a day in life

It was an early, rainy morning and the sky was painted a dull grey.

I had placed my mirrored bag and transparent umbrella on the adjoining seat and had just fished out Pamuk’s book to read while at the wait, when he arrived.

I wouldn’t have raised my eyes. I shouldn’t have raised my eyes. Because I lost the paragraph I was, just a moment ago, concentrating on. In front of me just a table across he - dressed in a lose t-shirt and lopsided jeans with chappals - settled, doing a customary round of nods. The girls in front of him seemed unperturbed.
But something inside me quickened, thickened, melted like cold drops of frozen water sliding across the glass of cold coffee.

I quickly bent my head, tucking a wisp of hair behind my ear, trying to trace over to the paragraph I had last left the story. I was going to appear cool, no matter what. He must have looked my way because there were few other people in the café and certainly no one like the girl-woman dressed in a white t-shirt and rolled up jeans, hair flowing to the beckoning of the wind, one hand heavy with copper bangles, so deeply engrossed in reading her book that she did not even stir when the rain announced another hiccupped bout of its ferocity.

The tiles on the porch caught the glint of drizzle. I could sense the bristles of rain wetting my toes but I managed to keep my body very still and breath low and very ordinary.

I read a paragraph thrice noting how unbearably elusive its meaning was getting.

He moved suddenly to answer a call on his mobile and that was the chance. I asked the waiter to get the bill and without stopping to look or think I lifted my things.
I had to find myself a place of reclusive safety in order to preserve what was happening inside me from getting outside.

I reached the warm insides of a new place and searched it. There were people playing in the bowling alley. Two turned conscious if I was watching them at their goal. I smiled and quickly joined in.
Anything to wade off that energy.
Anything to de-mystify.

How funny thoughts are, even for the very same person. You may think one thing of the past and miss out the thing happening in the present, though my thoughts were more on a tangent, going awry. I never thought that he must have searched for me when he came back to the table wondering where that girl-woman so deeply engrossed in reading should have disappeared.

By this time, the girl-woman was heaving a blue ball, her fingers tucked in its grooves, towards eight dancing white pins. She was taming the growing violence in her body with each move, her face a thousand shades of crimson.
A man and his little son were looking on nodding encouragingly every time I knocked down those pins. My scores were quite good said the scorekeeper.

By the end of it all, I was spent. I leant toward a pillar breathing lightly.

A glance at the clock reminded me that the festival was about to start. Totally oblivious to the heavy greetings of rain, I exited the alley.

The boy at the café was hurriedly shifting the tables and chairs toward an inch inside. I studied the way in which the rain had invaded, caring least for man-made boundaries.

Just then I catch him watching me with those drunken, lustful eyes.

He: where did you go?

Me: where do I go now?

He turned to continue the conversation he was having with someone and my eyes caught the nape of his neck that the breeze revealed when it blew his hair aside. The urge to bathe his neck with the warmth of my breath was too much. I stood in the corner wishing the crowd dissolves me.
But every time he turned, his eyes found out mine, utterly disregardful of the people he was with.

I was recording how helpless and weak I felt.

The only other thing gaining power that day was the rain.

© Rochelle Potkar