Cafe Blue Lake

His phone pinged a notification when the picture of the pussy arrived in his inbox. Mohan Krishnagiri groaned, then opened one eye and then the other before reaching a hand to the bedside table, he pulled the phone towards him. An action he performed with the delicacy of plucking a flower. It showed both his love and respect for the mobile phone- a device which he considered as nothing short of miraculous- a gift from God which he sometimes wondered humans were worthy of.

He had ditched the password screenlock the other day- after all, only he used his phone. So, he went straight to his email inbox and clicked open the mail from Alvika. EVen though the attached JPG had a random number for a name, he could tell what it was even before he downloaded and opened it.

"How does it look?" was the subject line.

He smiled on seeing the pussy. The sleep which clung to him like a tenacious wife just a moment ago dissipated instantly. He sat up in bed and went to Whatsapp and typed out a reply. "Looks wonderful, but I think it would have been even better with my name tattoed on it."

A few seconds later, he got a reply from Alvika. "Ayyo, Tatto would hurt there! But I am glad that you like it that I shaved."

"I couldn't have known it was shaved," he replied. "I mean, for all I know, this is its natural state. Maybe, you have some condition that prevents hair growth on your pubic region."

"Ha,ha,ha, very funny."

He smiled then, rolled over on the bed. "What are you wearing now?"

"A brown blazer, white shirt and a pair of black pants" came her reply. "I have a client meeting today. I am at work."

"But the picture?"

"Oh, I just went to the ladies for a quick pee. That's when I thought about you:) Den, I took that pic and sent it to you." After a moment, another message arrived on his phone. This one a question. "What about you? You in office? Are you showing my private pic to your male colleagues, you perv!" She appended this with a series of smiles to show she meant it as a joke.

"I called in sick today,"

"Oh, wat hapnd?"

"Nothing. I am completely fine. I just woke up feeling like I shouldn't go to work. I felt bored with it all. This endless routine, of working and coming home and going to work again, and in between buying stuff, ad infinitum. Makes me wonder what it is all about."

"Looks like someone is not getting enough action in bed," she replied. "Tell that pretty wife of yours to do her womanly duty and dance like a stripper!"

"I keep telling you, my wife is not pretty in the conventional sense. She may be handsome, but not pretty. And certainly notg as pretty as you."

"But you don't even know how I look!"

"I know how your pussy looks now," he said.

"But that's not me. That's like saying your dick is u. That u are a dick. LOL"

"That gives me an idea," he said. He then rolled right over again, so that he was lying face up. He then pushed his trainers down and clicked a picture of his manhood which he then sent her, along with the message, "If you want it, come and get it."

"Nice pic," she said. "But I am afraid I will need to take a raincheck on it. As I said, I have a client meeting to attend."

"Is the client hot?"

"It's a she. So, it doesn't matter one way or the other."

"Can you at least sent me a picture of your face? I would love to see how you really look like. You do realize that we have been chatting for eight months now? And we still would pass each other by on the road without recognizing."

There was no reply for a few long seconds. Despite her status being shown as online, he began to think she might have logged off.

"Why don't u go first?" came her reply eventually.

"Ladies first?" he said.

"Dat outdated concept"

He just stared at the phone screen for a long time, then turning his face towards his left, stared at himself in the dressing table mirror.

"I am still in bed. I want to show you my best face. Not the puffed up version still dull with sleep clinging to it like a xenomorph."

"Xenowhat?"

"Never mind that," he said. "Why don't we actually meet. I mean offline. We can meet at the Blue Lake Cafe. I will come there first. I will be wearing a red checkered shirt and a pair of black jeans. I have a tattoo with the word Muscle on my right forearm. Come check me out. If you don't like what you see, you can leave without being seen. What do you say?"

Another long pause before she sent in her reply. This time, her words were not abbreviated at all, as if to telegraph the idea that they were the result of careful deliberation. "So, you think that our relationship is all about appearances and nothing else?"

"We found each other in a sex chat forum," he said. "Of course it's about appearances. But whats so wrong about that?"

When another prolonged silence ensued, he worried he gave her offence in some way.

"So, when do you want to meet?" she said, breaking the digital silence.

**

Mohan was standing in front of the dressing table mirror, admiring himself when Lakshmi, his wife walked up to him with a request that wasn't odd for her. Extending a steel bowl, she said, "Can you please rub this turmeric paste on my back?"

He looked at her with a frown. "I can understand applying it on your face. But who would want to see their back turning paler?"

Despite his words, he took the bowl from her with a smile. She was a head shorter than him. So he needed to bend a little to kiss her. The smile got transferred from his face to hers.

"I thought you said you were not going to work today," she said, nodding at his shirt. It was a Louis Philippe which she bought for him for his last birthday. He had kissed her so much then that it felt like she was being drowned in kisses.

Never mind the fact that she bought him the gift using his own money.

"I was not planning to," he said. "But then, an urgent call came in from the office. Some issue with an ecommerce application that we developed for a client. People are not able to make transactions for some reason, and the reason is a bug in our code. The client is understandably pissed- every extra minute we take to fix it, they lose revenue possibly in the millions."

She patted him on the shoulder proudly. "My husband, the champion of the capitalist world."

"Don't say such things. It just comes out sounding like you are mocking me."

"I didn't mean to." She sounded, and looked genuinely hurt.

"I know you don't."

"I will apply the paste myself," she said.

"That's okay. Their millions can wait." He turned her around and started slathering the semi-wet paste on the back of her neck. Then, he applied it on her face and later on her breasts, after carefully removing the salwar that she was wearing.

Leaving the turmeric paste to dry on her skin, he made love to her.

"What about the ecommerce application?" she said even as he asked her to turn around so that he could have another go, this time from behind.

"Now, you know that I am no champion of the capitalist world." He grinned.

**

The Blue Lake Cafe was at the far end of the city from his home. And that was the main reason why he chose that place for his rendezvous with Alvika. But that wasn't the only reason- it was also where he had met Lakhsmi for the first time. He thought there was something cheekily poetic about meteing Alvika also in that same place.

However, some half way to the cafe, he saw on the car's dahsboard that the time display showed twelve thirty. He st

Ill had two more hours before the appointment time. He chided himself for getting over-excited and leaving hiome earlier than was required.

His libido was reasonably calm now- the two times he made love to Lakhsmi before leaving had helped. In the process, he had imagined Lakshmi as having different faces, belonging to different women he had lusted after at various points in his life. Women whom even though he had not possessed them- or because of that- left a strong impression on him.

He imagined that Alvika would be even more beautiful than any of those women ever were. Far more beautiful. And sexy. And vivacious. A whore in bed with the looks of a goddess.

He decided to steer his car towards a movie where he could spent the next one and half hours watching something silly yet expensively made entertainment. He chose for a movie the synopsis of which made him laugh for all the wrong reasons.

He bought a tub of popcorn and Pepsi before entering the movie hall. Sinking into the well-cushioned seat, he felt like he was sitting on a pillow. He found himself wondering if Alvika's thigh would be as soft as this seat.

The movie was about a man who somehow time-travels back to the era of the dinosaurs and have to fight the beasts to get back to the future where he came from. It almost fell in the category called 'mindless fun.' Almost.

At one point, Mohan's phone chimed. He imagined it was Alvika who was calling. Maybe, she was having second thoughts and wanted to call the whole thing off. Or maybe, she wanted to push the meeting ahead, the client meeting she mentioned having ended earlier than she expected?

But the call was from Lakhsmi, he was almost disappointed to see. He nearly picked the call before remembering that he was in a movie hall. A giant T-rex was screaming on screen.

He let the clll ring out and then sent her a message saying he was "busy with work, can I call you back latr?"

"Missing you," came her reply. "You said you would be home the whole day today, and then you up and left! Mising you. Missing you. Missing you."

He shook his head, even as he smiled. Sometimes, he really didn't get his wife. They have been married for eight years now. But sometimes, she still behaved like their wedding took place just weeks ago.Like they still were in the initial throes of a sort of rebirth which is what newly married couple experience aside from a lot of sex.

"I will come home soon, as soon as I fix this ecom problem," he typed. On the big screen, the dinosaur screamed again.

His phone chimed again, this time with the single dot sound of a notification. It was a Whatsapp message from Lakshmi. She was lying in bed in her lingerie. The words 'Missing you' were written with lipstick across her breasts.

He looked around. The darkened movie hall was almost completely deserted. It was an afternoon show on a weekday, of a film with a dismal Rotten Tomatoes rating. Of course, it's deserted, he thought. He unzipped his pants, and pulled out his dick, before taking a picture of it.

"Missing you too," he sent the message along with the picture "Missing you from the washroom."

"Swap the washroom for our bedroom and I have a solution for you," she replied with a wink emoji.

**

Later, coming out of the movie hall, he wondered if his relationship- if that's what it was- with Alvika was also like the movie which he just saw: almost mindless fun.

It was the first time that he was going to meet a woman through an online sex chat room. He has had dalliances with women before, even after his marriage. In fact, the frequency of these dalliances had increased once he got married. Not because he found Lakshmi lacking in anything sexual. He was more than happy in bed with her. But what she represented- the idea and the institution of marriage- had him scurrying to the arms of other women with whom he could spent time without nevcessarily spending his life.

But of course, one needed to be extra-cautious when it came to such dalliances. You need a thorough vetting process, to ensure that you are not falling into a trap.

But he has thrown all such caution to the wind in this case. A couple of times, even as his car was nearing the Blue Lake cafe, he thought of just turning around and driving back home, ascribing this whole endeavor to a momentary lapse of reason.

But something kept him going. He wondered as to what this something could be. At one point, he got stuck at a traffic light for so long, he had ample time to think about this. The obvious answer was that they had been conversing digitally for eight months. In fact, it was all too possible that over that period, he has spoken more with Alvika than he has with Lakhsmi, even though the latter lived under the same roof as him, and slept with her head resting on his chest, night after night. In the process, they had exchanged quite a bit about themselves to each other. He even told her things he hasn't told Lakshmi. Which he would never tell Lakshmi.

For all his communication with her, he used a number and emial that was not registered under his name. (It was a number he put to use occasionally. He called it his Honumber- a combination of the words 'Honey' and 'Number.')

But that wasn't the only reason why he was being so open with her in their conversations. It was just that she was the only person, literally the only one who has ever shown interests in the minutiae of his life- how he spent his time when he was not at work or with his wife or watching Netflix.

What thoughts went through his mind when he went for a walk in the park- he did mention that he enjoyed solitary walks sometimes. And what were his aspirations as a person- did he aim to become a calmer person in the future, or someone who could find contentment in the simplest of things?

She asked him questions that no one has ever asked before- including himself. The presence of such a person- even if it's in the form of bits and bytes- made a whole lot of difference in one's life. That's what he has learned in the past eight odd months. And that's why he was driving over to the Blue Lake Cafe right now, despite certain misgivings.

Earlier, he had told her that their relation was all about appearances. At the time, it just felt like the right thing to say. But as it turned out, the right thing and the truthful thing could be two different things.

**

The waitress was not so charming when she asked him for the fourth time if he would like to order. By now, even Mohan had conceded that Alanka was not going to turn up.

Or perhaps,she did, he thought. She looked in from the door and saw the tall lanky man sitting in the corner table, dressed in red checkered shirt and black pants. The Muscle tattoo on his arm was a joke at himself- at his rather thin stature.

Maybe, Alvika didn't get the joke. Or maybe, she did, but didn't like it.

"I am ready to order," he said to the young and pretty waitress. "But before that, can you tell me something? Please don't take this in the wrong way, but do I look okay?"

She frowned. Somehow, that seemed to make her look even more pretty. "Okay how?"

"I am going to meet my wife whom I haven't seen in a while. We had a fallout and I want to make up for it. Appearances matter in times like this, as you can surely appreciate. Do I look...okay, in that sense?"

The waitress gave her a sweet smile. "Absolutely, Sir. You go and do the right thing."

He ordered a bacon sandwich and a glass of orange juice. He didn't feel like eating much. But still, he took his time eating the sandwich and enjoying the juice, prolonging his stay in the cafe for as long as possible.

His phone chimed multiple times on his drive back. But he looked at the messages only when he had to stop at a traffic signal. The messages were from Alanka. They were mostly apology messages. "I chickened out. To be honest, I have never done anything like this before. And if my husband finds out I am seeing someone else, he will literally die. The man loves me like crazy."

"I didn't know you were married," he replied. "I was beginning to think you were a chatbot and I have been taken for a ride by some nefarious programmer."

"No, I am real alright. And that's the problem. Reality wants to stand between you and me."

He smirked at the message. If the woman wasn't up for a bit of infidelity, then what was she doing doing these things?

But he messaged back, "Alright. You ping me if you want to keep chatting."

"Of course, I do. Don't you?"

"Yes" he replied after a brief hesitation, albeit truthfully. And then, "Can you send me pics of your boobs? I wanted to fuck you so badly today. I even bought a pack of condom along. I guess I wull just put one on and just jerk off to the sight of your boobs- be content with a juvenile version of ecstacy."

"Sorry I let you down," she said with a crying emoji.

The light in the signal changed and he drove on. He was surprised to see that it was evening already.