Find prequel here
He
came in at 3:30 in the morning. In the night. Julie must have opened the door.
Usually I would set an alarm for that sort of thing. To wake up and usher him
in. But somehow, I hadn’t. It was a Saturday. I woke up much after 9, by that
time he was up and about in the house. In the tiny balcony with pigeon nests
and the potted croutons, in the living room by Julie’s recent cacti. Julie had
shaken me awake when she left for work.
“He’s
here bitch!”
“What?
Who?”
“Oh
c’mon. Your lover. Boyfriend. One night stander. Whatever you two are calling
it”, she whispered.
A
lot of reality sunk in. My chest felt heavy, filled with smoke, dry and
sorrowful. I shut my eyes and smashed my face on the pillow, attempting to
sleep for another half an hour or so.
My
room was still dark, only streaks of sunlight entered through the gaps in our
deep maroon curtains. I heard her walk out and shut the door close, softly. I
heard her make an excuse to the person outside, probably sitting on the cane
chair in the living room, which was the only place to sit in there in our minimalistic
nine hundred square feet two-bedroom. Apart from the guest mattress on the
floor where he most probably had slept his early morning off.
After
that, probably around 10, I walked out of my room toothbrush in hand, eyes
still closed. Mouth still foul. I heard him the kitchen. He was fumbling around
a little bit. Probably looking for material to make tea. Those soft sounds made
that heaviness in my chest return. I walked up to the kitchen threshold. He
turned to look at me.
Three
weeks ago we had met again. After that one day dalliance in his apartment in
his city. After what four or five years of an on and off unpleasant and yet
wildly tumultuous almost one-sided affair. From my one-side. Three weeks ago,
he had met me to tell me, he was serious about it all. Suddenly, I was the only
woman. That incident, of the telling me so, had make me irreversibly nervous
with joy immediately. But sometime after all that joy had reversed.
“I
don’t think we have got milk. It was my turn to get the milk, I am sure I
forgot”
We
didn’t have a fridge, a few months ago the old one went so bad we had to sell
it and never got around to buying a new one.
“We
don’t have a fridge, we buy everything once in two days, and everything goes
bad”
“Let’s
go buy a fridge then”
I
put the brush in my mouth and half smiled at him.
“There
must be milk powder, here somewhere”
I
pointed to the sugar and tea packets and pulled out the sauce pan from the pile
of clean utensils and went back to brushing my teeth.
I
turned away from him to shut my eyes and remember what he looked like a moment
ago. He was in khakis and a button down shirt. He didn’t wear a sweater or a
jacket anything. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, I could see his fair
hands. The sun shone on orange on his chin. Bits of beard stood on his cheeks.
There was no goatee. His pants were rather lose. Or maybe they were alright. I
needed to assess them again. His feet was flatter than regular people’s feet.
His toes almost made him look perched, like a bird. His toe nails were clear,
thick, yet clear. Unlike mine which always had tiny bits of nail paint stuck on
them, weeks’ sometimes months’ old. I was wrapped in a shawl. It covered my loose
onesie sleeping dress with animal prints, elephants and giraffes and
rhinoceroses. I wondered what he must think about that.
I
reentered the kitchen after wiping my face dry, with the face towel strung over
my shoulders. The tea was boiling by then. I saw him again. He was smiling more
now.
“Good
morning to you”, he said smirking, as if to ensure that I was totally up.
“Same
to you too”
“I
leave at 4:30”
“Oh”
“My
flight back is at 4:30, so I would clear your house by 2:30, is what I meant”
“Julie
likes you, you can stay longer if you want”
“I
like Julie too, decent girl”
“I
am sure you two would make each other very happy”
“Yeah
and so would her Dubai based fiancé, I should hope”
“Oh,
she told you”
“Yes
of course, had a nice chat with her in the morning. We talked every day and how
come you never told me she’s getting married in three months”
“No,
we didn’t talk every day. And I didn’t think you would like to know, too much
information.”
“But
I would like to know if I am getting married in three... seven months”
My
mind felt hollow, the foul smell in my mouth had returned. He focused his eyes
on me, while I pretended to strain the tea into the cups. I handed him over his
making sure our fingers didn’t touch. I cupped mine, trying to absorb all that
warmth into my ice cold fingers.
I
took a sip of mine, it was milky and sweet. The way I liked my tea, the way I
had told him a dozen times I liked my tea and about the severe importance of
tea in my mornings and afternoons. He was still holding his cup by the handle,
he hadn’t started sipping it yet. As if he was waiting for some kind of answer.
A few minutes into the act, almost exhausted by the tension of waiting for my
answer, he resumed being normal.
When
he had told me three weeks ago that he wanted us to get married, I had told him
I didn’t believe in proposals. The sounded very archaic, very Jane Austen. He
had never read Jane Austen, and I was very sure a man like him liked his
answers in yeses and nos. Not similes and metaphors. Definitely not quotations
of great fiction. Pushed further by my continuing silence back then, he had
asked me to think about it. Like seriously consider.
I
had tried very hard to cover my shock and awe. My temples were hot, my hands
were cold, and my heart was going wild. We were at the coffee shop just outside
the airport. I had gone to see him off. Just like he had come to see me off
when I had been to his place. It had been a cloudy and dull day. I had taken
the day off. My phone was getting inundated with calls from work which I had to
take because I was their slave. But now when I wanted the phone to ring, the
bloody call never came. He was holding my hands on the table, subtly so that
people wouldn’t stare at us. And he asked me again.
I
rattled with my passive aggressive shit told him he didn’t have a ring. How was
that even considered a proposal? Doesn’t he watch romantic comedies? The smile
from his face vanished. He was angry now. I had hurt him. He had the upper hand
now. The color of his eyes changed, the lengths of his breaths lengthened. His
tone changed when he spoke next. This love was a constant power struggle, a
tireless battle of egos.
“What
kind of ring would you like?” he had asked in a bossy commanding kind of way.
“That’s
beside the point.”
He
hadn’t even told me that he loved me. All that had felt very weird. I, who with
all her conviction knew that I loved him deeply, which was probably a serious
infatuation to begin with but had rapidly turned into a serious attraction and
then into love in a matter of days. I had been in love with him through days
and weeks and months, even when he had vanished from my life, even when he had
forgotten me for other things, I had waited for him desperately through all
that. That moment I was happy too, despite being terrified and in between I
felt so full with that joy, so overwhelmed that I felt I would rupture. But I
didn’t know how to behave. I must have emanated very contrasting signals.
“Let’s
go and buy a ring now, we can do that”, he said sounding normal, less angry.
“You
will miss your flight”
He
could have said he didn’t care. I would have loved to go shopping anyway. I
have never been with anyone to the airport who had missed a flight. I was very
punctual and careful. Never missed a flight bus or train. This could be
exciting. In that instant, had he bought me a ring I would have said yes. Back
calculating from the posterity we always project ourselves into, I would like
to think so. But he had said that the next time he would get me a ring
definitely. For sure, without fail.
We
had parted that day rather confused, me particularly in sort of a daze. Had he
been planning on revealing what he did and asking what he wanted of me, he
would have been relieved but I was too perturbed to even answer. My past came
rolling back at me.
I
had taken the bus back from the airport even though he had insisted on putting
me in a cab. It was just afternoon, there was no need to take a cab, it costed
thrice as much. It was a long ride in the bus, I had cried amongst strangers
who appeared as if they couldn’t see me cry and wipe my tears away and then cry
again and repeat.
I
imagined him in his flight, quietly reading his thin travel books, not books on
travel, but thin books that he bought just because they could be finished
within the span of two flights, one book for every journey, half on the onward,
and half on the return. I imagined him on his stop over. In strange airports,
in new cities, amongst people who looked very alien. Alien air, alien water,
longing for the familiarity of home. I imagined him listening to songs.
Imitating singers in his soft husky whispering voice, sometimes. And I held
myself back from crying. I obviously couldn’t marry him. We had been through a
lot of shit. This was just not feasible.
More
so because I had found out a lot more than I would like on that visit. He had
swiftly converted into a man of clay from a man of dreams. His fissures were
only too visible. His flaws real and within reach. His gaunt face within reach
to be plundered with my kisses warned me of all the past he had been through. I
warned myself to tread lightly, to tread with tremendous caution because he
seemed fractious and anything I might attempt may crumble him, just. I was so
frozen with restraint, I just sat that and observed him, go on and on.
He
held me in his arms, and we had sex a few times but I as so much in stupor that
I couldn’t break out of it. He asked me to snap out of whatever it was keeping
me but I was clearly rendered unable to. He re-narrated stories from his
childhood but somehow the humor from those had vanished. Unlike the first times
over phone when he had narrated them and I had laughed and laughed and fallen
for him, this time his telling me in person felt charmless, serious. For
instance, how once he had mistakenly seen his father conducting an operation on
one of his patients had battered him as a child and he couldn’t stop puking. Or
how he had driven their new car with his mother to test drive the thing and
they had gotten lost, finding their way out after half a day and running out of
petrol. I didn’t know why I had been amused earlier but then I couldn’t just
see it anymore. It was the shock of reality that went on.
In
my room we had opened the bottle of wine he had brought for me, his first gift
of any kind and perhaps the last too and we swigged it from paper cups and then
when we were very drunk, directly from the bottle. Julie had excused herself
for the entire weekend like a conscientious flat mate and we had cooked a meal
together or two, before deciding to order food, Chinese, Thai, whatever I had
in my whims and fancies. He entertained me, he tried. But somehow he seemed to
have a shortfall. Sometimes he failed by thin margins, sometimes by large
irrecoverable ones.
Probably
I was too much into myself. But then I asked him about Cora, his college
girlfriend. We had never brought her into our conversations. She was beyond
reach, just like the few boys from my past. But now Cora had risen from the
past. And he would have to spill the beans about her. It turned out Cora was
not just limited to college and they had continued seeing her for a couple of
years after graduating. She was vivacious and pretty, he showed me an old photo
of theirs on his phone. They both looked sheepish and sleepy in their
sweatshirts, almost like twins because they were both lanky, almost equally. They
looked as if they were drunk with love.
“So
why did you two put an end to it?”
“It
was mostly the working in separate cities that did it, primarily. Also she was really
into a new colleague when she had just started working”
“Oh
my gosh, were you jealous?” I stressed on my surprise. Because he played as the
cool chap all the time. His emotions under his control, firmly. He never broke
down, barely even fumbled. But the color of his face changed on the mention of
this.
“Not
exactly. But she was far too ahead with him to even look back at us and regret”
“Oh
you poor baby” I mocked him very sarcastically, because I was quite high.
He
forced his mouth on mine and bit my lips hard and wouldn’t stop until I
apologized. I was afraid it would leave a mark and I would be embarrassed to
step out. But it left no such mark. I had made him sad reminding him of all
that. Just to balance the scales I told him about a certain someone in my past
as well. Someone I had briefly seen, over half a dozen encounters a few years
ago. For a few months wherein I had been temporarily abandoned by my permanent
paramour. He laughed and continued working on some more bites I would be
embarrassed about the coming week.
Even
with the scales assumed to have been balanced, something didn’t feel right.
Upon probing further, it dawned upon me that he met Cora several times when I
was even so desperately flirting with him. He justified that he was always
looking for some sort of closure with her because she was his first and he
always wanted to make sure there was nothing left, not even the slightest,
before walking away.
I
could have spilled some more truths to balance the scales on that as well. I had
engaged in a friendly romance with a friend for a couple of weeks, but not to
explore any untaken chances. Only merely to fill the vacuum that newly begotten
youth had got me. But I believed this wouldn’t go down well, if I told him about
that friend. You never know how territorial men could get. And if he was
territorial, or anything of that sort, some secrets were better kept sealed.
“So
where is Cora now? Are you guys keeping in touch?” I pinched him again.
“Should
I? Do you want me to?” he retorted, sounding authoritative.
“I
don’t want to get into your business. But you never know, if you left their
some chances unexplored. What if there might be something, I wouldn’t want you
to blame me years later saying that ‘Why didn’t you tell me to check with Cora
one last time’ and what would I do...”
He
cut me off suddenly by asking “So you intend to be with me years later”
“Haven’t
I been always there? Except when you have brushed me aside me for women from
the past, or other newer hotter women, or work commitments, or family affairs,
or your friends, or women from the past, or newer hotter…”
I
suddenly realized I was wailing. Very loudly, my throat hurt, how loudly I was
crying. He held me on his lap and comforted me by pushing me into a ball but my
crying wouldn’t stop. I thought I would free myself from his clasp and run, but
there was nowhere to go. I gave in and couldn’t stop crying either.
“I
have loved you, always. Always, through my entire fucking life. Since the day I
met you. I have loved you”, I heard myself loudly confessing. All the drinking
had done the trick. I couldn’t see his face because I was looking away, we were
both looking in the same direction, at the walls. “But what have you done to me…”
“It’s
okay, it’s gonna be okay, baby”, he whispered and smothered my neck with kisses
from behind.
Shortly
after I must have fallen asleep. I must have passed out for two hours or more.
I could feel the cramps in several parts of my body, I woke up with a jolt and
sat cross legged on the bed. I must have scared the fuck out of him. He must be
petrified, oh my god.
He
was behaving too normally. He looked happy in fact. I had not the slightest
idea what had transpired in his head. He looked up from his phone.
“It’s
time, I have to call a cab to the airport”
“Is
it that late?”
“No,
it’s just after 3. You wanna come see me off?”
“Will
you pay my return cab fare?”
He
smiled and pressed his palm on my forehead. It felt cool, a shiver almost went
down my limbs.
“What
are we doing!? I will go wash my face and changeup” I left in a hurry.
I
splashed a lot of water on my face, still the heaviness won’t go.
When
I came out he must have guessed my situation. “We will get you some coffee at
the airport café or something. I am sure the airport must have something nice”,
he said sounding irreversibly posh.
“I’m
not so sure” I said trying to bail myself out of it.
From
inside the cab, the high way to the airport shone in the filtered sunlight from
a cloudy sky. The monsoon had not retreated properly. The clouds wore a dirty
white color and appeared ominous. It felt as if the rain was waiting.
“I
think I left my umbrella at home” I said rummaging through my handbag. He appeared
pensive. Almost borderline lost. “What is it?” I asked him.
“What
is what?”
“What
is wrong with you?” I quickly repeated “What on earth is wrong with you?” I
sounded more concerned the second time.
“Nothing
is wrong. Although it looks like it’s going to rain. Too bad about that
umbrella”
I
laughed nervously. Attempting to keep him going in the conversation. But he
continued to stare out the window. Had I succeeded in completely alienating him
by my nonsensical intoxicated blabber earlier.
“This
is not our usual Sunday afternoon traffic. Usually there is more. Much more”
“Oh,
is there?”
“Yes
I mean the cab barely moves. Also, we are hardly inside the city anymore. This
is practically outskirts.”
For
a minute there, he retreated and looked at me. In a manner that almost felt
condescending. In a way to warn me to keep away with my fake attempts at
conversation. To give up trying to trivialize what had happened earlier.
I
felt depressed in there. Couldn’t wait for us to reach the airport. I almost
nudged the driver on the shoulder to drive faster. I looked up the cafes at the
airport on my phone, to be sure that there were no good ones.
“Like
I said, no good café at the airport. I think I should just come back ASAP and
have my coffee at home. Julie will be back by then. I am sure I can exploit her
love for me to make me a good cup that will help me with the hangover. I after all
am the broken hearted one, amongst the two of us...” I giggled hopelessly.
This
time he looked at me. His eyes were between anger and sympathy. A terrible intermingling
of emotions that.
“I
just want to retract whatever I said earlier. I do not love you. You wouldn’t have
taken me seriously I am sure. These things happen when a girl drinks so much
wine”. I was meted out cold silence again.
I
rolled down the windows to get in some air, casually warning the driver to turn
off the AC. The cool air got into my lungs and breathed back some strength into
me. “I am sure, you haven’t taken me seriously.”
I
touched him behind his neck, squeezing a bit of his flesh between my fingers and
in a way forcing him to look at me. I could feel the dryness in my face, my
eyes singed from any lack of focus, my movements still not sober.
He
appeared to be deep in thought. As if taking one serious decision after another
or weighing something against something else. He looked worried, for the years I
had known him to be the man he is, he appeared worried. His eyebrows squeezed
up dividing his forehead into lines. His eyes looked somewhat exhausted. He put
his arm around me in the seat of the cab and brought me closer.
“Okay.
Alright.”
“What
is alright?”
“No
I haven’t taken you seriously at all.”
“Good
to know. Now we can get back to indulging in what we are good at”
“And
what might that be?”
“You
exploring chances with Cora perhaps and I writhing in self-concocted pain of heartbreak” I sank into his arms saying this. I couldn’t believe how loosely I was
behaving. It was the alcohol perhaps. I chugged in some water and relapsed into
his arms. I smelled his shirt, played with his collar, his buttons. I waltzed
into a half sleep.
He
woke me up when we drove into the airport. I went inside. He still had a lot of
time, he had web checked in and everything. He found a decent coffee shop and none
of my naysaying would work on him.
We
sat down and shortly before getting up to leave, he asked me the question. Then
he left.
For
three weeks, my recently converted two sided love affair stifled me. It shouldn’t
have. Why should it? Isn’t this what I had expected? Isn’t this the best that
could happen? We were finally settled to see this through.
But
this made me awkward and uncomfortable. Julie told me that it was going to be
alright. Obviously she was enormously happy for me, for us both, as she pointed
out. But there was something ashen about her expression that made me think
deeper and deeper until I lost all track of what I was thinking.
He
had called me to let me know that he would return through my city in a few
weeks, and on the way back would like to know what I felt. The timeline made me
dread. He was calm about the entire goings on. He had come out of his shell for
a sometime only, probably in the cab to the airport when he had been stuck in
indecision and had expressed worry on his face. But soon after he had said
whatever it was he had been weighing for or against, quietly passed the ball to
my court and retreated into his shell. Inert, as he always had been to the turmoil
of short-lived romance.
But
my angst of unrequited love had suddenly and uncontrollably transformed into
anger. We might have never made it to this point. Given my chronic shyness, had
he been even marginally more ignorant of me, we would have never made it to
this point. And at that point I was too stoic to let any other force get the
better of me. I loathed how my fates had turned thanks to a sliver of chance.
And I regretted it. It was very ironical, but I was going to refuse to him.
Obviously,
he might think I was just trying to play hard to get. And if he did play hard,
he might eventually get to it. But till then, I was refusing to jump to any
conclusions. So I didn’t answer him in the three week interval. He even went
out to buy a ring apparently and asked me if there was anything specific I wanted.
I didn’t budge in my indifference.
And
he’s finally here. In my apartment making tea. Giving me a timeline again by
when he would leave.
“Do
you want to see the ring? I got it on Tuesday. I would have sent you a photo. But
wanted to show in person.” At
that point he held my hands and kissed me. I looked at him in the eyes and told
him we could keep the ring for later.
“How
was your trip?” I asked.
“Same
old, same old. Except that this time I experienced every minute of it what you
had been feeling for years”
He
sounded honest. Distraught even. Like he had shrunk my years of suffering into
a span of three weeks and undergone it all.
“If
only such fast forwards were possible!” I said, trying to sound indignant.
“Do
you want me to beg?”
“Won’t
be such a bad idea. But I wouldn’t recommend it”
We
were getting nowhere this way. I took a shower and decided we should get some
brunch. Considering it was too early for lunch.
“And
you can get moving to the airport from the restaurant”
He
looked perplexed and confused because he was trying to hide it. I told myself
there is no going back on this. If I was letting him go, this was it. This was
what I was supposed to do. Push him out for good.
I
kept on going about my banter about films and books and my artsy friends. About
places in the city that were a must go to. Probably, he should try them out the
next time he is here. He gave me blank expressions that didn’t suit him and
made him appear like a completely different person, someone I couldn’t recognize.
He spoke in bits about his family. His mother, his brother, their small-town house.
We had ordered a lot of food. There was some that I would pack and take for
Julie I told him, the rest had to be left at the table. I offered but he paid.
We stood out in the shade of the parapet, he had his small trolley with him. We
were stranded in mid-September heat.
He
appeared weak, vulnerable. A gust of warm wind came and blew my hair astray. He
sized my face up in his hands and cupped my cheeks and smiled faintly.
“For
posterity”
I
didn’t stop him. He had accepted my refusal. In totality with whatever
repercussions it might beget.
“Since
I see no point in my staying further, I think, it’s time to hail that cab”
We
hugged. I squeezed the flesh behind his neck for a bit and condensed that
moment to be a source of warmth for cold years to come. Then he left and never
explored our chance again.