There is a lady who is sitting on gold. Our gold. She’s sitting on our gold because she’s the boss-lady. Her name is on the door. She signs things. She approves things. She gives things the nod. She gives greenlights and go-aheads. She appends signatures. She sits at the head of the table and people turn to her for direction. The CEO listens to her opinion because she knows her shit. She has known her shit for a very long time now. She knows her shit because she has made her bones; climbed up to that office because of working smart, playing politics, going for evening classes, having late nights, kissing the asses that need to be kissed, waking up early to catch the worm and staring down at men who try to stand between her and the door. It’s not been easy but now she’s there and she’s has her name on the darned door, now she signs things. Some people say she got there because of opening her legs to the right people. She doesn’t care; she sleeps eight hours.
She has what we want. And we want business. Her business. It’s decent business.
By the way, nobody calls it business anymore. I once ran into this guy, one of those guys you never remember how you came to know, (or even know their names but you keep running into them and you have those very polite conversations that go absolutely nowhere. This time I ran into him at Kiza, in the loo. I’m standing at the urinal holding my member and he’s standing in the next one holding his, and I say, “Chief, good to see you, been a while,” and he responds, “Long time, you have potead! How are things?” I say things are fantastic (I’d had four doubles, so…) how are you, what are you doing nowadays? And he says, “Oh, same same, just sharas.” Now I didn’t know what “sharas” was. Never heard it before. It sounded like maybe he was a “middleman.” Or a broker of something intangible. Or a fixer. You never know how men make their money in this city and sometimes it’s good if you don’t because one day cops from Special Crimes Unit might come to your office and ask you, “Do you really expect us believe that all this time you knew him you didn’t know he was into sharas?”
It’s only much later that I heard that word again and I was told that sharas is actually “biashara.” Sharas is what these cool Nairobi middle-class urbanites who are between jobs, or who are doing businesses that they never say call biashara. Sharas.
Anyway, so boss lady has the sharas (roll eyes) we need but somehow things have not been aligning. The stars are asunder. Our ducks refuse to stand in line. Which is odd because Ben had done a genius presentation. They had loved it. All of them. He had came back to the office and said to me, “I think I nailed it.” I said, Yeah? He said, “Yeah, I think it’s a wrap.” Only it’s never a wrap until it’s a wrap. It wasn’t wrapped the following week, or the next month or the next.
The boss lady hadn’t given it the nod. So everything stood still. We pulled down our sails, hauled out old wooden boxes and sat on them for a game of chess. And we waited. Half the business in this city is about waiting. You sit and you wait and you send a polite email reminder. And then you wait some more.
One day Ben says, “We have to take this lady out somewhere and talk to her. And you are coming for this one. All hands on deck.” I say Sure. Trick is not to take her to a posh place because it will look too formal, staged and needy. It can’t be dinner either because we will have to eat dessert and maybe pretend that we know about wine. It can’t be a hotel bar because most are bland and have politicians in oversized suits lurking about with undersized grins.
It has to be a place with music she will love and decent food menu. A place she could remove her boss lady jacket and let loose. I asked how old she was and Ben had no idea, maybe early 30’s? Brew Bistro Westlands? Nope. Can get very cold since it’s a rooftop. Brew Bistro Ngong Road? Pretentious. Mercury ABC? Too far from her office. Level 8 Best Western? Too squeezed, feels like drinking in a spaceship. Their rooftop deck? Good but cold at this time of the year. You don’t want the client getting a runny nose. Sankara’s Rooftop? Cold. Plus they have an entrance charge in 2016. Havana? Kitschy. Under the Radar? Very cold. Sierra Lounge. Could do, could do. Mambo Italia? Good but far from her office. So we settled on Explorer because on a Thursday they have that old New Jack Swing thing going, which means if she is in her early 30’s she might get nostalgic. And who doesn’t love nostalgia? Plus the whiskies that they sell by the bottle are well priced. We asked her to leave her car at home and we sent her an Uber.
By the way, this story is centered around one question: What do you do when a client falls?
She shows up looking lovely in black. She’s just back from her leave. She had spent a few weeks in Abu Dhabi, smoking shisha, riding the sand in the desert safari and holding those falcons with rheumy eyes. She looks refreshed and well rested. Her skin glows. She had gone home and freshened up so she smells like wild pollen. We are introduced. Nice to meet you. We crack open a bottle of whisky. Do you need a mixer with that? Right. Ice it is. Only pansies mix whisky with soda. Haha. By the way, how do you like the dry-fry onion chicken? It’s fantastic, isn’t it? Dubai has never filled any space in any of my emotions, how did you find it? Oh really? Haha. The music is great. The conversation is good. We don’t run out of ice. She drinks her water diligently. The ducks are slowly getting in line.
We are about to cross the rubicon and it’s delicate. We have to make it very casual and friendly; she has to be comfortable without feeling that we are kissing major ass. She knows we are kissing her ass, yes, but it can’t be too overt. So we keep her happy without being in her face. I let Ben lead because he’s a great salesman, a master storyteller and an astute charmer. He has wild stories that come from dust. He has killer one liners that cut like a zanbato. He is a schmooze. This is his show and I am prop, I stand in the shadow. He once took me for a pitch and a client asked me what I thought of their TV ad and I said the truth: it was lousy. Later Ben dressed me down. “You should never tell the client that kind of truth!” he has said. So yes, I have a big problem of blurting out what is in my head and this is not the night for me to say the wrong thing. No, ma’am.
The next stage is when to talk business; too soon and she might feel rushed. Too late and she might make promises that she won’t quite remember the next morning because we gave her too much booze. It’s a high wire act and I observe Ben navigate this labyrinth, dying to see when and how he will break into that conversation . Thankfully this problem is taken away from us when she says that she liked the idea and that she will work on it the following week. Just like that. We talk money. Rather, Ben talks money. There is a bit of haggling between them, nothing that can cause a hernia, then finally they agree. I want to reach across the table and hug her but Ben won’t approve. We clink glasses.
It’s headed to 11pm, the idea to take it elsewhere is floated because the angels are singing. What is the biggest thing on Thursday night? I don’t know, but I hear Pitch and Butch at K1 is One Love Night. Reggae night. Personally I don’t care for reggae music, dancehall yes, but not reggae. She says it’s cool, she doesn’t mind checking it out. By the way, if she had said she wanted to go to a club called Nyokabi Gardens in Nyeri we would have gladly driven her there at midnight. There is nothing we weren’t ready to do to make her happy that night. Nothing at all. If she wanted us to come in matching white trousers we would have thrown in white hats for good measure.
Pitch and Butch is sardine packed. We don’t get a table, so we huddle at the bar and fetch drinks. When you stand in that throng, you begin to wonder when reggae became mainstream. Some young looking deejay from the Dohty Family is killing it on stage. As the night wears on I see Wahome, Comms Manager, Multichoice so I I go up to say hello. Kriss Darling show up at the table. Never met the guy. He’s in a hoodie and beige jeans, adidas shoes and a flashy wristwatch. He’s also sober. Apparently he doesn’t drink. It’s an honour to meet him because I admire people who put their backs into it and build something with their hands and minds. I tell him I think he’s dope. You know I have had enough to drink when I start using words like dope. They start talking business. They are talking about Trace Mziki DSTV Channel 323 that kina Wahome launched this month to play African music. I think Kriss will be getting a reggae show in there or something. We’ll see. I excuse myself, thank Wahome for the drink and he says he will come to our table after.
Now here is what happens. Ben’s newly married and his wife is expectant, which means he has to go home early or else he will be accused of being an absentee father in waiting. On his way out, he whispers in my ear, “She is in your hands, all you have to do is make her happy, when she is ready to go home call her an Uber.” I nod. He made me feel like I was a child being left to take care of his younger sibling. I’d had a few, yes. The whole world had.
In short, at some point in the night the client fell down. We are at our table, I’m looking away and shortly I hear a crashing sound. When I look, I find her on her hands and knees. Tripped on a chair. You are told not to drink and drive because alcohol reduces your reaction time. Standing there seeing her down on the floor, I remember thinking, “That is our client down there, on her knees,” My brain seemed to process this information very, very slowly, almost like its path was being blocked. Like it couldn’t believe what was happening. It’s like when your mom leaves you alone in the house for a minute and when she comes back she finds half of the house burnt to the ground. What this means is that some gentleman got to her fast and helped her out, while I stood there watching like it was an out of body experience.
“I leave you for a minute with her and you break her knees?” Ben cried the next day when I told him. I stared at my shoes.
A woman talking with her mouth open is disturbing. A woman peeing while standing, legs apart, is ugly as hell. (I witnessed this, you have to at least once in your life). A hot woman farting is jarring because we never imagine that a hot woman can even get gas in her system. An ageing woman stripping in protest is ghastly. A woman in a purple camisole in 2016 is horrifying. A drunk woman throwing up on her shoes is disconcerting. All these things above a man can do and people will shrug and say, “Men!” (Yes, even wearing a camisole). But a woman falling is truly ungraceful and sad. Because when women fall, they fall like a stone. It’s worse if they have on a dress and it blows over and she has to be subjected to the indignity of her underwear showing. It’s even worse if she has on brown mother’s union. But what is worse is if you stand there like a statue and not help her up. Like what happened to me. I failed.
Our client, thankfully, didn’t have on a dress. Or mother’s union. (I hope).