Dead or Alive: A Love Story

 This is our third date. The third official date in as many years. We have been having several other hook-ups but none planned and organised as a date.

She is seated with her back to the window. Looking at her I know she had taken her time in preparing for this occasion. She looks beautiful, as always. Well, I did not take as much time, from my looks. Not that I did not, but I chose to make an appearance as if I did not. Truth be told, I was anxious for this day. Anxious as hell. I still am.

I am sipping my juice as she goes through the menu. She studies it curiously, longer than I would have. Looking at her, as she scrutinises the dishes and the tiny images of the meals available, reminds me of how much I had let myself down by my fake “unpreparedness”. 

While she is at it, I am racking my brain how to tell her, how I am to say what needs saying – what needs to be told. I had hinted about it the previous week as we had our usually long midnight phone calls.

“I love you!” I had blurted out.

I had felt embarrassed, a little bit, for having ambushed her in our conversation.

Coolly, she had said that we needed to talk about it. Face-to-face.

Now here we were: she staring at the menu, I sweating and stirring my juice as if it needed a vigorous stir to be sweet.

The waiter is still standing beside us, patiently waiting to take her order.

“I will have tea and a slice of cake,” she says before folding the menu and placing it on the table.

(Well, that took her long enough…)

The waiter scribbles on his notebook and then moves on to the adjacent table, wipes it clean then walks back to the kitchen-counter.

I suck at the straw. The straw only touches the surface of the juice and produces an irritating slurping sound. She winces. I stop sucking and dip my straw into the juice. It is quiet. The silence feels like a hundred years of solitude. A metal plate falls somewhere in the kitchen, there is a clanging of utensils and curses follow.

“Now, what is it that you were saying?” she asks unhurriedly.

My throat is parched. Careful not to make the irritating noise again, I sip directly from the glass. The cold juice is now warmer and tastes like enough of my saliva has diluted it. It even feels slippery and slimy in my mouth.

“I love you,” I say simply and then look into her eyes.

Somewhere deep inside me I am hoping to see a hint of something solid in her eyes, a reply that will save me of this vulnerability. Some hope, may be. My gaze is impeded by the sudden entry of the waiter who dexterously places the cake and the cup of tea on the table before asking if we needed anything else.

Shifting her gaze from me to the waiter, she shakes her head.

The waiter quickly and quietly retreats into the kitchen. His face tells of years of experience. He wears the sad smile of a man who has seen one too many a hearts broken in the ambience of a hotel. He does not seem to be convinced that I would succeed in my “affair”, nor did he seem to be pessimistic. May be, experience had taught him to expect the unexpected.

There is a deep silence in the hotel. Even the noise in the kitchen has drowned into a silent murmur of anticipation. I do not like this feeling of being a lab-rat. It is as if the universe, the hotel and its occupants are quiet to eavesdrop on the outcome of my love-lorn heart.

A man has to man up.

I look into her eyes and repeat the words, “I love you.”

She smiles, that impeccable smile of hers.

She reaches out and places her hand onto mine, looks into my eyes and smiles. She does not say a word, but keeps mum.

Her calmness is upsetting.

What does she mean by smiling?  My head queries. Why is she so calm?

I had not prepared myself for this. I expected her to say that she loved me too. Or even, maybe, say that she had no feelings for me. I would have managed to live with that. I could even have handled being told that she loved me, “loved me not like that, but like a brother”. I would have lived “like a brother”!

“I know,” she finally replies.

She knows! Yes! But…wait…What does she really mean by “I know”?

There is a soft giggle. It is hers. She is giggling. Can you believe it? She giggles and smiles as if amused by my confusion.

“I know,” she repeats and then sips her tea.

I want to do something, to keep my shaking hands busy but I can’t sip my juice, it is already too warm by now. I carve something on the surface of my juice. I crave a straight-up answer. Cruelty would have been something but not this!

“I know you love me and I love you too.”

The Seraphim and the Cherubim strike a cantata! The heavens are rejoicing! Hallelujah! The plates and spoons and pots and cups in the kitchen join in the aria! My palms are sweaty. I can feel prickly strings of sweat perforate through pores in my armpits before dropping down my ribs. I sip my juice, it tastes like God’s own stash of nectar. How love transforms everything.  

“I love you,” she says and then bites her cake, chews and then swallows. “Yes I do, she continues, “but now that you know this, what then?”

The question is brutally honest. Then what? It rings in my head. What had I expected after naming what we had, what would I do now that we were “in love”?

“What then?” she asks, shaking her head as if saddened by my ignorance of what it was that I wanted of love.

She continues, “Now that we are in love, what are we to do about it? Is it sex? I am ready, we can make love here and now. Whatever lovers do. I am ready!”

 Dead or Alive: A Love Story by Macaria Wa Gatundu.