I am on a trip with a few friends. “___” was also supposed to be present. But I’m disappointed. I’m not in touch with him, so I have no idea if he is going to turn up or not. I keep looking for him, as we’re about to leave. I don’t see him. I had mentally prepared myself for the situation that he isn’t there with the rest of us. But I’m still disappointed.
* * *
A few of us college friends are traveling by bus. It is one of those buses with wide and tall glass panes, letting a lot of light, giving the vehicle a feeling of space and lightness. We’re hanging from the railings on the roof of the bus and playing, when I catch sight of him playing cards with a girl ahead of me. He is dressed in grungy clothes – his usual style. Shorts and a non-descript t-shirt, his glasses on. He looks seriously while he plays. I try and attract his attention. Make my presence felt, but it doesn’t seem too successful at this early stage of my endeavour. Then one of my friends – SS – who has been complaining of feeling sick for a while pukes all over me. I’m covered in orange, gooey puke. I turn around, further drenching myself in her spray of puke, as I try to escape it. I stand there, dripping. I finally get his attention, which I was confident of getting even otherwise. He suddenly leaves the bus. I get out of the bus as well, more to follow him, but I tell my friends that I’m going to clean up and change.
I catch sight of him turn the corner of the bus and start to cross the road, as I step out of the bus. He doesn’t look back and he walks fast. I follow him at a jog and turn the corner of the bus, when I see him cross the road to the other side and get into his car. I follow him, dodging traffic, and finally start walking on the raised footpath, on the other side of which his car is parked, blocked from the main road. I think I can see a fair, elderly gentleman sitting on the passenger seat as “___” occupies the driver’s seat, but the view isn’t too clear due to the glare from the sun, which blocks out the face of the elderly gentleman from my vision. I walk at a brisk pace, closer to his car, not caring if that gentleman might even be his father, because I’m not certain if the gentleman is his father, and I don’t want to lose track of him, on a red herring. I can feel the elderly gentleman observing me with curiosity as I walk with a sense of determined purpose towards their vehicle. I draw closer, when the glare fades away and I can clearly see the person sitting in the passenger seat and to my quick shock, I see that it is his father.
In the span of the next few seconds, several things happen simultaneously.
I swerve and change my direction in the last minute, as I observe his father turn to ask “___” if he knows me, when he turns his face away from his father, in the pretext of looking out for traffic on the right, as he guides his car to make a U-Turn to the right. But in the last moment, from my vantage point, I catch a glimpse of the smile he was trying to hide. I wonder about the several possible explanations for the smile.
* * *
I stand outside his door. A tall, narrow house, it seems like, with a tall door. It is several stories high, like one of those ancient, partially hidden, dilapidated mansions, with yellowing paint peeling. I knock on the wooden door with a brass knocker. His father opens the door. With a perfunctory nod of recognition, he leaves the doorway and calls out for his son, who happens to stand right behind him, like he missed the door by just a few seconds, by which time his father had already reached the door. The father steals a quick look at his son’s face to read his expression as he turns, which the son happens to keep purposefully masked, with forced “expressionlessness”, which is characteristic of men/boys his age when they’re making sophisticated conversation with the women/girls they’re trying to impress; but particularly characteristic of him, as it is his signature trademark to be forcibly expressionless, to such an extent that the author can visibly feel the facial nerves underneath his skin jumping out from the strain. Or so she believes.
She then walks the threshold into his house and drinks in the deceptively wide staircase on the right, which looks quite narrow, that carries the father upstairs; the low hanging ornate chandeliers, that cast a yellow glow to the room; the richly done up inside walls, with old, expensive paintings hanging from the walls; potted green plants placed beneath the spiral staircase and the divan with the golden, silk covers a short distance away, opposite to the entrance door and against the wall; the ample privacy that is on offer.
Both of them relax considerably, once the entrance door is shut and the father is out of sight and ear-shot. With movements germinating from the relaxation of the muscles of the body, they idly amble towards the divan with the golden, silk bedspread. Her leading the way in her beguiling, feminine fashion; him following her, close behind her, such that they can feel each other’s body heat and presence in the prickles of their already sensitized skin. They reach the dark of the corner of the divan, underneath the spiral staircase, when she lays down on the bed and twists to face him at the last moment, as he reaches out to brace himself against the divan behind her, caging her between his arms. He reaches out his left hand, on a sudden thought, as he moves to touch her right temple and hair, but just not reaching the skin, but following it at such a close distance, as his eyes do. Every intimate contour of it, such that her brain and skin screams from the anticipation of the touch. The effect more violent and pronounced than what an actual touch might ever be. On an impulsive move he removes his right hand, while bracing himself against the divan with his left, as he moves to touch her left breast, as the author stops breathing, reading deeply the want in his eyes, to feel completely what the shockingly intimate touch would feel like, to be deluded in the last minute by that deceptive hand, which makes her anticipate a touch, but feels the auric current enveloping her body instead, to brace the divan behind her. As he breathes in her ear, moving inexorably closer, “When do I feel you…”.
* * *
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