“This place needs a kick in the pants,” said Hector. “They are no good, but this is where everyone comes. Have you been here before, Charlie?”
Charlie shook his head.
“You should come,” said Hector. “As I said, everyone comes here. This is where all the big deals are done. Right here. This is where people see who’s who, you know.”
Charlie nodded. He had no idea who was who. I am really just a mechanic, he said to himself. I am not even a proper detective. I am not a big man who can walk about The Gaborone Dance Studio as if he owns it. This is not my place.
They reached the bar, where Hector offered him a beer while ordering himself a vodka and lime.
“Vodka goes with anything,” he said. “You can have it with soda, with Coke if you like, with orange juice. Anything. You should try it some time. One vodka and you think: Problems? No problems any more. No problems.”
“That must be very good,” said Charlie. “Who hasn’t got problems?”
Hector raised his glass. “Who hasn’t got problems? Too true, Charlie. Too true.” He reached out and poked Charlie gently in the chest. “You’ve got problems, I’d say. Big problems too.”
Charlie said nothing. Hector was right: he had problems.
Hector took a sip of his vodka and lime. “Queenie says you’ve asked her to marry you? Is that true?”
Charlie thought that it was not strictly true. He could not remember actually proposing to her; it seemed to him that she had simply assumed that he was about to do so, and had saved him the effort. But he would not say that now.
“That’s true. We are hoping to get married.”
Hector nodded. “Then that’s where your problem lies,” he said.
Charlie looked down at the floor. Money. Everything was reduced to money. At the end of the day, that was how the important decisions were made. Money.
Hector continued, “Because I think you have no money at all—correct?”
Charlie looked up briefly and nodded. “I have no money. I am very poor.”
Hector made a noise with his tongue that was hard to interpret. It was not an encouraging sound. “You see, Charlie, you’re basically nothing, aren’t you? Mr. Nothing—big-time.”
Charlie was about to nod again, but stopped himself. He was beginning, though, to feel angry. That was not the way things were meant to be—not here in Botswana, where every person had a right to have their dignity acknowledged and respected. The government said that all the time. And when the government spoke, it spoke with all the authority of the ancestors, way back, all the way back.
He summoned up his courage. “I am not Mr. Nothing,” he said.
Hector’s tone was mocking. “No? Then who are you?”
“Same as you,” said Charlie. “Same as anybody else.”
This momentarily deflected Hector. But he soon returned. “Okay,” he said. “So you’re not nothing in the sense of…of not being here at all, but…but don’t you see a big problem here? You go to my uncles, my father even, and you say, ‘I want to marry Queenie-Queenie,’ and they say, ‘You want to marry Queenie-Queenie?’ And then they start to think about the money, Charlie, the money. And they say, ‘We were thinking of fifty cattle, maybe one hundred, who knows?’ And then they ask you how many cattle you have, and I don’t know the answer to that, Charlie, but I think I can guess. I think you are Mr. Zero Cattle. Is that correct?”
“I have no cattle. It is true.”
“You see,” said Hector. “When I said you were Mr. Nothing, that’s what I meant. And so you can’t marry Queenie unless there’s a big change in your life, Charlie.”
Charlie looked away. The waitress was staring at him from the end of the counter. She seemed puzzled as to why Charlie was with Hector. Noticing this, Charlie felt some satisfaction; she had written him off, and now here he was, talking to this well-dressed and impressive body-builder—Mr. Something to his Mr. Nothing.
Hector leaned forward. He lowered his voice. “I can help you, Charlie.”
Charlie drew in his breath. “Yes?”
“Yes. I can see my sister thinks a lot of you.” He paused. “I can’t see why. No offence, Charlie, but you know what I mean. Women are funny that way, aren’t they? They go for useless men sometimes.”
Charlie lowered his gaze. I am not useless. I am an assistant detective. I have almost solved a big case today. The ladies congratulated me. There was so much he could say to this person—if only he had the courage.
“So they insist on marrying some guy who’s never going to get anywhere,” Hector continued. “You ask them why, and they say—love. Would you believe it? That’s what they say.”
“Maybe that’s what they want.”
Hector ignored this. “And then, after a few years, they wake up one day and they have three children, maybe four, and they can’t see why they married him and they say, ‘Oh dear, look at me now, with all these children and this useless man—what can I do?’ And the answer, of course, is nothing, because they’re stuck with him.” He shook his head. “It’s very sad.”
“Perhaps—”
“Let me tell you, Charlie. I have some business interests and I need people to help me. And I think I might have just the job for you.”
Charlie pointed out that he already had a job. “I am an assistant detective.”
Hector brushed this aside. “Of course, of course. You work for that fat lady. But this would not be a full-time job—it would be an evening job, for after work. You go to work and do your investigations or whatever, then you come to my place and you do some things for me.”
Charlie asked what things these were.
“I am a partner in a money-lending firm,” said Hector. “I used money that the old man gave me—he has this big transport company, you know. Anyway, he advanced me some money and I invested with this guy called Freddy, who has a money-lending company. We make small loans to people who’ve spent all their money and need something to keep them going until payday.” He looked at Charlie. “You’ll know what it’s like to be short of money, won’t you?” He rubbed two fingers together while looking pained.
Charlie nodded. “It’s not easy.”
“Yes,” said Hector. “We make small loans, and then they pay us back when they get their pay. That’s the theory.”
“It doesn’t work?”