One Summer

THE MEETING

The ugliest hour is not when you anticipate the worst, but the hour after the crisis. When the story is settling in the mind, piercing each time you attempt at a bit more of understanding of it and its aftermath. It's only when the dread passes through your senses you begin to see formless beings inside you. When I hung up the line, I could only feel the wall's stillness bending, breaking. I felt like a firefly, the light just falling limply aside, the softbody breaking the intestines within. He said he will never call after that. He simply said he will walk away, or some such, nothing more than that. I was moving, I felt, though everything beside me was silent. I took the photograph from the table, looked at it again, with absolute indifference, like a crime scene at first sight.

I walked a few steps, turned around, and the phone rang again with a sound so shrill and insolent, I nearly gnawed at it. It was my mother. She asked me if I was meeting my cousin today. I said I will, and quickly ended the conversation saying I had work.

At 3PM, there was a knock. I felt someone was scowling inside my mind, I winced and tried to look for something to hold. There was a knock again. I went forward to the door, each step weighing heavier than before. I looked out and saw my friend, and his bony frame appeared shapeless. He paced slowly inside, and seemed to have realized a mess, looked at me like a mother looks at her kid, and looked around.

"Bro told me what happened," he said.

I nodded.

He kept looking around, as if trying to visualize what must have happened. He might have been looking for broken glass, or maybe looking for that spot where the hurt and the pain collided to form a pool of red. I callously gazed at him, wondering if his next words were about the phone call.

"I have to take you out."

We ate and spoke for sometime. He told me his research was coming along well, and that he had plans to start taking tutorials at home. He asked me once if I felt like taking a short trip outside. I shrugged and said that if weather could change my mind, I will be fine tomorrow. He didn't ask any questions later.

When you start to tell the world about a heartbreak, there isn't much to say really. It's either a sympathetic nudge to the bones or a softer condolence through letters from friends outside the city. It seems superficial to sell your story sometimes. Like an old tale at bedtime, to feel soft and cosy listening about a ghost story, shivering if it ever happens to you. You feel for the patient, as if that's what a person becomes, almost naturally.

A week later, a friend wrote to me saying he will be in town the following week. I had known him since the last few months, someone who cajoled me to take up writing seriously, since I could write a few stories really well, as he would often say. I hadn't told him about the heartbreak, because I didn't want another shoulder to carry me somewhere I really didn't want to be. I waited.

CLOSURE

"We'll take a little step at one time," he said, holding my hand, as if I was about to stumble and fall. He had become leaner from the last time I had seen him. We were sitting in a cafe, pouring out our woes. The cup stirred and the foam reached the edge as I slipped my hand out of his grip. I looked at the coffee mug. It showed me the boiling point where my emotions were, and the storm still rumbling beneath. I took it as a sign in my heart that this was it. I either let it settle or go for the plunge!

I started to shift a little in my seat, still uncertain about where this was all going. I wanted to know here I am, this is how things are, but none of that was happening. Since I was in the fray myself, I was in charge of all decisions. It took me a minute to step outside this confusion and look back at my friend. He was staring at the ground, lost in a daze. I felt like touching him on his shoulder, but decided against it. We sat in complete silence with the coffee mugs, untouched, and still hot.

I told him how I still slept uneasy, driven crazy by these aimless thoughts that kept me fettered. All this while, he said, he felt I was one of the most saner people he'd come across. He smiled when he said it, and the sunlight nearly missed his face. That could have made for a brilliant picture, I thought. Looking away, I simply nodded my head saying, "You were off from the very start!" I laughed.

He looked puzzled and sipped his coffee. And then, catching me unsuspecting, he asked, "So do you like men with crazy minds or just crazy sense of humour?"

Perhaps, I was right. This mad man knew me well, alright. We walked out looking in either directions. "We're meeting tomorrow," he said. "Of course." - Neha A