Her husband, Tobechukwu Eze, had stopped meeting her eyes when she came home after midnight. Tobi, as everyone called him, had once been a meticulous accountant who ironed his own shirts and believed a correct ledger was a kind of moral language. Now he spent whole mornings staring at a dead laptop, saying he was looking for consulting work while the telephone remained silent. Nkiru still loved him, but love had begun to feel like carrying a heavy object without knowing whether the person on the other side was helping. She would never have explained that to anyone at Meridian, least of all a stranger eating pepper soup alone.
The trouble began when Ronke Balogun swept through the entrance with three friends and the expectation that the entire building would rearrange itself around her. She was the daughter of Kunle Balogun, the finance executive whose name appeared on the Akinwale Group's annual reports, and she knew how people treated her father. Her expensive watch caught the light each time she gestured, and she spoke to the hostess with an exaggerated patience that made the young woman visibly uneasy. Ronke had asked for a table near the window, then decided table twelve suited the photographs she wanted to take. The elderly man was already eating there when she reached it.
"Excuse me," Ronke said, without lowering her voice. "Who seated him there?"
"I did, ma'am," Nkiru replied. "The table was available when he arrived."
Ronke looked from the soup to the man's sandals, then toward the adjoining tables where two businessmen had stopped speaking. "We are discussing business. Move him somewhere else."
"I'm sorry, but he arrived before you requested the space. I can arrange another table with a very good view."
"Do you know how much we're spending here tonight?"
The old gentleman placed his spoon down carefully, making sure it would not splash the white cloth. "Young lady, it is all right," he told Nkiru. "I can move if that makes your work easier."
"No, sir," she answered. "You've ordered, and you've done nothing wrong. You have every right to finish your meal here."
There was no edge in her voice, and that seemed to irritate Ronke more than open defiance would have done. The restaurant had a way of rewarding the loudest guest, the one most willing to promise bad publicity or expensive trouble. Ronke expected the ordinary pattern: the waitress would apologize, the older man would be moved, and the matter would be forgotten before dessert. Instead, Nkiru remained beside table twelve with a calmness that was not a challenge until Ronke decided to make it one. People began turning toward them, their forks paused above plates.
"Interesting," Ronke said. "So now waitresses give lectures on rights?"
"I am asking that we treat the gentleman as a guest, ma'am. That is all."
"Places like this need standards. Everybody shouldn't walk in because they can afford one bowl of soup."
"Our standards include how we speak to other guests," Nkiru replied. "I can help you find another table, but I cannot ask him to leave because of how he is dressed."