The Morning After

An entire night's worth of life had been erased. He remembered not a thing. The last confirmed sight in his head was having, what was probably, his sixth shot of the night. What had happened after that?

He had to remember because the circumstances of his waking up had greatly puzzled him. He had woken up in his room, in his night wear. The other side of the bed looked perfectly creased and slept-in. It was evident that she had slept by his side like every night.

He waded out of the room like he had the webbed feet of a duck. He investigated every room with the discerning precision of a crime sleuth. A crime sleuth who had spent the night soaked in a vat overnight.

She was gone. Doubly puzzling. How could his wife have gone to work like it was any other day? It was clearly not. Nor was the night before. Exactly what had happened after that sixth shot? For that matter, what had happened before it? He retched on the stairs. He felt vomit in his nasal passage. His head felt like a construction site.

Maybe it was his guilt that throbbed in his head. He didn't know yet what he was guilty of but all evidence (or the lack of it) pointed south. He had to pull himself together and piece the events together. What did he know? He had walked in to Hic!, the neighbourhood bar, to catch a game of football. BFC had played Mumbai off the park. Keshav Thapa, the talismanic import from Sikkim had dazzled with two assists and one goal. The game had ended at 7.30.

Status at 7.30: happy high at three pints of beer.

Then the first round of shots arrived. The local lads had won. The i-league was going to be theirs this season. That called for a shot.

The second shot arrived twenty minutes later because only pansies stopped at one.

Then there was a break during which a pint was emptied in the restroom and promptly offset with another at the bar. That is when the DJ stunned everyone with a rare Benny Benassi track. It was the track in which the vocalist kept mispronouncing 'hour' as 'How-er.' How he loved singing along to that. In a matter of minutes, everyone was on the floor.

A third shot was gulped down 'for Benny and the good old times.'

Status at around 9.00: Throwback to a young Travolta from 'Grease.'

His recollections after that were sketchy at best. A periodic status log was impossible. Much dancing had happened. The women had taken to him. He had complained about age 'taking the steam off his engine' to someone in the restroom.

At some point, his wife had called. The contents of the conversation had been wiped clean from his mind.

"Come here and dance, you old fart." Again, no recollection of who had said that.

The ketchup song. Those wretched steps he hated seeing on tv but didn't mind matching with her last night.

Wait, what? Who was the 'her?' And at what point had they kissed?

Was it before or after the sixth shot?

How the fuck did it matter? He had kissed her. Another woman. At the ripe old age of 45, he had crossed the line. Or had he?

No, no. His mind was playing tricks. It hadn't happened. Surely, it hadn't? Right?

But it had. What a kiss that was! He could still feel the part minty part beery taste of her mouth. Her body had felt like it would collapse into his arms any moment. He wasn't sure but it must have been something really important that interrupted it. Must have been the sixth shot. Good, so now events were gradually settling in a chronological sequence. But that solved nothing.

How had he gotten home? How had he made it to the bedroom? Where was his car? Who had driven? Where had the woman gone? God! Who was that woman?

He went hurtling down the stairs and out of the door. His car was right where it should have been. He ran back up and into his room. His wallet was on the table. Not a note seemed missing. Then who had paid? Was it her? So she had paid for his drinks and driven him home? Why? Had she thought she could come over to his place?

At that last thought, a chill climbed up his spine all the way to his shoulders, causing an involuntary shudder. And another more disconcerting thought occurred to him.

Did his wife know? It made perfect sense. The woman from the dance floor had driven him home, mistaking him for a lonely, rich guy she could get lucky with. But once home, she had come face to face with the wife. Much name calling had happened. The wife had called her a whore. She had unkindly reminded the wife of her inability to keep 'the man' at home. Then she had left in disgust. The wife had cursed him, her fate, her parents and Vijay Mallya before tucking him in.

She knew. If everything was in place and nothing was out of the ordinary, it was just a passive-aggressive build-up to the tempest that awaited him in the evening. Probably earlier, if she couldn't hold the rage in and took half a day off from work. That also explained why he had seen beetroot paranthas at the breakfast table. After all, it was his favourite.

It is sheer mastery at mind games that makes a woman treat her man with affected love on a day she plans to guilt-trap him.

He retched again. This time, in the bathroom. On the third attempt, he successfully threw up. The regurgitation brought some much-needed clarity. He had to address the situation. He had to address her and explain himself. He wasn't a serial cheat. He was feeling let down by himself. There was no excuse. She could punish him however she wished. He would tell her all this. He couldn't call her because she couldn't talk about it at work. It was too long for a text message. He couldn't wait till she got home because then it would all blow up in his face. He had to act. Now.

So he decided to write an email. Even if that didn't strictly qualify as a conversation, he hoped it would soften her up a bit by the time she got home.

'Hey honey,

I know you are furious about last night. I would be too, if I were you. I have no excuses to offer for what happened. I screwed up.

Trust me when I say this, I have never cheated on you in all these years. Until last night. I kissed a woman I hadn’t met before. I don't remember when I met her or what really happened. Looking back, it feels like a horrible thing to have done but I promise I am not having an affair.  

I was drunk. It was a moment of weakness and it just happened.

You don't deserve this. But can we talk about it and move past it? I know things haven’t been great but we could start working on them now.

Let’s talk, yes?

Love'

After much contemplation over the phrasing of his note, he sent it out.

There was nothing to do but wait. That made it even worse for him. Till that point, he had a sense of purpose, something he had to do to set things right. Now all he could do was await his damned sentence. It was the wait of a lamb at the slaughter.

Every few minutes, he checked his email. Citibank was offering him a platinum credit card. A Nigerian widow wanted him to inherit a stately sum in dollars. His wife was in no mood to put him out his misery yet.

More junk mails arrived. And after an agonizing wait and a dozen deleted junk mails, the note he was waiting for arrived -

'When you asked me to join you at the bar, I should have known it wasn't you speaking. That stranger you kissed was me.

I allowed myself to think that life had turned a corner last night. I am not so sure any longer.

I’m spending the night at Diya’s.'