At least till after breakfast

“Part of life is …..”

“…is remembering the dead,” Hazel, my ex wife, finished the thought for me. I always read aloud my thoughts as I type them into the computer. “That’s quite natural. But remembering a fiancé of 2 weeks some 35 years after she had gone to be with her Creator, is surely most unnatural.”

Acerbic as usual. That’s Hazel's persona. She hated my spending more time writing or working on my laptop than talking with her. Funny. That was what brought us together in the first place. She hated my spending time editing and beautifying other people’s work too. Why do that when you hardly ever get any credit, she used to say.

Divorced we were but was I as yet free from her? Or, is she free from me and willing to let me just be?

No. She came to my duplex to see how I was since leaving home. Probably, it was also to see if I had a housemate or a live-in lover. Or whatever…. I don’t know. Does she still love me or did she just want to make sure I was unhappier than she was? I don’t know that either. If I can fathom what she’s thinking, I’d surely have power over her, which, sadly I never had.

Truth was, if I wasn’t filling the time-gap before my appointment, an empty house would have greeted her. Another half hour and I would be on my way. But, now that my airspace had been breached, I left early, asking her to just pull the self-locking main door when she left. Now free at last and sitting quite comfortably here at the roadside coffee stall, taking a long time to finish my ‘teh tarik’, stalling the moment when I had to go into the Irish bar in Park Royal at the end of the block, I could still feel the darts shot by Hazel's angry eyes as I left her just now.

That of course didn’t help me and my already nervous state. I was going to my maiden date with someone from cyberspace. But I remember that “a man's got to do what a man's got to do” bravura phrase. So I unconsciously felt my back pocket for my comb then smiled self-consciously when it wasn’t there, sucked in my tummy, straighten my posture and edged closer to that green door.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry. Sorry. Excuse….” Apologetic I was as I was like being sucked into a giant vortex. Continuing to jostle and be jostled as I squeezed through the mass of, probably, partygoers, feeling like a party-pooper as I searched the crowded space for Axura, my Internet date – her photo image just a rather hazy recollection in my head. What have I gotten myself into? I was not that desperate for a friend. I’m free and should be enjoying this freedom. Yet, I was like sprinting headlong to be trapped in another relationship. Man o man! You’re surely a strange creature, full of contradictions.

Loneliness suits my lifestyle actually. I can get up anytime to finish my translation or editing assignments. I could call one of my mentees to go out and have coffee. Joe must have twisted my arm and my head to have been able to talk me into this ‘blunder in the making’. Am I that desperate to have to come here to be on a date with a total stranger? For all I know she could be a deranged, serial man-killer out avenging some hurts done to her by other men.” So why did I still come here, albeit rather timidly?

I was about to turn around and leave when upon being jostled, I dropped my hand-phone. I bent to pick it up and as I lifted my head I knocked into an elbow, initiating what might have been a minor domino effect. I hadn’t got used to the lighting and did not realize the magnitude of my mini part in the whole drama but the next thing I knew, my bald pate was sprayed with either beer or stout. And there was laughter, some boisterous, and among the sounds of hilarity, a woman seemed to be laughing herself into hysteria at the mini drama and ruckus.

I turned to look at who was the perpetrator of my head shower, my hand moving to my back pocket to get at my hanky. But before I did, a soft scented material was being dabbed at the back of my head while the head waiter did the same with the front of my shirt, using a clean, soft, white face towel.

“I am so sorry. I couldn’t help myself.” The big-mama-ish woman with the infectious laughter struggled to explain. She had tears. She cleared her throat and her voice trembled slightly as she spoke but she appeared quite comfortable and not at all flustered. The tremble was probably from the controlled laughter that still reverberated in her sumptuous cleavage.

“It was like in the Three Stooges, you knocking the waiters elbow after picking up your phone and he poured the beer into that woman’s lap. The stout in my mouth just spurted out on to your head…”

I snapped out of my ‘about to get angry’ state. “You don’t need to apologise. It’s really crowded in here. People are bumping into each other – must be some party. I’m alright now,” gently I pushed the waiter’s hand away but allowed hers to remain on my neck.

“Sir, can I get you something to drink? This one’s on the house.”

“Just Evian please. Thank you.” Flashing a nervous smile I gave him my order.”

I found I was sitting at the lady’s table. Didn’t realize when she’d lead me to it.

“You look familiar. Where did I see you before?” She looked at me intently. “Ahh… let me try something. ….”

She mimed a camera screen with her thumb and index finger of both hands so that she could only see my face from the eyes downwards and burst out with another salvo of laughter.

“Yes, I know where I’ve seen you. Yes, in the Sun paper and on TV. Was it the “Good Morning Malaysia” program? But you had hair then. That was, what, last week. Now you are ala Kojak! How come?”

“Er…”

“Oh sorry, rude of me, I’m Zana. And you’re Alam…”

“Yes, Zana, I’m him.”

“Wah, you translated Memoirs of a Geisha…and you are currently working on Karl X’s… and angling to have your publishers obtain the rights to The Zahir…”

The waiter came with my drink and freshened hers – she must have signalled. A regular probably…. I sipped my drink so as to delay answering the lady.

“Must be exciting being a translator!”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Zana, but it's boring and lonely work, except...."

“But I understand you work with a team, right? Surely it’s not that bad…”

“If it isn’t, why would I be here….”

“Well, you need to take a break sometime, right? Oh let me get you a drink. I owe you one or more for causing you to be here instead of being…. Btw, where were you headed? You were you looking for someone, right? Who’s she? I know it’s not a shim, right! You don’t have that inclination, do you?”

She’s indeed a fast worker and typical of a modern woman – so daring. And so quickly I was being interrogated. Is she from Interpol? I wonder. But she does spark my senses. Large women do that to me though I’m always hankering for waifs. Why couldn’t she be Axura? Would my date show up any minute now? Or was she already here anyway?

A quick glance at my watch showed that my date was already 45 minutes late. But that’s my life. Always it’s me who’s waiting. Waited and waited for Lily many years ago before she passed on. Then it was waiting for Hazel and later for the children. Wonder why my folks like to waste other people’s time. No respect!

I looked at Zana and really examine her features this time. Staring and being blatant about it.

"Do I pass the examination? Neeways, shall I order you another Evian like just now or shall it be a Long Island tea?”

I gulped and was about to ask……

“Oh I know that’s your usual ‘cup of tea’ when in a place like this. You told me on YM. I’m Zana not Axura, Johan. Axura’s just my handle as Johan’s yours.

I gulped again.

“So, are you disappointed?”

I looked into Zana’s eyes and smiled.

“Are you going to?”

“What?”

“Disappoint me?”

“That depends….”

“On what?”

“Are you going to tell me a story like one of those you sometimes spin on YM and the translators’ mailing list?”

“What, now?”

“No, tomorrow morning, while we make pancakes for breakfast..."

“So what do we do from now till….?”

“Well, aren’t you the ideas man? Now, the one for the road, Long Island tea, right?"

I nodded. Too many images – none of Hazel’s or Lily’s - were crowding in my coconut that I feared to say another word. But what would Paulo Coelho say to this woman next?

“Perhaps, you’d one day write a poem about me?

“In serious or funny mode?”

“Make it sexily funny, like the one you did on WPC Ayu, no?”

“You mean this one?”
PC Ayu, tell me why
you penetrate
my sleep
and every waking
moment
I spend thinking
about you,
about how
you used to
pull me over
ticketing me
for speeding
yet now
pulling me over
you, like a blanket,
sleepily
asking me
to speed it up!

Ah, yes. Making out with a police woman - that was purely my imagination. But, woman! I’ll let you have the last say…..at least till after breakfast…. Then I’ll have to rethink this idea of freedom….

© 2011 Abd Latiff Bidin