With all the goodness and apparent certainty in the relationship it became a matter of shock when Dase travelled to see her parents one weekend and returned after two weeks rather than three days as earlier indicated. On her return she sang a new and for all intents and purposes a riotous song. 

“Sweetheart, I know you missed me. I missed you more – I believe,” she said in a casual manner. “I spent all the time with my parents and, well, the unthinkable happened.” 

“Well?” Eto enquired in a relaxed tone.

“A young man appeared from somewhere, well, I knew him before as a neighbor. He came and asked for my hand in marriage.” Eto said nothing. “One of the things I hate most about you. Why would you clamp down when you are expected to talk or shout?”

“What should I say? It appears you were swept off your feet in an instant.”

“I doubt but I did feel like a straw in a swift river.”

“Wow! I guess you confronted a tall, handsome, and rich young man.”

“Are those the supreme qualities every spinster wants in a man?”

“What do you think?”

“May be some girls but some girls are taller than such qualities.” 

“Which of the ‘some group’ do you belong?”

“I belong to the group of realists.” Eto stood and walked to the wine cabinet and fixed a high ball for himself. When he returned and sat to drink Dase shook her head.

“Strange.”

“We live in a strange world.”

“I mean, how would you fix a drink for yourself when I should have one before you?”

“Maybe the axe about to fall has left me confounded.”

“Ahh, no, sweet heart, nothing to worry.” Silence took hold which forced Dase to hum a tune both of them loved to sing together. Eto continued to sip from the glass and to stare at space.

“Say something, will you? Well, no one can deny his height, his sculpted face, the extent of his inherited wealth but you are in a class of your own. You are more than the glitter and the gold.”

“The marines function in faraway United States.”

“I take exception to what you have just said. If I have derailed, you caused it, well, your negative thinking. You enjoyed spending productive time to conjure scenarios about the possibility of a break up. I am sure you will be happy about this development.” Eto kept quiet and continued to sip the drink to Dase’s annoyance. 

“What do you have to say?” Dase asked. 

“The blame game comes alive and sits at the high table like a hungry cat. I accept the blame – and the pain.”

“Thank you for being realistic.”

“Come, you want to fly a kite or you talk reality?”

“You are dear to me. I cannot afford to play any prank with you.” Eto kept quiet and looked blank. “You have nothing to say?”

“Nothing. May be few questions.”

“Ask.”

“Are we in a virtual or in a real world?”

“I cannot joke with you.”

“Sudden, sharp, brash. I think you should have introduced something before the bombshell.”

“Because I have little time and you often dislike persons who beat the sides of the drum.”

“You dropped in to release an arrow, a pernicious arrow with no space for me to think.”

“I am sorry about this.” 

“Let us assume we are before reality, will you from today wake on a bed and see a man other than me by you?”

“We are some weeks away from intimacy.”

“But it will happen.”

“Sweetheart, please try to make this easier for me. This has to do with my family. I have to do what they want.”

“You said several times no one can force you to do anything against your beliefs and conscience.”

“Sweetheart, you also said family takes precedence in our lives. In this wicked and insensitive world family becomes the sole reality.”

“Eto for life.”

“You want to mock me. I wrote the poem from the deepest of emotions and from the bottom of my heart.”

“While this tall, handsome, and rich guy sat at the top of your heart and bid his time.”

“I resent mockery.”

“Regard it as a joke for your story sounds stranger than fiction.”

“We face something more than creative non-fiction. Look out of the window.” Eto walked to the window, pushed the blinds, and stared at a sleek SUV which sat unperturbed outside his house. A young man stood by it and appeared to be nervous as he paced and looked at his house. “The guy goes by the name Lemmy.”

“Tall, handsome – a girl’s dream. The SUV confirms the third attribute – and attraction. Baby, those three account for your decision?”

“No.”

“I face lean times at present. Would it be your reason?”

“No,” she screamed. “I ate the kernel when your economy performed at high noon. I should share in the husk today.”

“But you have decided to run like a frightened cat. Why?”

“I have no explanation.”

“Search for justification.”

“I have none. One may want to describe it as a case of new passion crowding out the old.”

“Okay. Fine. Can you continue to regard Laura as insane? Can you use the words irrational and childish on her?” Dase looked away and moved to the window to look out maybe to be sure of her safety. 

“I hate what you have said and what you imply.”

“You have left certainty for uncertainty.”

“You want to hurt me. I reject it.”

“Someone has turned calabash against you in the village.”

“You said you disbelieve anything unscientific.”

“You have to think up something which can convince a twelve-year old of your decision. If you have none, it means you lied to me all along.”

“I hate lies.”

“You have lied all along. Yes, lies in bold scripts. Lies in Ariel black forty-point size. Bare faced, shameless lies fit for a street girl.”

“What! For seven years you gave me no idea you have the capacity for such expressions.”

“No thanks to you.” Eto paused and paced. He let go his guard and he hated it. “No intimacy to date yet you are about to be married to him?” Dase said nothing. “Liar extraordinary! Dase, I feel bad about me.”

“Why?”

“A girl deceived me for this long? One cannot call such a thing love. Insanity should be the better word.”

“I agree and I disagree. Friedrich Nietzsche confessed to the madness in the emotion called love. I quote him, ‘There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.’  My dear, you have company. Other persons have experienced the madness.”

“The power of love operates outside the capacity of her victims.” 

“I am sorry.”

“Terrible! All the assurances. All the promises.  All the oaths. Dear girl, you have related with an adult for seven years. How can someone say the same thing for seven years and in seven minutes turn around to say something different? Water with two tastes cannot flow from the same stream.”  

“You cannot get it.”

“Can I get anything? I am dumb and there lies my anger.”

“I wish you would understand.”

“I have no capacity to understand and I feel bad about my naiveté.”

“You are hard on you and I understand.” 

“You have no reason to understand because you have a divine right to hurt.”

“It has been difficult with me.” She opened the door and blew a kiss at the young man outside and closed the door.

“Dase, what accounts for this? What has been done or not done?”  

“Oh no. You called me by my name. Sweetheart, I may be outside your direct grasp three sixty-five days a year as before but I will be available. Anytime you want me in whatever capacity, I am a telephone call away.”

“You have ignored my question. If I am deficient somewhere let me know to be sure another Miss Fairweather stays away from my doorstep.”

“I resent such appellation. I demonstrated absolute devotion to you in thick and in thin.”

“I can see.  My sister, there may be a girl out there who has some humanity in her and sees me as a human being rather than a source of funds or a tool to be used and dumped. You have been my guide despite your age. Tell me where my feet should avoid hereafter. Regard it as a debt and a duty.”

“I only worry how you will cope.”

“None of your business.”

“I regard it as my business.”

“Tell such story to the marines. The human spirit continues to stand taller than the worst of human nature.”

“I can read it to mean my exit will be like any other because you are adjustable.”

“You can think the way it pleases you and the way it meets your need.”

“I put this to you – I meant little to you although you made me believe I meant the world to you.” 

“I should thrust a knife through my guts to prove what you mean to me?”

“No but I expected a little bit of extra emotion. I looked forward to a little resistance. Eto, can I say I took the right decision?” She paced. “I am unable to determine what to believe. If I can walk out on you anything in this world should be possible.”

“We live in a world of infinite possibilities.”

“I guess you did look for a way out and you have it on a platter of gold.” She paced and looked through the window. Her new beau continued to shift from one leg to the other as his patience wore thin. “Eto, I should go?”

“A leading question I think. Whatever you do will be your decision. As I told you all the time, ninety-nine per cent of your decisions are right.”

“I appreciate your appreciation.”

“Say, this one you claim to know little about this young man suppose the tide of fortune looks west?”

“Unlikely. He has an impeccable pedigree which can be traced to over a century.”

“Which explains your headlong dive.”

“In any case I am certain I can fall back on you. I remain your baby.”

“Consider such thought an avoidable daydream.”

“But you have stood by me through the worst times. If I have offered to react to your requests whenever they come you should do same.”

“If a situation arises which requires your assistance I will prefer to lose everything than accept your help.”

“What? Show more accommodation sweetheart.”

“You need to focus everything in one man the way you did in my case.”

“I will. But I pledge to continue to be of use if you need me.”

“I reject everything you have to offer. I say this without bitterness.”

“Take any position you want but make no attempt to forget me.” 

“Mention or show one thing I can use to remember your tenure in my life.” Dase stood silent for a moment, shrugged, and sighed. “You take, give nothing. Can you point to a handkerchief from you in seven years? Or one bottle of soda on my birthday? I advise a change of habit because this will be permanent. Give something material and I assure you people cherish genuine gifts.”

“I think I should leave. Thanks for everything and sorry about my shortcomings. Unintentional.”

“Go in peace and let God Almighty bless your marriage, your womb, your professional engagements, and your entire future.” 

“Amen.” 

When she handed the spare keys of the house to Eto he said “Wow!” He looked at the bunch and into her face. He read nothing for the face had nothing written on it.

“For real, I see,” he said and shrugged. “No injury time?” Dase kept quiet. “Irreversible I guess?” 

Dase nodded and walked to the door surprised because she felt blank and tears avoided her guts. How would her heart have hardened in such a short time? She wondered whether the feelings she nursed for Eto constituted love.

Eto felt no tears either as their time together dwindled. In recent years he wept in the privacy of his bedroom whenever emotion wrought by the demands of the position he held in the office took the better of him. 

“Just like, well,” Eto said in a casual tone. “Dase, the relationship from your angle all these years had to do with money, right?”

“I resent such statement. Seven years without a hug from another man! Did you think before you uttered those words?  If what I experienced bore a name other than love, I need to go back to the school of love if one exists.”

“You cannot stroll out of the life of someone you claim to love the way breeze does. Baby, love grows cold as every adult with experience in the school for lovers can attest. But for genuine love to evaporate like steam into cold air taxes imagination and credulity.  I am baffled as to what happened in two weeks. Just two weeks!” 

“You should allow us to talk about you. How will you cope?”

“How will we cope rather? I met you when you turned nineteen. I took over and ran your life but you had a life before nineteen. You will do well without me. You met me as an adult in a high office. I lived without you and I will live without you. Nature has in-built buffers and devices to facilitate retooling in every human being reason suicides are daft creatures. Suicide and the younger sister depression signal personal failure and amount to a vote of no-confidence in the omnipotent Creator.”

“Someone will take my place.”

“As sure as there will be daybreak after this most unwelcome night by day. We must move on. And please, I hold no grudges more so I expected it will happen.”

“How?”

“The signs were legion. For instance, do you have a handkerchief in this house where you hold the spare keys?”

Dase let her eyes rove on the tiled floor as if something such as the answer to the puzzle of her coldness towards Eto sat somewhere. She attempted to embrace him but he smiled and waved her away. She opened the door, stepped outside but turned back.

“I forgot. What about the furniture in the apartment you hired for me? Dase asked.

“They are yours.”

“I have no need for them. Such fine furniture, fittings, and equipment.”

“Keep them. Another girl less endowed may need them.”

“If you insist. I will have no need for them.”

“I want to hope.” Eto regretted the phrase after it left his mouth for it meant Dase may have the need to return to the real world of regular spinsters. Good enough she made no comment although her face held a puzzle.

In seven years they attempted to break up but each time something happened to her to make separation unrealistic. Eto hated being seen as Mr. Fallback but held his nose and continued. He made up his mind the departure of Dase this time will be final because she flaunted a man before him.

“I claim the assurance I am used to.”

“As you said I understand nothing.”

“You will continue to be my fall back, well, on things other than money.”

“Only someone as green as ivy would believe life runs like a river. But I wish you well.”

“Somehow I feel butterflies in my stomach. For seven years you were the only tree I placed my back on, the sole shade, and the one source of nourishment.”

“Your family will be there for you although it appears they are dispensable.”

“You know better but Lady Luck will be kind.”

Dase stepped out and allowed her body to be soaked by the warm sunrays. She saw the brightness as a sign of good luck although her heart appeared to block out attempt by the sunrays to touch it. With a warm body but a cold heart she strolled to the SUV of her new fiancé and refused to look back. 

Eto listened to the door of his residence but it closed itself without a sound. He wondered whether life and life’s processes end in such manner. A turbulent relationship of seven years ended with less than a whimper. After he sucked air from the window he sat on the settee with his full wait. The chair took the weight and enabled him close his eyes and go blank. He expected himself to cry but tears appeared to have gone on leave. 

Breeze enveloped him with peace along with the feeling of being released from prison. For years he considered himself a prisoner without a reason for his inability to set himself free. Without effort freedom flowed in like a non-violent current to energize and lift him few centimeters above the ground. But he wondered whether he would have preferred the prison given a choice.

During one of the numerous moments of helplessness and indecision in the course of the relationship, Eto thought up explanations for his impotence with respect to ability to break up with no backward glance. The one which appealed to him most referred him to the concept of karma. In another life he must have ill-treated a woman whether Dase or another. Dase positioned him to pay for such past action. Peace took an exalted seat in his being because he felt his relationship with Dase has made him pay for his past sins whatever they were.

He recalled the dozens of tense moments in their relationship and felt calm because they were gone. Dase often sent save our soul messages when her pots and pantry yawned or mighty malarial parasites played football match in her veins. On such occasions Eto used to call friends and family in desperation to raise money and transfer to her. Some of those occasions his kitchen would be empty, gasoline in his car would have fallen below reserve, and malaria parasites engaged in a party inside his arteries and veins. What a difference an hour or two can make in the life of a human being?! When he said a prayer for peace and general goodness for Dase he slept off on the couch.