A Series Of Unfortunate Events - II
Read Part I before proceeding to part II:
"You told her what?!?" Raj said disbelievingly.
"That I was dead broke and hungry and thought she might want to buy me dinner," I repeated again, each word killing me a thousand times.
"Let me get this straight; you had a thing for this chick for, what, two months; you then grow some balls and ask her out for dinner; you then go on to insinuate that what she is drinking is piss, burp on her face, throw ketchup all over her face and then when she wants you to tell her why you asked her out, you tell her you wanted her to buy you dinner?!?"
"Well, when you put it that way, it does sound quite terrible.But all of this happened so quickly that I had no time to think.It was one disaster after the another," I say defensively
"No matter how quickly it happened, you must have been fuckin' crazy to have told her that," he says shaking his head; apparently still in disbelief.
"Fuckin' crazy or not, I said what I could think of right then."
Raj is still shaking his head.
"And the bill was kinda steep too," I added cheekily.
"It's a wonder that you are still alive; if I had been her, I might have made testicle sizzler then and there in the bistro," he says caustically.
"If you had been her, I would have never asked her out; she would have been too hairy for my liking," I say, pointing to his beard.
He gives me the finger before proceeding to strangling me witless.
"E..nnn...o...u..ggg..hhh," I gasp, unable to withstand his smelly armpits any longer.He lets go of me just like he would let go of a disdainful fart.He walks around the room thinking while I take in a lungful of air.
"What did she say when you apologized to her?"
"Well; here is the deal.... I didn't get a chance to apologize to her," I whimpered.
"Speak up man, I can't hear you," Raj says forcefully.
"I didn't get to apologize to her," I say a little louder.
"Well, that's bloody brilliant; you take her out on one of her most memorable dates, for all the wrong reasons I may add before you start gloating over the word "memorable", and you don't apologize to her; that's just bloody brilliant," Raj says; he continues to mumble "bloody brilliant" over and over again as if to test his British lineage.
"It's not like I didn't apologize to her; after the whole "buy me dinner" sentence, she gave me a dirty look and stormed off from the bistro," I reply unconvincingly.
"Of course she would storm off from the bistro.What did you expect her to do; jump onto the table and hack on you mercilessly until she elicits an apology from you?"
"Well, I ran after her but the waiters convinced themselves that I had connived the entire fiasco just to escape from footing the bill.So they wouldn't let me off until I had paid for the food and by that time, it was too late."
"What do you mean "too late"; she isn't Marion Jones.All you had to throw out some money and rush after her," he says quizzically.
"Ummm, as luck would have it, I fell a little short on cash and then...," my voice trailed off.
"And then...?"
"Well, they made me scrub some dishes," I said hastily.
Raj bursts out laughing.
"Ohhhhh man, this gets richer and richer!"
"It isn't that funny," I say mirthlessly.
"Of course it is; it's like being told that the operation on your left kidney went really well only to realize that they were to operate on your right kidney," he manages to tell between bouts of uncontrolled laughter.He goes on laughing like a laughing hyena on ecstasy while I look hopelessly forlorn.I really did dig that girl.
"Okay, now that I've got that out of my system; let's talk about damage-control." He is till chuckling though.
"What do you mean: damage control?" I ask hopefully.
"Well, you need to apologize to her and you need to do it in style; before it's too late."
"You mean there is still hope?!?"
"There is always hope," he remarks haughtily. I hate it when he starts acting all smug.
"So I apologize to her tomorrow."
"Tomorrow, who said anything about tomorrow?!?Whatever has to be done, has to be done tonight."
"It's quite late; she might be alseep," I mumble. Holy crap, I didn't want to face her tonight. Besides, she is lodged at the Girl's hostel and getting into a maximum security prison would be a breeze compared to getting into the hostel at night.
"After the gala time she had with you, the last thing she would think about would be sleep.If I am not mistaken, she and her friends must be sticking pins into a voodoo doll shaped after you."
"Pins... voodoo dolls…," I say rather taken aback.
"Yeah; she's majorly into black magic and all; say, aren't you feeling any pain anywhere private?" he asks tauntingly. I show him the finger and tell him to shove it up his garbage chute.
“Wouldn’t getting into the hostel be next to impossible?” I ask him.
“Well, the trick is not in getting into the hostel but luring her out of it,” he says secretively.
He wouldn’t tell me more.
-----------------------
"So what's the plan?"
We were very close to the hostel, by a so-called garden which consisted of nothing but a few trees and some dead grass. It was pitch black and I thought that we looked like a bunch of fools carrying roses, candles, sheets, an expensive box of chocolates and a bottle of wine. I was feeling a bit hungry and I had asked Raj if I could have some of the chocolate. He threatened to torch my pole if I even as much as thought about it.
"Well, the plan is that I call down a friend of mine from the hostel.I'll tell her to bring Rhea along as well. I know that Rhea would be highly reluctant to associate herself with anybody on whom you might have even breathed upon; but knowing my friend, she will convince Rhea to come along," he rattles off like a strategist.
"Okay, so she comes down with your friend. Then what?" I ask him.
"Once I have called up my friend, you lay down the sheet over here and arrange all the candles around the sheet.I know that Rhea loves chocolates and well, who wouldn't like wine by the candle light. If you manage not to screw it up by being yourself, you might just about be able to notch up a few points."
Man, Raj may speak a lot of shit but he sure knows how to back it up.
"Okay; you better wait her and set up the sheets. Don't light the candle till I signal you to. The signal is an owl hoot." And he proceeds to hoot like an owl.Just as he finishes with his signal, another owl hoots back. I think Raj might have made an owl's loins tingle. He is just that kind of guy.
"And one more thing, don't eat the chocolates.being the nice girl that she is, she will offer some to you; so wait for a few minutes." Saying these words, he is off.
I spread the sheet around in darkness and squat on it. My adrenaline is pumping and I feel strangely elated. It's still rather dark and I suddenly feel the urge to relieve myself. Not wanting to light any candles, I rummage around for a twig or paper. My fingers fall upon something that felt like dead grass. I grab hold of it, bring my lighter close to it and say "let there be light".
What followed that was the loudest shriek I have ever heard. Suddenly a stinging pain surged up my right arm. The dead grass in my hand started to struggle against my grasp, much to my horror.
"What the....," I exclaim to myself and flare up my lighter again.
"Jesus; the fuckin' grass is a cat," I nearly shout to myself. It was a weird site; I held a cat in my hand and it's tail was on fire. I let go off the cat and it bounded off towards the hostel; it's tail still on fire.
I look at my hand and discover a long cut; damn damn damn.Why do shitty things happen to me?
As I was pitying myself, I heard an owl hoot. Raj!
And Rhea!
Hurriedly, I lit up the candles. and arranged the wine and the box of chocolate.
"What was all that racket, man?!?" Raj asked as he jogs over towards me.I told him what had happened.
"Dude, you are the only guy I know who is capable of torching cats before making up to his girl," he says wistfully."Is she here?" I ask him."Look for yourself," he says, pointing over my shoulder.
I turn around and spot Rhea coming towards us with Raj's mystery girl tagging along with her. Actually, it should be the other way around but who cares!
I grabbed hold of the chocolates and the bottle of wine and headed off towards her. She saw me coming and started a little. She hesitated for a moment and then continued towards me.
"What's this jerk doing here?" is the first thing she ask's Raj as she closed down on us.
"Why don't you ask the jerk himself, Rhea?"
Bastard!
"What are you doing over here, you sorry piece of trash?" she asks me.She seems a little miffed.
"Ummm, look Rhea, I am really sorry about what happened at the bistro. I know I acted like a total jackass and I'm sorry about that. Sometimes I let the humor get the better of me; it's not an excuse but still I'm really sorry," I tell her as she looks at me, unconvinced.
"Well, the truth is that I really really like you and just wanted you to know what a fun guy i could be; and you put me in a spot by asking me why I asked you out. I liked you but I couldn't say that out flat so I went to the best next thing: jokes."
She's still unconvinced.
I hand her the box of chocolates and the bottle of wine and tell her again that I was really sorry. As I was telling her all of this, I was also leading her towards the candle-lit sheet. The moment she saw it, I knew that she was floored.
She looked at the wine and the candle light and says," Are you trying to get me drunk?"
I had been holding her hand for a bit now and I think the blood from the cut started to make its prescence felt against her soft skin.It might have also fallen on her dress, which, thankfully, wasn’t white.
“Did you have something on your hand ‘cause it feels all sticky?” Rhea asks me as she looks into my eyes.
I didn't know what to tell her; not anything funny. So I just grab the roses and hand it over to her. She takes the flowers and takes a whiff of it. I would have thought that she might have said that the roses smell lovely or something to that effect but instead, she threw the roses at me.
I look at her, dumbfounded.
"Were they roses?" she asks me, haltingly.
"Yeah, they were.But don't worry, you smell even better than those roses," I said rather adventurously.
She wibbled.
Well, that's the best way I could put the noise she made.
A wibble.
"I'm all...llll...er..ggg...iiccc toooo rooo..sssesss," she wibbled again.
"What?!?"
"Are you alright?" I asked her as I flared up the lighter making sure they were far away from her hair.
"Aaaiiiii.......nweeddd....tooo...gwoooo...twoo...thwe....ospitle...," she wibbled again.
I took a close look at her face; it was bursting into spots and her eyes and lips were puffing up.
"Ummm; Raj...I think you need to call for a rickshaw," I shouted out to Raj. He ran over towards us; got hold of the situation and flagged down a rickshaw while I guided Rhea towards the rickshaw. Rhea's friend comforted her while giving me dirty looks.
Rhea and her friend got into one rickshaw while Raj and I fitted into another.
"Man, you have a real bad luck streak goin' on with you.How was I supposed to know she was allergic to roses?"
I couldn't curse my bad luck enough but I had one burning question in my mind as we raced towards the hospital.
"Raj, can I ask you a question now?" I ask.
"Go ahead, yaar."
"Can I have some chocolates now?"
"You told her what?!?" Raj said disbelievingly.
"That I was dead broke and hungry and thought she might want to buy me dinner," I repeated again, each word killing me a thousand times.
"Let me get this straight; you had a thing for this chick for, what, two months; you then grow some balls and ask her out for dinner; you then go on to insinuate that what she is drinking is piss, burp on her face, throw ketchup all over her face and then when she wants you to tell her why you asked her out, you tell her you wanted her to buy you dinner?!?"
"Well, when you put it that way, it does sound quite terrible.But all of this happened so quickly that I had no time to think.It was one disaster after the another," I say defensively
"No matter how quickly it happened, you must have been fuckin' crazy to have told her that," he says shaking his head; apparently still in disbelief.
"Fuckin' crazy or not, I said what I could think of right then."
Raj is still shaking his head.
"And the bill was kinda steep too," I added cheekily.
"It's a wonder that you are still alive; if I had been her, I might have made testicle sizzler then and there in the bistro," he says caustically.
"If you had been her, I would have never asked her out; she would have been too hairy for my liking," I say, pointing to his beard.
He gives me the finger before proceeding to strangling me witless.
"E..nnn...o...u..ggg..hhh," I gasp, unable to withstand his smelly armpits any longer.He lets go of me just like he would let go of a disdainful fart.He walks around the room thinking while I take in a lungful of air.
"What did she say when you apologized to her?"
"Well; here is the deal.... I didn't get a chance to apologize to her," I whimpered.
"Speak up man, I can't hear you," Raj says forcefully.
"I didn't get to apologize to her," I say a little louder.
"Well, that's bloody brilliant; you take her out on one of her most memorable dates, for all the wrong reasons I may add before you start gloating over the word "memorable", and you don't apologize to her; that's just bloody brilliant," Raj says; he continues to mumble "bloody brilliant" over and over again as if to test his British lineage.
"It's not like I didn't apologize to her; after the whole "buy me dinner" sentence, she gave me a dirty look and stormed off from the bistro," I reply unconvincingly.
"Of course she would storm off from the bistro.What did you expect her to do; jump onto the table and hack on you mercilessly until she elicits an apology from you?"
"Well, I ran after her but the waiters convinced themselves that I had connived the entire fiasco just to escape from footing the bill.So they wouldn't let me off until I had paid for the food and by that time, it was too late."
"What do you mean "too late"; she isn't Marion Jones.All you had to throw out some money and rush after her," he says quizzically.
"Ummm, as luck would have it, I fell a little short on cash and then...," my voice trailed off.
"And then...?"
"Well, they made me scrub some dishes," I said hastily.
Raj bursts out laughing.
"Ohhhhh man, this gets richer and richer!"
"It isn't that funny," I say mirthlessly.
"Of course it is; it's like being told that the operation on your left kidney went really well only to realize that they were to operate on your right kidney," he manages to tell between bouts of uncontrolled laughter.He goes on laughing like a laughing hyena on ecstasy while I look hopelessly forlorn.I really did dig that girl.
"Okay, now that I've got that out of my system; let's talk about damage-control." He is till chuckling though.
"What do you mean: damage control?" I ask hopefully.
"Well, you need to apologize to her and you need to do it in style; before it's too late."
"You mean there is still hope?!?"
"There is always hope," he remarks haughtily. I hate it when he starts acting all smug.
"So I apologize to her tomorrow."
"Tomorrow, who said anything about tomorrow?!?Whatever has to be done, has to be done tonight."
"It's quite late; she might be alseep," I mumble. Holy crap, I didn't want to face her tonight. Besides, she is lodged at the Girl's hostel and getting into a maximum security prison would be a breeze compared to getting into the hostel at night.
"After the gala time she had with you, the last thing she would think about would be sleep.If I am not mistaken, she and her friends must be sticking pins into a voodoo doll shaped after you."
"Pins... voodoo dolls…," I say rather taken aback.
"Yeah; she's majorly into black magic and all; say, aren't you feeling any pain anywhere private?" he asks tauntingly. I show him the finger and tell him to shove it up his garbage chute.
“Wouldn’t getting into the hostel be next to impossible?” I ask him.
“Well, the trick is not in getting into the hostel but luring her out of it,” he says secretively.
He wouldn’t tell me more.
-----------------------
"So what's the plan?"
We were very close to the hostel, by a so-called garden which consisted of nothing but a few trees and some dead grass. It was pitch black and I thought that we looked like a bunch of fools carrying roses, candles, sheets, an expensive box of chocolates and a bottle of wine. I was feeling a bit hungry and I had asked Raj if I could have some of the chocolate. He threatened to torch my pole if I even as much as thought about it.
"Well, the plan is that I call down a friend of mine from the hostel.I'll tell her to bring Rhea along as well. I know that Rhea would be highly reluctant to associate herself with anybody on whom you might have even breathed upon; but knowing my friend, she will convince Rhea to come along," he rattles off like a strategist.
"Okay, so she comes down with your friend. Then what?" I ask him.
"Once I have called up my friend, you lay down the sheet over here and arrange all the candles around the sheet.I know that Rhea loves chocolates and well, who wouldn't like wine by the candle light. If you manage not to screw it up by being yourself, you might just about be able to notch up a few points."
Man, Raj may speak a lot of shit but he sure knows how to back it up.
"Okay; you better wait her and set up the sheets. Don't light the candle till I signal you to. The signal is an owl hoot." And he proceeds to hoot like an owl.Just as he finishes with his signal, another owl hoots back. I think Raj might have made an owl's loins tingle. He is just that kind of guy.
"And one more thing, don't eat the chocolates.being the nice girl that she is, she will offer some to you; so wait for a few minutes." Saying these words, he is off.
I spread the sheet around in darkness and squat on it. My adrenaline is pumping and I feel strangely elated. It's still rather dark and I suddenly feel the urge to relieve myself. Not wanting to light any candles, I rummage around for a twig or paper. My fingers fall upon something that felt like dead grass. I grab hold of it, bring my lighter close to it and say "let there be light".
What followed that was the loudest shriek I have ever heard. Suddenly a stinging pain surged up my right arm. The dead grass in my hand started to struggle against my grasp, much to my horror.
"What the....," I exclaim to myself and flare up my lighter again.
"Jesus; the fuckin' grass is a cat," I nearly shout to myself. It was a weird site; I held a cat in my hand and it's tail was on fire. I let go off the cat and it bounded off towards the hostel; it's tail still on fire.
I look at my hand and discover a long cut; damn damn damn.Why do shitty things happen to me?
As I was pitying myself, I heard an owl hoot. Raj!
And Rhea!
Hurriedly, I lit up the candles. and arranged the wine and the box of chocolate.
"What was all that racket, man?!?" Raj asked as he jogs over towards me.I told him what had happened.
"Dude, you are the only guy I know who is capable of torching cats before making up to his girl," he says wistfully."Is she here?" I ask him."Look for yourself," he says, pointing over my shoulder.
I turn around and spot Rhea coming towards us with Raj's mystery girl tagging along with her. Actually, it should be the other way around but who cares!
I grabbed hold of the chocolates and the bottle of wine and headed off towards her. She saw me coming and started a little. She hesitated for a moment and then continued towards me.
"What's this jerk doing here?" is the first thing she ask's Raj as she closed down on us.
"Why don't you ask the jerk himself, Rhea?"
Bastard!
"What are you doing over here, you sorry piece of trash?" she asks me.She seems a little miffed.
"Ummm, look Rhea, I am really sorry about what happened at the bistro. I know I acted like a total jackass and I'm sorry about that. Sometimes I let the humor get the better of me; it's not an excuse but still I'm really sorry," I tell her as she looks at me, unconvinced.
"Well, the truth is that I really really like you and just wanted you to know what a fun guy i could be; and you put me in a spot by asking me why I asked you out. I liked you but I couldn't say that out flat so I went to the best next thing: jokes."
She's still unconvinced.
I hand her the box of chocolates and the bottle of wine and tell her again that I was really sorry. As I was telling her all of this, I was also leading her towards the candle-lit sheet. The moment she saw it, I knew that she was floored.
She looked at the wine and the candle light and says," Are you trying to get me drunk?"
I had been holding her hand for a bit now and I think the blood from the cut started to make its prescence felt against her soft skin.It might have also fallen on her dress, which, thankfully, wasn’t white.
“Did you have something on your hand ‘cause it feels all sticky?” Rhea asks me as she looks into my eyes.
I didn't know what to tell her; not anything funny. So I just grab the roses and hand it over to her. She takes the flowers and takes a whiff of it. I would have thought that she might have said that the roses smell lovely or something to that effect but instead, she threw the roses at me.
I look at her, dumbfounded.
"Were they roses?" she asks me, haltingly.
"Yeah, they were.But don't worry, you smell even better than those roses," I said rather adventurously.
She wibbled.
Well, that's the best way I could put the noise she made.
A wibble.
"I'm all...llll...er..ggg...iiccc toooo rooo..sssesss," she wibbled again.
"What?!?"
"Are you alright?" I asked her as I flared up the lighter making sure they were far away from her hair.
"Aaaiiiii.......nweeddd....tooo...gwoooo...twoo...thwe....ospitle...," she wibbled again.
I took a close look at her face; it was bursting into spots and her eyes and lips were puffing up.
"Ummm; Raj...I think you need to call for a rickshaw," I shouted out to Raj. He ran over towards us; got hold of the situation and flagged down a rickshaw while I guided Rhea towards the rickshaw. Rhea's friend comforted her while giving me dirty looks.
Rhea and her friend got into one rickshaw while Raj and I fitted into another.
"Man, you have a real bad luck streak goin' on with you.How was I supposed to know she was allergic to roses?"
I couldn't curse my bad luck enough but I had one burning question in my mind as we raced towards the hospital.
"Raj, can I ask you a question now?" I ask.
"Go ahead, yaar."
"Can I have some chocolates now?"
