A desperate wait

I was taken aback when a man wearing a helmet approached and asked, “Searching for a room?” All the major festivities were over, and Christmas was yet to arrive. It was that time of the year when you couldn’t get a hotel room in Lakeside. But strangely, in the middle of the street, the man was offering me a room—and that too at a price way below Lakeside’s standards.

“I have already booked a room,” I said, more to myself because the man had already walked past me. But as he left, I caught a whiff of alcohol from him. He must have thought that I didn’t want to talk to him because he was drunk. The truth is that I am of the conviction that it’s not important to strike up a conversation with everyone, everywhere. 

As I stood on the sidewalk, I noticed a group of young girls walking into a dingy lounge across the street. Their clothes looked outlandish, I looked down at my own baggy jeans, hoping—even praying—that they didn’t look as odd.

Lakeside is not where I come regularly. I was here today because a group was joining me for dinner.

The only people I knew from the group were my two male friends, and I had never met the three girls coming with them. The girls were my friends’ friends from their school days.

As time passed, I began realizing that going to a bar and taking a slug of a drink would have been a prudent move. But I dismissed the idea because I was meeting those girls for the first time. I didn’t want to smell of alcohol and sound slurry. No civilized person would want to leave a bad impression during the very first meeting. To say I was excited to meet them would be an understatement. In the afternoon, when my friend had phoned me to inform me about the dinner party at Lakeside with his lady friends, I was thrilled by the idea of meeting unknown girls. Over the years, that friend of mine had never missed inviting me to any of the parties he went to. Perhaps he found it easier when I went along with him because he spoke even less than I did. This time, my excitement knew no bounds as it had been a while since I attended any gatherings with a group of girls.

When my relationship ended last year, I had vowed that I wouldn’t date anyone, but it was just a moment of frustration. For a year, I didn’t meet any girls and even avoided them when they approached me. It always took me by surprise when a girl texted me on Facebook, saying she’d love to have coffee with me. I may be dumb, but I knew at least that I didn’t have enough qualities to charm a girl. Most girls found me boring because of my involvement in writing and literature, while others wanted to meet me only to talk about how literature works.

At around 9 pm, I got a phone call from one of my friends, telling me that he and the other male friend would arrive in five minutes. I didn’t ask him if the girls were still coming because it would have sounded desperate. Also, if I had asked about the girls, my friend would have found some way to make fun of me when he arrived.

A red Vespa scooter stopped right where I was standing. The boys arrived, both of them wearing matching blue jeans, as if they were twins. As they approached, with no girls in sight, I felt a jolt of disappointment. Would I be there so early if the girls were not coming? But before I could ask about the girls, a friend said, “The girls are somewhere near here. They were saying they would be with another group until we arrived. So just let me give a call and ask where they are.” That news brought some relief to my senses as I wouldn’t have to listen to the boys ranting about their studies. No one would want to spend a night with geeks grunting constantly about money and studies. I wish I could convince my friends that there was more to life than just devouring course books. I mean, what’s with these engineer boys and course books? It’s not like I didn’t make efforts to replace their course books with classics and rom-com novels. But no matter how much you train the fish, it can’t swim outside the water. Tired of their ways, I stopped forcing them into reading novels, while incessantly being the victim of their superior jokes that only engineers could tell.

When the girl answered the phone on the other end, we spontaneously walked toward Busy Bee because it was the only vibrant pub in sight.

“We are right in front of Busy Bee,“ the friend murmured into the phone, while the other friend and I started making small talk. The girl on the other end said something I couldn’t quite make out.

“What? You’re there? Wait,” the friend turned around and peered at the dinghy lounge across the street. The girl in a black dress emerged and waved her hands at us. My nose scrunched up in disgust and surprise. I beckoned the friend and asked if they were the girls we were planning to meet.

“Yeah. They were the friends I was talking about. The three of them and we studied together till the tenth,” the friend with the phone in his hand said and pointed at another friend.

I laughed inwardly, suppressing a loud laugh. I didn’t tell my friends that I was standing on the sidewalk and glancing at them from across the street all the while. The girl in a black dress went inside the lounge again, possibly to pay the bill and fetch the others. While waiting for the girls, the friend, still holding the phone, looked tensely at me and mumbled, “You saw her? The one in a black dress. You’re going to talk to her tonight while we focus on the other two. We both are on the talking stage with the two other ladies. It’s weird that after years of knowing them, we are finally feeling something for them.”

“I’m not surprised at all. You know you both have always been like this. What a weird set of characters!” I remarked and met their eyes in succession. They laughed hilariously loud, and by the time they stopped laughing, the girl in a black dress was already behind them. Pushing her way through the boys, she appeared right in front of me, her nose stud glinting in the night lights. I hoped she didn’t notice me all the time I was standing there. When her right hand suspended in the mid-air, inviting me to shake her hand, I wondered whether I would have barged into the dingy lounge had I known that the girls were my friends’ friends.