act like my wife without being dragged to it.

Maybe part of me still wanted dignity to return on its own.

Instead, she gave me something else.

## She Finally Asked How Much
Once the number was in the room, Miriam started talking as if the landlord had already lifted our mattress into the street and nothing in the world could stop it.

‘We may as well relax and wait for him to throw us out,’ she said, scooping the last of the stew with a piece of meat.

I leaned forward.

‘Even if it is half, give me something.

I’ll beg him with the rest.

Let me at least show effort.’

She shot back immediately.

‘I said I don’t have money in my account.’

That sentence hit me harder because it was so deliberate.

She wasn’t just refusing help.

She was forcing me to act blind in front of her lie.

The children laughed in the other room at something on an exercise page, and the ordinary sound of it made the scene worse.

Life was still trying to continue while my house split quietly at the table.

I said, ‘Miriam, we live here together.’

She answered, ‘Then act like a man who lives here together.’

Her plate was almost empty.

She took a sip of water, wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, and looked at me with the calm of someone fully sure the night belonged to her.

That was the moment I remembered the promise I had made myself on the chair by the window after reading the landlord’s text.

If another man entered this rent matter, I wouldn’t touch a naira of it.

I hadn’t planned the line out of pride alone.

I knew what some money costs after it lands.

Once another man puts his voice inside your marriage, he doesn’t usually stop at the transfer.

Then she reached for her phone.

## Then She Reached For Phone
There was no hesitation in the movement.

Miriam picked up the cracked phone with the same hand she had been eating with, wiped her fingers on a napkin, and unlocked the screen.

The blue light hit her cheek and turned the whole table colder.

I watched her scroll with her thumb as if she had already decided long before that night who she would call if I ever failed loudly enough.

That was the thought that hurt before the call even connected.

She dialed and put the phone to her ear.

The call didn’t ring long.

Whoever it was, he answered like he had been expecting her.

Her voice changed first.

Softer.

Almost sweet.

‘Please, darling, can you help me with something? I’m in a deep financial mess right now.

Our rent is due and there’s no money to pay.’

I sat very still.

The room that had been full of insult suddenly had something worse in it: performance.

She wasn’t begging for the family.

She was presenting herself.

Her shoulders dropped into ease, and a small smile touched the edge of her mouth that I had not seen all evening.

The fan kept turning.

A motorcycle passed outside.

Somewhere down the corridor, a baby cried and somebody hushed him.

Inside my flat, my wife was asking another man for rent