Chapter 3: The Fall
Alice stared at the business card for three days.
It sat on her kitchen counter beside her kettle, which she had decided was a completely neutral place to put it and meant nothing at all. She made tea every morning and looked at it and looked away. She took client calls and reviewed fabric samples and approved two new office designs and did not think about calling the number printed in clean dark ink on that small white card.
On the fourth day, Chanda noticed it.
They were sitting at Alice's dining table going over the Meridian contract expansion when Chanda reached past her laptop for a pen and stopped. She picked up the card, turned it over, read it, then looked at Alice with a particular expression she reserved for situations she found deeply entertaining.
"Mike Mbewe," Chanda said slowly and calmly. "The lawyer?"
"Put it down, Chanda."
"Mike Mbewe of Mbewe and Associates?" Chanda's eyebrows were doing something dramatic. "Alice, he is one of the best corporate lawyers in Lusaka. How do you even know him?"
"I don't know him. We bumped into each other. Literally. On Cairo Road."
"And he gave you his card."
"Can we go back to the contract please?"
"His personal card, Alice. Not his firm card. His personal card." Chanda set it down carefully like it was something precious. "There is a difference."
Alice knew there was a difference. She had known there was a difference for three days. That was precisely the problem.
"Chanda."
"I'm just saying."
"Contract. Now."
Chanda opened her laptop but she was smiling and she did not stop smiling for the rest of the afternoon.
Alice called him that evening.
She told herself it was practical. Of course she told herself it was practical. Her phone screen had a crack in the corner that caught her thumb every time she scrolled, and he had offered to replace it, and it was simply a matter of following up on that offer. It was a practical call. Nothing more.
He picked up on the second ring.
"Alice Nyambe," he said, and the way he said her name, unhurried, like he had been expecting it, made her grip her phone a little tighter.
"You said you'd replace my screen," she said, skipping hello entirely.
A pause. Then, "I did say that."
"I'm holding you to it."
"I was hoping you would." Another pause, warmer this time. "Are you free Saturday morning?"
She was free. She had absolutely nothing on Saturday morning. "I can move some things," she said.
They met at a small phone repair shop in Woodlands that Mike apparently knew well. The young man behind the counter greeted him by name and took Alice's phone without her having to explain anything. Mike had clearly called ahead.
That small detail did something to her that she didn't examine too closely.
They waited sitting on a low wall in the shade of a jacaranda tree, the purple flowers dropping slowly around them in the late morning heat. Lusaka on a Saturday was quieter, slower, the city breathing differently than it did on weekdays.
"You didn't have to call ahead," Alice said.
"It saved time," he replied.
"You're very efficient."
"Occupational habit." He glanced at her. "Does it bother you?"
She considered that honestly. "No," she said. "I'm the same."
He nodded, like that confirmed something he had already been suspecting. They sat for a moment in easy silence. Alice noticed that silence with Mike was not uncomfortable. It had weight to it, substance, like the quiet between two people who didn't need to fill every moment with noise.
"Tell me about Nyambe Interiors," he said.
"You already looked it up."
"I read about it. I want to hear you talk about it."
She looked at him. He was watching a woman across the road hang washing on a line, giving Alice the space to decide whether to answer or not. No pressure. No performance. Just an open question left in the air for her to take or leave.
She took it.
She talked about Nyambe Interiors the way she rarely let herself talk about it in public. Honestly. About the early years working from a one bedroom flat in Chelston. About the first corporate client she had almost lost because she couldn't afford to hire help fast enough. About the specific satisfaction of walking into a finished office space and knowing that every detail had come from her head and her hands.
Mike listened the way she had watched him listen at the bar. Completely. Occasionally he asked a question, a good one, precise, that showed he had actually heard what she said before it. No advice, no comparisons, no redirecting.
By the time her phone was ready she had been talking for forty minutes and hadn't noticed.
She stopped mid sentence when the young man appeared at the door with her phone, screen perfect and new. She stood, suddenly aware of how much she had said.
"I talked too much," she said.
"You talked the right amount," Mike said, standing beside her.
She looked at him. He was close again, the way he kept ending up close without it ever feeling like a move. More like gravity, the natural conclusion of two people occupying the same space.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "For the screen."
"It was my fault," he said.
"We established it was both our faults."
"Then thank me for my half," he said, and the almost smile was back, the one that lived just at the corner of his mouth and made her want to know what it looked like when it went all the way.
She was still thinking about that when he said, "Have dinner with me."
Not a question. Not quite. The kind of sentence that left room to say no but made you feel the weight of choosing it.
Alice looked at him for a long moment. The practical part of her brain listed all the sensible reasons to decline. She was busy. She did not know this man. She had learned a long time ago not to let warmth from a handsome face override good judgment.
But then she thought about the handkerchief. About the card. About forty minutes passing like five.
"When?" she said.
Something shifted in his eyes. Quiet, warm, certain.
"Friday," he said.
"Friday," she agreed.
She walked to her car telling herself it was just dinner. Just two adults sharing a meal. Nothing to feel warm about. Nothing to feel nervous about.
Her hands were steady on the steering wheel all the way home.
It was only when she got inside and kicked off her shoes and sat on her couch in the quiet of her flat that she let herself smile. Small, private, just for her.
Outside, Lusaka hummed along, indifferent and golden in the afternoon light, entirely unaware that something had just begun.