Table No. 7? ( A Short Story)

That evening, there was a door in your gaze. Once inside, I found another, which then opened into yet another. It took me a while to realize that each door was keeping back a little bit of you. And each door led me a little out of you.

Hinged to a memory of disfigured 'almosts’, you slowly closed out of sight. Now, where the hell did that come from?! Either Bukowski or Brautigan, I guess.

I waited at the train station for an hour, cautiously superstitious that if I hang around long enough, the train might eventually come back. Haha!

Later, I settled on my favorite bar stool at Jo’s, thinking of you. But I was mindful not to think too hard. It was a milestone year-end after all.

During those slow minutes, I existed in two places – there, and wherever you took me. For analogy’s sake, think quantum mechanics, like good old ?Schr?dinger's cat. Alive & dead at the same time due to some subatomic event that has or has not occurred. Trying to make sense of what was wrong with this Godforsaken world, and why had all the rights conspired together to suddenly become one consolidated wrong.

A voice within me was telling me that sometime very soon, the Goddamned world out there was going to end as well. Downing my second rum & feeling that familiar warm gush burning through my chest, I suddenly felt reckless. Bring it on Doomsday, I am in!

I noticed the green-eyed lass during my fifth. As I ?learnt later, she was then on her third. Maybe she felt sorry for me. Or I, for her. At that age, rum still does the trick. I walked up to her and tossed a cheesy one liner. She found it interesting, even called me a ‘charmer’. I tried my famous shy smile on her. She assimilated it, even pretended to fall for it with an exaggerated ‘aaw!’. She confessed that having nothing better to do, she had been observing me, & then asked if I always preferred drinking alone. I turned the question back on her. She joked and replied that only when she is at a certain time of the month, breaking into an abrupt throaty laughter, making the happy people in Jo’s pub turn towards us, to check the cause of the sudden amplified happiness at Table no. 7.

Borrowing her Marlboro for a drag, I realized that she was everything that did not remind me of you. I don’t know why, but I found the thought strangely comforting.

Over the next two hours, we drank Captain Morgan, smoked Marlboros, deconstructed Kafka and waited for the year to end. She didn’t ask your name. I didn’t ask hers. Or his.

In our own lopsided way, we helped each other separate the anger from within and classify it as just another form of disappointed hope.

Every love has several stories. First, the story as it was. Second, the story as it could have been. Third, the story as it was told. Fourth, the story as it would go ahead to be remembered.

And then there is a part that forms outside the periphery of the four stories. Have you ever thought that there is a fifth story in there too? The story of that precise moment when you fall out of love and instantly start feeling Zen-like, no longer bothered to mend your brokenness? And that one person you share that magical moment with?

On some days, I think of that New Year’s Eve at Jo’s pub & the unnecessary fireworks outside the window that would periodically erupt to drown the sounds of our manufactured laughter. And in those four hours, contrary to my fears – you, who tried your best to enslave my thoughts, slowly lost your grip. And she, who doggedly tried to remain inconspicuous, stealthily made way into a corner of my heart where all permanent memories go and live.

Looking back today, I think that we would have made a queer sight to any onlooker who might have idly wondered what was such a pretty girl like her doing with a pony tailed bum on the last day of such a special year.

But we didn't care. We - two nobodies, huddled in a corner table of a semi-lit suburban bar, clinging on to each other for life support & waiting for a wrong century to end.

On some days, I wish I had a more detailed version of that fifth story of her life. Or where did life take her after the first of January 2000.

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( Did you like this story? Do hit 'Like' and leave a comment. This is one of the several stories that did not make it to the final collection of 'Once upon a someone'??, my latest book that's a compilation of 55 short stories cutting through genres. You may find it on Amazon in your country).

Disclaimers -?1. Please read this story for its essence & not the particulars. I mean no disrespect towards any person, gender or community ; 2. My articles, blogposts & short stories have no relation to my day job.