Sep 17, 2012

Of glass windows and strangers and evenings laced with green tea.

He had curly hair like Maggie noodles. She didn’t know how it would feel like if she ran her hands through them. She didn’t even remember the colour of his eyes though she was quite sure she had looked into them a time too many over the course of the evening. She could make him laugh and she liked the sound of his giggles. Even those rare times when they spoke on the phone she would wait expectantly to hear him giggle over some silly joke she cracked.

He was tall and thin and he reminded her of a beautiful stallion with gorgeous curly mane. There was this air about him that spoke of sensitivity and with traces of immense strength hidden underneath that veneer. He could be stubborn, insanely stubborn she thought. She hadn’t seen that side of him. She’d seen him open up to her slowly that evening as she tried to break down those walls he had built so carefully around him. Shy boy that he was and the brazen woman she could be. What a perfectly bizarre combination they could have been. He with his silent, dreamy ways and I don’t give a rat’s arse about anyone and I’ll do exactly what I feel like attitude and she a tad bit loud and outspoken and forever battling her way through life.

They came from different parts of the country and had been brought up differently with different experiences growing up. They accidentally bumped into each other one evening as she waited haplessly for a friend who never showed up. They'd worked at the same office for months without exchanging any hullo or hi. But when she saw him trying to hide from her at the coffee shop that day she was tickled. She knocked on the glass and gestured him to come out and he was compelled to do so and introduce himself sheepishly. From that moment on till today she still wonders what magic was at play that balmy, august evening. She remembers bits and pieces of their conversation, fragments of the song he sang, the expression on his face when she related her stories, how he said he didn’t like women who painted their nails and hers had been freshly painted red that afternoon. He told her conversations turned him on and she thought would these conversations qualify as such conversations and laughed secretly to herself. They played 20 questions and that is when he asked her if she was seeing someone. They asked each other the most ridiculous questions and drank well into the evening merrily until she had to go home. Would he drop her home she asked him and he said of course he would. He dropped her home in a big yellow taxi and she thought she’d never see him again. She kissed him on the cheek and walked off into the darkness off the night leaving him alone with his thoughts of the girl who pulled him out of his reverie as she drank green tea, made animated conversation and blew menthol smoke rings into his face.