Behind Closed Doors

Chapter Fourteen

Henry Johnson had really hoped and even prayed that the marriage he’d contracted with Fiona would help to cure him of the homosexual urges that always swept over him at the sight of a very attractive male. But he was wrong. Everything seemed to have gotten worse than before, for he found himself fantasizing about every good-looking guy he came across. So he channeled his energy towards the family business, a young man driven by anger and frustration.

His opium was his work, and he worked himself tirelessly to the bone, though he customarily made out the time to hang out with his wife and eat her food and ultimately have sex with her. His mother, Rosalie, had practically vacated the family house, now choosing to spend most of her time in a bungalow at Ikoyi which his father had purchased in 1986, and she was always commenting about the fact that he was a workaholic and a man dedicated to his wife. But she was blissfully unaware that all he did was just a ploy to hide the identity crisis he was dealing with.

Fiona was finally pregnant, and by March 2000, her pregnancy was already showing through, and Henry could not help but heave a sigh of relief when they put off sex till the birth of their baby so that she could rest because she’d now gotten clumsy. He was happy about it, but he was filled with real loneliness, and a hunger and longing that gnawed mercilessly at his soul, a roaring void that demanded to be filled with the touch and embrace of a male lover.

Fiona later gave birth to a set of fraternal male and female twins in July, throwing his mind off the tragedy of his life. When she returned from the hospital, Rosalie dropped by for a visit. As always, she was elegantly dressed in an understated yet very stunning black sheath dress, and her hair hung free around her shoulders. Her makeup was flawless, her French manicure had no chip in it, and he suspected that Fiona’s mother must feel much disheveled in her presence, for she was indeed magically stunning to look at. There was no two ways about it; Rosalie was one stunning woman.

Rosalie laughed and smiled as she was used to, and there were tears in her eyes as she looked at her grandchildren, but then she got all serious. ‘I am very happy that this has happened,’ she said as she bent forward to kiss the forehead of the sleeping male, her Chanel No 5 oozing off her. ‘Now, Henry, you must come with me. There is something I have to show you.’

They went up into the smaller living room upstairs and sat down on upholstered chairs, facing each other. Rosalie pulled out a folded magazine from her alligator tote bag and placed it on the table before Henry.

‘That is the next big thing that is about to happen in the movie industry, and you have to see this.’

Henry leaned forward to the thing on the table, picked it up, and then he looked at the headline. He could make nothing of it, at least not until he saw the picture the covered the entire glossy front page of the magazine.  Incredibly, like a dream come true, it was Phoenix, the beautiful Phoenix from the Drummer Club. The guy looked so stunning, that for a moment he hardly believed that what he was seeing was the truth, and then he saw the ring that the guy was wearing on his finger, and then Henry knew that this was no illusion. Then a small passage leaped out at him from the pages:

“In Nollywood, we thought that we’d seen it all, what with the likes of Liz Benson and her ilk taking the country by storm. But now, T. O. Phoenix is here and, with his new movie, Time seems to stand still. He is inarguably one of the most beautiful and most talented young actors in the industry.”

So Phoenix had gone and gotten his little ass into the big screens and had parlayed his talent for the whole world to see, Henry thought, and he felt a deep-seated sense of pride and a pang of longing for the guy engulf him.

He looked up at his mother, frowning. ‘I see we’ve gotten a new big thing out in the industry, but what has that got to do with us?’ he asked.

‘Everything!’ Rosalie exclaimed. ‘This guy has the attention of the whole world now and we must see to make some money out of this. We can get into Ethnicity Studios and strike up a deal with them about being the ones responsible for the financing of every new movie he’ll be appearing in. We will help to get him the publicity he needs, we’ll be the ones to ok whatever scripts he’ll be doing for them, and then there is the hefty six-figure salary that he cannot possibly resist.’

‘And then what?’

‘It is very simple, my darling! Then we’ll sit back and enjoy the money he’s bound to make for us, smiling our way to the bank with our cheques all week.’

‘Aw, Jesus.’ Henry groaned and then stood up to prowl around the room with his hands jabbed into his pockets. ‘What you seem to be insinuating is the fact that we’ll own the guy and be controlling everything he does. That is ridiculous.’

‘No it’s not ridiculous, my boy. I spoke to Anthony St. Claire and the man told me that he had already set a team of very aggressive writers at work, all of them spinning classic tales the guy must play next year. There are other studios out there, and they’ll all want a piece of the guy, and it’ll be a battle now that the young man knows his true worth. He’ll go to the highest bidder, and the white man had told me already that he doesn’t wish to invest so heavily in the work of the guy, that he’s got so many other Talents out there lined up for his attention and all bitching with jealousy that their spot has been taken over by the unknown guy. I told him not to worry, that I intent to put my own money into the young man so that should anything happen with him, then it’ll be my money on the line, not his. We will bankroll some of these movies, have this Phoenix star in them, and then we will make money.’

Henry was still totally bewildered. He threw up his hands and demanded, ‘Then why are you telling me this?’

Rosalie shook her head as if she was talking to a developmentally retarded child. ‘It’s because I want you to handle him, that’s why. Talent is like dynamite which you can love and nurture with love and the greatest care ever, but when it blows, it’ll be right in your face. You’re young and I’m old, so when it blows, I want you to be the one to take the fall, not me. Besides, I am a beauty queen. I should not have some sort of scandal touch my face. I will leave all the fighting to you young blood.’

‘You’re not old, mother.’ Henry meant it totally because he’d never seen another woman her age who could contrive to look so stunning and ageless. She was a hard and very disciplined woman, not only with those around her, but also with herself. In a perverse way he was very proud of her.

Rosalie flashed a dazzling smile. ‘So you promise to go and see the guy in action and then later make the choice?’

Henry could never refuse her anything, so he invariably agreed. And when the movie was premiered at the Silverbird Cinema, he was there with his mother to see it; and darn if he did not gape at the size of the crowd that filled the entire place to the brim. There were the sugar daddies with their sugar daughters; there were the big campus babes from UNILAG and LASU; there were the playboys and the other rich players of Lagos society. Darn if they didn’t call out and cry out the guy’s name as Phoenix climbed out of the sleek Lexus that had brought him there. And then as the movie played, it was as if the guy was feeding the screens with fire and life, his magic to the world.

Henry felt all these emotions and more. He felt the feral hunger of a starving man, a passion that seemed to defy all rational explanation. His blood was stirred once again at the sight of that guy, and right then he forgot that he was married, he forgot that the society frowned severely on the kind of thoughts he had for Phoenix－ his entire being desired the guy anew. And he knew that he must have him, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

After that night it was Phoenix everywhere; the media seemed to derive some kind of mad joy from peddling his face to the public. And what made the fact more painful was that there was no deliberate ploy involved to get his face out there to the world; the media and the online people just plain loved the guy’s face, plus the fact that the word-of-mouth marketing they were doing on his behalf was not hurting him in any way.

Henry wanted the guy very badly, so he gave Rosalie the ok to go and pursue the movie business with Phoenix because he knew that once he had the guy in his pocket it would mean that the guy was in his arms too. That was the truth that he hid from his mother; that he wanted to have the actor’s delectable body wrapped around his forever.

It was now a waiting game; one that Henry knew how to play very well.