She didn’t know what drove her to take him to her apartment after a long evening of abortive and unskilled flirting. This was unlike her and she felt that she had no choice in the matter. She didn’t know anything about him except his name, which sounded very funny for the way he looked. He had no idea what was happening either. He lingered in the club transfixed in her movements and let the magic in her control his movements. So when she finally asked him to walk her to her place, he could not even think of saying no.
Sometimes love just happens. It happens without reason or purpose. It happens despite all the best efforts. It happens even when it should not. He entered her car in silence. She apologized for the mess in the car and for the half-eaten banana on the passenger seat. They drove in silence with neither saying a word. The streetlights that had just become brighter in the evening mediated in the matter silently. A wave of intensity rose and fell between them and rippled out into the world. As she parked her car in front of her house, he leaned over and kissed her for the first time; on the lips but without tongue. She did not kiss him back. She felt his kiss and stayed stiff without reacting.
Her apartment was rather tiny, almost like a cell. It was painted in light green color. She lived alone in the basement of a rooming house owned by an immigrant Iraqi couple who after retiring made most of their income from their properties. She got a good deal when she showed up one evening desperate for a place and with no intention to spend a lot of money. They showed her the room and as an incentive offered to furnish it with a bed and mattress. She furnished the rest with IKEA furniture and bright colored curtains. There was a lava lamp in the corner that provided nighttime theatre to the otherwise drab ambience.
On the bed, with the lights turned off except for the psychedelic dots of flicker for the lava lamp and the radio playing softly, they touched each other for the first time, seriously and with determination, her forearm pressing against his crotch; his hand – shaking and unsteady- roaming freely across the faint moist curvature of her thigh without the watchful eyes of the bouncer. Like two lost souls in love for the first time, drinking thirstily from an endless cup they moved unashamedly into the final frontier and discovered each other. They were not skilled at it either, she having lost her confidence in a feeling that brought on a loss of control and he nervous and lost in the moment. He lost and found his hardness and she missed and regained her rhythm. They made love like two school children fooling around behind the schoolyard for the first time.
When they were done, all their nervousness had gone, wiped clear by the tender words and soft touch. Only a gentle feeling of well being remained.
Then he felt the urge. His stomach started to turn. First he thought it was his body feeling sick for the sin he had just committed. Then, despite the fighting of the mind over matter, the matter grew strong and he ran to the toilet with the urgency he had never felt before. When he came out of the toilet, after a long while, he no longer was in love. He kept going in and out most of the night and after the fourth time when the tenderness was replaced by certain revulsion, Coco also fell out of love.
They were then a curious pair; ex-lovers bound to each other by a hidden connection of the man in need of a toilet and woman who was the owner of the toilet. The fact that they had just made love made it difficult for her to throw him out right away. She covered herself and hoped he would leave soon.
At some point in the night, weak and muttering, Bullet suggested that she call a cab for him. Without protesting, she did.
The next day, Bullet was admitted to the hospital with a terrible case of amoebic dysentery. It was quite ironic, as everyone from the Embassy remarked when they came to visit him at the hospital, that a man from India would catch a tropical disease in America.
Finally when he was well enough to leave America for India, with his dream of visiting New York unfulfilled, he sat on his chair and contemplated the emptiness of life; his failing career, his unloved wife, his pointless trip to America and his one true love that lasted for only an afternoon.
Then he wrote Coco a letter.
My dearest Coco, it read, I don’t know why I write this. There is no point in writing a letter of love to a former lover whom I have only known but for a fleeting moment. But what I felt in that moment was true love. My illness and departure from your place tore my heart not because it ended so soon, but because it happened once. I can never be the same person again, having experienced it once. I am in turmoil. I shall return to India and remember you. It is pointless to expect that we will ever meet again or that if we met, we would ever feel for each other the way we did that evening. But for that evening, I thank you. For the illness and the subsequent silliness and all the inconvenience it caused, I apologize. Yours, Bullet.
Then in the taxi to the airport, sitting in the backseat, Bullet carefully tore the letter into a thousand pieces and let them all fly away into the night sky of Washington DC.
On her way to work, Coco saw a small piece of white paper fly though the air and land on her windshield. It stuck there confidently like it was fixed there with glue. When she parked the car, she pulled out the paper and read it. It was an advertisement for a mattress. It simply said, “Comfort. For one night or forever.”
Then she began to cry.
