Mr Survivor: Dear Omosh, toe the line or your revenge will be served cold
For my own financial survival, I decided to give Omosh a scare big enough to remind him who is boss but still retain him as the personal physician to Legend and Concorde.
When we parted ways on this platform last time, I promised to give Omosh, my driver-cum mechanic, a decapitating blow that would teach him a lifelong lesson on how not to mess up other men’s marriages in general and mine in particular. You will remember how Omosh had jeopardised my marriage by poisoning Queen with juicy lies about the status of my relationship with Mrembo, the proprietor of Happy Valley Resort.
Buoyed by my recent win at Happy Valley where I managed to have two of my worst enemies suspended from setting foot at Happy Valley Resort for three months, and armed with the damning secrets that I have about Omosh’s unholy handshake with Makena, our house help, I was determined to bring his marriage down like a pack of cards. You see, if a man takes your ugali, take away his sukumawiki.
Now, while I have always protected him from his no-nonsense wife by keeping the truth about his affair with Makena under the table, he has been poisoning Queen with lies. This was in total disregard of the fact that he owns whatever he has, if he owns anything, courtesy of me. But two problems confronted me as I planned how to tackle him.
One, it is not manly to destroy another man’s marriage, particularly when that man has miserably failed to destroy yours. In any case, it could be misinterpreted to mean that we were competing with him over Makena, complicating my already erratic marital stability all the more.
Secondly, and most importantly, despite the pain that Omosh had caused me, he is to me what Makena is to Queen—a necessary evil. You see, Legend, my newly acquired old model Volkswagen Passat, is in need of the constant company of a mechanic, and Omosh is the only one who seems to understand both the mechanical psychology and physiology of the legend.
And that is where the problem lies.
Dealing Omosh a blow could mean consigning the Legend to a mechanical intensive care unit (ICU) that in turn meant transferring my financial health to the high dependence unit (HDU) And so, after thinking deeply, I saw the light and arrived at the educated conclusion that I required Omosh more than he required me. For my own financial survival, I decided to give him a scare big enough to remind him who is boss but still retain him as the personal physician to Legend and Concorde, my terrain tested Beetle.
“You should have told me that you have had enough of my employment,” I told Omosh on Saturday.
“Why? What have I done?” he asked.
“You have been feeding Queen with lies from those Happy Valley idlers,” I said, giving him time to digest the news before dropping the bomb shell.
“Boss, I think someone is telling you lies,” he said.
“I know a lot about you and Makena but I have always chosen to protect you from your wife when she asked,” I said as Omosh’s mouth fell open but words refused to come out.
“Can I give you the licence to continue telling Queen your lies and I start telling your wife the truth I know?” I asked.
At that juncture, Omosh went mad. He started howling like a hyena. “Boss, I plead with you. Save me from that woman, the issue is not about our marriage but my life,” he cried.
“When you fed Queen with lies, were you not risking my life?” I pushed further, enjoying the whole drama.
“Boss, you do not know my wife. Telling her about Makena is finishing me completely,” he cried.
“What do you want me to do with you? I asked.
“You know me boss, you know how long we have been together. Give me one more chance and I won’t let you down, please boss,” he cried.
“I shall think about it,” I told him.
“Please boss. Thanks. I swear I will never interfere with your life again,” he pleaded.
I had managed to put Omosh in his right place. Although we both knew that we needed each other, there is a way in which Omosh had inherited Makena’s arrogance. Both had managed to blackmail us at the palace by acting as the indispensable workers whose departure would lead to our end. This sense of entitlement and indispensability had given them the shameless audacity to grow their affair in our own compound.
But I was not going to stand it anymore. However, I let Omosh off, with only the scare tactic to remind him who is boss.
He has been a really shaken man since. My decision determines whether he is safe from his wife. More so, I not only stand between him and his job, but also his bae Makena. I am sure he has learnt his lesson. And that is how Omosh still has his job and his marriage is still intact.
Wainaina Karanja lives in Nyandarua County. He is a teacher of English and writes stories to portray the reality of countryside life in Kenya as well as offer entertainment. [email protected]
