THE FIFTH IS THE LAST ONE

City break

Part four

“And doesn’t she cook just delightfully?” Awndrey asked Ras, though it sounded more as an indisputable statement than a question, while the three of them were waiting for the desert to be served. Ras, who was sitting on the other side of the table, gave a feignedly kind look at Lilly as he nodded puzzled “Well, I guess…” he cleared his throat “I mean I believe you, though I didn’t have the pleasure yet” he managed to say giving the best of his self not to sound too dry. “Tell me you’re kittin’ me” Awndrey responded cheerfully. He was in a very good mood that evening and every time he was saying something his voice was witnessing it. “You know each other for a month or so and you haven’t cooked for that good man yet…?” “Not even your famous pancakes…?” he swerved to Lilly’s side, who was sitting right next beside him. “I plead guilty” Lilly raised both of her hands and returned the kind glance –genuine this time- to Ras who was sitting across the table.
The atmosphere of the company that evening may seemed cheery and admirable for the rest of the people who were sitting at the scattered tables around them and were mostly occupied by middle- aged yappies along with their housewives or their fiancés or their secretaries (some of the women were combining both of the last two attributes), but in truth, if you were observing really carefully, you could discern that there was so much tense in the air that it was like as a bomb was waiting to explode and it was just a matter of time when this would eventually happen.
Most of the night was spent Awndrey talking about Lilly and every single common experience they went through together in the past and this was making Ras feeling that the blonde woman with whom he had spent every single day of the previous month of his life, wasn’t a familiar person anymore but a total stranger. That wasn’t true of course, but that was the way he was feeling at that moment.
Even though Ras had an already shaped idea about Awndrey before he even met him just by Lilly’s descriptions and his own assumptions, he was the kind of man who was giving you the impression that he was pretty confident about himself and was never asking for verification or any kind of compliments by the others. He also had an undefined way to command and exude a sense of respect and veneration to everyone who was surrounding him everywhere he was going. These feelings maybe were boosted and enlarged by his masculine squared features of his face and his striking height.
Ras was kept scrutinizing the features of Awndrey’s face one by one from his chin to his cheek bones while they were having their pie filled with spade marmalade – it was a very tasteful pie- and he was kept thinking that this man was probably the more masculine and the more confident version of his own self. In a mysterious way, Awndrey was looking, talking and acting the way Ras also wanted and was trying but never managed to, simply because he wasn’t made in this way.
Every time Awndrey would open his mouth he would always have an interesting story to narrate about his turbulent life in the different places he had visited during the recent period of his life –the period after he had left his hometown- searching for a promising occupation as he said but he never did, maybe his expectation were way too high, and every time, Lilly was all ears. Meanwhile, Lilly hadn’t found until that moment the chance to inform Ras about the real purpose of Awndrey’s visit and the reason he asked for her help but the important thing was that as he said sometime while they were at “Duke”, he had decided to arrive for his hometown the upcoming day.
When bill was left enclosed in a silly envelop with the name of the restaurant and its address printed on it upon the table, Awndrey insisted to pay it all just by himself. Ras had thought that they should split the cost, because it was one of the most expensive restaurants of the city and Awndrey may was not aware of that, but even after he saw the inscribed price Awndrey remained adamant. Ras realized that it would be impossible to alter his mind, so he retreated. Now, what about calling this, a punch on the stomach…? A punch to this already wounded virility…
Because, if you really think about it and if these two men were likened to two mammals in a jungle and Lilly to the female one who would have to choose the one of them with whom she would inseminate her descendant, then Awndrey would be the uncontested dominant; the one who would win the fight between them. For this reason, (ok, Ras didn’t have the time and the clear mind to get it that far), Ras had spent the entire time at the restaurant feeling awkward and uneasy and Lilly had surely figured it out, since she was giving him weird and conspiratorial glances every time he was overdoing it with scratching the table’s refined cloth or with moving his fork nervously and intolerably fast up and down.
On the way back after the dinner, they shared the same taxi. They were going to the same direction, though Lilly and Awndrey would continue for a drink in one of the city’s innumerous bars but Ras said that he had an early morning waking up, when he asked to join. That was a horrendous lie but Ras swore he did when Lilly pushed him a little further to change his mind.
Ras sat in the front seat and the rest in the back. In the five minute distance until the Glorent street where the bar “TIM’S” was located he wished many times that the taxi driver were more talkative. The man hadn’t say a word even when Ras told him about the places he should stop, but he was not to blame because he may was going through a tough situation or he was just reticent by nature. But whichever the reason was, Ras wished they could exchange a word or two during the drive, because the other two were whispering and laughing and teasing each other, and whispering again and the exclusion his front seat was provided him, was making feel really uncomfortable.
When the taxi stopped outside “TIM’S” Lilly signaled to the driver from the outside to descent the window from the passenger’s side and she bent to wish Ras “goodnight”. He tried to smile and though he thought that his face muscles wouldn’t follow, he smiled. Lilly said that she would call him “first thing in the morning” and bent a little further to kiss him. They hadn’t kissed for days and Ras thought that they hadn’t for ages. Only a moment later Lilly was holding Awndrey from his leather jacket sleeve, leading him to the bar’s entrance. The tall man turned his face to the way where the taxi was standing and was about to get back in move again and when Ras raised his right hand to sign “bye”, Awndrey blinked him instead of doing the same. It was a blink which was meaning many things. Though it could be taken as a mark of intimacy, Ras took it as a very sarcastic and abhorrent signal. He felt enraged. That man was capable of driving him to the edge just with a simple blink of his eye. Could it be a sign of a man telling to another that at the end he was the prevailing one? The one he had won over the female mammal? Well, some could say it could.