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my country odd numbers bring bad luck, and that is one thing I had already had enough of.
    A man answered the call. He was angry.
    “Who is this? It’s bloody six in the morning.”
    “Is this Mister Andrew O’Rourke?”
    “Yeah. Who are you?”
    “Can I come to see you, Mister?”
    “Who the hell is this?”
    “We met on the beach in Nigeria. I remember you very well, Mister O’Rourke. I am in England now. Can I come to see you and Sarah? I do not have anywhere else to go.”
    There was silence on the other end of the line. Then the man coughed, and started to laugh.
    “This is a windup, right? Who is this? I’m warning you, I get nutters like you on my case all the time. Leave me alone, or you won’t get away with it. My paper always prosecutes. They’ll have this call traced and find out who you are and have you arrested. You wouldn’t be the first.”
    “You don’t believe it is me?”
    “Just leave me alone. Understand? I don’t want to hear about it. All that stuff happened a long time ago and it wasn’t my fault.”
    “I will come to your house. That way you will believe it is me.”
    “No.”
    “I do not know anyone else in this country, Mister O’Rourke. I am sorry. I am just telling you, so that you can be ready.”
    The man did not sound angry anymore. He made a small sound, like a child when it is nervous about what will happen. I hung up the phone and turned around to the other girls. My heart was pounding so fast, I thought I would vomit right there on the linoleum floor. The other girls were staring at me, nervous and expectant.
    Well?
said the girl in the purple dress.
    Hmm? I said.
    De
taxi,
darlin! What is happenin about de taxi?
    Oh yes, the taxi. The taxi man said a cab will pick us up in ten minutes. He said we are to wait outside.
    The girl in the purple dress, she smiled.
    “Mi name is Yevette. From Jamaica, zeen. You
useful,
darlin. What dey call yu?”
    “My name is Little Bee.”
    “What kinda name yu call dat?”
    “It is my name.”
    “What kind of place yu come from, dey go roun callin little gals de names of insects?”
    “Nigeria.”
    Yevette laughed. It was a big laugh, like the way the chief baddy laughs in the pirate films.
WU-ha-ha-ha-ha!
It made the telephone receiver rattle in its cradle.
Nye-JIRRYA!
said Yevette. Then she turned round to the others, the girl in the sari and the girl with the documents.
Come wid us, gals,
she said.
We de United Nations, see it, an today we is all followin Nye-JIRRYA. WU-ha-ha-ha-ha!
    Yevette was still laughing when the four of us girls walked out past the security desk, toward the door. The detention officer looked up from his newspaper when we went by. The topless girl was gone now—the officer had turned the page. I looked down at his newspaper. The headline on the new page said ASYLUM SEEKERS EATING OUR SWANS. I looked back at the detention officer, but he would not look up at me. While I looked, he moved his arm over the page to cover the headline. He made it look like he needed to scratch his elbow. Or maybe he really
did
need to scratch his elbow. I realized I knew nothing about men apart from the fear. A uniform that is too big for you, a desk that is too small for you, an eight-hour shift that is too long for you, and suddenly here comes a girl with three kilos of documents and no motivation, another one with jelly-green eyes and a yellow sari who is so beautiful you cannot look at her for too long in case your eyeballs go
ploof,
a third girl from Nigeria who is named after a honeybee, and a noisy woman from Jamaica who laughs like the pirate Bluebeard. Perhaps this is exactly the type of circumstance that makes a man’s elbow itch.
    I turned to look back at the detention officer just before we went out through the double doors. He was watching us leave. He looked very small and lonely there, with his thin little wrists, under the fluorescent lights. The light made his skin look green, the color of a baby caterpillar