Lights at Prizm

At nine o'clock on a Friday the whole of June 12 Street turned purple, and nobody living on it could afford the light.

It spilled from the sign over No. 1145 and ran down the street like paint, over the parked cars and the coal pot and the open drain, until even the puddles looked expensive. The house behind the sign, Prizm, was three floors of glass and music: a ground floor full of moving shadows, a pool deck lit from below, a rooftop garden strung with lights. Nobody knew why the house number was 1145. The owner said it was the time, to the minute, that he had walked out of Kirikiri for the last time.

At the north gate the party line had been building since eight. Guests in good shoes picked their way around the puddles. An officer with a clipboard was running the queue, and to everyone who complained he said, "The stars have no queue tonight. We still do." Two young men in black carried crates of cold drinks to the police post and set them down there like an offering. One of the officers, a woman with a quick laugh, pushed hers back with one finger and went on checking names.

AJ had put on his cleanest T-shirt, which was clean in the way a story is true: mostly, if you didn't look closely.

And then, at nine, the music started.

He heard it before he reached the gate of No. 1145, rolling over the wall and down the street: Joe-Izzy, live, starting his set the way he did every night, warm and unhurried, the beat sliding under the generators until for a few minutes they seemed to be playing along. People on the street stopped what they were doing. Mama Ronke's children danced on the veranda of Iloro House. Chuks, at his pot, raised his spoon like a conductor. When the crowd on the rooftop started singing "Asset" back at the stage, half of June 12 Street sang it too, from their windows and doorways, for free.

Above the clinic at No. 5, a window was open. Funke was leaning on the sill, singing along, her textbook face-down beside her.

"You found my window again," she called down. "Are you checking on me or collecting reasons to smile?"

"Can it be both?"

"Go and see your concert. And come home safely. Visiting hours are over, my father says, even for windows."

The door

The gate of No. 1145 had a velvet rope, a lit doorway, and a bouncer the size of a small car, who looked at AJ with the polite sorrow of a man who has turned away a great many people and expected to turn away a great many more.

"No. 1145 is VIP ticket entry only. You will have to enjoy the concert from the street tonight."

A VIP ticket, AJ had heard Dozie explain at length, started at ₦10,000 for the ground floor and went up from there, all the way to the rooftop and backstage. AJ had ₦1,000. He looked past the bouncer at the purple light and the dancing and the silver glint of the stage, and he said what he had been thinking since the first night he saw the sign.

"One day I will throw my own parties here."

The bouncer did not laugh. That was almost worse.

In the doorway stood a woman in a sharp black dress with a tablet in her hand and the calm of somebody who had ended many arguments without raising her voice. "Welcome to Prizm. I'm Natasha, your hostess tonight. Need anything in here, you ask me first." She looked AJ over, head to sneakers, and back up. "Dress code tonight is simple: look sharp, keep it classy, and no wahala on my floor." Wahala: trouble.

"How am I doing?"

"One out of three," said Natasha. "No wahala, so far. Keep it that way."

AJ was about to turn around when a voice behind him said, "Say that again."

The Warden

He was in his late fifties, broad and unhurried, in white linen that glowed purple in the light. Gold rings on four fingers. A gold watch. In one hand, a horsehair fly-whisk that he did not need, flicking it gently at nothing. Two men in black stood behind him.

"Say what again?" said AJ.

"Anything. I want to hear the accent." The man smiled. "London?"

"South London."

"My son." He said it warmly, the way a man says it when he has already decided what you are worth. "They call me the Warden. Chief Lazarus Ekanem. Thirty-one years at Kirikiri, across the road. Thirty-one years, and I walked out with a gold watch and every one of my teeth." He gestured up at the sign. "You know why Prizm? A prism takes plain light and makes it colors. A prison takes colorful people and makes them plain. I have done both."

Behind him, on the rooftop, Joe-Izzy moved into "High On Life," and the crowd roared. The Warden glanced up, pleased as a man admiring his own car. "The best artist in Lagos, every night, in my house," he said. AJ noticed that the man on the stage did not look down at the Warden once. He was too busy singing.

"Proverbs says a man's gift makes room for him," said the Warden. "The prison rulebook says every gift must be logged. I keep both books, my son. You heard what you said to my doorman? About throwing parties here?"

"I was joking."

"No, you weren't. Everybody who stands at this rope wants to be inside. Most of them have nothing to offer me. But you, you have an accent. An accent is a passport, my son."

"Mine got me deported."

The Warden's smile widened, as if AJ had said something very clever. "Exactly. A man who knows the way into London and the way out of it." He flicked the fly-whisk. "I hear Sola and Tunde have given you a number. Two and a half million, for one small gate. Ah, those boys. They have big appetites."

AJ said nothing. He had not told anyone the number except Sarge.

"I have a small errand," said the Warden. "Small, small. Nothing at all for a man like you. You do it well, and maybe the gate police find they have made a mistake in their arithmetic. Maybe Natasha finds you a VIP band. Maybe, one day, you throw a party in my house." He held out his hand, rings and all. "Come and see me in my office. The back booth. Natasha will show you in."

In the doorway, Natasha's face showed nothing at all, which AJ suspected was a skill she had worked very hard at.

He looked at the hand. Over the Warden's shoulder, at the far end of the street, the hatch of Sarge's gatehouse was a small square of yellow light in all that purple. Count your fingers after you shake his hand.

The music swelled. The generators sang. Across the road, Kirikiri's wall lights burned white and patient, the way they had burned for thirty-one years.

AJ reached out, and the Warden's rings were cool in his palm, and the grip was warm and strong and lasted a moment longer than it needed to.

"Good," said the Warden softly. "Very good, my son. We will talk."

Then he turned and went inside, into the purple and the music, and the rope fell back into place behind him.

AJ stood on June 12 Street with the beat in his chest. Slowly, without quite meaning to, he looked down at his hands and counted.

All ten were there. Somehow, that was the part that worried him.