An affair to remember - A short story

He asked her to go on without him to the 4th floor. He told her that he needed a smoke. She displayed just a hint of disappointment, but the smile from the side of his mouth made sure that she smiled back coquettishly. "I had a great time today", she said, looking very earnest as she said it. "Same here" he said, now smiling end-to-end, but unable to look as comfortable as he was in the morning. He hoped she didnt notice his uneasiness, but there were a sea of people walking into Office building 4, looking busy and occupied in general, noticing one's reactions would be hard in such an environment. Before she walked in, she waved to him and said "See ya", her dainty, perfectly proportionate hands holding his gaze, as he reached for the packet of Wills in his pocket.

He was nervous. He went to the back of the building for a smoke he so much desired and required. "It is nothing, you are just letting it influence you" was the thought that came to his usually rational mind. He lit up the cigarette and refreshed his memory. He tried to recollect the entire series of events. Nikita and he had planned on going out today. Over the last few days, their chemistry was undeniable and it was only a matter of time before one of them approached the other. The past week had been absolute madness in the office with an internal audit taking the whole place by storm. Both of them had spent long nights perched over their laptops, next to each other, the conversation frequently slipping from the quarterly budget to her recent divorce and the way she was coping with it, to his disconnect from his home surroundings. The audit ended on a Thursday, and Nikita, nonchalantly walked up to him and asked him whether he wanted to play truant from the office on Friday, and do something fun. He was immensely flattered, because someone as gorgeous and classy as Nikita wouldnt obviously ask any random man out on a date. He found himself nodding slightly in a desperate attempt to underplay the whole situation and saying yes.

They were scheduled to meet at the mall, located quite a distance away from the office and in the center of the city, to avoid any possible run-ins with co-workers. 11 was the time decided upon. They were planning to get some lunch at this Spanish restaurant that she was dying to go to and then catch the matinee. Both of them had to get back to the office after that, to tie up some loose ends. He was there on the dot at 11. She wasnt. He decided to wait up for her at the large bookstore in the mall. The mall was unusually crowded, even on a weekday. They were having an annual "All-store sale" and the place was filled with college-goers, office-goers and the odd retirement-home goers all looking for "the best brands at low prices". As he was flipping the pages of the latest Jim Collins book, he couldnt help but notice a young man wearing a bag and talking on the phone. The young man wearing the heavy backpack let it it drop near the children's book section and walked briskly out of the store saying "Oh, you are outside? Wait, Ill come and meet you." He then got lost in the management theories of Jim Collins and lingered on for another 20 minutes before Nikita turned up at 11:30. He told her to come into the store and she arrived there, looking beautiful as ever, complete with elegant semi-casual workwear and a very attractive looking bag. She was one to make heads turn, she was. She said "Hi, whats up? What are you doing here", he sheepishly held up the book and they approached the billing counter together. While she was talking about Girish, a painful lecherous senior at the office, he couldnt help but notice that the bag the young man had left near the children's section was still lying there. He thought he should tell her, but decided not to. The billing queue was short and he decided not to let it affect him "Spoilt kids, they are always leaving their things behind", he thought. After that Nikita and he disappeared into the much-touted Spanish restaurant at the mall, where the food was excellent, and the tab being in proportion with the number of oohs and aahs she let out as she was savouring the delicious food there. They then went for the matinee showing of the romantic comedy, "The Proposal", an otherwise forgettable movie, but made memorable because the company he had was excellent. Not only was she fun to talk to, but she was also extremely physical in her overtures. It had been a while since he had been this attracted to a woman like this and she being attracted to him. His mind had completely forgotten the backpack, when he thought he saw something strange. Nikita and he were walking past the bookstore on their way out at around 6:30 in the evening. The children's section of the bookstore was visible to him through the large glass display and he could have sworn that he saw the strap of the backpack from there. She was in a hurry. There was a weekly review meeting in 45 minutes, which she had to attend. She dragged him along to the parking lot, where he picked up his car and both of them left for the office. The backpack never left him feeling comfortable. He could hear the airport announcement playing in his head. "Please report any suspicious activity or suspicious baggage to the airport staff. Security is everyone's concern".

He now stood in outside Building 4 in the back, smoking, thinking about the contents of the bag. He was not sure whether he should report it, after all. It might just have been a college boy forgetting his books in a store. Books, he thought, for a collegian were quite forgettable as well. He also remembered that the mall had a metal detector placed at all entrances and bags were usually checked, but the crowd that day was quite an enormous one, had they checked this backpack? He had thoughts of reporting this incident to the cops, but feared that it might raise a few questions. What was he doing in that mall? with another woman? when his wife was at home? Both Nikita and he had called in sick to the office, and if they discovered that he they were in a mall, enjoying themselves, then it might cause some issues in the office. Not to mention at home. His wife would be crestfallen if she knew that he was in the proverbial "arms of another woman". As he was thinking of all this, his phone rang and his video con with a foreign client was scheduled to start in a few minutes and he was needed on the 7th floor. He went upto the 7th floor, switched off his phone and attended the vid-con. It was 7:30. He was done with the call by 11:30, drove straight home to find his wife sleeping. He washed up and went straight to bed, exhausted.

The next morning was when the expensive bone-china coffee mug crashed loudly to the floor causing it to break into several pieces. His wife came running, shocked, enquiring about what happened. He stood transfixed at the broken coffee mug and its brown contents spilling on to the carpet. She asked him what happened, to which he replied, "Nothing, it just slipped from my hand", entirely ignoring the fact that he was shaking with fear. She said, "Wait, Ill ask Mani to clean it up, my god the carpet is a mess and so are your pyjamas. Go in and put it for wash", irritably. He was looking for an exit strategy to get out of her presence, lest she smell a rat. He immediately walked quickly into his room, holding the coffee stained copy of the The Hindu with the headlines in the frontpage reading "20 dead in mall bomb blast"