The heat over Otse didn’t arrive. It was just there by mid-morning, the way it always was — sitting on the rooftops, on the pale dust of the yards, patient and uninterested in being noticed. The birds had gone quiet. The goats near the edge of the ward moved only toward shade. Even the sound of the main road, usually a steady presence in the background, had thinned to almost nothing, as if the heat had convinced the cars to take the day off too.
Oteng Modise was standing at the mirror above his dresser and he was not thinking about any of that.
He was twenty-six and he had a first date in an hour and the mirror was not giving him what he wanted. He’d tried three shirts. The navy one was on. Not because it was the right choice — after three shirts you lose the ability to judge. You just pick something and commit. The collar sat right. He had pressed it himself that morning, slowly, running the iron along the seams with the care of someone who does not own many shirts and treats the ones he has accordingly.
He picked up the cologne. Dark cedar, something warm underneath. He pressed the nozzle once. Let it settle. Pressed it again.
Set the bottle down.
His phone rang.
He picked it up without looking, expecting Gaone, who had been sending messages all morning about the date with the enthusiasm of someone who had nothing better to do. Gaone was genuinely invested in the romantic complications of other people — not out of malice, just out of the particular boredom of a man whose own life had settled into something predictable and who therefore followed other people’s unsettled lives with the attention of a devoted reader.
“Hello?”
A pause. Not network. The pause of someone deciding.
“Oteng?”
He knew the voice. He didn’t know how or from where, but the knowing was immediate — the same way you hear your own name from a stranger and understand at once that they mean you. The voice was his and wasn’t. Like a reflection: you and also reversed. The same pitch, the same small hesitation before a sentence that his mother used to call his thinking sound, except older. Slower. Like a version of himself that had learned to wait before speaking.
“Yes,” he said. “Who is this?”
“It is me. It is you. I am calling from the future.”
Oteng held the phone away and looked at it for three full seconds. Then he brought it back.
“Okay,” he said. “Who is this actually.”
“You are wearing the navy shirt,” the voice said. Patient, but the kind of patient that comes after something else has been used up. “You ate one mint and you are deciding whether to eat another.”
Oteng looked at the packet of mints on the dresser. His hand had been moving toward it when the phone rang.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
“Let’s say I believe you,” he said. “What do you want?”
“The cologne. You’ve already sprayed it twice. Don’t spray it again. Thato doesn’t do well with strong scents. Her eyes will water. She’ll cough the whole walk there and she’ll be irritated before you even sit down. Put the bottle down.”
Oteng looked at the bottle. He had been about to do exactly that.
“Okay,” he said. “What else?”
“Her ex. His name is Tumo. She lives near his family — she still sees him around, there are relatives involved. It’s not what you think. Don’t ask about it. Whatever curiosity you have, swallow it. The moment you ask about Tumo is the moment everything goes wrong.”
“They still talk?”
“Yes. But it’s nothing. I’m telling you it’s nothing. Just don’t ask.”
“If it’s nothing, why can’t I ask?”
“Because the asking is the problem. Not the answer. Trust me.”
Oteng thought about this. He didn’t fully accept it. He filed it somewhere.
“What else?”
A pause.
“The wallet.”
“What about the wallet?”
“Don’t forget it.”
His hand moved automatically to his back pocket. He’d changed after work. The wallet was still in the work jeans, which were on the chair in the corner under a shirt.
“And if I forget it,” Oteng said, “what happens?”
Long pause.
“What happens?” he pressed. “Does Thato pay?”
“No. She doesn’t pay.”
Something shifted in Oteng’s face. “So they take the food away?”
“Listen to me.” The voice had changed — something urgent in it now. “The food is a small thing. The problem is what comes after. Just put the wallet in your pocket before you leave. One thing. That’s all.”
“But wait.” He stood up. The logic was assembling itself and he couldn’t stop it. “If Thato wouldn’t cover a meal in an emergency — not because she’s expected to, but because the man she came with forgot his money — if she wouldn’t do that, what does that tell me?”
“It tells you nothing. Because you won’t be in that situation if you take the wallet.”
“Hypothetically—”
“Hypothetically is not the problem. The wallet is the problem. Take the wallet.”
“Fine. But — where were you when I was failing my exams? Where were you during all those years when I actually needed someone? You couldn’t call then? You couldn’t tell me what to study?”
The silence on the other end changed.
“Oteng,” the voice said finally, quietly. “Just take the wallet.”
The call ended.
He stood in the middle of the room. The corrugated iron roof made its warm sounds — the small ticks and groans of metal that has absorbed heat all day and is working through it. Outside, a dog was making a case for something. Nobody was responding.
He looked at the cologne bottle.
He picked it up and sprayed it three more times. The nozzle on a nearly empty bottle is unpredictable. More came out than he meant. He coughed, waved a hand through the cloud, set the bottle down.
He looked at the chair. The work jeans. The wallet inside them.
He put on his jacket and went out.