"We aren't paying your leave, so use it or lose it Geoff."
This was not what I wanted. I didn't have the money to go on holiday, so if I was not going to lose my leave, it would be two weeks at home. Television, reading, cruising the net and maybe a beer or three at the weekends.
Since Lucy and I had split up nine months previously, home was not my favourite place; there were far too many bad memories. I was trying to sell the house, but the market was on its knees and I could not find a buyer. In order to avoid home, I threw myself in to my work, which helped, but only for a while.
Since my employer had been bought out six months previously, the senior management had been replaced causing my professional life to become an endless cycle of performance reviews, management meetings and corporate bureaucracy, while they rationalised, downsized, restrategized, all the time seemingly doing everything in their power to demoralize and destabilize!
I was O.K. The top performer, or a close second most months, I was also the longest serving in my section so had the most experience. I just would have preferred that they paid me out for untaken leave like the previous business owners did. I was certain of one thing though, I was not going to give up my two weeks leave to our new bosses. At least two weeks at home would be a rest, a boring rest, but better than nothing.
Friday night drinks after work that week resulted in a Saturday morning hangover.
No sugar or milk for coffee. Just as bad, there was nothing that was not a frozen supper that I could have for breakfast. The only option would be to drag my sorry ass in to the shower and then to the shops.
As usual I walked past the house neighbouring mine which had been empty since about the same time that Lucy left. "Oh that's just fucking great!" I thought, seeing a gang of guys hefting furniture in to the house. An identical house to mine, yet no-one bothered to come and check my place out, they just ignored it and bought the house next door!
I wondered idly what my new neighbours would be like. The way life was going, it would probably be twin crying babies with teenage heavy metal loving siblings, a trailer trash family that would leave the gardens turn to jungle and make it even tougher to sell my place.
Feeling low, well even lower, I took the easy option of breakfast at a diner before having to grab provisions for home.
The moving guys were almost finished when I got back. Just a few boxes at the back of the removals truck, but no sign of the new residents.
The rest of that Saturday was a revolving cycle of walking around the house looking for things to do, movies, dozing and eating crap food, all the while dressed in my lucky boxer shorts. Lucky! HA! They hadn't been lucky for the last nine months that's for sure. A miserable day followed by a not spectacular night's sleep.
Sunday came and with an element of reluctance I got myself out of bed around noon. After showering, a beer in the garden for breakfast seemed a good idea. Maybe not my best idea ever but the best one I had right then.
There was no fence between my place and the new neighbours. You could see that there used to be, but someone had pulled it down before I bought my house. Sat out in the garden, I could see my new neighbour's patio doors were open. There were sounds of things being moved around and general busyness. So far, so good, there were no crying babies and an apparent lack of obstreperous heavy metal listening teens. There was still a chance of trailer trash though.
I thought about doing the neighbourly thing and going over to introduce myself, but my current blue mood and the fact that I didn't even want to live there, kind of put a dampener on my neighbourliness! Instead I would be "Mr unsocial, drinking alone neighbour," a person you don't want to speak with.
A few days later I had to go to the bank to pay bills and do householder type stuff, like getting a new real estate agent for starters!
I had gotten everything done and was walking from the car park to my place when I saw her. She stopped me in my tracks. I'm not sure what my face was doing, but I'm sure I looked a dork.
She meanwhile, was the most spectacularly beautiful woman. Indian, maybe 30 probably younger, as she walked by me she lowered her eyes, but gave me a shy smile. I stood there rooted to the spot, my head tracking her as she passed by.
It's not as though you could see much. Covered to the neck, wrists and ankles in something traditional, but that face, her eyes, her hair, the way she moved. It was like my mind's eye took a photograph and burned it in to my memory.
I did not have a clue who that woman was, but for the next few days as I existed at home she crept in to my mind more and more.
Self-pity swallowed me up, depressingly single, in a house I hated, working in a job I now loathed while being tormented by an image of the unobtainable.
A couple of days later I had to knock myself in to shape or I was going to go to pieces. Without knowing where, I thought I would take a drive, anywhere damnit, do something different and for fucks sake get to grips with life. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I'd locked up and was walking to the car when I heard the sound of broken glass and "Oh no!" I turned to see my Indian Lady stooped over. Jeans and a t-shirt this time, but there was no mistaking that complexion, that hair, those eyes. She was kneeling down outside her gate picking up shopping that seemed to have fallen out of the bottom of a bag. Scrabbling around as fruit and jars rolled here and there, she noticed me, frozen to the spot and probably with the same lame ass look on my face.
She stopped what she was doing and just smiled. Beauty, innocence, sultriness and exotica. I was entranced. It may have been a second, it could have been a couple of hours, to be honest I don't know how long I stood there.
With her giving a questioning but wonderful look, she held her hands out to the sides as if saying, "well are you going to help or what?"
Taking a first step towards her, I caught the toe of my shoe on a paving stone and stumbled clumsily, then I bent down to apprehend an escaping jar of pickles. As I got closer I picked up some more stuff and helped her put it in some of the unbroken bags.
With her squatting, and me on one knee, we both picked up the last items. As I handed them to her I smelled something incredible... a sweet smell, more citrus than flowers, something like incense but not. Now that I was closer I could see that she wore no makeup, her skin glowed nonetheless and she was astoundingly beautiful.
"Geoff," I said giving her my hand to shake as we still squatted on the ground."
"Mina," said as she turned away, standing up without accepting the hand shake. "Thank you very much, I had better be getting inside with these things," she said with a strange distracted look, not quite shyness, not fear, but something. There was probably a jealous husband inside I thought to myself.
"O.K. Mina, nice to meet you, I'd better get going, see you around."
