The salesman in Room 8
Small, quick and never short of a word. If it is moving this week, Benny has it, and it is written in a notebook with a rubber band around it.
Speak the English, AJ. The oyinbo price goes up.Benny
Benny is Benedict Adebisi. He is small and quick, and he talks the way water comes out of a burst pipe: all at once, in every direction, and somehow always ending up exactly where it was going. He made his first sale at eight, when he sold his mother's neighbor a plastic chair. It was her own chair. When she noticed, she bought a cushion for it from him as well.
He met Danger at eleven, when Danger fell off a wall onto his tray of roasted groundnuts. Benny sold the wreckage as "fresh groundnut powder" at double the price before Danger had finished standing up. "We did," he told him. "You fell, I sold. That's a business." It has been a business for fifteen years. Phone credit in the morning, chargers by ten, fuel in jerrycans when the pumps run dry, cold water when the light goes, and umbrellas the minute it rains: Benny sells, and Danger stands behind him looking like the end of the argument, which Benny calls customer service.
Everything goes in the notebook: who owes, who paid, what is moving this week. He keeps the money, and Danger has never once asked to see the notebook, which Benny considers the highest compliment of his life. On AJ's first day he tried to sell him a charger, a SIM card, a phone to go with it and a second-hand belt. By the third day they were friends. Lately the Warden's boys have been handing them errands, and Benny, who knows what everything he sells is and what it costs, is wondering what is in the bag.
Benny lives in Room 8 of Iloro House with Danger, down the corridor from AJ. Their door stays locked: they are out working.
Danger is the most dangerous man on June 12 Street and the one it loves most, a street poet with a notebook of verses. Benny can sell anything to anyone. Together they hustle at the gate and take any odd job going, no questions asked. Then a man with a London accent moves into Room 3, and the Warden's boys hand them a bag.
The most dangerous man on June 12 Street and the one it loves most: a stare that stops a fight, a laugh you can hear from the gate, and a notebook of verses.
Deported from London, beaten in a cell, broke on a veranda bench. He has a plan, a London accent and a debt to the gate police.
The hairdresser at Palmline, outside the main gate, and AJ's neighbor in Room 7. Everybody talks in her chair. She repeats almost none of it.
Economics graduate, second class upper, "in opportunities". He borrows ₦500 and pays back ₦50, exactly once.
The smallest room, the emptiest pocket and the busiest door on June 12 Street. Nobody can explain it, least of all Benny.
Thirty-one years at Kirikiri prison, now the owner of Prizm. He plays the big man, brokers deals at his table, and takes ten percent.
AJ Cities