THE BUENOS- AIRES AFFAIR

Some days I really think I’m cheating on Susan
I mean not really but metaphysically
I’m with her but I’m with Winnie
This is like a writer’s block
This is like a mid life crisis


We’re sitting at a marble table, eating lobster
And sipping red wine
I’m forcing a smile
But it doesn’t reach my eyes
I’m not too crazy about the food either
In fact I’m ready to vomit
I don’t hesitate to take such actions


The waiter is translucent
He whirls like a blender and meows like a hellish cat
The room is spinning upside down
My pupils are dilating
Susan is talking
I can’t hear her
Some excerpts-
“This Gucci….”, “You never….”, “How could Vanessa…”,
“Dad would never…”, “I told you we….”, “I’m thinking of…”
“I went to this…..”, “She has this….”Look at me…..”
“You don’t know….”, “Look at me”…”Me, me, me, me…..”


This conversation too is probably as profound as
Tommy Choo shoes
Or as relevant as
The Pompous Mrs. Smith’s daughter failing her Trimester
Or as life altering as
The movie where she knew the killer from the first scene
It always is something like that
Her words are-
Shallow and urban,
Just like her


I hate Susan
I hate Susan very much
She’s annoying
She’s a bitch
But not in bed
There, she is boring
And she talks and talks and talks
Now, bitches say- “Hello!’, “I found a bone” or “Let’s fuck!” or “Woof!
That’s basically all she ever says


But I can’t complain
I have everything-
The charcoal- black BMW
The gold license plates
The Harrods bed sheets
The lunches at Four Seasons
The downtown condominium
The garden with a swimming pool
The champagne on ice
The three storey brownstone
The scuba diving in Maldives
The mingling with upper class
The monogrammed tuxedos
The Monet from the auction
The forty fourth floor office
The sand wedges and the eight irons
The exorbitant Opera balconies
The bow- wearing butlers
And of course the marble table, Susan and the lobster
I have everything today
Susan is my wife, by the way


S-U-S-A-N-
Who spoke French better than English till she was seventeen
Whose biggest achievement’s been redecorating our house thirty two times
Whose sole aim in life is to catch me in bed with another girl
Who still thinks Dostoevsky is a brand of diamond jewelry


And as she cracks open the lobster
With the concentration of a portrait artist
I wonder how life would’ve turned up
Had I ended up with Winnie instead


That fateful monsoon in Argentina-
The Erudite poetry
The Wodehouse wit
The Salinger sarcasm
The Guerilla lovemaking
The Gravity’s rainbow
The Purple magnolias
The Missing mails
Her elephant memories never truly left me
Even today


And then, amidst the translucent waiters,
The fading memories and the spinning room,
I see her
On the table by the window
I see Winnie
And a man and a young boy and a young girl
Like the little me and the little Winnie
The one I knew


I observe a few things about her
This one had bloated like the belly of an architect
The caked make up distorted her face strangely
As though she were in a dreamy opera
The eyes that had once contained the whole of Guevara’s revolution
Were now veiled behind a golden pince-nez
Most of all, she seemed to be in love.
Like famous child prodigies
She too had got her character too soon


I don’t really stop and think about what dreams may come.
They’re out of my eraser-head like nightfall upon waking.
But I realized that I always saw you in my dreams
Now, I saw
You’d become too real
I can love someone without it being like that.
I keep them a stranger- a stranger who’s a friend


Then suddenly, Susan’s nonsense started to sound adorable
She actually believed something was wrong with me,
When I told her how beautiful she looked
She thought I was a) either having an affair or b) dying of cancer or c) both
I smiled to myself when I heard that
The smile reaching my eyes and also my ears
And then almost on the verge of tears,
She told me that she was three months on
And that she loved me
And that she was not trying to entrap me into anything
And that I should not pick up the dinner plate and smash it against the wall
And that she had heard from the doctor just today, she swore
And that she didn’t know it herself all this while
And that she’d arranged for the whole evening to tell me this
And that she loved me


I reached through the silver cutlery
For her quivering hand on the spotless tablecloth,
She convulsed with fear, expecting a scene
And closed her eyes
And for the first time in over three years
I laughed
She opened her eyes in bewilderment
And with that, I fell in love with her


Susan has since fainted on the table
With nervousness and delight
I’ve paid the check and am carrying her in my arms
Smiling and unconscious
Into the BMW
I tenderly pat her bloating stomach
Long live the new flesh


And while closing the door to the car
I see Winnie’s soul fly on the clouds,
On a magic carpet
And I look up her skirt
For the very last time