oilmen

M–. One of three partners in a Houston car service company. There are Werthers Originals in the cup holder beside me. When he learns I am soon to be in the business of booking multiple transportation shuttles, he is pleased to have made my acquaintance, and plies me to stay in touch. His company is looking to expand—he’s been in the business ten years; the partnership formed a year ago. The car is sleek—a trunk deep enough for two, even three bodies, magazines tucked in the leather seat pockets.

A woman on the radio observes that she’s lived in the States longer than she has in her native England. M– hasn’t been home, to the south of Nigeria, in ten years, but his accent is still able to twist and soften my native language enough so that I confuse Poland for Portland—his cousin is a professional basketball player in the former.

He picks me up from a flight from Detroit. He asks about the automaker’s situation, but I am woefully deficient of information. He’s thinking of going to Detroit for a convention of Nigerian émigrés. They eat, socialize, and discuss topics about home.

He first came to the States for school, in Wisconsin, but then “Wisconsin got cold.” Houston was much more like home, in terms of the weather, and the Nigerian expatriate community is surprisingly prodigious—like much in Texas, it has to do with oil, and the money that helps it flow.