One Night Stand

I’ve always hated two things, deaths and marriages. These days, old people too. I tried the second, long back, and got only the bad stuff. The other two are too close for comfort. Death I can handle but not old people – with their selfish ways, bad breath, farting whenever and wherever. I used to hate kids too but at eighty-two, it’s easy to swat them away.

I’m usually not so cantankerous. But I’ve always been nervous before her visit.

This is only the second time she’s come to my place. The first time, she was in her teens – an ugly duckling she was and how she developed since then! I usually met her at her place, even when her nasty mother was alive.

I can hear the doorbell ringing. The maid takes her time but finally brings her to my room.

“Hi, kid! You look great.” I wasn’t lying. She has aged but she looks good, even at seventy eight.

“Hi! Long time since anyone called me that.” She didn’t bother to lie either. “Your maid told me about your night in the gutter! Look at you! And, shuttling between here and the town five times in a day, what were you thinking?”

“I can’t carry much. Had to bring the shopping in small lots?”

“Can’t you take someone with you?”

“Do you?” She didn’t reply to that. “It got dark a bit early. I got out of the bus, took a few steps in the wrong direction and…”

“She told me…how you were missed next morning and people finally finding you in that gutter.”

“It was a hole, not gutter! Anyway, leave that.”

“How are you?” she asked softly.

She sat on the chair next to my bed, looking straight at me – sitting the same way, straight back, legs close, feet crossed at the ankles. She saw me looking and I said the usual,

“Geisha…”

“How you wish!”

I reached for a cigarette, my companion these days. It helps to kill appetite and nobody is complaining except the maid.

“When did you start that?” she asked me.

“Recently…ten, fifteen years back.”

“Do you mind not smoking? A bit sensitive these days, price of old age – the package deal, aches and pains and breathlessness. Damn nuisance!”

I put the cigarette away. “So, are you married?”

She laughed. “Aren’t you abrupt? Why…are you going to propose?”

“Well, I’ve always proposed.”

“Whatever.” She must have seen me frown at that word, touchy about being a matter of no consequence. “You had your chance.” Now, she was trying flattery.

“Well?”

“Still once married but…I wrote to you about him, didn’t I?”

“Is it still that guy – some hot shot at your old Univ.? Isn’t he young?”

She raised her eyebrows, probably her way of telling me politely that the interesting ones tend to be so in our current circumstances or that I should mind my own business. “Sixty. He’s now pushing for some commitment. You know me…not even in my good days! What about you? Did you get around to searching…actively, I mean?”

“Yeah, for a while I searched among the second-hand lot – the widowed and the divorced. Nasty lot – they can’t forget the first one!”

“What about the unmarried?”

“Unmarried at this age, must be faulty…knowing my luck, most probably a virgin, too. Anyway, they usually have great expectations…the first time and all that…”

“Come on…”

“Didn’t you?”

She thought for a while before replying, “Strange. I can’t even remember the first one. Now, I try to remember only the current affair. It wouldn’t do if I forgot any detail, would it? People are waiting to pronounce Alzheimer’s on you…feel so insecure at times. At least, I don’t have kids waiting to put me in a home.”

“You wanted kids, didn’t you?”

“Long back…and you…”

“Kids…me?”

“No…I meant, what have you been up to?”

“Been reading the puranas…old-age reading…most of our gods had problematic love affairs, you know. Loss of trust, need for desertion, illegitimate kids…Siva, Rama, Krishna…thank God it was all written then…certainly would’ve raised some mad dog’s hackles if written these days. When I’ve the energy…and the will…I try to do that…”

“Still anti-establishment…the maverick?”

“I experimented too long…with my life…should’ve learned from others…and, experimented on others. No…I…just lost.”

“But…you would’ve done the same given a second chance, right?” She smiled with her cliché and for a moment, I thought it was because she could accept losers. Anyway, I always gave women with a smile a lot of leeway, and hers is not the best.

“Probably…my God likes losers, hates match-fixers. He’s a discarded God, my God! You…still an atheist?”

“I tried being agnostic…but it’s too much trouble. Whatever…should not matter now, I think. I wouldn’t even trust Him…or Her…with my problems.”

“You know what my problem is…lived a wee bit too long…most of the great guys died at thirty three…imagine them middle-aged or old dealing with hypertension, prostate problems, what-not…”

I reached for a glass of water, feeling tired but wanting more. I raised my glass to her, “Here’s to looking at you, kid!”

“Gross…be original…”

“Let’s have sex.”

“Yeah, right…” she laughed a bit too heartily, probably trying to imagine the scene. It hurts but I laughed with her. Wiping her own eyes, she asked quite seriously, “We keep meeting once a decade or so, right…why?”

“Something to smile about…like a one night stand…”

“Will we have one more?”