So here are two foolish couples. Denny and Nara are just lovers.  Denny puts her up in a two bedroomed cottage and that’s where their relationship now thrives. The owner of the cottage insists he can only allow singles of the same sex to share the cottage so enter Petronella who becomes Nara’s house mate.  She has a fiancé, Twambo.
The two men and their lovers or partners become close to each other and spend much time together in that little cottage.  They often share meals, especially evening ones but also breakfast and lunches on weekends. Denny develops interest in Petronella and somehow, they find a common cord and start a relationship which they consume at some lodge.  They are cheating on their partners, Denny cheating on Nara and Petronellaon her fiancé Twambo.  They keep their secret so well but not forever!  Twambo, very much unlike him anyway, suddenly goes through Petronella’s phone and discovers messages that make it crystal clear what is happening between his fiancé and Denny. It’s also clear where they meet for their sexual activities.
He stays calm about it even though he is deeply hut. This is the woman he has invested his love in and has been planning to make his life partner.  What calms him down is his own secret. He was sexually attracted to Nara, Petronella’s house mate, and lover of Denny.  The two have been having a steamy affair of their own.  While Denny would tell Nara that he’s working late and so will only get home to visit her around 20 hours, Petronella would also find an excuse for keeping Twambo away from the cottage till she is back“ a bit late”.  They would then go to the lodge and have their fun.
Twambo and Nara would also exchange this information about the fact that both their lovers wouldn’t be home till later.  Twambo would get to the cottage and enjoy some pretty blissful moments with Nara.  Both couples think they are clever.  In fact, it is a question of two couples fooling each other but ultimately, fooling themselves!
This was the reason Twambo calmly announced as they sat together, that he knew what was going on between his fiancé Petronella and his friend Denny.  He actually did so by asking when next the two would go and have fun at the named lodge.  While Denny and Petronella were looking blue, green and purple in shocked confusion and disarray, Twambo shocked them further by telling them they need not worry too much. The puzzle had solved itself already as he too had been injecting unimaginable thrills in Nara right there in the cottage, in her bedroom, each time Petronellaand Denny said they would be late coming home.
The calm confusion, though, was only momentary.  Much as all four realised they were guilty of cheating on their partners, that essentially, the best would be to shake hands and ask for each others’ forgiveness and start afresh, love and possessiveness (or jealousy as is commonly known in Zambia) don’t operate like that.  Take a most lecherous man like our brother who writes this column, Herr Mixture MeexyNjombwinjo!  He does the most unthinkable things the word ‘morality’ would long have been decimated from the dictionary if it was applied on him alone, yet give him any sign that you admire his wife, and he goes into days of nonstop tantrums about what he can do to you if he finds you!  It’s a normal natural feeling, that of protecting that which you love, which you feel belongs to you, even when you yourself admired another and even went as far as doing what you don’t want others to do with your partner.
So, yeah, the couples were all consumed in angry, disappointed bitter and many other emotions after discovering what had been going on.  Denny was the first to react, and in a most irrational manner for that matter.
“You bastard!” he screamed at Twambo.  “You talk as if … as if …  you think you are … I can hit you!”
Nara, his partner, reacted in defensive mode.  “Why should you hit him?  Didn’t you take his future wife?  No ways.  You are not going to hit anyone!”
“I will hit you, you bitch!” Denny said glaring and turning on his lover.  “I waste my money paying your rentals, paying your Dstv, buying your food, groceries and so on and that’s how you repay me?  You are a first class bitch!”
He was moving threateningly towards her, his lips parted in a nasty snarl.  Twambo instinctively moved in between Denny and Nara.
“Denny, this is all so stupid and you must realise that!” he challenged his colleague, eyeing him straight like a boxer eyes his opponent in the ring just before the start of a fight.
Denny, who by now looked every inch the savage that he truly was, a savagery which had been hibernating in his soft-soft love antics for the two girls and feigned friendship for Twambo, growled like a rabid dog as he violently shoved him off!.  Poor Twambo could not believe the amount of energy and force in the smaller looking man.  He staggered backwards and went tumbling onto the floor, hitting the arm of one sofa on his way down.
“Aaah don’t hit him!” screamed Petronella, rushing at Denny. He slapped her hard, calling her several unprintables as he warned her to stay out of it.
She also fell near her fiancé and started to scramble up as Denny head-butted Nara on her forehead and she started to cry out aloud.  Denny appeared to be the worst hit in the scenario as he suddenly went on the rampage attacking the other three.  Twambo managed to get to his feet, attempted to fight back, more out of anger than principle but he received a straight hard right on the mouth, instantly smelling blood as he returned to the floor.
“I want you out of my place, immediately!” Denny screamed as he gathered Nara by her blouse and shook her violently.
She struggled with him and tried to scratch his eyes out but the beast was too strong.  She screamed at him, instead, saying it wasn’t his house, that she wouldn’t move an inch, that he could go wherever he came from and shewould afford the cottage, the food, the groceries, the Dstv and everything; that her life did not depend on him.  He punched her on the temple just as Twambo, with the ultimate force in his body, unleashed a huge punch of his own to the back of Denny’s head.  The man went down as if he had been pole axed. There was sudden total silence as Denny lay so still where he had fallen on the floor no one was in doubt he had been killed with that one blow to his head.
“You’ve killed him!  You have killed your friend!” Peronella was shouting and crying at the top of her voice.
The landlord burst into the sitting room his two teenage boys behind him.  The noise had attracted them and they had arrived to find out if their cottage was on fire or whatever.
To cut a long boring story about four fools and their cheating lovers, each on the other, Denny was resuscitated when the landlord poured a container (budiza) of ice cold water from the deep freezer on his head.  He jumped up so suddenly and ran right, stopped, then left, stopped again and looking thoroughly confused and obviously momentarily unaware where he was, managed to utter a “What? Who … where the hell …” before he fully came to.
Twambo left Petronella.  He said he would find it hard to trust her in marriage.  She said it was okay because she too would never trust a man who slept with his house mate.  He might slaughter all her sisters, cousins and even maids I future.  Denny went away from Nara but the next day, he called her and said in spite of all the mess, he missed her. She said she missed him too.  He would come back.
The landlord gave them a week to move, the two girls!  In that time, Twamboalso called Nara.  He missed her. She said she missed him too. Could they meet at a lodge and talk?  Yes.  After all, Denny was married, reminded Twambo. She was, in that relationship, an assistant to the madam (ATM), wasn’t she? Yes.