The Good Life excerpt 3

The gate of the Ro-Ro Port was still closed, though. Ro-Ro was an affiliate body of the Apapa Quays and it alone dealt with the importation of fairly used cars.

Walking briskly, noting the time through his watch, he forded Creek Road when there was a little lull in its ever constant flow of fast traffic. He strode down Jetty Road and up Sapele Road to number seven, a huge three-storey building that hosted different business establishments. Vintage International that employed him had the whole use of the ground floor and its owner’s reason for being on the ground floor was that it was easier for their clients and would-be clients to come to them on the ground floor as against climbing the stairs.

VI was into several ventures including clearing and forwarding, Uba’s main department with them. Its premises were sectioned into large and small offices with passages intersecting. The managing director’s sanctuary was the largest for a sole occupant and next in line for a fair amount of solitary space was his secretary. One of the offices was also that of a man quaintly known as the Time and Data Keeper whose task was to record all the activities of the firm into an electronic database.

Uba moved down a passage to the man’s office. The limited enclosure, with its diminutive wooden desk, made the corpulent man seem larger than life.

“Good morning, sir,” Uba greeted, as he got himself a pen and pulled open a ruled hardback notebook.

“Morning, Will,” boomed the IT expert. “It’s exactly eight now and I was just about to ink the register with a red line.”

Uba had finished putting down his arrival time and signature in the log book. “Well, I beat the time, sir.”

“Only on Mondays that you do,” the man said as he ushered him out with a wink and closed his office door after hanging a ‘If You Arrive Now, You Are Late’ sign on its front.

“Is this a new innovation?” Uba asked, “’cause it’s certainly new on me.”

“Yeah, Will. An inspiration I had some time ago and I’m just putting into effect.”

“Well I hope it’ll have some effect,” Uba said. In his heart he knew it wouldn’t. He retreated down the passage to the MD’s office. He knew the head honcho wasn’t yet around, but his target, the secretary was.

Her name was Jane Colin and she was a recent employee who hadn’t yet spent a year with VI. She was of average height. She had ample curves, was very attractive like a goddess and Uba had been having several nights with her in his dreams. He fancied her a lot and intended to get her in the hole someday soonest.

He entered her station and switched to his drawl reserved for the opposite sex he wanted to be intimate with. It had become a reflex action with him. “Hi, Jane. Howz the morning?”

Note: This is an excerpt of The Good Life, one of the books written by Oseyiza Oogbodo, curator of this blog, and it’s available as an eBook along with his other books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/oseyizaoogbodo