Mke wa Mlinzi
"The night watchman sleeps during the day. His thick wife waits alone in the guard house. The employer who pays their rent visits too often. She pays him back in ways her sleeping husband never knows."
Juma is my night watchman.
Twelve hours, seven PM to seven AM, guarding the gate of my compound. He's reliable, honest, loyal. He lives in the guard house by the gate with his wife, Adhiambo.
Adhiambo is the problem.
Or the solution.
Depending on how you look at it.
She's forty-four years old.
Married to Juma for twenty years, living in the guard house for ten. While Juma works nights, Adhiambo maintains their tiny home, cooks his meals, waits for him to sleep.
Then she waits some more.
I started visiting during the waiting.
Adhiambo is thick.
Guard house thick—years of small spaces and big appetites. Heavy breasts that strain her house dress. Wide hips that barely fit through the narrow doorway. A belly soft from waiting, from boredom, from having nothing to do all day but exist.
"Bwana visits often," she said one morning.
I was checking on the compound. Juma was asleep in the back room—snoring, dead to the world after a long shift.
"I like to make sure everything is secure."
"Everything is very secure." Her eyes held mine. "Especially during the day. When Juma sleeps."
"He sleeps soundly?"
"Like the dead." She moved closer. "Nothing wakes him. Trust me. I've tried."
The first time, I was nervous.
Juma was sleeping twenty feet away. The guard house walls were thin. One sound, one movement, one wrong step—
"Relax," Adhiambo whispered. "He took his medication. He sleeps for six hours minimum. We have time."
"How much time?"
"Enough." She pulled me onto their tiny bed—the bed she shared with Juma, the bed where he'd sleep tonight, oblivious. "I've been waiting for this for months."
I took the watchman's wife while he snored.
Quietly—she insisted, despite her claim that nothing woke him. Her thick body beneath mine, her legs wrapped around my waist, her mouth buried in my shoulder to muffle her sounds.
"Yes—finally—someone who sees me—"
"Your husband—"
"Guards the gate all night." She clenched around me. "Ignores me all day. You're the only one who visits."
The routine establishes itself.
Every morning after Juma goes to sleep, I visit the guard house. "Checking security," I tell my household staff. They don't question the boss.
Inside, Adhiambo is waiting.
"He earns three thousand shillings a month," she tells me one day.
We're tangled in her bed, Juma snoring three meters away. The intimacy is obscene.
"I know. I pay him."
"You could pay more."
"Are you negotiating?"
"I'm suggesting." She traces a finger down my chest. "He works hard. He's loyal. And his wife... his wife provides certain services."
"Services?"
"Security services." She mounts me, careful not to shake the bed. "I make sure you're... secure. Every morning. That's worth something, isn't it?"
I raise Juma's salary that week.
He never asks why.
The guard house becomes my second office.
I spend more time there than in my actual office. Business calls taken while Adhiambo rides me silently. Emails sent while she mouths me to quiet orgasms. Meetings postponed while I bury myself in her thick body.
"Your wife must wonder," she says.
"My wife has her own distractions."
"Other men?"
"Shopping. Lunches. Friends." I thrust deeper. "She doesn't notice where I go."
"Lucky for me." Adhiambo comes, silently shaking. "Lucky for us."
Juma wakes up once.
Adhiambo is on top of me, the bed creaking despite our care. The snoring stops. We freeze.
"Adhiambo?" Juma's voice is groggy, half-asleep.
"Go back to sleep, mzee," she says calmly. "I'm just cleaning."
"Cleaning? I heard—"
"The bed squeaks. I'm tightening the bolts. Sleep."
He sleeps.
She resumes riding me.
"That was close," I whisper.
"That was nothing." She bounces harder. "He believes whatever I tell him. Twenty years of marriage, he's never questioned anything."
The relationship deepens.
I find myself wanting more than morning visits. Wanting to see her at night. Wanting her in my house, not just her guard house.
"Come to the main house," I tell her. "Tomorrow night. Juma will be on duty."
"He'll see me leave—"
"I'll send him on an errand. Twenty minutes. That's enough."
"Enough for what?"
"Enough for you to understand what you mean to me."
She comes to the main house.
I send Juma to check the back fence—"strange sounds, need you to investigate." He goes. She comes.
"This is your bedroom," she says.
"This is our bedroom. Tonight."
I take her in my marriage bed.
Louder than we've ever been—no sleeping husband to worry about, no thin walls. She screams while I pound into her, comes while I fill her, collapses while I hold her.
"I've never—"
"I know."
"In your bed—where your wife sleeps—"
"Where I wish you slept."
The arrangement continues for five years.
Guard house mornings. Main house evenings when possible. A private apartment I rent in town for weekend afternoons. Juma never suspects. My wife never notices. Adhiambo blooms.
"I'm not a watchman's wife anymore," she says one day. "Not really."
"What are you?"
"Yours." She traces my face. "More than his. More than anyone's. Yours."
Juma retires at sixty-two.
Pension, health problems, tired bones. I hire a new watchman. Juma and Adhiambo are supposed to leave the guard house.
They don't.
"I've arranged something," I tell her. "A cottage on the property. You'll stay."
"Juma doesn't wonder—"
"Juma is grateful. Pension plus free housing. He thinks I'm being generous."
"You are generous." She kisses me. "Very, very generous."
The cottage is better than the guard house.
Private bedroom—Adhiambo's, for when Juma is in the main room. I visit more often now. Stay longer. Sometimes overnight while Juma thinks she's "visiting relatives."
"He'll die eventually," she says.
"That's morbid."
"That's practical." She mounts me in her private bedroom. "When he dies, what happens to me?"
"You stay."
"As what?"
"As mine." I pull her down onto me. "You've always been mine. You always will be."
The watchman sleeps.
Day and night now—old age, fatigue, the end approaching. His wife tends to him. Cooks his meals. Gives him medication.
Then she comes to me.
"He's comfortable," she reports. "Sleeping peacefully."
"And you?"
"I'm here." She starts undressing. "With you. Where I belong."
The watchman guards nothing now.
But his wife?
His wife is guarded.
Protected.
Owned.
By the man who pays for everything.
Including her.
Especially her.