Continued From…
It was a big house. Beautiful abstract paintings, furniture smelling fresh and looking cozy. A furry dog almost as tall as me, welcomed her on two paws. I stood still and purposeless like the expensive statues in drawing room. She smiled at my timid eyes. The dog was held by the neck strap and shown way to the other room.
She spoke from behind the curtains asking me to open the fridge and take anything I wished. I wondered if our wishes are often found in frozen fridges of memory.
She returned. A bottle of Antiquity and some chips came with her. I unwound the shoelaces and sat with folded legs on the couch.
“Isn’t this too spacious to live alone?”
“Life has its way of unplanned conclusions,” she replied. I noticed a picture of her, a man and a kid, resting lifeless on wall. It might not have been much of archive, but she looked a generation younger and happier too. “Your husband and child?” I asked casually, trying not to sound personal. “Yes” she replied with emotionless gesture of least interest.
The conversations of the next few pegs revolved around me. She asked me about work and other aspects of life. There was warmth in those moist eyes. I failed to decipher why, but I ended up speaking a lot of my heart. Doors closed from ages lay open as blank mysteries preserved on useless locks. I told her about failed plans and missed opportunities. Maybe it was excess drinking or the continuity of raindrop sounds on the window. I kept talking. She kept listening. Her eyes never left mine. My tears found ears. I might have shed a two within, telling her about how I could not make it to my cousin’s funeral to meet a deadline and how I had a break up with a girl I so loved, amidst all the meaningless quest of a work life, which I neither aspired of in the first place, forget about dreaming the same.
I told her about being confused what to do next, and how it becomes equally tough sometimes to find causes of unhappiness while everything theoretically is better than most. How in good words, friends and family speak about me; I feel they don’t know me. Inside the shiny glossy life they see, is a shallow skeleton.
She came from her couch to mine and held my hand, asking me how many times I have spoken this much before. I told her, being with strangers, makes me feel like gas molecules, I look for empty spaces in people’s life, people I don’t know much, I expand in those spaces more comfortably than I expand in the heart of a person who loves me.
We talked nothing for the next few minutes and shared a cigarette. We made meaningless circles of smoke and smiled.
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