HEARTS AT STAKE

HEARTS AT STAKE

Fiction

Written By Temba Magorimbo

© Copyright tmagorimbo 2014

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Image Credit - Copy of Lit Fiction Book Cover - Made with PosterMyWall

About The Author

_______________________________________

Temba Magorimbo was born on 9 August 1966, Tuesday at Gwelo [then now Gweru] General Hospital. He attended primary education [first term] at Bumburwi Primary, Old Mkoba before transferring to Senga Primary, Senka [then Senga] from 1973 to 1979. He went to Nashville High, Nashville [two weeks] in 1980 before transferring to Ascot Secondary, Ascot until 1983.

He is married and has two daughters.

__________

Disclaimer

All the characters, events and the story in this novel Hearts At Stake are all figments of my runaway imagination. The story, events and characters have no direct/indirect relationship to anyone living or dead. The pastors quoted therein are as non-existent as the Lochness monster. Should there by chance be such a relationship, it's regretted as being purely coincidental. It is as rare as an archer based in Borrowdale shooting a pheasant in Hudson Bay. However, should I have misrepresented facts, I stand to accept correction.

"Stephanie," Sandra said on the cell phone. "How are you doing?"

"I was searching all over for you," Stephanie had replied.

"My cell was in my hand bag. I was busy elsewhere. I had my hands all dirty doing baking," she replied. "I saw seven missed calls from you alone."

"I sent a message that you should see me soon."

"Here I am calling back."

"I have been asked to provide catering to a group of couples from a church in Borrowdale," Stephanie replied on the other end of the line.

"How many?" she asked. "And when most probably Saturday?"

"The numbers are about sixty couples coming together in Amby, Greendale. They say there is strict time management. They have loads of activities to keep the marital fires burning. It must be somewhere close to Coronation Road where we hosted that surprise birthday party."

"Wow, that is a dish," she replied. "What is the time, duration and anything else I need to know?"

"It's a mid-morning themed get together which may get right into the night. There is breakfast, snack lunch, snacks, mineral drinks with no beer, champagne and other wines etc. You have to be at my place this afternoon so we make some of the dishes. I will have to impress on your baking prowess. Last time I served ginger cakes compliments came to me. I forgot to pass them to where they belonged."

"Don't worry Stephanie I was born and raised inside a Gloria® flour packet. "

"Really?" Stephanie laughed.

Her laughter was like an SKM motorcycle being started without adequate battery and fuel power.

"So ______?"

"You said you have nothing to do on Saturday afternoon come in and join the teaching."

"I am not a couple. Reminder, I am single with a daughter who is growing up with accolades of suitors galore. Who knows, maybe I will make it to be grandmother before the age of thirty-eight. I thought you said catering."

"All the same it's a church themed get-together," Stephanie had replied. "Be at my place as soon as you finish lessons. We will start preparations around 0900hrs."

"Need I board there seeing as it that when you start yodelling instructions on cooking we will be at it until around eleven thirty in the evening?"

"What male company would you need seeing that you don't like gasping for breath?" Stephanie shot back. That was below the belt but true.

"What?" she asked as if she had not heard the meaning.

"You don't like getting @#$#&*@!"

"Stephanie?" Sandra was beside herself with laughter. "There is a price to pay for being a woman always looking for male company. I have to accept that I am single. I am unmarried with a daughter to consider. I don't accept bedroom reproaches. I was never a one night stand type of girl."

"One day you will have to start dating again. Do you have any date? You may bring them to the convention. There are business links to be done for us as well."

"Dates are not coming that easy. I will be there as soon as the lessons are through. I will be on the convention need be alone as I am."

"I tried providing dates and you sneezed at them. I tried hooking you with a few here and there. It didn't work."

"Stephanie, few young men my age who are single want to date a single mother seriously. They did rather spread their wings, making two women pregnant before marrying the third not the other way round. The moment you say there is a daughter, he stands grabbing your behind and tits in expectation of @#$%^&*()_+, which isn't what I was planning to dish out. Even those with children out of marriage expect to marry clean virgins."

"That doesn't give you the right to stop dating. You need to have a social life. You need a man friend with whom you establish a pattern of friendship and rules to follow. There is something bad about a daughter or son growing up without a father figure in the home."

Stephanie was not to be thrown off balance easily. She was like a motherly honing pigeon or a KGB hit squad on the scent of an armed dissident. "

"Hear, hear. I guess I will have to form a single mothers support group seeing churches have Sunday school, young generation, youth, couples, men's and ladies fellowship excluding us single mothers."

"Most of your likes get married and change fellowships!"

___________________________________

"Is there a party?" Martin asked.

He was crouching next to his maternal uncle's son and his wife who sat on plastic chairs. His mother had been the last born in a family where her brother had a son almost close to fifty.

"A couples meeting," his uncle replied. "That is why I had specifically asked that you bring Tina along. We do things in twos like turtle doves that mate for life."

"Tina does not meet time deadlines," Martin had replied. "She had other more pressing fish to fry that coming here with me today."

What does a man say when he is dating a girl who is not present where he is supposed to present a paper? Do you say your date is intelligent but has a shroud of ingenuousness around her? Do you say negatives or positives?

"It makes it odd. I wanted you to make a presentation for your company's residential stands. Now there is only you. We have about forty couples if my counting is to be trusted. Imagine dealing a business presentation to these people. They are all from within the light density suburbs. You will see the parade of latest vehicles showing they are a separate high powered clique. You make a sell, they will spread the word about you and your company."

"Uncle. I am an engineer not a sales person though the commission does come in handy," Martin had suggested. "Thank you for the specific offer to me and Tina. Who made the cards?"

"You throw in the sales loot and you hand over the commission if you don't need it," his uncle replied. "The cards were made by another female graphics graduate of Harare Polytechnic, for free in order to spread her wings. Don't date her though."

"Uncle!"

"Did you read the specifics on the cards?" asked his aunt. "Especially where they said NO to single married couples."

"On what?"

"Strictly couples!"

"Hey the who is who in vehicles is coming around. What is this house used for with such dedicated and paved parking space?"

"It was someone's idea of not looking for money in London and New York. They turned this four thousand square metre residential plot into a garden of paradise. It is rented out for weddings, birthday parties and other events. The gazebo you see can accommodate about two to three hundred guests. That is where we will be having out couples' convention."

"Just like I did when I invested my money in a tour company and car hire business. To think we started as three guys pooling resources together to buy and hire out six vehicles," Martin replied. "Now the fleet has grown to about fourteen including two Toyota Quantum buses and two 32-seat tour buses which are almost always on hire weekly. Now everyone at work comments on that I have about eight vehicles when all I will be doing is being given any vehicle for a week to use."

"I have my shopping centre, four shops, toilets and store rooms to collect rentals from."

His uncle agreed on the need to invest when the time was good.

Martin dialled a number and listened. He spoke a few words.

"You have put me in a tight spot Tina. They need us as couples here. I have urgent business to sell to a clique of rich buddies. The last time I managed to haul a good sale was at a golf and fund raising dinner near Isis Road remember? ____ Huh? ____. You didn't turn up too? _____ Uncle has a business deal he wanted me to do. What? _____ Okay. She is definitely not coming."

"Poor you," his aunt said.

"Then I did better scram. I was just paying a visit then," Martin replied.

"And leave all the food and a chance to earn $000s in commission?" asked the aunt. "Are you way too crazy?"

"No auntie Bridget. I can't intrude," Martin had replied. "Tina is unable to be here. She says she is somewhere in Mufakose. She can't discuss details of the bridal shower there."

When he had asked, she had stammered on the relationship. Apparently it was a friend of a friend's relative who was tying the knot the following week. Tina had been invited. Her invitation here had played second fiddle. Now he was in a dilemma.

"Listen Martin, don't you have a new land development off Sakunda Service Station near Rockview Park?"

"Yeah we do Uncle Oswald."

"Then I have never seen a civil engineer turned projects manager who can't stomach a group of people. You are supposed to sell the residential park development. Who knows maybe a senior couple may want a credit plan for their son or a young couple for a second investment in property."

"Yeah I hear uncle. You are church couples here."

"We will find a single one to attach you to," Aunt Bridget suggested. "

"It's your fault," Oswald said to Bridget. "You were supposed to keep introducing him to eligible females."

"Oswald, Martin has Tina!" she almost shrieked. "Goodness me give these young people a break before we start matching them one against then other."

"I was only suggesting_______," Oswald said.

"Martin, find somewhere to sit and chat with your uncle while I telephone around for an eligible female for the occasion."

___________________________________

"Stephanie, how are you?" asked Bridget. "I hope you didn't forget the cake?"

"I didn't plus the best baker in the city is around with me. You say anything to deal with flour and she is a guru in it," Stephanie first hugged Bridget. "That is my long lost and found distance cousin, um Sandra. Sandy this is my church mate. She and I learnt at the same boarding school years apart. I used books she had used several decades apart. She liked reading and quoting off hand, Pride & Prejudiceor Jude the Obscure. She recited Julius Caesar verbatim at assembly. She beat me to the wedding ring of her husband. I could have been his wife."

"Hi Sandra, Stephanie is so talkative. If she had married my Oswald, maybe I should have dated Jerome instead. She is old enough to be my daughter. I will have to keep tabs on my husband. Some men love younger women I tell you."

"Bridget did her boarding years before us but I got her reputation for excelling in literature, English and classics."

Hand claps were heard before the three ladies started offloading things and making arrangements. They talked and worked, laughing all the time. They always found some juicy titbit to remember. Misfortunes of time ago became sources of humour now.

"Where is Jerome?" asked Bridget.

"He is coming. I wouldn't let him off the hook that easy. Men are not that easy to find so the guy of my youth remains stuck to me."

"You heard the couples' chairperson say absolutely no single married people," Bridget replied.

"Then I should make haste my departure," Sandra advised Stephanie.

"I could do with your assistance," Stephanie replied. "There is a lot to do. The other two girls could not make it on short notice. They are married. They need their men's permission to attend/host at a couple's fellowship."

"Where is your man?" asked Bridget.

"She is a single mother," Stephanie replied. "And I trust her to assist me. She stands by her word."

"I have a nephew who is unattached who wants to sell a residential phase to the couples," Bridget had replied.

"Settled, for today, Sandra you are a married couple with whoever, I could lose business so would he," replied Stephanie.

"Stephanie!"

"You heard her girl," Bridget emphasize taking Sandra's arm. She headed for where Martin was in conversation with his uncle. "Excuse me a minute or two both of you."

"Yap," Martin replied.

"This is Sandra and she is your date Martin for today. Her mentor is running a business issue. She needs Sandra's assistance so do you to sell Rockview," Bridget replied. "She and Sandra are partners. The last time I heard correctly, Sandra is a confectionery guru. Talk scones, cookies, cake and mince/meat pies with her while I do what I am supposed to do. You both have something to sell so behave like a married couple!"

"Aunt," protested Martin. "I wasn't that keen."

"Stephanie has to pay employees. You will help you aunt, period. I have spoken! Hold hands like real couples do and smile at him, he won't bite."

"Women!" Oswald volunteered. "Hello Sandra, nice to meet you. I am Oswald, her unfortunate but fortunate husband. I saw you some ten decades too late we would have had a date."

"Oswald!"

"Shoo-o aunt."

"Hi, I am Martin, your husband, I hope you still remember me," Martin had said to ripples of laughter. They shook hands again.

"Don't let the goose out," warned Stephanie. "Sandra will be back to sit with you Martin."

"Thanks folks," Sandra said after shaking hands.

"Sandra," Oswald began. "If you don't mind I and Martin will change wives. You can sit next to me while he sits next to his aging aunt."

"Uncle," she caught onto the joke. "New and old wine don't mix and match. Old wine is matured and tender. New wine hasn't been tested and tried."

Martin was tall almost to a metre eighty with a strong frame over his skeletal muscles. He wasn't stout neither was he thin. He appeared very tall with broad shoulders and long legs that could have done long jump, hop skip and jump or track events. His eyes were burrowed in slits. His head was covered by a mane of jet black hair shampooed, combed and well kempt. His eye sockets seemed hidden in slits within a furrow before his forehead.

Sandra was just as tall being slightly slimmer than Martin with long shapely legs and a ball of a face. Her jawbone seemed to jut out shooting her teeth far forward within her mouth. Her cheekbones rode both sides of her face giving her a girlish grin. She was stuck between being very attractive and plain.

© Copyright tmagorimbo 2014