The Condom
3:35 p.m.
Ike glowered at his phone. He wanted—no needed—to wreak violence. Throwing a mobile phone against the wall was not it, particularly given the prices these days. He craved the old desk telephones, those hardy things whose receivers could be slammed. Even smashing them against the wall carried little consequence. There were no stored numbers to be retrieved or downloads to be restored. Or pesky phone companies to be called, for that matter. And they did not cost a small fortune. On such considerations was the mobile phone on his table safe, at least for the time being. Still, a wave of anguish swept over him. He stood up and paced his office, pounding fist into palm. All this, he thought, all this because of a condom, a stupid condom.
7:35 a.m.
Ike saw the condom at the same time as Laura did. He had just finished his ritual, morning call to Mama and was launching himself out of bed as his wife emerged from the bathroom. She was made-up and ready to go to work, her fragrance filling the bedroom. Then she froze. And he froze. For there it was. An unopened condom. On the floor. By their tangled heap of clothes from the night before.
Laura always rose before Ike. She was very orderly and ensured that their house was spick and span, with one exception. On the mornings after their frenzied trysts, she made it a point of duty to leave their clothes where they lay, as a testimonial of sorts to the continuing spontaneity of their sex. She and Ike never used condoms. Laura was Catholic. The pope forbade condoms, and that was that. For all her worldliness otherwise, and to Ike’s bemusement, Laura would not compromise. They would not use condoms in their marriage.
Ike had his dalliances—he was a virile man after all, he told himself in justification. Sex with one woman would never be enough. He loved Laura with all his heart and had extraordinary sex with her but “playing away” from time to time pandered to a primordial male need for variety. Or so his rationalisation went.
There was nothing to the extramarital liaisons. They were purely physical, and he never became emotionally involved. He always bought condoms on his way to the encounters but made sure that he disposed of them, including any unused ones, at the scene of the crime. His mind now raced. How had he missed this one? How had he forgotten to throw it away? How had he been so stupid?
Ike looked from the condom to Laura. He saw her face go from disbelief to horror and then cloud with rage. She bent down ever so slowly and picked up the condom.
“Honey…” Ike started softly.
“John,” she said, equally softly, straightening up and holding the condom before her.
She only called him John, his middle name, when she was upset.
“Honey,” Ike pleaded, his hands suppliant. He took a step towards her.
“Don’t you dare!” Laura shrieked. “Don’t you dare come near me!”
“Honey…”
“Don’t you ‘honey’ me!” Laura was near hysterical now.
Ike knew when to back off.
Laura looked as if she were about to burst into tears. Her lips twitched, but no further words came. She looked around frantically and grabbed her bag. Eyes flared, she stopped to wag a finger at Ike before storming out of the bedroom, slamming the door. She still had the condom.
Ike peered out of the window until he saw her emerge downstairs onto the road. She had taken some time to compose herself. She waved at their neighbour, pulled faces at a little girl being walked to school and headed down laughing towards the bus stop. He knew her too well. The cheery countenance belied a smouldering volcano. Despite the distance, he could make out a steely glint in her eyes. Ike John Amadi, solicitor, Taurean and number one Arsenal fan, was in trouble.
10:45 a.m.
Ike got to his office late. His mood was not helped by the rain through which he had trudged from Bank station. Even for a London morning in autumn, it was especially cold and grey. And miserably wet. The dour gods of English weather must have felt as grouchy as he did that morning. He chuckled at the thought despite his mood. Risking water damage to his phone, he had tried to call Laura as soon as he got out of the station, but the call went straight to voicemail. It would not be the only time that day he was tempted to hurl the phone.
Ike shed his raincoat and settled into his seat, having made himself a strong brew. He tried to throw himself into work, going through an agreement on his table and firing off emails. After half an hour, he admitted defeat and pushed back from the table. He moped at the window, his untouched coffee now tepid. It was still raining steadily outside. His thoughts were filled with Laura, wandering between the events of that morning and their life together.
“Excuse me,” the voice said with palpable agitation. Ike raised his head, reverie broken. He was in the John Lewis store on Oxford Street, considering which television to buy for the start of the football season the next weekend. Arsenal were the reigning champions, and Ike wanted to watch them defend their title in the latest technology. He had closed work early to give himself enough time to browse the choices.
“Were you talking to me?” he asked the blonde woman who was looking at him from the next aisle.
“Yes,” the woman said. “Can you come over here?” It was not a request.
Ike comprehended immediately. A dark-suited black man in a high-end, central London shop could only mean one thing. He suppressed a smile and went over. Standing before her, he could not help but think that she was the most beautiful woman he had seen in a long time. Whatever perfume she had on smelt like heaven.
“Does this come in another colour?” she demanded.
“Like what colour?” Ike responded.
“Like shocking pink?” she said.
“I really don’t know,” Ike said, looking directly at her. “Perhaps we should ask someone who actually works here.”
The woman’s eyes widened in realisation. She started to say something, but Ike stopped her with a wave of the hand and shake of the head. He caught the attention of a shop assistant, whom he beckoned over. As the assistant took charge with predictable obsequiousness, Ike went back to his televisions.
He was deep in contemplation on product specifications when he sensed a tentative presence beside him. He looked up to see the beautiful blonde woman, her face now a picture of mortification.
“I’m really sorry, sir, but I wanted to apologise for what happened a few minutes ago. It’s just that…”
“The suit confused you?” Ike completed. As the woman blushed, Ike broke into a wide grin and offered his hand. “Don’t mind me. My name’s Ike, and I think you are the most beautiful woman who’s ever mistaken me for a security guard.”
She grinned back at him, looking relieved, and shook his hand. “My name’s Laura and I think you are the most handsome man I’ve ever mistaken for a security guard.”
They both laughed. She offered to buy him coffee and he accepted, his televisions and football instantly forgotten. Coffee would turn to dinner and then to late drinks at a bar in Mayfair. By the time they parted at the Bond Street station, Ike was smitten.
Laura was a riot. She had a self-deprecating sense of humour which he thought unusual for a woman so beautiful. She loved Caribbean culture and had chosen to live in Brixton where she could be surrounded by its purveyors. From time to time, she would break into Jamaican patois to relate what some dreadlocked man or the other had said to her in Brixton Market. She had a master’s degree from University College London, specialising in mid‑twentieth-century feminist literature, and taught at the prestigious Dulwich College in south London.
1:00 p.m.
Ike tried Laura again. Her phone still went to voicemail. They always spoke at lunchtime, no matter how busy either of them was. She was making him stew on purpose, or worse, she was so furious that she could not trust herself to speak to him. Ike suspected it was the latter. He considered calling Tina, Laura’s friend who also taught at Dulwich, but dismissed the thought. Instead, he went downstairs to buy a sandwich, only to find that he had no appetite. He stood for a bit in front of the shop, watching Londoners go about their business hunched up against the dripping rain. All the while, he thought about Laura. He did not know what he would to say to her if she answered the phone. For the umpteenth time that day, he wondered at that condom. How could he have been so careless as to leave it in his trousers?
Ike and Laura first made love two weeks after they had met, in her flat. Ike’s infatuation with women usually ended as soon as he had sex with them. He likened it to Adam’s eyes opening in the Garden of Eden. Once the forbidden fruit was partaken of, it did not seem quite so attractive anymore. With Laura, things were different. For the first time he could remember, Ike was besotted post-coitus.
The sex had been mind-blowing. Laura was skilled and assertive, adept at giving and taking pleasure in bed. She had a plethora of toys and lubricants, was given to manoeuvring into all sorts of impossible positions and talked suitably dirty throughout. They made love many times, every day, for the next week, and she moved in with him a fortnight later. They were married by the end of the year.
Ike considered himself an accomplished lover, but it was not difficult for him to accept that his technique improved a lot under Laura’s insistent tutelage. No more evident was this than when he first cheated on her, three months after their wedding.
It was a one-night stand with Joan, a woman he met in the pub one Saturday, when Laura travelled to France on a school trip. As he climaxed, he shouted out Laura’s name, much to his subsequent embarrassment. Rather than being affronted, Joan expressed gratitude. “Whoever Laura is,” she said, “thank her loads for me, luv—she’s the one behind the best sex I’ve ever had, innit?”
The experience with Joan provoked a spiral of infidelity. The sex never came close to that which he continued to enjoy with Laura, but it gave him a different kind of pleasure. Primal need for sexual variety and all that, yes, but there was more. The plaudits Ike now invariably received after the fact from the women pandered to his ego and increased his appetite for more conquests.
Most importantly, he got an intoxicating thrill—even if he would not admit it—from the danger in cheating on Laura. Laura could not stand infidelity and, especially with her abhorrence of condoms, thought it not far removed from the end of the world. He had no doubt that she would immediately leave him if she had the slightest clue that he was unfaithful. He could not bear the thought of life without her.
7:00 p.m.
Ike stood at their front door. He still did not know what he was going to say, but it was time to get it over with. It had been the worst day of his life. Taking a deep breath, he turned the key in the lock. Laura was sitting at the dining table, looking morose. Ike sat opposite her wearily and started, “Laura…”
She cut him off. Her voice was surprisingly soft. “Honey, marriage is about trust.”
“I know but…” Ike said.
“Let me finish,” she said in a stronger voice. “Without trust, darling, we have nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Ike’s heart sank.
Laura continued. “If you wanted us to do the birth control thing, all you had to do was tell me. We could have talked about it. Catholicism will not come between us and a happy marriage. I know you don’t want children yet; that’s fine. Neither do I, and you know that.”
Ike could not believe what he was hearing.
“I felt betrayed that you would consider using a condom with me—perhaps you’ve even done so—without telling me. No, darling. We talk about things, and we compromise. I was hurt in the morning, but I thought about it all day. I realised that the trust I want means that I too have to talk to you about what I don’t like.”
“And?” Ike asked.
“And I don’t like my baby not talking to me about wanting us to use condoms. So let’s talk, darling. Let’s talk now about us and using condoms in our marriage.”
Ike reached over and kissed his wife, waves of relief washing over him.
1:16 p.m.
Laura and Tina sat in a Starbucks in Dulwich village.
“Have you decided what to do?” Tina asked over her latte.
“Yes, Tina, I have a plan. I still don’t know how I forgot the bloody condom in my jeans. I always leave them at Steve’s place. I’ve never been as shocked as when I saw that condom this morning. And then I saw the look of guilt on Ike’s face.”
“But how did you know the condom was yours?” Tina pressed.
“It was a nonlatex condom, Tina. Latex gives me severe irritation down there. Steve introduced me to nonlatex. That’s why I picked it up as quickly as I could. If Ike had looked closely, he might have realised it wasn’t his. Or then again, men being men, he might not have!”
“Oh, the poor darling,” Tina laughed. “But you can’t let him off the hook?”
“Like I said, babe, this here is a woman with a plan.”
The two women high-fived and laughed some more.
