The maid

Chapter 4: A kid

Imagine a beautiful, blue, clear, open sea in front of you. Clean, litterless, golden sand under your feet and beautiful ladies serving you everything that you could ever wish to have in your entire life. Imagine having a beer in your hands and your favorite music playing on the side as you relax on a beach chair. There is a big red umbrella over your head, sunglasses covering your eyes and all those chuttiya friends and cousins of yours are partying right in front of you. Girls in bikinis and the open sky are the only things that you can see and the smell of saltwater and weed has clouded your nostrils.

Fun, right? For some, that might even be a dream come true.

But as that man enjoyed all those amenities that day, at the beach party that one of his friends had planned, all he felt from inside was empty. "Maybe jumping off the building wasn't such a bad idea," now he wondered. Rather than enjoying the luxury he had, this time, he only emptily sat in a chair with all the thoughts of the world in his heart. With a hookah in his hands and smoke in front of his eyes, all he could think of at that moment was why he was still living and what could happen if he were to disappear.

Nothing was clear in his mind. Nor was anything clear in his heart. All he had now in his heart was numbness. Did he want all the money and fame that he had received being the good boy of his family? He didn't. The norms of the society in which he had grown up were confusing him but being the goody-to-shoes that he had always been was nowhere how he had originally intended his life to go down. The spirit of adventure had always been there, somewhere, but suppressed because of the oppressive, obsessive behavior of his old man, and being some time away from that man let him breathe.

So he was breathing, smoke. Drinking weed. Thinking shit. And just trying his best to know what to do next because the only person who took decisions for his life was apparently very wrong. Why was he wrong though? Wasn't being rich, powerful, and having everything all that anyone could have ever wanted. Wasn't being right according to everyone around him the right thing to do? Why then did it all feel so wrong in his mind? Was he the only one being delusional or was he right?

That young man didn't have any answers though. All he had were many more questions that kept gathering in the back of his mind with every second that he breathed in free air away from his family. All he sought was that one woman who was now carrying a tray full of empty glasses to one end of the beach. She was alone in that tight, small maid's outfit that had probably been worn by her for days along. Somehow his mind told him that she knew the answers. As if, she was living the life he would have lived if he had listened to the voice of his heart. Somehow, that connection just never seemed to sever.

No one.

She had called herself no one to him and in all honesty, the man knew that she was right.

If thought logically, there was no relation between him and this, beautiful woman that he was looking at. If thought emotionally, he had probably fallen for her just at the first glance. So, the only explanation for his obsession with staring at the maiden's back was that his heart was trying to tell him that there was something in front of him that he wanted but couldn't get. Not even with all the money he had and neither with the perfect life that he had achieved under the guidance of his father. It was probably his heart telling him that it had had enough of living by the invisible norms, rules, and regulations of that world.

Because otherwise, there would not have been any other logical reason for him to want to walk behind her. If his heart wasn't whispering things into his brain and his self sense of righteousness wasn't compromised because of the weed that he just smoked, the drunken man would have never decided to act upon his instinct. And his instinct at that moment told him to follow her, probably to a dark alley in the back of the hotel. Probably in a place good men never went to and probably, he wouldn't have laid his eyes on something that he never could have. But his eyes were laid and his heart had fixated itself. Oxytocin had done its work and the dopamine was running high in his head. There was no way out until he managed to lay his hands on what he had laid his eyes on.

So, he went ahead to do the same. Laid his hand on the one thing that seemed sane to do in his half sober state of drunkness and frowned slightly when he felt her retracting her hand away from him instead.
" The party is back there sir," her sigh. Even that was enticing at that point. Even that was enough for that stumbling man to hold back onto her and smile.
" It seems to be here though," his hand in her hair. Once again. Just like he had imagined.

Sure he was still stumbling and she now was glaring at him but they were in the middle of nowhere without his fellow buddies to distract him and now, as he swam in a pool of her blue eyes, he only saw it getting deeper and prettier by the second. Her skin was as beautiful as the golden, shining sand under his feet. Her hair, flowing along with the wind only made it so much more fun to stare at her longer now

" I don't provide these types of services, sir," but her menacing, disapproving tone did not help his sickening heart in the way he had hoped she would

" You think I'm asking?" It's difficult for someone who has gotten every girl he ever wanted in his bed to accept rejection but the push was a little harsh. A little too harsh for a man who couldn't even think properly at that moment.

" I am not a sellout. You want someone to satisfy your needs, there are plenty stripping naked in the party you just came out of. Go back to your place,"
" And what if I don't want to go back to my place? It's... Controlling" A kid. In her eyes at the moment, he was acting like a small kid. Especially when she found him holding his own knees close to his chest and looking away from her like a scared cat. The way he rocked back and forth on the sand and the words that came out his mouth, only made it clear to her that the weed had done its job on his head. And well, she had never met a drunk man who acted like a kid but, it sure was protocol for her to keep the guests safe, and in that condition, he could as well drown in the ocean and no one would know. So, with no other options left, she sighed and handed him one of her hands

" It's not. Come. Let's go back,"
" It is! I can't do anything that I want! Can't even laugh when I want to,"
" And that is just the way the world works. Come,"
" NO!"

Kids throw tantrums. It's natural. But seeing a grown man throw a tantrum only made it much clearer. He hadn't grown up. Just pretended to grow up because people had expectations and holding up those expectations was what everyone was busy doing. Being the best version of themselves, so that others could give them some credit, and his dull eyes had long back told her the truth of his life. It was a lie. He was living a life he didn't like spending time in.

Seeing no other way out, she only sighed and sat next to him on the sand as he mumbled about some dumb fight that he had with someone in his mouth and kept frowning.
" Fine, what do you want to talk about then?"