AYITEY POWERS IN BABYLON PART 2

                                                      

…So when the Eastern European “gentleman” approached him and offered to sell him a top-of-the-range, ultra-modern laptop for half the RRP, I was surprised to observe that our boxing hero’s interest bone had been tickled.

So as if led by some unseen force from some next dimension, Ayitey Powers was led like a sheep to the slaughter. The slaughter being a burnt-out 1980-something Fiat.

The Fiat was where all the magic lay. We shall call our Eastern European Mariusz for convenience sake and because I just can’t keep saying/typing “Eastern European, Eastern European” like an idiot.

 Well, he walked briskly towards the said car. It was business, nothing personal. Mariusz nodded to another Mariusz-looking guy in the stalls who was trying too hard to look like a casual, innocent bystander. He looked, to me, like an accomplice from 100 yards away. All the while, Ayitey followed the first Mariusz to his car.

Clickety clack, clickety clack, clickety clack, his shoes sounded.

Another Ghanaian hustler (perhaps from night shift) reading the scene hollered “Ayiteeeey!”, trying to signal him, to tip him and save him from the snares of the devil. But Ayitey Powers mistaking him for yet another bugging fan, just waved at him, avoiding eye-contact in true celebrity style. He just followed Mariusz.

Clickety clack, clickety clack, clickety clack.

Mariusz took the laptop from the front passenger side of the Fiat. He pulled it out of the paper box. It was shiny fresh even from where I stood, complete with Styrofoam, manual and everything. Then something strange happened; as Powers agreed to withdraw money from the ATM, Mariusz put the laptop back on the floor of the backseat and offered to walk Powers to the ATM. He explained that since the laptop was brand flipping new he didn’t want to carry it about.

Now, you don’t have to be F.B.I, B.N.I, C.S.I or anything-I to smell a rabid rat here. The laptop was taken from the front side but when he was putting it back in the car, he shoved it around the backseats. WHY? Read on.

                                         

                                                  ELECTRONIC MAGIC SWITCH   (Ayitey Powers)

The Electronic Magic Switch is explained here. Electronic; because these conmen titillate a greedy man (or woman) with an iPod, laptop, Blackberry and all manner of wavy phones. Magic Switch; because with a slight of manicured hands, these confidence tricksters substitute a box of sexy electronics for a similar box of pure rubbish.

OK, so after retrieving the laptop from the backseat, Mariusz presented it to Powers with Papal pomp and received a thick wad of purple cash from the latter for his effort. At that point, Mr Powers was certain he had a new laptop in his hands. Mariusz was calm and composed enough to count the money and shake the hand of his clueless mack: Mr Ayitey Powers before driving off with a speed that would have left Lewis Hamilton gasping.

A sense of the dramatic prompted my inner crooner to break into Adane Best’s Multi-Platinum single titled “Ayitey”. “Ayitey, Ayitey, Ayitey, Ayitey Ooooh….”  I didn’t sing it out aloud, of course!

Moment of truth (or lies) now: Ayitey Powers ripped open the carton like a spoiled kid at Christmas expecting to see his lappie. I don’t know what he saw in the paper box but the sound that came out of his dark-ass Ga lips was “eeeeeeeiiiiiihhhhhhhh!!!!”.

His facial expression was a variant mixture of shock, anger, terror and plain disbelief. It was the closest to fainting, I had ever seen a man get. Ayitey staggered broken-heartedly to an elderly white man selling cutlery and explained his palaver to him. I missed the greater chunk of the conversation but as I got closer, I heard the bit where he said “……..so they sold me a carton of POTATOES for that amount of money! I swear there was a laptop in this same carton ten minutes ago!” 

So that was it. POTATOES!

Here’s my deduction: The men had two similar boxes. One had a laptop, the other was stacked with potatoes. They showed him the laptop and magic switched it for the carton of potatoes. I looked around and sure enough, the other man who looked like Mariusz but wasn’t Mariusz who had nodded to Mariusz had completely DISAPPEARED. Wonderful!

The old trader, perhaps disgusted with both the culprit (for being so heartless) and the victim (for agreeing to buy stolen goods) just kept shaking his head from side to side.

Ayitey asked him “so what should I do now…with these potatoes?”

The old man looked him dead in the eye and said “well, go cook them and eat them then.”

That, ladies and gentlemen was a true story.