Black Opium and The Night Everything Changed

She was not supposed to be there. The invitation had gone to her colleague Bisi, who had given it to her at four PM on a Friday with the casual generosity of someone who already had plans. Gallery opening. Drinks. Take it, I'm not going.

Sade had no particular interest in gallery openings. She had been planning to go home, eat jollof rice, and watch something undemanding. This was a good plan. This was the right plan.

She went to the gallery.

She wore the Black Opium because it was Friday and she had bought it three weeks ago and had not yet found an occasion worthy of it. A gallery opening with free drinks and no expectations felt like exactly the right amount of occasion.

Coffee and vanilla and something darker underneath — the perfume of someone who had decided, at the last minute, to show up anyway.

The gallery was in a converted building in Ikoyi, the kind of space that looked effortless and had cost a significant amount of effort. The art was good. The drinks were better. The crowd was the sort of Lagos crowd that was interesting in the way Lagos crowds are always interesting — everyone there was doing something, building something, wanted something from the evening even if they could not have named it.

She was looking at a painting — large, dark, a cityscape that could have been Lagos or could have been anywhere — when someone stood beside her and said: “It's meant to be Victoria Island from the bridge. But I think it looks like grief.”

She looked at him. He looked at the painting. “I think it looks like home,” she said.

They talked for two hours. They exchanged numbers. They have been together for three years.

She still wears the Black Opium on Fridays. She considers it accurate record-keeping.

YSL Black Opium. For the night you almost stayed home.