her brand on a TV show she run, she was in three short years already a nominee for FEAR 40.

“And still only in her late-30s,” I thought, admiringly and enviously, of a colleague I had always only flirted with in the office, but stayed ‘FB’ friends with.

So that her asking me to be her ‘male escort’ to these awards, first on FB, then through WhatsApp call, had come as a surprise.

“So no man will have you, Sweet Simaloi?” I teased, as I slipped next to her reserved table at the Delta Hotel in Westlands, in a room full of her fellow nominees, a 200-strong throng, and entertainment by a musician called Tree.

“Ha ha,” she laughed, and she still looked good, with those deep eyes, long nose and jaw, her lithe figure in a red dress that showed small cleavage and high heels.

Desiree Simaloi was knocking back the Amarulas, and her eyes were a bit glazed.

“Isn’t it too early to celebrate?” I teased.

“To be honest, Mike” she replied. “I am a nervous wreck. I need this win, badly.”

That, I could sympathise with – except that in her finalist category with four other women – Simaloi didn’t win. And the open devastation showed on her handsome face.

“Let’s go celebrate,” I said, although I hadn’t managed to have more than the hot starter soup. Thinking of where to get 500K in 20 days is bad for the appetite, let me tell you, Maina!

That night at a Westie bar popular with expats, and with Simaloi picking the bill, we took ‘drowning our sorrow’ metaphor to a whole new level, knocking back tons of tots of all sorts of shots like hot sods.

At about 6am on Saturday, Desiree slurred. “I took the tab, you get the AirBnB.”

We caught an App Cab to my place, Lean Wood Apartments somewhere in Waithaka, canoodling in the back seat with Desiree, my phone charging in front with some bad tempered driver called Casper Ndugo.

“I need to call that Casper,” I gasped, as we got into my flat (couldn’t afford AirBnB, ironic, when I had owned one in January, if you remember the story).

“You need to grasp her,” Simaloi said, “take care of the desire of Desiree, nah io Machuma.”

“Is that one of your ads?”

And the next thing, clothes were getting ripped off, people were naked in bed doing ‘bad manners,’ then passed out cold in the aftermath of heated passions.

“Daddy is with a dead woman in the bed,” Neo’s voice was faraway in my dream.

I woke up with those flashing lights of hangover arousals. My eyes adjusted to light. Was that Laura, Neo’s mother, standing at the bedroom door or a dream?

Then the hangover hallucination spoke: “I heard you lost your cousin in a flood and decided to surprise you at home with Neo to commiserate, Safari…”

Now I was wide awake, as Laura spoke on, bitterly: “But I see you have good shoulders to cry on. Don’t bother to try and contact me or see my son, Neo. Otherwise, I will go to court and report that you cavort with prostitutes in your flat, not conducive for a six-year-old boy’s upbringing. Goodbye forever, Mike!”

“She’s not a slut,” I whispered.

Long after Desiree Simaloi had left after lunch with a “see you soon” she didn’t mean, as I watched TV blindly, there came a WhatsApp from Laura, Neo’s mum.

It was a very clear snap of a naked me, and nude Desiree passed out beside me.

I pictured it on the front page of the tabloid ‘My City,’ the way they had of a governor Obadiah Panyarut with a side-chick this week.

“She’s still a hoe,” Laura had typed. “Get a child with her. Coz you’ll never see Neo.”
I looked at the photo again.

Neo had been right – in her passed out state, on camera, Simaloi did look dead.

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