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a rougher exterior.
    “Sit down. What can I offer you?”
    Big Men and Big Women, Obinze would later learn, did not talk to people, they instead talked at people, and that evening Chief had talked and talked, pontificating about politics, while his guests crowed, “Exactly! You are correct, Chief! Thank you!” They were wearing the uniform of the Lagos youngish and wealthyish—leather slippers, jeans and open-neck tight shirts, all with familiar designer logos—but there was, in their manner, the plowing eagerness of men in need.
    After his guests left, Chief turned to Nneoma. “Do you know that song ‘No One Knows Tomorrow’?” Then he proceeded to sing the song with childish gusto.
No one knows tomorrow! To-mor-row! No one knowstomorrow!
Another generous splash of cognac in his glass. “That is the one principle that this country is based on. The major principle. No one knows tomorrow. Remember those big bankers during Abacha’s government? They thought they owned this country, and the next thing they knew, they were in prison. Look at that pauper who could not pay his rent before, then Babangida gave him an oil well, and now he has a private jet!” Chief spoke with a triumphant tone, mundane observations delivered as grand discoveries, while Nneoma listened and smiled and agreed. Her animation was exaggerated, as though a bigger smile and a quicker laugh, each ego-burnish shinier than the last, would ensure that Chief would help them. Obinze was amused by how obvious it seemed, how frank she was in her flirtations. But Chief merely gave them a case of red wine as a gift, and said vaguely to Obinze, “Come and see me next week.”
    Obinze visited Chief the next week and then the next; Nneoma told him to just keep hanging around until Chief did something for him. Chief’s steward always served fresh pepper soup, deeply flavorful pieces of fish in a broth that made Obinze’s nose run, cleared his head, and somehow unclogged the future and filled him with hope, so that he sat contentedly, listening to Chief and his guests. They fascinated him, the unsubtle cowering of the almost rich in the presence of the rich, and the rich in the presence of the very rich; to have money, it seemed, was to be consumed by money. Obinze felt repulsion and longing; he pitied them, but he also imagined being like them. One day, Chief drank more cognac than usual, and talked haphazardly about people stabbing you in the back and small boys growing tails and ungrateful fools suddenly thinking they were sharp. Obinze was not sure what exactly had happened, but somebody had upset Chief, a gap had opened, and as soon as they were alone, he said, “Chief, if there is something I can help you do, please tell me. You can depend on me.” His own words surprised him. He had stepped out of himself. He was high on pepper soup. This was what it meant to hustle. He was in Lagos and he had to hustle.
    Chief looked at him, a long, shrewd look. “We need more people like you in this country. People from good families, with good home training. You are a gentleman, I see it in your eyes. And your mother is a professor. It is not easy.”
    Obinze half smiled, to seem humble in the face of this odd praise.
    “You are hungry and honest, that is very rare in this country. Is that not so?” Chief asked.
    “Yes,” Obinze said, even though he was not sure whether he was agreeing about his having this quality or about the rarity of this quality. But it did not matter, because Chief sounded certain.
    “Everybody is hungry in this country, even the rich men are hungry, but nobody is honest.”
    Obinze nodded, and Chief gave him another long look, before silently turning back to his cognac. On his next visit, Chief was his usual garrulous self.
    “I was Babangida’s friend. I was Abacha’s friend. Now that the military has gone, Obasanjo is my friend,” he said. “Do you know why? Is it because I am stupid?”
    “Of course not, Chief,” Obinze