The Mark

How I hate that shade of pink!

I tell myself to stop thinking about her sartorial taste as I sit on the edge of the bed and tie my shoelaces.

Stop it. Her sense of dressing should be the least of your worries right now. Besides, you didn't marry her because you admire what she drapes her body in.

So I pull myself up, turn to her, and help her with her zipper. She smells good. It's the Burberry perfume I had picked up for her the last time I went to Dubai. I turn her around to face me. She has beautiful doe eyes. Lined in black and sprinkled with just the right amount of sparkly grey, she looks up at me and smiles. She does have a beautiful smile. It lights up her face. My attention is momentarily diverted by the swipe of her tongue over her lips, reminding me of long, sweaty nights. She smiles again, knowingly this time. 

No, baby, I don't think you can read my mind right now. It's better this way. And easier.

She whispers something suggestive in my ear. I wink and smack her behind in a show of obvious appreciation. That'll hold her until my job is done.

We walk out of our apartment and close the self-locking door behind us. She holds up her keys, raises her eyebrows in question. In the 18 months that we've been together, she has come to know how particular I am about always carrying my own set of keys. I had left them behind, but I nod in affirmation. I won't need those keys after tonight.

The black SUV parked in the basement had cost me a pretty penny. They pay me well for the kind of work I do. Besides, the cost of the car was covered in the expense account. My personal bank account in the Cayman Islands has already been credited with the fees I command...all in advance. They know that when I'm hired, I finish the job.  

I put the gearstick on drive and pull the vehicle out of the parking lot onto the busy road. I had already driven on that route enough times in the past month to know that we'll reach the hotel in 24 minutes or less after starting at 6:50 in the evening. She turns on the stereo and I smile and pretend to enjoy 'Kings of Leon' as she bobs her head to the music. Her earrings, with tiny bells on them, tinkle with every shake of her head. This is so annoying. Personally, I prefer the classics. Give me Mozart or Bach any day. I like how they soothe your nerves and help you think more clearly, plan more clearly.

We reach in under 22 minutes. The place is already thronging with the who's who of politics and media. Security is very tight. Nothing I didn't expect. Roshan, the head of security, is doing his job well. Right now, he's at the entrance. I hand over my mobile phone and the small bag with my camera equipment. The officer at the entrance picks it up and puts it through the X-ray machine for a thorough check. Smooth sailing. Wait! Not yet. Roshan comes forward and picks up my bag, as if with half a mind to open and check its contents. That is when he sees her, pink suit, tinkling earrings and all, and his face splits into a friendly smile. They had met each other in passing on a few previous gatherings. She explains that I am her plus one. He lets us pass after a few minutes of friendly chatter and a wave of his big hand. 18 months just paid off. 

The huge banquet hall in the hotel is alive with conversation and the clink of wineglasses. Everyone who is here is a public figure. This massive gathering is a conglomeration of some very influential people who have the collective power of making or breaking an entire nation. If not for the plus one, I would have easily needed another six months to get here on my own.

Like a pro, she maneuvers her way through the bevy of waiters carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres and makes a beeline for the group of fellow editors. I follow her and exchange the expected pleasantries with the few people that I know and get introduced to a few that I don't. Time is of essence. And my time is precious. I excuse myself.

According to plan, I take the ornate corridor leading to the staff restrooms on the ground floor. I walk by some security personnel with impassive faces holding some very impressive firearms. Thanks to the tag around my neck with ‘PRESS’ written in huge red letters, I get access without raising any eyebrows. I reach the restroom and push the door open. As expected, there is no one inside. Every member of the staff is busy catering to the crowd outside. I put the camera bag on the counter that holds a line of three white sinks in Italian marble. What a waste! The thought of decimating such fine pieces of art is a shame. My dinner jacket is a bit snug; I don't like working in the confines of restrictive clothing. I take it off. Now the camera bag. I unzip the bag carefully, so as not to disturb any of the multicolored wires attached to the beautiful piece of work inside. Here it is! Straight from the land of the communists. Roshan has done his job well. He was quick enough that no one saw him replace the camera bag with an identical one. With the cumulative four million dollars sitting in his six bank accounts, he can easily disappear into Neverland until the authorities close the file on him. 

What is inside the bag is a brilliant, compact piece of work; no bigger than a camera. Yet, its effect, I know from experience, is a hundredfold. They will not forget this easily. The last time I saw something this beautiful was in Afghanistan seven years ago. 

I put my hands inside gently, as though reaching for a lover's body. Click! There is a small, almost dismissible, sound from the other side of the door. My fingers pause. My ears strain. I quickly take the Glock out from the small compartment in the camera bag and cover the bag with my dinner jacket. I turn around to face the door with my hand on my gun. Too late! A sharp, piercing pain to the left of my chest. My breathing stops. The last thing I see is a flurry of pink and the glitter of gold earrings that make a tinkling sound - like bells.

............................................................................................................

She looks down at the spreading circle of red on his white shirt. Egyptian cotton that almost feels like silk. She had bought that shirt for him and admired how he looked in it this evening. He had always been a looker. She picks up the dinner jacket and the camera bag. There was only one person other than him who had touched that camera bag from the time it left the X-ray machine till he entered the restroom. It won't be difficult to connect Roshan to the crime and seal the security breach. You just have to follow the money trail. 

Someone will clean up the mess in the restroom. She doesn't have to worry about that.

She looks back at him one last time. There's a tiny speck of moisture in the corner of her eye. Damn! She had done this before. He was no different. The rule is to never get attached to the mark. 18 months just paid off. She will miss the long, sweaty nights though.

The speakers in the hall break into a Mozart just as she plasters a smile on her face and walks out.

Another Lifetime

It had been raining for a fortnight - the sky wept as if mourning the loss of an irreplaceable lost love; the sounds of its grieving cries echoed by thunder. The clouds that sailed overhead were massive, gray tufts of cottonball conjuring up random shapes, not very different from the sticky cotton-art pictures made by the chirpy 6 year olds who went to her for art lessons on Sundays. It wasn't Sunday. It was one of those days in the middle of monsoon when the joy of the first showers had long been spent and the empty, wet roads ten floors below her 4 bedroom apartment made her feel what she vehemently refused to give in to on better days - loneliness.

She was all of 39 years: married for 14 years and a mother of two. She had jumped into an arranged match with much hope of turning it into the warm, enduring kind of companionship that she had seen her parents share. However, the only adjective she could think of befitting her fourteen years of marriage was 'mellow'. They never had much to talk about beyond the shared mumbling of a few meaningless words across the dinner table drowned by the excited narration of the children about their newest achievement or mischief depending on which one did the talking. The worst was not when he was too immersed in work to talk. The worst were the silences when he did not have much work.

Mellow wasn't how she felt that evening. She felt the loss of something she had never had, something she had seen in the eyes of some of her friends who laughed more often. It was one of those days when loneliness crept up on her. So she did what she always did on one of those days – she closed her eyes and went back a thousand years to a different time –

She was young, perhaps pretty and a little breathless with laughter over some joke shared with the man holding her hand and looking at her with laughing, brown eyes. There were about a dozen other couples in the room dancing to the tune of a slow chart-topper and oblivious to the baby butterflies fluttering in her tummy just the way they were oblivious to anyone but each other. The music stopped for a couple of minutes as the orchestra prepared to burst into another feet-tapping number. He could see that she was a little tired and it was the perfect excuse for him to sweep her off the dance floor and have her all to himself for a few minutes until the next song. The empty couch near the balcony was soft enough to sink into and they slumped into it gratefully, still holding hands. She burst into a fit of tiny giggles and turned to him.

“I’m so happy”, she breathed between giggles. “You make me so happy.”

“Do I?” he asked. “Well that’s a start ‘cause I’m going to love you and keep you so happy for the rest of our lives that it’ll be enough to last you another lifetime.” 

Sometimes, when she thought hard enough, she almost believed that that was her. And then, like all those sometimes, she opened her eyes and whispered to herself, “I was another girl. It was another lifetime. And he loved me enough to last another lifetime. It has to last one more lifetime…this lifetime.”