Mating Habits of the Bonobo Monkey

I

Love comes to the University in the spring of 2012. Lust has been there for the past sixty-odd years, making the beds a little warmer and the nights a little colder, but love can lay claim to enough seedy places of ill-repute without needing another gathering of hormonal nitwits in its repertoire.

Love comes to the University anyway. There is a grand parade in its perpetual dishonour, and the incumbent students' union sends in a fleet of white Innovas to attract a crowd.
Everybody sees the shining white cars roaring up University Avenue and decides to stay at home.
You end up going nevertheless because you have long believed love to be a socio-political construct invented for the sole purpose of acting as a deterrent to the overburdened cause of Feminism.
I go because I am currently the wrong degree of coolness to do drugs and there is nothing good on TV.

Would you look at that, you declaim without inflection. Such a gross display of chauvinism and testosterone.
A carload of unionists skid past on a bike and a half.
You remark that you've never seen anybody grosser and in more urgent need of emasculation.
I introduce myself to you.
You ignore my existence.

We are passed by the motorcade proper. The first two cars contain random dignitaries and one-fourths of a momo stand. The third car contains love for real.
It's got a heady odour, you observe.
I was expecting someone taller, I confess.

The big car is followed by half a dozen smaller ones and a man leading a fulmination of marmots on leashes.
Then there is a bunch of wattle-necked ladies chasing inexpensive fur coats.
Then the road is empty.

There's that, I say.
What a cheap and degenerative display of Capitalist pedagogy, you say.
You wanna grab a bite, I say.
Only if you don't expect me to pay for you.

II

Things go great for the first three months. They also go to hell in two weeks flat.
There is too much milk in this coffee, you say as I pour out espresso shots from our stolen coffeemaker. There isn't enough milk in this paneer kulcha. I learn that cottage cheese is a dairy product.
Three-fourths of a momo stand opens in our locality. There are dumplings but no steam. The boiler plates have been requisitioned by the Students' Union.

We take a long walk spread over dozens of evenings. We bicker incessantly over the splitting of cafe bills. We watch poorly-hidden wrinkles spread over poorly-interpreted scripts playing out on poorly-observed silver screens. I write about our burgeoning romance in a poorly-thought out idiom.
We make out every chance we get but there is nothing poor about that.

We measure rainfall in hours rather than centimeters. We cross a road together.
There are bad bits too, of course.

I complain that you do not give me enough time. You blame me of sabotaging your bi-weekly assessment preparations, your political career, India's chances in the T20 World Cup (though I contend it is all that damn Tendulkar's fault for making us complacent), and your plans for breakfast with an ever-growing roster of attractive male underwear models.

I call you beautiful on a morning when you're at your ugliest. You read a story by me and fail to make the appropriate sort of noise (which, in case you are wondering, is halfway between an indignant oink and the post-coital clicking of a dolphin).

Things come to a head when a perfectly-serviceable joke is allowed to accelerate constantly at a rate of nine-point-eight-meters-per-second-squared until it reaches the floor.
We watch the joke falling and know it represents both the general quality of writing currently produced by our generation (read: me) and the arc of our relationship.

We decide to move in together.

III

The end begins at the midway point of our first night in the new flat.
There is something about the moonlight that inspires-
Did you remember to get the vegetables for breakfast, you ask.
Yes. But there is something about the moonlight-
Because one of us will have to get some milk for the tea and I'm not a morning person, you insist.
I'll do it. There's just something-
You should get your own sheets by the end of the week, you add.
Screw it, I concede, and spend the rest of the night trying to cut off the oxygen supply to my brain with a borrowed loop of blanket.

The tenant before last drops by the following morning to ask after his coffeemaker. We serve him tepid tea and make regretful noises in time with his story. We also crack him over the head with an inside joke and try not to laugh as it runs down his face.

After he leaves we make our penultimate set of espresso shots and chuckle a lot. There is some sloppy kissing in the kitchen that leaves two Tupperware boxes bruised but is still deeply satisfying. Halfway through our third quarter of tonsil hockey you stop and ask me when we'd last been this happy together.

I try to signal the end of your time-out but the Tupperware boxes seem to be squinting reproachfully up at me. Your uncanny knack for being correct continues to infuriate.

This isn't working out, you say.
Don't say that, I say.
I'm bad at sugarcoating stuff, you say.
The secret is to preheat the oven at one-five-oh degrees for thirty minutes, I say.
You don't necessarily have to make this harder, you say.
I love you, I say.
You shake your head and say nothing at all. Your eyes follow my rapid strides and clumsy fumble with the doorknob, but you still say nothing.
Silence begins to leak out of the windows and the neighbours come around to complain that they cannot hear their televisions.

By the time I return with three packets of skimmed milk you've locked yourself into the balcony and refuse to leave while I'm still in the flat.

IV

Love departs the University at the beginning of the monsoon. There isn't enough of it to go around at the House of Commons and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting feels it would be deliciously ironic on their part to recommend love being a mandatory presence in Parliament.
The demand for camera-phones amongst senior party officials quadruples overnight. So does the viewcount of racy 'party' videos on YouTube.

There is a grand farewell followed by a horrible squall of rain. People who'd earlier been looking forward to the meeting of separate glances see no interesting strangers in the street.

There are a lot of Dear John emails written, sent, and then discarded from Inboxes without being read.

Here we are, I say.
Here we are, you say.
The last car in the procession passes us again.
I suppose we gave it our best, you say.
It's all that damned Tendulkar's fault for making us complacent, I say.
I suppose I could laugh at that, you say.
Don't leave me, I say.
Thank God we're handling this like mature and sensible individuals, you say.
I'll make it all up to you, I say.
It goes without saying that we'll still be friends, you say.
I'll write something terrific about you, I say.
Don't do that, you say. Write about something interesting instead. Like the mating habits of the Bonobo monkey, which seldom forms permanent monogamous relationships with an individual partner.
I don't know anything about your monkeys, I say.
Something people would want to read, you know?
I mutter something about wikipedia while you get yourself a rickshaw.
You have a good thing going. Don't fuck it up, you say.

That's all the goodbye I am going to get.
I contemplate my slightly-tragic moment as I stand in the last of the summer sunshine. I am still standing there when the rains proper hit the sidewalk.

This is the lowest point of my existence, I say.

Then a freak meteor strike decimates humanity in December.

Siren

It was a dream, of course. That much I knew long before the dash through the theater, long before leaving the party, long before things went from strange and interesting to all-out screamathon. It was a good-ol' fashioned dream... Except it was also one of those things that pop into your head and then refuse to leave - like an unbidden guest standing at your doorstep one fine midsummer morning, all set on gracing you with his presence until Diwali at least.

There were two ways to deal with it - either let it pick at the insides of my skull until it dissolved (which would take an inordinate amount of time, given the complexity of the factors involved), or get it down on paper so I could mutilate it into gibberish and give up on it.

I chose the latter.
So this is the story of my dream.


It began on the stairwell of a multi-storey. I was fifteen again, going for tuitions to the home of an old lady who would smell like cabbage and jasmines on the edge of decay, and offer to turn us over to our parents at the slightest indiscretion. I knew all this from the chattering crowd of children walking around me; in the real world I hadn't been to any tuition classes till I turned eighteen.

I happen to be tall, but those kids barely reached my elbow. I would've thought they were much younger if it weren't for the identical sky-blue mathematics textbook we were all carrying.

I scanned the crowds for familiar faces. There weren't any. To make matters worse the kids all insisted on pushing me to the front; I found myself at the door of a house on the seventh floor, a crowd of tiny kids behind me, the whole tableau uncannily similar to the Pied Piper coming home after a long day at work.
I pressed the door bell.

A deep bass note reverberated through the floor. The kids stopped chattering and were still. I looked back and saw them all gazing up at me, tiny eyes reddish in the late evening.
The first pang of unease hit me then.
I tried to cut back through them but the door opened and a pair of hands dragged me in.


The lighting inside was no better than outside - strobe patterns lit up the walls at random intervals. I barely had a moment to wonder how they'd fitted a discotheque inside a 3BHK on the wrong side of the Yamuna - then the door banged shut behind me, and the bassline enveloped me completely.

The hands on my shoulders let off the pressure but did not let go. I waited for my eyes to adjust and then hazarded a look.

It was a girl.
The second pang of unease hit when my brain did a complete critical appraisal of her (the sort that I wouldn't dare try in daylight because I'd inevitably end up getting slapped) and still couldn't decide whether she was good-looking or not. She had pixie hair that actually reached her shoulders but looked much shorter. Her neck was long and slender, her height considerably more than that of the pipsqueaks who'd pushed me into the flat. She was wearing a little blue dress, and her features seemed vaguely familiar.

-Who are you? I mouthed the words but wasn't sure she'd heard.
-Does it matter? Her own voice was no more prominent. I was pleasantly surprised to discover I could read lips as well. She had a nice mouth.
-Where is this place?
She shrugged. One hand remained on my shoulder, the grip firm but comfortable. She motioned for me to follow her deeper into the house.

-I'm dreaming, aren't I?
I had just seen a couch set up in front of a flat screen with half a dozen guys crammed on top of each other, watching some sporting event or the other.
The entire party (along with assorted paraphernalia) was situated inside a single shower cubicle.

She grinned. It was a nice grin, but slightly wide. She made me a little nervous.
Her expression didn't change as she started to say something funny, but then her face suddenly went blank.

-What is it?
-We have to leave. Now.
-What? Why?
-Siren, she mouthed. I felt a slight chill. Not at the word, but the doomed expression that flitted across her face.
-Excuse me?
-Listen. Can't you hear it?
I stared at her for a moment and then realized I could. There was a faint wailing somewhere in the background.
-We have to leave, she repeated. Now.
-But we aren't exactly felons, are we?

In reply she gestured into the next bedroom down the line.
I peeked in.
A bunch of kids were sitting around an empty flower-vase, uttering weird incantations and making even weirder gestures. Just before I could burst out laughing, however, the vase... Glowed.

I continued to stare as a thin tendril of green fume emanated from the mouth of the vase and burrowed its way into the nose of the nearest kid. He fell back as if physically pushed; his eyes rolled up into his head.

The other kids continued their incantations; the vase was filled with green fumes now. I imagined I saw a spark of electricity somewhere in its depths.

-I don't want to be anywhere near them when the cops arrive, I admitted.
-Thought so. Come with me.
-Where are we going?

She came to a door that was, by my reckoning, the other bathroom.
-I'm not a big fan of sports!
-Shut up and get in.

She opened the door and pushed me


the smell of freshly cut grass
-What the hell was that?
-What?
-With the door and... Wait, where the hell are we?
-Could you stop emphasizing random words? It sounds kinda weird.

-Sorry.
We were on the streets of Connaught Place. It was long past midnight by the looks of it - the roads were all deserted, the stalls shut, not even a single smackhead dozing on the pavement. I looked down Janpath and noted how much it appeared like the setting for some post-apocalyptic movie.

-How did we get here?
-That's a good question.
-So are we safe here?
-Not really.
The sound of a car alarm from the other side of the circle. Red and blue lights reflected upon the pockmarked white pillars.

-Let's go.
She picked up a half-brick and hefted it through the glass shopfront of the nearest sportswear showroom.
Klaxons went off almost immediately.
-Wow. So you have a mad impulse and you Just Do It, huh?
-Save your product placements for the real world.

Her hand upon my forearm this time. Propelling me after her into the shop.
-Hey! There's glass and stuff here!
-Crybaby.
The door of a changing room with some actress in a sports-bra on it
-Do you think we could go to her place and
-Shut up!

The slightly stale smell of room freshener


-What the hell is that stench?
-We're in a public restroom.
-Ugh! And where exactly is
-See for yourself.

And I did.
We were at the one place in the city I'd sworn to never visit again. The river Yamuna flowed a few dozen yards down, oily with ghee and incense and practically carpeted by rotting flower petals. And in the marginal distance of a few dozen yards, five funeral pyres at different stages in the process of incineration.

-Nigambodh Ghaat.
-It's the last place they'd look for you.
-Who are they anyway?
-You'll probably find out soon enough.

The heat from the fires bathed my face. I found myself perilously close to a flashback that I desperately wanted to avoid. Except-
-Yep, they're aware of reverse psychology.

I hadn't seen or heard the sirens but I knew she wasn't lying. We ran down to the doors of the electric crematorium, which she kicked twice or thrice before the lock began to give way.
-Right now I'm actually kinda glad that my mind is blacking out the actual period of transit.
-Is that right?
-Yeah. I don't want to see the insides of this place. Can we please go somewhere a little less... Uninhabited?

-Are you sure?
The door finally fell open.
-I think so. I mean, what could possibly go


the inside of a theater blood red carpet pounding underfoot something black and white on the gigantic screen to our left and everybody to the right lit up by reflected blue light her hand warm but rough in mine pulling me to the side trying to block out the audience but too late to begin with
much too late

reptiles
all of them reptiles

lizards and snakes and iguanas somehow bundled into human clothing tongues lapping black in the semi darkness screeching and hissing and baring stained fangs and the stench of decay and offal in the air

-Over here, her voice right next to my ear the fear in it genuine but somehow disconnected from her person, and then a towering neon EXIT sign glowing red red red flicker red
only spot of colour in the room

the sound of her hands fumbling with the doorknob
one last look back into the theater
and the reptiles all of the slithery slimy reptiles wearing human clothes rising up in their seats
plastic toys and bleached balloons and windup animals in their hands
(claws not hands reptiles don't have hands)
shiny in the dim lighting somehow emitting light on their own and then

at the same moment as the door falling open

a hungry despicable babble of voices unruly chorus saying different words but the same thing all the same thing
-come here boy we have candy
-let me show you a magic trick
-ice cream trucks do you want ice cream jangling bells
-come a little closer and we can make this pencil disappear would you like that boy would you

and then out through the door with the neon EXIT sign and complete silence like unplugging a radio


-How long will this go on?
She looked like she hadn't heard. Then she cut me off halfway through asking again.
-Until we can outrun the sirens.
I strained my ears. She was right - there was still a mechanical screaming somewhere in the distance behind her. We were standing at a busy intersection five minutes from my own doorstep. I had no idea how we'd gotten here from the theater.

-We have to cross.
I took her hand, unbidden. She smiled a tight smile. Trucks blared past before us, burning rubber in both directions, glowing acid green and fire red in the sodium lighting. Her complexion looked orange. It suited her, somehow. The dress from the discotheque had been replaced by a plain shirt and skirt combination.

I let her lead me to the divider. I pretty much trusted her blindly by now. There was a paanwalla on the other side of the intersection. The roof of his stall smoldered, unseen and unnoticed. The air was heavy with the sweet scent of tobacco.

We crossed again. We were stepping past the tobacconist when the screaming in the distance turned into a continuous wail. Blue and red lights reappeared in the distance, a sense of inevitability embedded in the ruckus they were kicking up.

-Run, she said.
So we ran again - off the open road, into the half a mile stretch of barren fields and muddy paths that separated my locality from the nearest metro station.
I somehow knew we would never make it to the station.

Halfway down the empty stretch she suddenly turned right, towards the gate of a tiny enclosure marking off some faceless man's miserable holdings from the rest of the wasteland.

-Why are we
But I needn't have bothered
A gate is another type of door, after all


one of the narrow by-lanes on campus. Once again within walking distance of my college but on slightly unfamiliar territory.
-I am starting to detect a pattern here, I said.
She said nothing for the moment. Her breathing was becoming slightly ragged.
-We can stop for a bit, I suggested, although I knew we couldn't. I could hear a chorus of wails from the main road. We hadn't got a headstart.

There were doors all around us but they looked like they'd been bolted for decades.
-We're headed towards a
-Yes. Yes, I know.
Right on cue we turned the corner and came upon the brick wall we both knew about.

-Now what?
She said nothing. The catch in her breathing was more prominent.
The sirens came closer and closer. In a moment they'd turn the corner and light up the dead-end street.
She thrust something into my hand in the semi-dark.

-What is this? She didn't answer. It was too late.
The blue and red lights turned the corner. They threw her features into sharp relief. I realized with a jolt that she really was beautiful. All she'd needed to do was tie back her hair and change into a salwar-kameez.

A car door clanged open behind me. Somebody stepped out.
I didn't really care. I continued staring at her.
Something fluttered in my hand. I looked down.

It was a single black feather, the sort you'd see on a crow or a raven.
I looked back at her and saw that she was crying.

A fat red drop gathered at the corner of her eye and trickled down, leaving a shiny trail that was too bright and viscous to be anything but blood.
I let go of the feather. I turned to face the coppers
(pigs they call 'em pigs)
the front grills of the cars suspiciously like chrome-plated jaws
(they steal eggs and suck goats dry)
and then, at long last, a chance to look at my tormentors proper


I awoke screaming.

"Baby! What is it?"
I turned to the right. She lay in the bed beside me, on the soft downy mattress that was the most comfortable surface I'd ever slept on (even though I seemed to have nightmares with a sickly regularity whenever I slept on it).
My parents' old bedroom. My parents' old bed.

The only light came from a dim green zero-watt nightbulb, but I could see the silhouette of her nightgown, the way her hair was falling across her forehead.
I knew her, in this light. It seemed impossible not to. My struggle to identify her in the dreamworld felt strangely disconcerting now - this was the woman I loved.

I spoke her name out loud.
She said mine, the pronunciation flawless but slightly muffled. I ran my fingers though her hair, tucking rogue strands behind her ear.
She pulled me closer.

I didn't need to tell her what was wrong. She didn't really care. Her sole interest was getting my breathing back in check, to calm me down so we could go back to sleep. I felt the smoothness of her skin against mine, slightly cool compared to my own feverish pallor, and on an impulse I reached out and kissed her.

She was motionless for a moment before she reciprocated. Her mouth opened, soft and pliant.
I finally knew why she'd been having difficulties pronouncing my name.
She had the wrong number of teeth.

Too many, in fact. Too many teeth to fit into a human mouth. Fifty, a hundred, two thousand, serrated needles
(hypodermic)
crammed into that impossibly lovely mouth. She gave me a moment to explore, her tongue thin and scaly against mine, and then the teeth clenched shut on my tongue.

There was no pain. Some sort of toxin in the venom, I guessed.
Besides, she'd only done it so she could establish her grip proper. She wouldn't hurt me unneccessarily.

Things finally made sense. The word siren had multiple connotations, didn't it?
She pinned me upon the bed, her mouth now grey and elongated upon mine, and the zero-watt bulb was hidden as she finally stretched her wings, the ones she'd been hiding all along.
They were the jet black wings of a raven.

Feathers flew away in torrents around her. She raised her hands and I saw her nails, long and luminous and sharp enough for the tips to taper off into nothing.
The glow vanished as she plunged both her hands into my chest - and this time there was pain, tremendous and horrible and unimaginable. I tried to scream before remembering my mouth was otherwise occupied.

Her rough cheeks squirmed against mine. I realized she was smiling. There was a wrenching as her mouth left mine, and I could finally feel the inside of my head again.
Whatever was left of it, anyway.

She spat something fleshy and rubbery off the bed. Then the hands widened the gap between each other, like an excited kid opening a window on the first day of his holidays, and she cackled in triumph as she saw what she wanted.

There was another wrenching but this one was too big to respond to.
My senses began to fade away, and the last thing I saw was the creature sitting on my chest, wingspan almost as big as the width of the room, holding my heart up so it could be the last thing I saw.


I woke up for real and counted to ten to keep from screaming. I needn't have bothered - the urge was too halfhearted to be a problem. I'd already had my chance to test my lungs. And I'd taken it.

After the counting I lay back, the sole occupant of my own bed - slightly harder than the floor and (hitherto) nightmare-free.
There were earphone wires wrapped around my head and neck like some geek's bondage fetish. I untangled them and tossed them onto the table across the room.

I felt fine. Slightly shaken by the bizarre sequence of dreams, yes (the details were fading but the sense of unreality persisted). I couldn't recall the occupants of the police-car, or the face of the siren. I had a feeling she'd look like nobody I knew; the note of recognition in  the last dream had been the only false note in an otherwise-flawless night of terror.

The clock on my phone said it was barely past 3AM.
I cursed myself for turning in at midnight.

Then I lay back down to wait for sleep - pausing only to fall out of bed when a firetruck passed on the road outside.

Last Call

“Get fucked,” the bartender said in an even monotone.

I turned 90 in a fluid motion and continued telling my story to whoever was sitting there now.

“It’s not like I’m inventive or anything,” I said reasonably. “I know I’m not. I don’t got what it takes to const- constric- create narratives. It’s just that I can read beginnings and predict endings.”

What do you mean, I waited for the man with the mousy blonde hair to ask; but he continued to stare miserably into his glass. 

"I had to give up on Agatha Christie when I was ten," I confided. "It was a total buzzkill. The basic sort of crap people can't get. And don't even get me started on serialized novels."

The mousy-haired man's lady friend finally came back from the restroom. I could tell by the way she put her hand on his shoulder that they'd end up marrying each other in a couple of months. I also knew that it would be a desperately unhappy marriage - although he wouldn't realize that until just before her untimely death, seven years from now. He'd be convicted. I decided I had to warn him.

"Get away from her, good buddy," I warned him. "Shizz-shisss-she's-"

"Get fucked," the blonde man's lady friend suggested. She slammed a wad of notes on the bar and dragged him away in her wake.

"-not a keeper," I finished my sentence. Then I finished my drink.

"What exactly are we doing here?"

"See that man standing in the corner?"

"The one who is indescribably handsome and yet extrudes an air of silent melancholy?"

"No, to the right."

"The self-assured shark with the silver hair chatting up a sultry woman half his age?"

"No, you idiot. The one next to the pinball machine."

"What, that tall, slouchy man in the crumpled suit who's facing the wrong way?"

"Yeah, that one."

"What the hell is he doing?"

What the hell was I doing?

That was a good question. I had a lot of good questions.
Who introduces new cast members in the second episode instead of the season premiere?
Why insert your writerly persona into a novel when the narrator himself is already a thinly-veiled analogy of you?
When do you realize there is a hole in the lining of the inner pocket of your coat, out of which your little blue pill has fallen fifteen minutes ago, thus rendering your pursuit of the sultry woman half your age redundant?

And while we were at it, where were the Snowdens of yesteryear?
I realized I was on a roll.
I also realized I was slightly drunk.

What I was doing was this:
I was standing next to the pinball table, facing the wrong way. I would stand there until the next contestant came up, shoved a quarter in, and started his game. I would stand in the same position, not looking at the person or the table, listening to the sound effects and nursing a drink. As soon as the last ball fell through (which seldom took long - most people who stepped up to the pinball table at twelve fifteen on a weekday night were too drunk to tell the difference between the fruit machine and a urinal), I would finish whatever was left of my drink and announce their exact score without turning around. Then the loser would pay for the winner's next drink.

I hadn't lost even once. People assumed I was winning by listening to the sound effects and calculating. If they found out the scores were popping unbidden into my head there would probably be a riot.

"Nineteen thousand six hundred and eighty-four," I called out.
The man with the silver hair was led out by the sultry woman half his age.
My glass was magically refilled.


"Why not use your ability to fry some bigger fish?"

"Excuse me?" I looked up. I hadn't realized anyone was actually listening. I'd been ranting on about how I missed the simple joys - how it was hard even to laugh at newspaper comics, knowing that half of them would be cancelled midway through important arcs (in one memorable instance due to the cartoonist faking his death to move to Bucharest).

"I mean at some high stakes poker game or something. The races." It was the sultry woman who'd been led out by the dysfunctional man earlier tonight. Or was it some other night? "I mean, you could be rich!"

I grinned. It was about as funny as cancer.
"I don't actually see the exact endings of things, miss," my head was starting to swim but I tipped my glass at the bartender again. He rolled his eyes. "I just have a knack for guessing possible outcomes. Pinball games are the only exception. Even if I go down to a race and think really hard, all I'll get is a brainwave that says some horse will win." I stared moodily into my empty glass. "Even my disease has a sense of humour."

"Don't be ridiculous!" She laid a warm hand on my arm. I looked at it. Then I looked at her. She smiled. "Have you ever thought about why you have this gift?"

"It isn't really a gift," I said. "I don't even think it's all that special. The thing is, everything that begins at a fixed point already has its conclusion nestled away inside. Nothing ever changes. If you really want to know how something ends, you just have to read the beginning closely enough."

"Sure." She hadn't moved her hand.
She wasn't all that pretty - she'd dressed carelessly and the nightlong barhopping had taken its toll - but she had great eyes. I was a sucker for those eyes.
The smile didn't hurt, either.

"I'm going to die around twenty years from now," I said evenly. "It will be sudden and violent. I won't feel any pain. I will die solvent but not rich. Happy but not satisfied. And I will be alone. There is no greatness to hang around for."

"I don't really believe in worrying about the future," she lied. "Plus my place is nearby. Do you wanna continue our little conversation there?"

I nodded. Her smile widened. Her teeth were bright and her hair fell rather fetchingly over her ears. I adjusted for prettiness accordingly.

It was all a sham, of course - she'd been staking me out for over a week. She - and her employers, who I couldn't get a glimpse of yet - were very interested in my ability. I swirled around the last drink I'd be consuming at this particular bar, and then drained it in one gulp.

The thing was, I hadn't started my story a week ago, when she first bumped into me (accidentally, as she assured me then) on my way out. I had realized then how that particular story would go.
No, this was a story spanning the breadth of just one night.
Because I was getting tired and needed somewhere to begin.

I paid for my drink and followed her into the ending I'd been working towards.