Lemon Sorbet

Sunday. Bring home groceries day. The vestiges of last night’s alcoholic excess gnaws on your nerves, the beginnings of a hangover that can only be quelled by coffee and toast with butter. ‘Buy one, get one free!’, screams the alert from the supermarket in a text message, a service you don’t remember subscribing to. Wily marketing that actually means old eggs need to make way for new ones on the shelves so business can continue apace. The smell from the living room is one of ennui commingling with the sweetish stench of stale onion rings and empty beer bottles. Oh, the blasted chicanery of pretense youth. You walk around, shoving all evidence of another wasted Saturday night into a trash bag.

The afternoon will require application of thought to the many things that lie ahead: the coming week, stoicism in the face of gaslighting that’s all too common now at the workplace, bills to pay, all those things that make up a life that somehow arrives despite all those roads of yesterday paved with good intentions and forgotten dreams, but who cares about all that? It’s still morning time.

You fold the newspaper neatly, clear breadcrumbs off the table, check your visage in the hallway mirror, notice no errant cowlicks that need to be gelled and smoothed into place, no poppy seeds sticking to your teeth, nothing that needs you to stop in your tracks to reassess. But you still do. Because mirror, mirror on the wall.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Your unerring muscle memory makes you reach for the keys hanging from one of the hooks under your wall sconce, two and a half steps from the door, so that you don’t have to crane your neck or twist your torso any more than you should to reach for them. Age can be a pain in the ass, but it teaches you things.

Off you go.

*

 As you stand debating whether to buy the fat-free or Vitamin-D enriched milk in the dairy section, you see her. That is to say, the corner of your eyes, long used to always being on the lookout for the sight of her, spy her unmistakable gait, legs sheathed in spandex, cardigan wrapped around her waist, feet in soft-heeled flip-flops that make no noise, disappearing into the personal hygiene aisle. Your eyes, ever furtive, ever hopeful, manage to get the tiniest glimpse of her from the back, and the line of capillaries that connects your eyes, heart, and loins clicks distinctly into place.

How long has it been? Two years? Five? Ten?   14 years, seven months, week three, day four into the eighth month, to be precise. But who’s counting?

Is it possible she is finally in your city like your friend told you she was? Has she changed much? Branching from that question, how much is too much? Or, for that matter, too little? What do you expect to see? That frisson of anticipation laced with fear slowly advances from the base of your spine to the nape of your neck. What will you tell her if you do come face-to-face with her? If nothing else strikes you when your eyes meet, you tell yourself, you will resort to the time-tested and failsafe ‘Hello.’

She is nowhere to be seen. Your eyes dart back and forth and everywhere in between, frantically, but alas, no sight of her. Was it your imagination? Is it possible that you might be hallucinating? You’re now torn between the absolute terror of seeing her again and the distinct possibility of you-may-never.

But no, your eyes weren’t deceiving you! There she is!

Thank god. She turns ever so slightly, and you see the large pink birthmark on the right side of her neck. You’re struck by how intimately you know its crests and troughs, its sharp edges on the top and the delicate concavity at the bottom, as if it is always in attempt of receding into itself. You’ve traced that pattern on possibly every surface imaginable: the walls of your house, the sand at the beach, breakfast oatmeal, on the pillowcase, all those women’s backs that have been in your bed since, and sometimes, in the puddle that drips down off you onto the floor as you emerge from the shower cubicle, in that space between the rug and the sink.

You lose her again.

*

By now, the desperation to seek her out and say those unspoken words trumps the fear of not being able to ever say them. You briefly consider just hanging out near the cash counters – she’s sure to show up in one of the queues, sooner than later. As you round the bend, you see her walk into the frozen foods section.

Lemon sorbet. Of course. You remember how you’d learned to develop a taste for it even though your tongue rejected the sharpness every time she invited you to dig in. The bitter aftertaste as the citrus registered on your taste-buds had nothing on the full-throated mmm that escaped her lips those long-ago nights.

What will you say? Hasn’t it all been leading up to this very moment, here, now?

You slowly advance towards her as her hands deftly reach into the shelf to pick out two tubs of lemon sorbet. You think you might now know what a man dying of thirst in the desert feels like upon sighting a mirage. You’re not even a tad remorseful about your mind resorting to lazy clichés.

You send up a silent, fervent prayer to the speech Gods up above to help line up those words in your head into one coherent sentence as you bridge the distance.

You’re now close enough that your breaths will sync in a minute. She looks up. As recognition dawns in her eyes, your phone jangles somewhere deep in your back pocket. Unbeknownst to you, your left hand, long accustomed to reaching for it even when you don’t want it to, pulls the phone out, and your eyes, long accustomed to being servile to the white-collar diktats of your life, glances at the screen.

It’s your wife calling.

 *****

(First published in the Gardan Journal, Craigardan’s literary journal).