Year of the Chick (35 page)

I nodded and hurried past him. But of course it wasn’t over.

He quickened his pace and caught up in seconds. “I’ve got a question for you: do you think panda bears are cute?”

This was a classic trick question of the clipboard-wielding solicitor. If I said “no” he would accuse me of hating all endangered species, and if I said “yes” he’d have me signing donation forms in the middle of the street within seconds.

“I’m sorry but I’m really busy,” I said, gazing at the ground to avoid any chance of eye-contact (the last thing I needed was to humanize the volunteer).

An elderly couple coming from the opposite direction were suddenly in his way. It was an anti-charity gift from above, and I gave my thanks by speed-walking the hell away. It’s not that I didn’t respect the hard work of volunteers, but what about the freedom of choice? I contributed to charities now and then, but I did so after hearing about them in related conversation, or from searches I’d done online. Then I’d do my little background checks to find out where the money really went.
Like buying an actual fruit tree for an African village? It’s a tree and it’s going in the ground, I support this!

Lost in my troubled thoughts about charitable entrapment, I heard the distinct sound of footsteps hitting the pavement in a sprint.

The next thing I knew the cute volunteer (now looking a bit sweaty) was staring me in the face.

My jaw dropped, and then quickly re-formed into a scowl. “Excuse me, but you can’t just chase people in the street when they have places to be! Like you’re CHASING me!” A few people turned to listen.

“I CAN chase you,” he smugly said. “And I am.”

With teeth fully-clenched I spoke. “Get...the hell...away from me.” I knew he understood, as he rolled his eyes, put on a fake smile, and set to work approaching somebody else.

I shook my head at the state of our current world. Yes, we had eluded telemarketers by putting ourselves on “do not call” lists, but now we had to run through the streets to protect our freedom? This was just the sort of thing to put off otherwise generous people from being charitable. Which would probably result in the eventual extinction of pandas.

Life in the big city...

***

Safe inside the café and free of all solicitors, I finally took out some cash to pay the latte girl. When I gave her the money my hand grazed her perfectly-moisturized palm. The feeling made me smile, not because I was leaning towards lesbianism these days, but because I, who in the past had been known to mash up hand lotions and foot creams to achieve the perfect softness, could certainly appreciate the effort.

I found a table right by the window, the perfect observational perch. As my laptop hummed to life, I took the first sip of non-fat toffee-nut heaven. At that exact moment, I heard two eager halves of a mouth snap shut on a ginger molasses cookie. My acute hearing alerted me to some licking of the lips as well. I didn’t even have to turn to see the ecstasy-filled expression on the person’s face.
I know the feeling.
A year and a half ago that person was me, chomping on cookies to fill the void, and obsessing over love long lost. So much had changed since then.

But had it?

My laptop now greeted me with an always stirring desktop photo. One side of the picture was a handsome man with sandy brown hair, bright blue eyes, and the smile of a distinguished gentleman
.
Right next to him, snuggled up to his cheek and feeling oh-so-proud to have scored such a catch...was me. My long strands of hair from that windy day were slightly obscuring the backdrop, but the scene of Central Park wrapped in a blanket of fresh snow was unmistakeable.

This man, the ever-charming screenwriting Brit James Caldwell, was living proof that accidental encounters on the Internet didn’t always lead to the dreaded kidnap/murder scenario.
At least not yet...some killers take time
.

And what about James, anyway?
The man of “Jude Law wishes and Daniel Craig dreams
.” He’d put New York City right on my map, and left me with an imprint slightly more elegant than an “I Love New York” tramp-stamp, but equally as permanent.

And yet...he’d been back in Barcelona for months, a place that could’ve been the frickin’ moon if stone-cold reality had anything to say. I looked around the café and saw a couple with interlocked fingers, which somehow made me think of my parents.
Weird.
They were planning my sister’s wedding, and would make sure I stayed on my leash until they planned out mine (with an Internet-ordered groom...free shipping!).

Score one for stone-cold reality, score zero for Romi Narindra.

But I wasn’t a victim anymore, oh no! I shook my head firmly like a psycho at a table full of imaginary friends. First of all, I had learned to deflect Indian lawyers discovered by my father via meddling matchmakers (quick-fix solution: faking illness and vomiting-on-demand), and secondly...I had a book! I pulled the stack of pages from my bag, this manuscript getting more and more creased (and latte-stained) by the day. My barely legible notes were the result of James’s instrumental feedback. Because of all that scrawled-out advice, I’d gone from inconsequential blogger to someone with a story to tell. And all I’d needed was a gin-and-tonic-drinking, green-olive-popping, foreign-language-speaking debonair artist on my side.

But was he even on my side anymore?

He definitely wasn’t on my literal side, made perfectly clear by the vacant seat at the table, but I wondered where he’d be once my book was out in the world. Cheering me on from across the sea? Like an invisible sailor on a “Pirates of the Caribbean” ghost ship? That surely wouldn’t be enough, nor would anything in the realm of love, if I couldn’t reach out and touch it.

New rule: no more dates that require airplanes!

The conversation in my head ended quickly, when I noticed the nearby couple massaging each other’s wrists in a face-to-face soul-mate moment.

 
“What if a lonely widower saw this display?” I wanted to say. “Show some consideration!” All caught up in this inner outrage, my elbow slid off the table, and all my precious pages scattered to the floor. As I crouched down to gather them up (with the love-struck couple looking down at me from their pedestal of supremacy), a card popped out of the stack.

The birthday card from James.
                                                                              

My manuscript suddenly turned into a pile of junk mail, as I flipped open the card to read the message I’d already memorized.

Four lines later I was done, once again amazed at how something so simple could be a bonus scene from “Gone with the Wind.”

My gaze switched quickly from the pages of my book to the card. Then to the totally obnoxious couple. Then back to the card. Imagining myself as a huge bestseller who would one day own a jet to visit all her lovers, I gathered up the pages and tossed the card into the bag.
For bag’s eyes only.

Settled back in my seat now, I chugged my latte like a hockey player chugs water in-between shifts (
minus the part where I spray it all over my face
). I returned my attention to the laptop, and opened up the document that awaited all the edits. This story, a quest to find love and avoid arranged marriage, was somewhat auto-biographical...and entirely embarrassing. The worst parts to recount were the pressures of arranged-marriage doom, since for me those were the facts of real life.

One day I’ll look back and laugh.

I gazed out the window for a moment, this ritzy stretch of Bloor Street lined with Prada and Chanel displayed before me. Fashionably-dressed women in their forties walked by, popping out like gemstones on a cloudy day.

“Must be nice,” I muttered, suddenly feeling inspired.
What IS IT about rich people?

I stretched my arms and began the final re-write of my very first book, the novel called “Year of the Chick”…

***

When I opened the big glass door to the Royal Ontario Museum, street sounds were replaced with the excited chatter of museum revelers. After several hours spent writing and now this, there was no nerdier way I could’ve spent my birthday (barring a game of chess against myself). The area was packed with school children wrapping up their field trips, and tourists just now piling in. I pushed past all of them, heading straight to the VIP queue.

A middle-aged woman with a long-forgotten grown-out perm (
she’s obviously not getting bi-annual perms from her daughter like my mom gets from me)
, an oversized navy museum blazer, and a thin-lipped smile waited patiently, as I fumbled through my bulging wallet. Having a bulging wallet always made me feel important, like a pimp who couldn’t keep his stack of cash in a tidy bank roll, since his ho’s had been working so much overtime. Unlike a pimp’s commission though, my wallet was empty on cash and full of useless “points cards” instead, ones that would earn me a trip to Paris in approximately eighty years. I eventually filtered through the plastic, finding my membership card and handing it to the blazer-wearing lady.

“Most of our year-round members are seniors,” she mused, as her gaze switched from my photo to my not-so-senior face.

She handed back the card and nodded in approval.

Or pity.

It was unclear.

I shrugged my shoulders and smiled as I took in the possibilities.
Dinosaurs to my left, South East Asia to my right, and my personal favourites up above (Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt).

I decided to skip the elevator, opting for a curvy stone staircase with a totem pole in the middle. I stared at each face on the totem pole as I climbed the steps, with the full curiosity of the book-reading nerd I used to be. At home I had a bookcase stacked with everything from an entire giant book on Van Gogh, to about twenty different books on Ancient Egypt. Meanwhile I’d completely forgotten they existed for the whole of last year, so obsessed I’d become with finding a man. Now that the quest for love was on hold (
or up in the air...or on hiatus...or hopeless?
), I was finally getting back to my roots. Which apparently made me the only Torontonian under seventy with a museum membership.

I made it to the third floor and entered the hall of Ancient History. Everything smelled a bit dead, but it wasn’t the kind of “dead smell” that would emanate from the home of a lonely person missing in action. Instead it was a “dusty mummy linens” and “disintegrating ancient bones” kind of dead. It was basically my aphrodisiac, right up there with a medium-ripe mango.

Usually I would stop to admire the Roman busts of Trajan and the like, but this time I zipped down the massive corridor to the dimly lit area beyond…Ancient Egypt.

Part of me was disappointed by how this exhibit hadn’t been updated since I was in high school (
I expect more from you, Canadian government!
), but the other part of me thought it was convenient to know exactly where everything was.

My power-walk slowed down when I spotted her several feet ahead.

Cleopatra.

I’d always preferred the Ancient Egyptian depiction of this icon, and even though most of the paint had caked away from this ancient bust, she appeared resplendent.

“We meet again.”

I didn’t find it odd that I was speaking to a bust, as I’d already come to see her three times since I activated my membership.
We’re on speaking terms now.
Besides, if there were ever a statue to talk to yourself in front of, it had to be the legendary Cleopatra. It was the little known things about Cleopatra that impressed me the most, like how when she and her brother Ptolemy ruled as teenagers, she had his name removed off all important documents and coins so she could rule alone. Something like that was extremely badass, and I would totally do the same to my waste-of-space brother if we found ourselves ruling Toronto. On a larger scale though, I was more than impressed by Cleopatra’s way with men.

“Did you really roll yourself into a rug and get delivered to Caesar?” I asked. “Alexandria to Rome seems far. Toronto to Barcelona is farther. Should I move?”

She wouldn’t say.

“Seriously that’s a damn grand gesture.” I sighed. “Why can’t I be that bold? And is that what it takes to get noticed? The rug ‘n roll?”

Cleopatra wasn’t very good at giving advice.

I knew I was being a little crazy right now, but in my defense, I was fitting in just fine with the senile demographic of the average museum member.

“Do men even buy rugs these days? Like what if I rolled myself in a rug, but the guy’s all like ‘You must have the wrong person. I just got my hardwood floors put in.’” I shook my head. “See? You had it easy.”

I scowled at Cleopatra for a moment, but quickly remembered she was on my side.

I stroked her stony tresses of hair when no one was looking, and then I made a secret birthday wish:
In the next year, please help me find the courage to make a Cleopatra-worthy grand gesture...

(If you liked what you read, the full-length version of “Last-Minute Love” is available at Amazon now!)

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