Three addresses in this city. Two of them had been dead-ends and my legs were reluctant to make it to the third. I saw a little grocery store coming up beside me. I went in up to the counter and asked for a bottle of coconut water. The shopkeeper was a genial lady in her late middle-age. The handful of people I had exchanged words with while walking through the streets had all been kinder than most strangers. I paid her and took the bottle in a brown paper bag. There were a couple of chairs just outside the shop door. I sat down and began to sip from the cold bottle. My legs laid themselves out in a stretch of relief. I gulped the rest of my coconut water down, threw the bottle in a nearby bin, and hurried onwards. I really hoped that this final address was a success. I wanted this trip to amount to more than just sore legs.
I ventured ahead for a few more kilometers, which felt more like a few dozen to me. Another bottle of coconut water would have helped. The people around who noticed me, must’ve thought me to be either insane or broke to not hail a cab given the struggle on my face to simply keep walking. But I have to walk. I have to walk. And as long as my legs work, I will walk.
I kept myself convinced of my endurance as I walked upon two rows of secluded residences facing each other, gated with towering fern trees. The fronds spread wide and reached across over the entrance to the lane, clasping those on the other side to make a grand, green archway. I checked the address again. I walked down the lane as I came up on it to my left; it was much like the other houses around it. Two storeys high and wide enough that a garden with a white porch swing welcomed you to its front. How far back the boundary of the house stretched, I didn’t know. The building itself was painted in a soothing hue of green, similar to the shade of dew-kissed grass. As my hand went up to the doorbell, I prayed for two things: that someone was home and they had ice-cold beverages. But just the former being fulfilled would work too.
The bell rung and the mechanical tweet of a canary began my restless wait. It was only a few seconds, thank god. The door opened and out came a face I barely recognised. But it was same enough after all these years to still engage my remembrance. We both looked at each other.
“You have any cold juice or beer?”, I shouted to him with a smile.
He had both and I drank a few. We had been sitting and talking for some time in his living room. The ceiling was more than five meters high and all the furniture was sand-coloured teak. The lights were not too bright and the large Venetian windows let in plenty of sun. His hair was still a crisp brown and his grey eyes had grown sharper. He barely had wrinkles or any other signs of age that I did; though not a year between us, I looked a decade older. He fiddled with his fingers and face spasmodically and neither of us kept the other’s gaze for too long. Even a stranger could tell that something was amiss here.
“You want anything else to drink?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine,” I said as I peered at the empty bottles and glasses in front of me.
“It has been so, so long. How much time has it been?”
“Seven, maybe eight years,” I replied.
He started shaking his head as he laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“I remembered that in the last grade, you caught two rats and brought them to school in a box.”
“I let them loose in the staff conference room, didn’t I?”
“During a meeting,” he chortled.
“And I never got caught either,” I said. I looked at him, comfortable in his home. “I am sorry that I stopped reaching out. It wasn’t right. To you or the rest. I am so sorry.”
His expression took on a grim air as he looked me in the eyes, “Yes, you did. My little girl was born and we never heard from you. I tried to get in touch, but nothing. For years, I’ve only gotten to hear about you from people I hardly know. We were buddies, man and you just…you just haven’t been one.”
I couldn’t meet his eyes even though I felt them locked onto me.
“Anyway,” he shrugged, “you’re here now. How have you been?”
“I am alright,” I nodded. “I had really hoped I would find you here. More so than I had for others. I mean, you were my best friend for years.”
“Okay yeah, you’re forgiven, you shit-eating rascal. Just don’t start sentimentalizing. Not while I am still sober.”
“I have something else to get off my chest too. I have also come to you to say, or at least begin to say goodbye.”
There were a few silent seconds as neither of us even blinked.
“I don’t get the joke,” he said. “What goodbye? You haven’t even been here an hour.”
My heart grew heavier. I saw no easy way for this.
I told him everything over the next few minutes. The diagnosis, the treatment and my chances. I told him how I chose to spend the last few months correcting the course of whatever little life I had left rather than suffer and wither through the treatment to add only a few more weeks to my agony.
With each sentence I had said, his eyes had grown redder and his breath ragged. I waited for his reply. He closed his eyes and started fuming.
I became nervous, “I know I h—”
“GET OUT!” he yelled.
I was jolted from my seat as he rose and advanced towards me.
“You were never here for me or my family. Not for the good stuff. Not for the bad stuff. I didn’t have a friend to depend on,” he said. “Now you dare to just waltz back in and put us all through the pain of losing you. Who do you think you are? Do you really think I’ll just let you do that?”
He charged me out the door. “Look, I don’t deserve to be let in again. I know that,” I said. “But I’m going to be dead and gone anyway. You can be angry for as long as you want, but at least let me have a chance at this.”
He stopped once I was out on the street. He came in close and said, “Just disappear again. I won’t mind it this time.” He turned back and vanished into his home.
I was too dilapidated to plead, to convince him. Unsure of what lay next for me, I just began walking. My feet moved painlessly. With my head hung, I saw the little pearl-drops splash onto the asphalt from my face. My vision blurred. I went to a nearby tree and slid down its trunk. Sitting there, I curled up in the mud and slept. I was too enervated for anything else.
It had been months now. I had exceeded all the doctors' predictions but now as I lay half-conscious on the hospital bed, pumped full of drugs, tubes going in and out with the piercing smell of ethanol disinfectants in the air, I knew that my time of rest wasn’t far. I wanted to rest. I was unconscious most of the time and when I was awake, I only wanted to fall asleep. I must have nodded off again because I didn’t hear the door open.
I opened my eyes with some effort. I saw that neat, brown hair and those striking grey eyes again. They gazed at me much more softly than the last time I had seen them. I tried to speak but coughed instead. I licked my parched lips as he took a glass of water and brought it to my mouth while cradling my head up. I took in a few cold sips.
“I talked to the doctors. And they…well, they told me how you’ve been,” he said.
“Yeah, I look like crap but I’m still the handsomest one in the ward.”
He started to speak but stopped as if there was a lump in his throat.
“I am glad to see you here. You don’t have to say anything.”
He reached and hugged me. I called upon whatever vigour was left and held him back as he started to sob into my chest. My own eyes started to well up. Though tears flowed down, my face was a beaming smile. My friend had come to say goodbye.
“Your wife must’ve talked some sense into you,” I said.
He chuckled, “She is the wiser one. But I am also terrified of her, especially when she dishes out threats. So, here I am.”
“I am free right now,” I said. “You got something on your mind?”
“Let’s see if I can my get hands on a few chilled beers. Then the day is ours, you dumb-shit.”
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