Chapter seven

The soft beep of the alarm found his eyes opening as soon as it called out. The realization that less than six years ago, he struggled to wake when the alarm came at five curved a grim smile into my lips.

Just six years.

Robinson rubbed a palm over his face before sitting up in bed. To his left Eleana had somehow managed to entangle herself with the bedsheet. However does she sleep this much? he thought.

He walked over to the table on Eleana's side of the bed, plucked the bottle of water on it and emptied it down his aching throat. Rounding the bed, he walked into the restroom on the far end of the wall. A quick splash of water on his face and he walked back into the room. Eleana was still asleep, but in a new position, the sheets tangling tighter.

A quick glance at the clock told him he had been up for nearly fifteen minutes, which left him with another fifteen before he commenced the business of the day. Having the only possible distraction from from starting still slumbering off beside him, chalres decided to start his day on a headstart.

For the next three hours, he was positioned in front of his computer screen, running through articles, videos and images in preparation for the next meeting he was going to have with a client on Monday. It would have been an easy task to get a briefing from the team in charge of research, but the client seemed clueless to Robinson and he wanted to be sure of what he was getting into.

Not that he didn't trust the research team. He knew he did. They were one of the best of his workers at the company but the way the client presented itself as clueless was propelling his wanting to find out himself if it was a client worth spending time on or if he were to move on to the next candidate that needed his attention to close a deal.

Robinson had a rule in business: know who you spend your time with and if he was ever to waste time in someone, it should be something he agreed to. The decision has helped him save some more minutes — hours, in the case of the Board of Directors at the company, who he was starting to wonder how they got that high.

So, that morning, Robinson spent three hours running through the internet and also checking if what the company provided was accurate with what the research team had been provided with. From his experience, the first place to find a company nowadays was on social media. It seemed counterproductive, but for someone who had learnt to place his entire being in work when the time came, chalres could easily turn off unnecessary distractions.

At the end of it, he had found the company to be indeed true and having history, but had some explanations to make on some of the projects they had undergone. If they couldn't provide reasonable explanation for these projects, there was a higher probability of their name being added to the company's black list.

Somewhere during the three hours, Robinson would come to find when he finished, Eleana and woken up and as other days they had spent together, buried her face in her phone. When he looked over, she was tapping it furiously. It remained a puzzle to him, what she did on the phone that required that level of urgency..or speed. As far as Robinson knew, Eleana didn't work, volunteer at an NGO, or do anything that would require her exerting energy, yet she always had something to type, messages to respond to.

When he finally decided to close the chapter, he stood from the chair. A faint rumble ran through his belly. The time on the bedside alarm told him the time was 8:15.

“This is a first time," he said to himself softly before standing.

Usually, Robinson ate breakfast because it was mandatory, never because he was hungry. After some deliberation, he remembered he didn't have anything as dinner the previous evening..

Luckily for him, on the chest of drawers placed at Eleana's side of the bed was a bottle of water, unopened just as it had been every other evening. He emptied the bottle down his throat, not mentioning a word to Eleana, and also kept her face in her phone, immersed, not noticing him. Done, he left the room, waked down the hallway, jogged down the staircase and wound his way behind it. To his right is a room made specifically for himself. Sometimes, when he was in the mood, for Charles.

The room was his gym and where he spent his Saturday morning, keeping in shape his well-chiselled, model body for at least an hour. Bench presses, weightlifting, squats, running on the treadmill, push-ups, and an entire textbook of other workout techniques later, did Robinson only come out of the gym.

By the time he came out — a shower, two bottles of water emptied — his belly was burning. Not only from sitting-up, but from hunger. It had been long since he felt hunger that sharp in the early hours of the morning.

“Àna," he called, as he walked out of the gym, heading towards the kitchen.

No response came and he wondered if she was occupied with Mariam again. The little thing could be a needle in the butt sometimes.

“Àna," he called, even louder this time. Yet, no response greeted his ears. Where is everyone? Even shouting as of then was already a chore.

When he walked into the kitchen, it took a moment of restraint for me not to yell in anger.

The countertop was empty and there was no sign of food on the dining table. How long does it take to prepare a meal? he wondered as he moved around the kitchen. Hoping that she'd left the food in the freezer, not wanting to bother him.

When he looked through the hole in the kitchen that gave a glimpse of the sitting room, Robinson gritted his teeth.

“Yeah, I'll go to an eatery later."