As the music filled every inch of the room, with eyes fixed on the sparkling plum-red drops trickling down the slender neck of the bottle, she poured herself some wine. Using an upstroke she rubbed the last few drops away and licked them off her finger. Adam examined her moves with utmost diligence, then holding her hand, pulled her closer…
[As Bryan Adams & Sarah McLachlan sing..]
‘I can’t believe this moment’s come
It’s so incredible that we’re alone
There’s so much to be said and done
It’s impossible not to be overcome
Will you forgive me if I feel this way
‘Cause we’ve just met – tell me that’s OK
So take this feeling make it grow
Never let it – never let it go
Don’t let go of the things you believe in
You give me something that I can believe in..
(music)
’Honey, Let the wine just be…’, he pleaded, burying his face in her palms as he rubbed her back with thunderous gentle strokes.
Letting the empty glass rest on the table, she held Adam lovingly but wondered how somebody had gotten her addicted to intoxication of every sort.
‘Strange man’, she murmured angrily. A few moments later she slapped herself for smirking at the thought of him, the ‘somebody’.
A faint smile on her face transcended to be a mist in front of her eyes. Moments inside a tiny car, rushed in absurd randomness in front of her eyes. A bad blend of laughter and cries disturbed her senses vigorously. Adam stood in front of her smiling with all the happiness in the world, but he did not look like himself. He came closer and clasped her in his arms. She felt suffocated by the warm gesture and could barely speak. But still she managed a few words for the sake of love that could not leave her senses alone…
‘Alex…Be here, please. I love …’ She was so soft in her murmurings that Adam could barely hear a word expect ‘Love’. Adam had always feared that word. Having said just half of what she intended to, she collapsed in Adam’s arms.
Feeling her arms give up the grip, Adam realized that all was not well.
‘Emma! Emma! Are you alright?’ All efforts were in vain for, little did the man know that Emma had retired to her fatiguing body and she had no strength or intent to be the bubbly woman she had been a long time back. All he could sense that she muttered something, nothing of which he understood and she was breathless. And a few moments later she was senseless too.
Running down the stairs he kept telling himself that she was alright and that ‘this too shall pass’. The uplifting words did help till as far as the boulevard surrounding Emma’s home. Men glared at him for being outrageous enough to step out on a dark morning that gave every promise of a spell of intolerable rain. The cab-drivers had eyes that asked too many questions and he disgusted at the thought of being led to anywhere. Emma was lying alone on the bed, and if she was to wake up there would be no sign of him. For the first time in the many months of being with her, Adam felt that if she woke up – it must be in his presence, in his arms or on his chest. For then, he was perplexed about what he could do to bring her back to senses. For once, he did not want her lying on the bed. Rushing through the eerie lanes of her locality Adam strangely remembered how she talked about her personal prayers, her fancies, whims…
‘My baby, you will be perfect.’ he kept telling himself.
Having found no help in a little time, Adam decided that it was more important for her to be in front of his eyes and for him to have her all to himself. When he reentered the room, Emma was still on her bed. He scared himself into believing that she was no more. A surge of unexpected emotions filled him up. He felt absurd about how for so long he did not understand, looked here and there in disbelief and then when it was absolutely clear to him he hurried towards her. A man in his perfect senses would have escaped, but like they say – love does weird things! He lifted her senseless body in his strong arms, he shook her slightly and when she did not wake up, he shook her vigorously.
‘Emma, will you please wake up! Wake up you bitch!’, and bitterly crying at the thought of having lost her, Adam hugged her once again, like he had earlier that day.
‘I love you.. I loved you, silly girl.’ Adam knew not if he ever would have realized that spending endless nights on her bed had only led him to desire spending all his days with her. Squeezing her in his arms he sobbed like a kid, when – like the shot of raw rum on fire, he felt her fingers move on his back. He rubbed his eyes and looked at her face. She was blinking in unnerving continuity. It took her a good hundred seconds to register where she was and what she was doing.
Upon seeing Adam, still around she asked, ‘You are still here, Adam? You should have left.’
‘Be quiet, girl. Be quiet.’
Assuming that Adam was fed-up because they couldn’t make love even after an hour-long foreplay, she thought he had been waiting for her to wake up and make up for it.
‘I am so sorry… I just…’
‘Shut up.’ His authoritative tone was new to Emma. ‘Drink this up’, he said, stirring a spoonful of glucose in a glass of chilled water.
‘No, I am just fine. I wouldn’t need this. Don’t take the trouble.’ she said, feeling rather uncomfortable.
Adam sat close to her, held her face in his palms, and kissed her forehead. ‘Drink it, baby’. She obeyed like a girl of five. She stared at him wide-eyed. Something about him had changed, but she did not know what.
An hour-long chit-chat later he asked her if she could afford a stroll. She said she’d love to.
Her neighborhood had nothing but memories to offer. Under the street-light, in the unperturbed locality, Alex and she would often find a royal escape, inside the constraints of a ‘tiny car’.
‘Tinted glasses, darling. Don’t you worry.’ She was used to hear Alex assure her that way with a wicked lopsided smile. She would blush at the sound of colored glasses – so very uncharacteristic of her, now – she thought.
Looking at Adam, she realized how much more like Alex she had become. His presence rang through her just like blood that gushed out of a nerve undone. She breathed a deep sigh of hopelessness.
“This is the last you will hear from me ever. Keep smiling” The words still managed to lay a dainty pinch on the baby-soft skin of Emma’s remembrance of him.
Adam didn’t want the chill that the wind caused him, to fill her heart up. He promptly held her hand in his own and kissed her empty palm.
“Oh-laa! Oo-oo la-lala-la”, Adam whispered.
“What?”, Emma asked, startled.
“Come closer”, Adam demanded.
Bringing her ear closer to his lips, she waited patiently for him to say something sensible.
He planted a soft kiss on her cheek.
Before she stepped out of the car Emma asked Alex to lean forward. “You don’t want to kiss me, do you?” He asked jokingly. “I do”, Emma replied rather stubbornly. And just after having said that, she kissed him on his sweaty cheek that had tiny hair all over it. He looked at her in wonder. She looked straight into in his eyes, sitting right beside him on a moon-lit mid-night and said, “Good night”. She stepped out. He lowered his ‘tinted glass’ and asked her to come forth. “What now?”, she asked. Without saying a word, he turned his other cheek to her…
Watching her stare into the emptiness of the gravelled path, Adam asked with the same comic tone as Alex’s, “What steals you away from me, miss?”
Lowering her head with fond remembrances with a tinge of pain – “Abeyance, perhaps”, Emma answered with a smile.
