There hadn't been a fight when she'd picked up his shirt from the bench and demanded that she be compensated for his unintended vile act of throwing out her clothes before the doors had locked.
"I'm seeing how to get you out of my shirt...", he said turning away from the mirror in front of which she stood and took a seat on the bench, "But interesting that you used 'your shirt' instead of 'a shirt'...", he shook his head, thoughtfully, "So, No! I'm not answering your other question..."
"Ah! I see...", her slow drawl almost made him want to face her again, picturing her tucked chin and her unwavering focus on her nimble fingers that must be making quick work of the long stretch of buttons, "Your are not just the agency's muscle then..."
"Trust me, you have no idea..." He rolled his eyes, which she had no way of knowing, but soon she made her way to sit on the second bench that ran parallel to the wall, diagonally opposite from where he sat, putting a few feet between them as she faced him.
The shirt, she'd taken from him, was only for good measure over the damp towel that she still wore underneath. Her hair was smoothed over her one shoulder and it had begun to coat his shirt with its wetness, casting him into a mindless absorption, as the damp spot grew wide around her shoulder.
"Why hasn't your lady friend's pill kicked in yet?"
His eyes flew to hers, "You will have to ask my lady friend..."
He wasn't going to tell that his so called lady witch of a friend Giovanna had given her a placebo, instead, and had wickedly schemed for her to wake up out of her intermittent stupor when he would have carried her inside from the car had everything gone as planned after their little chat in the interrogation room.
"How long does this new lockdown last?, she placed her elbow on her knee, leaning forward, giving away her anxiety, "I mean, what about people who would want to use the bathroom?"
"Again...you will just have to ask her", his head titled to one side; an unseen bluntness came into his eyes, "And secondly, you think I care that people are pissing their pants because the bathrooms are locked out?"
He had no intentions of revealing that it was just their bathroom that had been closed down, to grant them the much needed space that he hadn't planned on them having at all.
It took him an affirming chant to come to terms that he was talking to her; as if they were two strangers like that of a bollywood movie, who had only happened to have gotten locked in the most inopportune of times and he felt transported into a dream-like setting from that sudden unsuspecting situation that had come to be. Yet, there was the shiver of her fingers, a faint stutter - from the cold or from his presence, he couldn't tell - that made him fall out of his reveries, bringing into thought that she perhaps would never remember the nights she'd readily slept in his hold with only a sheet to wrap them, when in that instant, she was in a constant grip of discomfort from having to assure her modesty every time his eyes took in the forgotten svelte of her body.
Her voice stirred from a mild disbelief then, "Are all agents like you?"
"Why do you ask?"
"You know", she looked away, "I could put down as a general rule in my dating nays and don'ts that I could do without dating you lot. That is if everyone in this building were no different than the rude, bitter egotist that you are proving to be in the last one hour that I have been with you"
"Unless...", he drawled and she scoffed from possibly having guessed where he was going with that intent sarcasm, "All that exotic and raunchy sex is as true as those bond and spy movies claim it to be...Only, every mundane woman's fantasy come true..."
"And every woman's nightmare", she ended for him, their heated volley with a stiff disapproving shake of her head, "If that is indeed true, then you folks strike an unfair bargain after that hot and steamy affair. You people get to walk out unscathed, minus the heartache when the rest of us get to haggle with the truth of the illusion that it was..."
"And remind me, who is bitter again?", he feigned a mocking curiosity with a derisive smile on, "Did someone ever tell you that you assume a lot? You seem to have discerned that we don't pay a price because..."
"You tell me...", she prompted him back and he could foresee the trap she was laying for him much to his dislike, "This person you spoke about in past tense, he was an agent too if I haven't got this all entirely wrong. It never occurred to me until I found myself here, but now every block in the puzzle seems to be falling into place"
It had all come down too fast even for him to muster an evasion that her statement called for. For all the bluster that he'd managed, he was ill equipped to handle the torment of her emotions that showed in her voice firsthand. Only a hands reach in distance and there he was unable to pull her into a hug and that in turn made him picture a wall of his own resolve crush his gut and grind out an avalanche of pain into his veins.
"If nothing is a fling or a joke", she added when he didn't speak for long, her voice wavering from a weak pull of conviction to keep up that argument, "Then tell me why he hasn't reached out to me to-date? Not once...lest he died in the blast, but none did either, if my memory serves right"
"I don't think I have given you any cause to believe that you two were more than an acquaintance", he leaned in further and openly addressed her, "Again, you do assume a lot..."
"No. It wasn't you who had led me to believe that", her voice had dimmed out to a lifelessness that he wanted to drive his fist into those many white porcelain sinks that bordered the wall, "But, trust me there was much cause to arrive at that conclusion that we meant a lot more to each other than being just friends...At least, I know he must have been for me..."
His brows drew together at her revelation, not comprehending the certainty that she felt for the man she couldn't even identify.
"You dated him for a few months, but it didn't last long..." He replied her promptly wanting to deter her from going ahead the path of destruction that she was unknowingly treading on.
"Oh! but why?...Again, there is no point discussing it if it was nothing more than a casual dalliance for him. Or if it was anything painful...", and he saw in the flinch of a smile that played on her lips, a fizzled out hope to meekly convince herself to give up on her search, "Oh! what the hell? Men these days break up with their girlfriends over broken finger nails...if it was any such inane reason, then I'm half glad that I don't remember him..."
He would have believed her too - her decrepit attempts to disregard him - had it not been for the lone tear that had crossed the threshold of her lashes and slipped down her cheek.
"I can't believe I'm doing this...", he closed his eyes for that moment, "When the agency got wind of your relationship, he was asked to end all communications with you..."
"Do you have a picture of him? Anything at all?", and he heard that slow desperation in her voice which he'd feared ever since the time he'd remained hidden behind the one way mirror, "Did he get transferred to another office?"
"Why?", he got up and walked to his locker to remove a pair of scissors and a trimmer, thinking it was safe not to face her that minute, "How does it even matter anymore? Its not that there would be any love lost between you two, if you did manage to get in touch with him. You won't remember what you felt for him long ago..."
Walling himself for what she had to say, willing himself to sense that thickness in skin that he maintained at all times, he walked to a nearby sink and placed the items in his hand on the counter; the distance he'd put between them, already starting a course of relief in him.
"Sorry", she said wiping her tear and raised her eyes to him in the mirror, "but I don't think you are in any position to decide that..."
And it seemed a long minute before he could remove his eyes from her reflection to his fingers that remained curved over the counter's edge.
"At least, give me his name..."
If only she could stop with her urging, he told himself, in that plaintive voice of hers that appeared to conceal nothing from him - despite going against his initial opinion that from having erased him for her memories she'd founded a wall around her mind's workings since the blast incident.
"Sorry..." He said turning away a bit, faking a retort while his forehead, in contrast, furrowed from a show of anger and concern, "Its not for me to decide if I can divulge that piece of information. You can ask my lady friend"
"Its not like she is waiting on the other side of the door to hand me the file your agency must be keeping on me", she spoke in contempt, "Surely, not anymore than you do...If anything she lied..."
"And for your own good...", he insisted with a flurry of impassion.
"And you people stop making my decisions for me...", the crackling vehemence in her tone was a direct measure of her ire that he'd sparked momentarily, her cheeks a flaming red while the tears held back for the while she'd conversed with him, finally spilled from her eyes, "Just because I don't remember my past, the moments that led me to fall for this man, you don't get to shape them for me..."
There really wasn't anything to be exchanged in return while he was quite determined to keep his silence.
After that, they didn't speak for long and she sat with her feet stretched, crossed at her ankles, weary from their talk that hadn't taken them anywhere, her eyes closed while her head rested against the tiled wall. A repose; an assertion that he could outlive his own temptation to break open the chest of truth to her. It was also precisely when he felt a need for distraction and diverted himself to shaping the tapered line of neck hair back into existence. But, even as he tried to reach behind with his trimmer, his shoulder pain shot through his arm and back making him cry out without his knowledge and he let out a loud exclamation at that onshoot of aching in way of an expletive that made her open her eyes and stare at him through the mirror.
He held her eyes there; his irritation that morphed itself in to the original helplessness that he'd felt, his eyes stinging from that vulnerability and something else, which eventually had her get up and move towards him.
"I'm sorry...You deserved none of that...", she took the trimmer from his hand, making him question the strange understanding she seemed to offer then, "Here, let me help with that..."
He couldn't deny himself what was perhaps the one final time she would lay her fingers on him and unconsciously, he gave her a small smile; a reconciliation. "Its all right...its natural for you to feel that antagonism towards the agency..."
When he was taller than her, he stepped around her to sit on the bench, so that she didn't have to raise herself on her tip toes. Once she was behind him, the low hum of the trimmer drowned out all sounds that could reach his ears, letting him be sensate only to the feel of her fingers running through his hair, smoothing the bristle of hair at times as she did, while a nub of her finger guided the trimmer by the line of his neck.
He smiled and unable to hold himself back from making a remark, he said, "I always knew woman can never really resist my charm at length..."
"Now, that just makes me want to add, arrogant ass to that long list of titles I had conferred upon you not too long ago...", and she said smiling too.
But, as she spoke, in the briefest second that their eyes met in the mirror, she must have seen his easy collapse into his real self when he took in her smile: a spark of knowing; the damnation that he brought upon himself; those hours of having to remain in the shadows forever; a hint of something else that he so fervently fought to hide; and she tugged on the tip of his earlobe, unknowing just as she'd done all those times in the mountains of tibet.
In the same heat of the stimuli of that memory, he pulled her fingers away, "How many times...do..", he said, looking up at her and smiled in kind, only for it to fade the next moment from realizing the gravest of all slips that'd ever committed. His mouth went dry.
F**k!
She froze. The clipper fell to the ground and her finger left his clasp slowly to cover her mouth as she gave out a gasp. "I have done this before", she whispered, "Haven't I?"
"Ok...Listen!", he was on his feet the next instant, his hands in a surrendering gesture, while she took a step back and his insides quivered from a morbid dread that shot through his body, "Its not what you think..."
"You...", she took another step back, her finger pointed at him, shaking from that spasm of recognition.
"No...wait..." He reached for her hand, but it was too late by then, when the door fell open and Arthur and Alistair came marching in with the latter carrying a long coat.
When his first instinct was to run from the escape that had presented itself with the bathroom door opening, he couldn't bring himself to move when he noticed the bridge of water that shimmered in her eyes, refusing to fall and failing to be withheld; her mouth slightly open from a dismissing awe of how that second had played out between them, when in truth either of them couldn't have conceived for their old intimate habits to having betrayed them.
"You can thank me later..."Arthur shoved a bunch of papers into his hands and nudged him by his shoulder, "The cabinet ministry debriefing in 2 hrs...you have to leave pronto..."
Partly, he felt something had been stolen from him then and he'd in part stolen something from her too, by creeping up on her with his assault of an unintentional admission.
"I will take care of...", his gaze went back to her from Arthur and he took a mindless step backwards when Arthur shook him again by his arm, "You just go on now..."
Not until he'd reached the entryway, he paused to look at her. Then again, a vision of her hurt and bleeding in his arms came to him and it didn't take him one breath to find his old perverse sense of purpose once more, when that was the only way he'd learnt to love her. Her bygone suffering, provoked life into his limbs, his veins throbbing with the same distress that he'd seen in her eyes. One last look at her and then rubbing his forehead, as if he was wiping something off his skin there, he took in a deep breath and turned on his heel to walk away.
Cricket
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