FEATHERED LOVE

Chapter 6

Today is gonna be a day of surprises. This is the precursor to it. Have a good time anticipating.

The days passed by like falling leaves, inconspicuous and unremarkable. Like a ripple on the steady waters, he and his presence in my life faded out to oblivion. With no possibility of future meetings, my heart yearned for him like a thirst unquenched. He slowly but surely started to melt into the background of other things that poured into my life thereafter. But meeting him had such an impact on me that it left a huge dent in my heart. Like a comet landing on a barren land to hollow out a huge space and open its contact. When I was not consciously trying to fantasize about meeting him in some fairytale-like fashion, I was left spacing out and dreaming about his dreamy eyes. But even so, with all the dreaming, he was soon getting lost in yesterdays.

In the week that followed and some, I had time to get used to the new city. I had become a regular customer of the little coffee shop that Nadia had introduced to me. I had also discovered that apart from their magical coffees they also had bombastic sub-sandwiches that cured all illnesses. I took the time to explore the locality and discovered an amazing dessert shop at the corner shop of the seventh alley. Little surprises along my exploration slowly but surely made me fall in love with the city.

But that did not mean that everything was sunshine and roses. My work was far from the easy glide I had assumed. The bad first impression I had made on my boss had him questioning my abilities. Within a week of formally joining the consulate, I had been assigned to 10 different cases to do all sorts of research. If it hadn't been for the fact that my boss crosschecked every file I had submitted, I would have thought that he was bullying me. Nadia assured me that this rigorous training was something that every new joiner had to undergo to prove their work, irrespective of their positions it was said to be the unique way of our boss welcoming new people. I had reasons to believe that I had satisfactorily passed mine because yesterday my boss said that the file I had presented was exemplary and should be taken as reference by the interns. Oh! How my lungs burst with joy.

My house took longer than necessary before it was ready for me to live in it. The 3-day hotel stay that I had assumed previously was now extended to about 8 days. I would be moving into the house tomorrow but moving in itself was a job so exhaustive that all my enthusiasm had dried up. And moving twice in less than a month was killing me.

But the worst mishappening of all was my inability to meet him again. The case of Abhimanyu was personally taken up by my boss and he had been mad3 to collect the parcel from the office of immigration. I had no idea what I would possibly do if I met him again. I didn't want to talk with him, didn't want to see him nor did I want to hear him. His mere existence was putting a strain too big on my mental consciousness. But like a moth yearning for a destructive fire, I was yearning to meet him.

It was nearly seven thirty as I was walking down to my hotel for the last time. Tomorrow was a weekend so I had ample time to take detours and stop at every little trinket that caught my eye. One thing that I had to get used to after coming to Italy was the late sunsets. It was nearly eight and the sun was yet to completely disappear. Bathed in the golden hour, everything in sight was looking alluring.

I took my time to reach my hotel. As I reached the lobby of my hotel I was greeted with the sight of Diego talking with his criminal-looking friend, who he had introduced as Max.

In all honesty, my first impression of this Max guy was not very good and I had wanted to talk to Diego about it out of my concern. But as the week passed my impression of Max went down several notches. For one, this guy liked to hide around in unnoticed corners and pop up at unexpected times which scared me out of my wits once.