Luna: New Moon

Up there is the wedding of the year. Across the plaza from the front door of the Home Inn is an AKA commissary, an up-market affair for recreational cooks. Lucasinho steps out into the street and walks towards it. The traffic detours around him, ripples of self-organisation running from the plaza out along the five prospekts. Trays of bright vegetables in the window, a prominent meat locker with hanging lacquered ducks and poultry sausage; fish and frogs on ice; at the back of the store, freezers and bins of beans and lentils, bouquets of salad under a freshening mist. Two middle-aged women sit at the counter, rolling and lolling together with a secret shared laughter. They wear adinkra familiars in the Asamoah manner: the goose of Sankara, the asterisk of Ananse Ntontan.

Their laughter stops when Lucasinho enters the shop.

‘I’m Lucas Corta Junior,’ he announces. They know who he is. The society channels have been filled with nothing but his face for a week. They look afraid. He sets his fedora on the counter. Lucas takes the metal spike from his left ear and sets it beside the hat. ‘Please show this to Abena Maanu Asamoah. She’ll know what it means. I claim the protection of the Golden Stool.’

We’re Earth and moon, Lucas Corta thinks. Bryce Mackenzie a gravid planet, I a small svelte satellite. Lucas takes pleasure in the analogy. Another pleasure; this is the same hotel from which Lucasinho absconded. Two small smiles. That will be the extent of the pleasure in this meeting.

Bryce Mackenzie stamps his way to the sofa, stick, foot, other stick, foot, like some antiquated quadruped mining machine. Lucas can hardly watch. How can the man bear himself? How can his many amors and adoptees bear him?

‘Drink?’

Bryce Mackenzie grunts as he lowers himself to the sofa.

‘I’ll take that as a no. Do you mind if I do? The staff from the Holiday Inn are on hourly contracts and, well, you know me. I like to extract the maximum value from any situation. And these Blushing Boys really are rather good.’

‘Your levity is not appropriate,’ Bryce Mackenzie says. ‘Where is the boy?’

‘Lucasinho should be arriving in Twé even as we speak.’

The guests, the families; then the celebrant. The role was nothing more than witnessing the signatures on the nikahs, but Jonathon Kayode had brought the full magnificence of the Eagle of the Moon to the role. When Ariel has suggested he celebrate, he had feigned surprise, even coyness. No no, I couldn’t possibly, well, oh all right then

.

Jonathon Kayode had arrayed himself in formal agbada, adorned with golden regalia he had commissioned for the occasion. ‘Is he wearing built-up shoes?’ Rafa whispered to Lucas. Once noticed, it shaded everything. Without the elevator shoes, the Eagle would have been a head shorter than the couple he was marrying. Rafa caught his own joke. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his mouth, but Rafa quaked with suppressed laughter.

‘Stop that,’ Lucas hissed. ‘I have to get up there and hand him over.’ The infection was irresistible. Lucas swallowed a tight giggle and discreetly wiped tears from his eyes. The orchestra stuck up The Blooming of Rainy Night Flowers. Bryce Mackenzie rose and took his position by the Orange Pavilion. Every head turned. Denny Mackenzie walked the rose petal path. His walk was clumsy, self-conscious, half-hearted. He had no idea what to do with his hands. Bryce Mackenzie beamed. Jonathon Kayode opened his arms like a summoning priest.

‘Show time,’ Rafa whispered to his brother. Then every Corta familiar whispered simultaneously call from Lucasinho.

Within thirty seconds Gupshup had sent the news around the moon. Lucasinho Corta: runaway groom.

‘You’ve been in touch with your son?’ Bryce Mackenzie asks.

‘I haven’t heard from him.’

‘Pleased to hear that. I was under the impression that this was something you had knocked up between you.’

‘You’re being ridiculous.’

Bryce Mackenzie shakes his head, a tic of annoyance.

‘The question now is how do we repair the damage?’

‘There’s damage?’

Another tic: a flare of the nostrils, an audible breath.

‘Damage to the image of my family, the reputation of Mackenzie Metals; our compensation for the suit Gupshup will bring against us.’

‘The drinks bill must be pretty high too,’ Lucas says. He has met Bryce Mackenzie twice, both times social occasions, never in business, but Lucas has worked out the man’s trick, his malandragem. Physical intimidation, not by muscle, but by mass. Bryce Mackenzie dominates a room as if by gravity; a trip, a fall will break you. I know how the trick is done, Lucas thinks. But you are the Earth and I am the moon. He feels lightheaded with potential. Everything is clear, clear as never before.

‘Flippant,’ Bryce Mackenzie says. He is sweating, big sweaty man.

‘Neither your family nor mine are intimidated by threats of litigation. What’s your proposal?’