Ria, are you ok?

Chapter 5

21 - Ria

By nine p.m. we had been almost ten hours in front of the screen. Gwen stood up and went to look out the window.

"Is it still there?" I asked.

"No, she left."

"How do you know it was a 'she'?"

"The same way I know you're hungry right now and want to order something to eat."

She handed me the phone together with a flyer from a nearby Korean restaurant.

Gwen seriously disliked talking on the phone. Had I not been with her she would have gotten dressed and go to the place itself so she wouldn't have to make the phone call. Whenever she had no choice but to make the call herself she got so nervous, and the conversations got so awkward that I bet her calls would probably be used later for training purposes.

The name of the restaurant was Seoul Doognegi. "What should I order?"

"Surprise me," she said, grinning, and grabbed her towel as she got into the bathroom.

I knew she took exceptionally brief showers, so I had about three minutes to think about how I would surprise her. Under the seat of my scooter, I had a flyer from a Turkish restaurant, which would surprise her as she thought I was going to be ordering Korean, not Turkish.

I stealthily opened the door and ran downstairs to look for the flyer. My cute little yellow scooter was there waiting for me, and next to it was the orange cat we had seen before. She asked to be surprised, so I grabbed the flyer and the cat, came back upstairs and ordered two falafels with some fries. I poured some water in a bowl for the cat and observed as she went about sniffing around the room.

Gwen came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her torso, she looked at the cat and then looked at me, then looked at the cat again and then back at me. I grinned. I could feel she wasn't prepared for it, she was still analyzing the situation and thinking of a catchy phrase that would fit the scene. She couldn't think of anything and now it was too late, she had missed her chance, if she'd said something now the timing would have been off and I could feel how frustrated that made her feel. She looked at me and went back into the bathroom.

As she turned on the hair dryer, the doorbell rang. I opened the door and a well-built dark skinned Turkish guy with a thick beard was there to deliver our food, he smiled at me and looked at the cat. The bathroom door opened, Gwen looked at the Turkish guy, I looked at the cat, the delivery guy looked at Gwen, the cat licked its paws, Gwen looked at me, grinned and went back into the bathroom. I paid the guy, set the food on the table and stroked the cat.

Five minutes later Gwen finally came out, sat in front of me, took a bite of her falafel and casually said: "Mmm, this is good!" Not a word about the cat, nor did she seem surprised about the food not being Korean.

After we finished eating she stroked the cat as if it was the most natural thing to do, went back to bed, tapped on it to signal me to come to her and played the next episode for us, episode eleven. We were almost halfway done with the show and after that we would be free.

The cat jumped onto the bed and rubbed herself against our legs. Gwen looked at me and held my arm.

22 - Peter

I didn't book any kind of accommodation in Mumbai - to follow this trip's trend I decided to let the accommodation find me instead. I had also read online that foreigners leaving the train stations or airports in India should be careful with hawker taxi drivers touting them in and taking them to dodgy hotels far from the city, where they happen to get some commission from. At the same time, I read no hotel would cost more than five or ten dollars a night, so for adventure's sake, I decided to do just that. I arrived at the train station and went along with the first taxi driver that humbly offered me his services.