Theandric Thursday: The End To This Night

I stand in this chilly night outside one of the busiest, hippest club in West End. The fog shifts in shifts. A wave after a wave, mixed with aromas of spices and smell of charred meat from the numerous kitchens nearby. Often, it gets mixed with a familiar smoke of tobacco from someone's cigarette. Someone who is out to light in the fresh air, like me.

A red haired girl, with clothes far from suitable for this kind of a weather, steps out from the heavy double doors of the bar. She takes a deep breath and looks around for something.

'Oh, this can't be possible', I mumble, as soon as I see her. Surely co-incidences don't happen to such a degree. But she spots me and before I can turn around or attempt to walk away, she is already at my side.

"Hey, you got a fag?"

"Umm, yeah sure!" I take out one from my pack and hand it to her. Then I light it up.

"Thanks," she says smiling.

I smile back and return to my posture, looking ahead on the road. From the corner of my eye, I see how she's practically shivering. She wears a shimmering purple miniskirt and a pink tank top. To compare her state of cold, I try to imagine how I would feel without my leather jacket which I am wearing on top of a denim shirt, for a second. For a second only because after one long drag, she is talking.

"Fuck, it is so cold out here!!" she asserts through clattering teeth.

"Ahmm" I nod.

"What" she looks "ohh oh! Did I say 'fuck'?.. oh oh, I am sorry. I meant God, like 'God!! it is so cold out here'.."

"It's okay, no issues."

She is definitely drunk. I know. Otherwise, she wouldn't have used that word in the first place. Also because otherwise, she wouldn't have said sorry.

I know this is the time I should walk away and spare the upcoming talk and what is to follow afterwards but I don't think I'll actually do that. I really want to go, but I won't.

"You often come here, do you?" she continues.

"Sometimes. Yeah sometimes."

A longer than small pause.

"And you?", I ask.

 There, I am in it now. I have shown interest. God! Why do I do this?

"It's my second time. The crowd is great! I love it! I only discovered this place last week and I am back."

"Yeah, it is really nice. The crowd is indeed good" I say giving her a very tiny suggestive smile.

I hate how I get from acting an unknown stranger to doing this, this thing that I am doing right now, in a second.

She smiles too, unrestrained. I knew she would.

We keep on talking about wheather a little, and work, and distant summer, and bars and the new Indonesian restaurant and the tube and whatever not for about 15 minutes. She graduates onto her third cigarette.

And is she getting comfortable or what.

"So you are here with friends, colleagues...girlfriend?" she says.

"No"

"No? No girlfriend? Boyfriend then?"

I smile again, a little wider this time.

"No, no boyfriend either. I am by myself."
A pause.
"You look like you are with friends?"

"And what makes you say that?" she smiles teasingly. She is definitely totally drunk.

"Well, cause you don't have anything on you right now. Phone or Purse or the like. So you must be with your friends who are lookig after those things inside"

"Good observation Sherlock. But I can be with my boyfriend, can't I? Or girlfriend?"

"Hahaha! Umm, no! Your boyfriend wouldn't have stayed that long inside without you. And definitely not a girlfriend."

"Ahemm. Okay, Sherlock and Freud. What else do you think my boyfriend would not have done?"

There now again. Ten minutes ago, I was walking away from her, and now I am enjoying this. I knew she would do this. She would rope me in with this invisible rope and I would have no choice but to get pulled. She has that affect, Mars. I should have known.

"Ohkay. Umm, he wouldn't have let you stand here and shiver in the cold, for starters. And he would have kept you at a safe distance from strange men when you are so drunk."

"Oooh, that hurt. But you see, I am not 'so drunk'. And since you were doing so well until now, I'll deduct some marks and give you another go. Go on."

"Hahah! Thanks. Umm, he would've .." I think for a second before taking off my jacket and putting it around her," .. done this. And he would have said 'honey, it is getting late and cold. Why don't we head back home..'."

She smiles wider and a flush appears to her cheeks.

".. and in the comfort of our cozy bed?" I finish.

"Ahun, sounds plausible to me." she says. "What do you reckon would have happened then?"

"I think, then.." I look into her eyes and say it slowly," you would have gone in to fetch your things and he would have taken his car from the parking."

I push into my pockets and take out some keys.

"Hahaha! This is really unbelievable! Really, really!" she says and showing a lot more restraint and thinking for being so drunk, shifts her feet for a few seconds.

"Err, what is your name?" she asks after arriving at some kind of a decision.

"Justin Clay" I invent.

"Okay Justin, I am Mars, just Mars. Meet me here in five minutes" and with that she goes in to collect her stuff.

As I go off three streets to get the car, many thoughts go through my head. I try to make up my mind about what to do now. How to go about this night. She is drunk and maybe all that bearing and alacrity was only the effect of biting cold that was keeping her in senses. Whatever it was, here is as good an opportunity as any and in all likeliness she wouldn't even remember what happened tonight, in the morning. Of course it would be no use staying, I would be long gone when she wakes up. Or should I stay and face the morning. Would she be mad or hysterical and call the police, accusing me of what I am not. I think, I better not stay and just do what I must, nothing more.

I find her outside the gates as I drive up to the bar. She hops in, and takes a sigh of relief in the warmness of the car, but doesn't take the jacket off. We start towards her home.

"Ahh, I am so tired. Let's get home quick or I'll sleep on my way and it'll all be a waste."

I widen my eyes at her and she lets out a big laugh." Oh, I am joking Justin, don't you worry, I am not going to sleep just yet. Besides, if you would, your car looks comfy enough."

"Err, I think we should better get to your home first," I say, trying best to mask my surprise at her statements because this, at least is not how she is like. I wonder what she drank when she went in to get her things?

"You know, I don't usually do this. I am otherwise a very sensible kind of a girl. Very sensible."

"I am sure you are. And you can sleep if you want, it's okay."

I hope she does sleep, since that would be so much better for me.

"Thanks. You know, you remind me of someone. Your behaviour, the way you talk etc. I don't remember very well who but..", she trails off. But I don't believe this. Can it really be that she would remember me? Although I should not think like that, she might be talking about someone else, and besides, she's drunk.

But, does this mean that I can tell her about me, about other things, like our past meetings? Should I tell her now or wait till morning? But again, she would freak out in the morning so I should tell her right now if I have to tell.

"Even I have something to tell to you. You know, I am not Justin Clay really. I am ..."

But she has fallen asleep already. I know the way to her house so I drive there, park the car and with some effort, carry her to her flat. On the way up, she tries to wrestle out of my arms and nearly falls out but the jacket comes handy.

As soon as I tuck her into bed, I fall down too beside her. I am as tired as she seemed, maybe more. And that too, without drinking. It feels so good to finally be a able to sleep after two days. I feel peaceful and comforted in her bed now that I am here, lying down. It was good that I stayed and continued to talk to her, even though it was not initially to get into her bed. Glad that I did, or I would be sleeping on a roadside or in a closed tunnel or someplace like that right now.

Sleep comes quickly and quietly.

In the morning, I wake up to see Mars still sleeping, in lesser clothes than she was in last night. She must have thrown off some during the night. I lay in the bed thinking again, whether to wait for her to wake up and tell her all about myself and maybe she would think it over for once. Of what I know about her, she might consider my story. She after all remembers me, from the two similar nights I have slept in her bed. She doesn't remember me of course, but that is obvious since I am not what she remembers of me. Not even what she will remember of me from last night when she wakes up.

But again, I can't take the risk. I am too scared to get my heart broken all over again. I can escape the police, but I won't be able to excape her frightened face. I should go therefore, away before she wakes up and try to search for me. Or wonder now, how this morning is such a strange co-incidence like two previous times. Too similar and too strange.

I leave her and go to start a new day, a new quest. Maybe I'll meet her again, and maybe this time not by co-incidence but by will. I think how this next, I'll make sure she is not drunk, and maybe she'll listen me out, hear about me, about my curse.

I'll wait for a suitable day when I can tell her, trying my luck yet again as I have done so many times before, to make someone believe me. To believe that I am not joking when I tell them that I have a curse which changes my face and features every time I wake up from a sleep. A curse never heard nor told of before, by anyone, to anyone.

I don't know for what I was cursed with this curse. How suddenly I changed one day and how, suddenly, I was scared of one thing most dear to everyone no end. I think about how I tried not sleeping in the beginning altogether, but how long can one not sleep. And then came the second cucrse. That form changing sleep was something I could not have in my own bed, even if I wanted to. I layed awake three nights before I collapsed on a begger's cot in a alley the fourth day. I learned how I cannot sleep even on a bed bought with money, when I spent sleepless nights in almost all the hotels in town. I can't even break into empty houses to sleep, I've tried it.

How humiliating and difficult is it that I must sleep in someone else's bed, with their permission, to be able to fall asleep. That if I fail to achieve that, I am left to share spaces with the drug addicts and the homeless, ruin dwellers. That all my wealth doesn't come to any of my use with this terrible curse in place. The only, still respectable way out for me right now is what did last night. And the fact that get attached to people doesn't help my case one bit. No one recognises me the very next day they meet me and yet I am forced to go out in the world, to make short lived relationships and being robbed of them soon after.

 

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This post is part of Theandric Thursday, a fortnightly whenever-she-gets-time-and-feels-like-posting feature hosted by Ashna Banga.

The dictionary definition of 'Theandric' is 'Relating to the joint agency of divine and human nature'.

Sounds interesting? Write your own Theandric Thursday post and drop a link on her blog. You can write reality, part-reality-part-fiction or total fiction(like this post here), it's flexible. You can also use the picture on the right for the post.