The Dinner Date

By Harshita Mishra

Three women squat sheepishly on the ground, curling and uncurling the laces of their respective tennis shoes, in a dramatically incorrect but mechanically congruent fashion; the sky tripping over seams of lilac and settling below the nearest streetlight that arrives to life with a strangled gurgle. The fig tree, less than half a dozen yards from the ladies, moans and looks on; emphatic in its embittered demeanour, swirling violently as Buck paddles out of the water. 

It has been a month since the swimming pool by the two marsh brown buildings reopened; the blue of the water now limpid and pristine, as Buck likes to call it. One of the two buildings—both offices catering to textile companies, is supposedly receiving the axe, sweeping out the entire block of accounting, Buck included. 

The women—with their black hair, with their ginger hair, with their black hair—have sunk into a lazy exchange, twittering like birds about cosmetic surgeries and the last dead person in their house. Buck slips on his socks and mounts a towel over his head, watches the woman with the ginger hair through the sheath of the wet cloth, his disposition calm and nonchalant. His eyes, however, reek of calamity. 

“The shrink said it?”

“All three of them, yes.”

“What do you mean, all three of them said it? You’re believing them—this?” 

Buck slides into his shoes, into his beige shirt and raven black trousers, tries unfailingly to listen in on the ladies, the ginger haired one, more precisely. 

“A road accident?” 

“Quite so, yes.” She says.

“All three of them?”

“All three of them, yes.” She says.

“They said you’d—

“—I’d die in a road accident, yes. All three of them predicted it, yes.” She says

The other two women hiss and guffaw in the same breath, punctuating the air around them with frisky sentimentality. Buck, now, as new as ever, leans against the pompous fig tree and pretends to work through the documents in his suitcase. God knows he doesn’t need them anymore. 

“How long has it been?”

“Oh it was—well, it was when i was living by the beach.” She says.

“You know how it’s—it’s rather funny, if not tragic, that I might know the cause of my death but not the time.” She drawls.

Buck stands at the tipping edge of the pool, looks over at the hunching women, looks at them, looks at her, until somehow, their warm breaths and supple alabaster skins do not seem so delectable anymore. It is as if he could see through the crevices of the white in her eyes, the red capillary twisting its way into the iris. She was suddenly grotesque, repulsive to him. 

Just in time, the timer on his watch beeps and he curses under his breath. He’s already swaying from the liquor in his belly, the sky above him smaller than his stance. He produces the suitcase from behind him and tosses it into the pool, watches the water devour the ash grey leather case, the apparent combination something reminiscent of a lost world, but of course Buck is too dense to comprehend that.

Nothing happens; the files inside do not attempt to bubble up to the surface, the women do not turn their heads to see. 

He leaves and fails to notice a man walk in, a trail of yellow sand following him, carrying a slim bouquet of chrysanthemums in one hand and a peeled, half eaten piece of carrot in the other. He has tears running down his eyes, not a sound though; not so much as a hiccup leaves his mouth as he walks by the pool, aiming for the benches.

However, his right foot catches on the residual water from Buck’s little peccadillo and slips. The walls of the public arena vibrate from the thunder of the splash. 

This time, the women look. 

—

Keys jingle as the door opens and Buck lets himself in. The room to his right, past the hallway and the living room is the master bedroom with its door slightly ajar. The timer on his watch goes off for the second time that day and he rushes furiously into the kitchen, hurling into the sink, emptying his gut. He twists the tap until the translucent water squirts away more than half of the pecan pie he had eaten that morning in a jiffy. 

“You’re home late.” 

A shrill voice, both suave and clipped reverberates around him, but Buck doesn’t turn around—he is busy pulling out metal pans, silverware and a bottle of maple syrup from cabinets. 

“I said you’re h—

“Oh cut it already, will you!” The wooden spoon with a silicon end crashes to the floor, clatters. Buck fishes into a bowl, pulls out three weeks old frozen chicken and plunks it onto the dinner table with a monstrous thud. The presence behind him shifts and Buck feels a sweet mist of apprehension pass through him. 

He turns around and flinches back with equal speed, face convulsing into elaborate expressions of disgust and terrific displeasure. 

“What are you—Lord, put on your head!” 

The figure looming before him, over him is Asian, after he cinches his head back on his severed neck, that is. The Vietnamese fatigues scream 62’ borne air strikes. A mustard coloured salamander sits on his shoulder, quite as perky and quite as dead as him. 

“I was waiting to open the door for you. You know how I love opening doors. And then my head fell—

“Will you please be quiet, please?”

“Buck, what is all the fuss about? Is someone coming?” The chair to Buck’s right creaks and moves back on its own and the Asian slots into it, just like that. Rivulets of blood bead perpetually by the thin line around his neck but never find the floor or the chair. 

Buck doesn’t move, his eyes are closed, it is as if he’s swept away in absolute catatonia. His mouth, rigid as ever, smoothens and quirks into a devastating smile. He has the face of a heartbreaker. His eyes reopen and find the notorious brown ones of the Asian. 

“I have a date.”

The Vietnamese springs up from his seat and squeals, legitimately squeals and gets into Buck’s face. 

“So you’re saying?” He swallows.

“Yes?”

“So you’re saying that I’d—I’d finally get to open the door for someone who is not you?” 

“Yes.” Buck shakes his head. The timer goes off for the third time, just in tandem with the television coming to life in the living room. Buck rubs at his forehead, he has less than an hour before the bell rings. 

He plops back to the kitchen counter, dunks the chicken thigh into a heap of batter and pulls out a packet of spaghetti, sloshes it into the water, drains it and stuffs it into the microwave. 

He rushes to the living room, grabs the remote from the sanguine coloured sofa and turns off the television. 

“Hey, what the hell?”

This time, it is a woman; peach skinned, tall and ugly. She is crouching on the floor with her legs twisted at an ungodly angle as her hands haphazardly hold up her weight. She was an anorexic in her days.  

“You need to stop.” 

“No I don’t.”

“Your hip hop routine can wait a day, save your breath.”

“You know better than anyone that it isn’t about wasting a breath in this household, Buck.”

“I’m sorry, but your break dancing lessons need to stop now.”

“And why is that?”

“I have a date.”

“Have a what again?”

“A date!” Buck stares at the woman, her ash white hair disintegrating right on her scalp, but never really disappearing. They are stuck in time, these figures, or so it seems.

“Oh well, good luck with that.” The TV flicks on while the remote still sits atop Buck’s palm. Buck sighs and slumps into the couch, exhaustion suddenly dotting his features. The taps and swirls and jumps ring through his ears until they don’t. 

The microwave pings in the kitchen and he’s out of his seat and by the counter in record time; peeling out the bowl with the steaming spaghetti and dumping it into the red sauce bubbling in a pan on the stove. He chops the chicken into pieces and chucks it all into the pan and puts the lid on. The television blares in the living room with a certain hippie, older than the two world wars, break dancing to a pleasantly misogynistic hip hop routine. Buck stands on his toes and opens a kitchen cabinet on the top right corner, lifts out two heavy bottles of red wine; uncapping one and pouring it into a small cup. He does not have those Victorian wine glasses lying around so ceramic cups will have to do. Buck does not believe in profligate living.  

He pads into his bedroom, hoping to clear out any extra laundry lying around, smooth out the sheets and get rid of the lint probably collecting around the hem. He trods into the bathroom to grab a bunch of cinnamon and lavender candles from a drawer underneath the sink but freezes in place when a wet hand, blue and sloppy touches his clothed elbow. 

The timer on his watch goes off for the third time that day but Buck ignores it. He knows he has around twenty minutes before the bell rings. 

“We had a pact, didn’t we?” Buck speaks calmly to the nineteen year old in the bathtub. She is taciturn, doesn’t so much as glance at Buck; her mouth is smeared with blue but so are the ends of her hands and legs. 

“Pick my brain, I can’t remember.”

“That you’d get out of the water—the bathtub when someone comes to visit.”

“You don’t ever have anyone visiting though, do you?”

“Today, I do.” 

“Humour me.”

“I have a date.” The girl sinks deeper into the water until it pools around her eyes and trickles into her nose. 

“Is she pretty?”

“She is a goddess.” The girl swabs her tongue over her bleached teeth and looks curiously at Buck. 

“Will she stay the night?”

“Let’s just say that if she does, you’ll have to be out of the bathroom.”

“What do I get in return, Buck?”

“I told you, I’d show you the fire escape.”

“Will you?” 

“Yes. Do we have a deal?” She raises her hand and twirls a lock of his hair in her finger.

“I guess we do.”

By the time Buck gets to the fire escape, the food is ready and the dinner table is arranged  methodically all the while reaffirming his faith in himself. He drags out two heaping charcoal litter bags and shoves them into the garbage can by the stairs. The man standing against the railing with a cigarette in hand is clad in a turtleneck sweater made of a rather obscure material and jeans. He is looking off into the darkness of the rapidly falling night and humming. 

Suddenly, perhaps an old rendition of some classical music floats around them, on the fire escape. Buck leans against the brick wall and stares at the brooding shadow of the man. He always does this, puts on music that surpasses the trajectory of insurmountable dread, wringing  out the blasphemy one thinks one is incapable of committing. 

“What is it, this time?” Buck begins.

“Listz’s arrangement of serenades.” 

“Sounds nice.” 

The man turns around, reclines back and watches Buck carefully. 

“I’m sorry about your job.” Buck watches him back.

“It’s alright, I’ll get back on my feet.” 

“Will you be okay?”

“I will—I am, you see, I’ve—

“—A date, I know.”

“Of course you do, you know everything.” Buck looks away.

“How long?”

“Uh, she could ring the bell anytime now.” The man stubs the end of his cigarette and tosses it off into the void beneath. The cigarette, obviously, never finds the ground.

“Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t be upset if she doesn’t make it. You will find someone new.” Buck giggles and rubs his face with the heel of his palms.

“Yeah but the thing is, she will make it.” Buck giggles again. 

-

A fork stabs into a stack of lemon bread, topped abundantly with maple syrup and then some. 

Two hours and twenty three minutes. 

“Well, at least tonight we aren’t blasting our ears off with obnoxious jazz music.” The woman from the living room cries, preening at herself from afar. 

“So you’re saying—you’re saying that I won’t get to open the door for someone who isn’t you?” The Asian takes off his decapitated head and places it on the table, sinks into a chair with utter dejection.

Buck cuts into a frail piece of chicken, wraps it around thick spaghetti and the sauce, puts it into his mouth and chews. He swallows it down with a chug from the ceramic cup. 

By Harshita Mishra