Love Song of a Latter DayChauvinist

by Malini

New Year's Challenge Entry 2005, Winning Story!

It was in an airport lounge that he was first fascinated. Having exhausted his FT, lacking any desire to browse the duty-free shopping, and not yet ready to whip out his laptop and admit that tomorrow was another working day he lighted on an old copy of the New Yorker – not the usual business lounge fare, but a weakness of his nevertheless. The story spoke to him, powerfully capturing the solitude of a life fragmented between continents and business deals and giving names to his inchoate sensations. Once he had hoped to make a living out of words, and so he did in a way. Corporate empires stood and fell on the wording of contracts he hammered out in careful compromises in grueling conferences in boardrooms from Shanghai to San Francisco, the long way around. He was successful, confident and self-assured in his sphere. The loneliness was not evident, for those he lived among had made the same sacrifices. Companionship was the casualty of his success, but the compensations were substantial.

It was in another airport lounge, out of another FT, that he learnt that she was up for the Booker Prize that year. This time he did venture out to the duty-free W. H. Smith for a copy of her novel. He never cracked his laptop for the entire flight to Tokyo, and for the first time went in to negotiate an acquisition without knowing the financials inside and out. The company was not worth it. The novel was. He found out in The Economist a few months later that she had won the prize.

The next time he was in New York he went to a reading of hers, at a gallery in Chelsea. It hadn’t started when he arrived, and he tried to amuse himself by trying to determine who she was. It was hard to tell, since most women there were indistinguishable in the perennial garb of the modish New Yorker. Most men he knew appreciated New York, where the standard of female attractiveness was far higher than the average elsewhere. He had always found it rather stifling to be around women who tried so hard. When she did take the mike, he was slightly startled to realize how young and slight she looked. She had dressed well, but with a hint of whimsy, in trousers and a short fitted jacket, with a beret perched jauntily on the short cropped hair setting off her dainty features. Her eyes were large and expressive; he might have spent all evening looking into them had she not then started to read, and then her voice captured him and took him on a journey at once familiar and seen through new eyes. He bought another copy of her novel just so he could have her sign it.

In London he met her, at an engagement party for a colleague. She was a close friend of the bride. She smiled and they chatted for a few minutes, and the groom was delighted to prove that not all of his friends were philistines. They met again a few months later at a much smaller dinner with the couple, and he was surprised to find that she remembered his name. This time they chatted on a thousand subjects, on art, and books, and music, and travel. He became a fixture at their parties when he was in London, and they never managed to run out of things to talk about. He was promoted to an usher by the time the wedding came around. She was the maid of honor, of course.

And then one day he woke up and realized that he loved her; that he was a little less lonely everyday just knowing she was in the world. And though it was just a matter of getting a phone number and calling her, and asking her to dinner and taking it from there, he never did. Instead he read his FT Weekend and found out about the house she had bought herself on Lake Como, and saw her on BBC World talking about being a UN ambassador for peace. He learnt how much she had earned for the film rights of her novel, and read that every leading man in Hollywood was vying for the part. And he decided that it would never work, that she would want a more high flying life, even though he was the one who spent a tenth of his lifetime on airplanes. He did notice that both copies of her novel were starting to get a little dog-eared around the edges, and was relieved when her next book came out.

They saw each other often at parties, and still could never stop talking, and perhaps their friends wondered what they were waiting for. Once she asked him out, to accompany her to a literary dinner. He accepted, of course, and picked her up promptly on time. He never told her how stunning she looked in her mauve sheath of a dress, and barely spoke all evening, though her colleagues were friendly, and the conversation, she knew, was never out of his depth. He dropped her off at her doorstep with a peck on her cheek. She never asked him out again.

He traveled more even than he had before, so that he had some excuse for missing those parties. His paychecks and bonuses grew embarrassingly large, and the only thing keeping him from buying a house on Como was that he would never take the time to spend there. That, and the company, of course.

But still, they did see each other, and though the smiles were a little tarnished, the conversation had only mellowed like good wine. They had never spoken of personal things, and they didn’t now, but still it was a jolt when he saw her walk in on the arm of another man, almost more so because it didn’t stop her from stopping by him to chat. He dated too, languidly going through the motions with no expectation of expelling her from his heart. He rarely had to take the trouble to break up; however promising he appeared at first sight, most women were confounded by his talent for confusing shop talk for small talk. She had never heard him mention his job.

Yet he kept closer track of these matters than he cared to admit, and he knew very well that she was nowhere seriously, or even casually, attached. He read an interview once, in People, where she admitted very candidly that she seemed to scare men off nowadays. He dropped the magazine surreptitiously, as though she had mentioned him by name.

And so he found himself in another airport bookshop on the last day of the year, fingering a copy of her second novel in a language he didn’t read, and flipping to the flyleaf to sneak a glance at her picture. It didn’t do her justice in his eyes. He made his way back to the lounge, but the year-end Economist failed to hold his interest, and he sat back instead and let his mind wander where it would, to her. He could count the months by how many times he had seen her, and what she had been wearing, and what she had said. He could count his travels by the number of times he had read her books, or the ones she told him to read. His successes were the times that he had made her smile, his failures the tautness of her lips when he hadn’t said what they both knew he meant.

And just like that he knew what he needed to say, and what he was a fool for not having said a very long time ago. For so long she had given the words to his feelings, but now the words were his own, the words with which he would tell her his feelings, and the words with which he would ask after hers.

He could imagine a scene from a thousand movies about a reunion on New Year’s Eve, and though he wanted the swirling snowflakes and the declaration that would start the rest of their lives and the never ending celluloid kiss at that perfect stroke of midnight, he knew that was not the way it would be for them. He was on his flight when it was midnight somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, and he raised a glass of champagne in salute to her. It would be several days into the New Year before he could hope to see her again. And he knew it would not be easy, and that by all rights he should expect a rebuff, for no lady likes to be kept waiting. But he also knew that he could wait, and he would wait, because this was the way it was always meant to be.





The End.

Copyright held by Malini - 2005