It is five in the evening when Sarah finally gathers her mobile phone, a few coins in change, the bill and the book that she has just finished reading sitting at the cafe, into a clumsy heap. She dumps everything into her big, black leather handbag except the book and heads toward the magnificent glass door of the cafe. Just as she rests her hand on the door knob to push it open, she hears a deep-throated voice calling her name. ‘Sarah.’
There is something both magnetic and startling about this voice and she turns around holding her breath. Who could it be? When she turns, Sarah shivers with excitement and fright. Right before her is a tall, handsome man, with such a well-chiselled face, such deep mystical eyes, oceans in themselves, and such beautiful lips that she thinks she will swoon in delight. She can’t believe what she is seeing. Was this true? Or was it one of those games that her mind was playing?
“Sarah?” he questions again.
“Yes,” she replies, a deep sigh escaping her unabashedly.
There’s an awkward silence, or so she thinks. Suddenly she doesn’t want to talk, but the next second her heart nudges her to go on.
“And you?” she asks hesitantly.
“Don’t recognise me?” he asks. Sarah notices that his eyes flicker with mischief. Suddenly, she wants to be stubborn.
“No,” she says emphatically.
“Steve,” he says, shifting a little, “Steven Parker.” And then, he points to the book she has in her hand.
Sarah is flabbergasted. She rubs her eyes in disbelief. No, this can’t be true. She doesn’t want to be there anymore. She pushes the glass door and walks away, almost running, her heart pounding, her mouth dry and her blood rushing up to her head. This is madness, she tells herself, even as she hears his voice in the distance, calling her name. ‘Sarah’.
***
Sarah doesn’t realise she has walked a good one mile in a fit of anxiety. She slows down her pace and hires a cab. On the way back home, she tries to gather herself and revisit the strangeness of the last one hour. She then looks at the book in her hand.
It had been a week since Joey, her husband, left on a work tour that would last a month and a half. In a way, Sarah had looked forward to his leaving. They had been married for eight years and nothing was exactly wrong with their marriage but not everything was fabulous either. When Joey announced that he had to be away for six weeks, Sarah welcomed it with some joy in her mind. She needed some time alone. To search for her old self that she had left behind somewhere in these last eight years, to regain some of the vivacity of her youth, to just be herself – without any pretensions and obligations and compromises.
She had begun her solitary journey in search of her self by reading a book, a romantic book, with oodles of love pouring out of every page, not exactly intelligent literary writing but something soulful nonetheless. Steven Parker was the protagonist of the book that Sarah dug out from her bookshelf and began reading.
***
As Sarah lies on her bed after dinner, her phone beeps. It’s a message. She thinks it must be Joey. It better be, she hopes, because she needed something to keep her mind away from her encounter with Steven Parker, the man who had jumped straight out of the book and stood before her in the cafe earlier that evening.
Sarah checks her phone. It’s not Joey like she thinks. It’s a strange number. She grows tense as she taps on the message with trembling fingers. ‘Dear Sarah,’ it reads, ‘why did you walk away from me? I wanted to talk to you. – Steve’. Sarah gulps down her fear. She feels paralysed by the unbelievable strangeness of it all.
She doesn’t budge an inch and is too afraid to sleep. The book lies quietly on her study table, right next to the table lamp. It seems as harmless as it looked when she had first picked it up, as harmless as any other book. Sarah tells herself it’s all a figment of her imagination. How could a character just come to life and be a part of her ‘real’ world the moment she finished the book? Surely that was crazy, wasn’t it?
The next moment, she feels strangely calm, as if the question she asked herself had dissolved the tension in her mind. But then, she thinks again, the message was real. It wasn’t an illusion. She grabs her phone and sees the message again. Much to her despair, it sits pretty in her inbox. Suddenly, she wants to put the reality (or the absence of it) to test.
“How do you know my number?” she messages back, surprised at her own temerity.
Silence ensues. For Sarah, that is strangely comforting. He wouldn’t get back, after all, she thinks. She rewinds a bit and thinks through what she contemplated as she read that book over the last one week. When she does, she realises she had inadvertently admired the protagonist, Steven Parker, for his charisma, chivalry and cherubic smile. He had literally swept her off her feet. In a weird way, she desired him, wanted (someone like) him in her life at this point. Not that everything was wrong with Joey. But then, everything wasn’t right either. In essence, she had pined for a whiff of fresh air, a whiff of girly love. A break from the monotonous. The book had made her feel giddy with excitement. And in due course, she had fallen in love with the character called Steven Parker.
The beep of her mobile breaks her reverie. Sarah shivers. I hope it isn’t him, I hope it isn’t him, she prays desperately. But it is him. “That’s simple,” the message reads, “you had put your business card into the book, remember?” Sarah rushes to her study table and grabbing the book, begins to flip the pages. And her business card falls from in between the pages. It, of course, has her number. She collapses on the floor.
***
Sarah goes about her life over the next two days in a trance. She finds everything illusory and begins to view things and events sceptically. She realises she isn’t willing to accept anything as it is, on face value. She contemplates tossing the book into fire but warns herself about possible repercussions of such a drastic act. She then tosses it into the attic, nonetheless. She panics each time a message arrives and sighs in relief when she realises it isn’t him.
But what arrives next is an email. From Steven Parker. Sarah has tears in her eyes. She doesn’t want to open it. But curiosity kills her. So eventually she does.
Subject : Coffee?
Sarah,
Steve here. Do not fear me. I am not here to do you harm. I am here only to help you. You ask how I found you. It’s your mind that spoke to me as you read the book. The book about me. No reader emanated such love, so full of warmth, for me, when they read the book. Your love and admiration for me felt truly special. It brought me to life.
Should I tell you what I read of your mind when your eyes scanned the pages? Will you believe me then? That I am no stalker? That I am a well-meaning man? Well then, here you go.
Remember that instant when I tell Fay, my lady love in the book, that I believed in her, no matter what? You cried there, didn’t you? Your tears wet the words, Sarah. And they stung me with such powerful adoration and longing.
How about that part of the story where I hold Fay’s hand, kiss her tender fingers, then her thin lips and then we make love? You had goosebumps there, didn’t you, Sarah? You wanted me to wrap you in my arms, didn’t you?
I can tell you many more. Your reading of the book is a life-altering experience for me, Sarah. It was an emotional whirlwind. It breathed life into me. I wanted to meet Sarah, feel her love and admiration for me for real. But more importantly, I wanted to give her my company. I do not know (and don’t intend to know either) what drove you to this point but I just want to let you know that I am out here, waiting for you to walk into my arms. Will you…? Will you meet me for coffee at 4 tomorrow evening at your favourite cafe (where you finished the book)? Please do. Pretty please.
Yours,
Steve
Sarah buries her face in her palms and weeps. Weeps over her destiny, weeps over what she has gotten herself into. She wonders what she has to do now. Should I tell Joey? No, she decides. She fears unnecessary complications. She heads home from work in a daze. She can’t eat, she can’t sleep. She feels blank. She doesn’t know what to expect. She doesn’t know what to do. She takes her phone and reads his mail again. The gentleness of it touches her. She views it in a new light. And for some weird reason, she wants to prove to herself again that all this wasn’t real. She decides she would go for the coffee date.
***
Sarah is at the cafe at 4. She stares blankly out of the window, watching life go by as she stays a passive spectator. “Sarah,” she hears the same voice again. It was him. Unmistakably him. Sarah swallows the fear that had risen to her throat. She stares at him as he seats himself in the chair opposite hers. His looks kill her softly.
“What would you have?” he asks.
“Nothing,” Sarah replies mechanically.
She no longer understands what is going on.
“Should we take a walk then?” he asks, rising up and offering to open the door.
Sarah nods and walks out in a trance.
His chivalry pleases her. They walk in silence for a while. He says many things but she cannot focus. They walk and walk and stop in front of an old museum.
“Say something, Sarah,” he speaks softly, “you haven’t said a word.”
Sarah turns and gazes into his deep eyes. Her eyes lock into his.
“You look so beautiful,” he tells her, “so magically beautiful.”
Sarah blushes. With his long fingers, he tucks a bunch of loose strands of hair behind her ears. Sarah shivers. Steven Parker takes her hand and holds it firmly. The next instant he places his lips on hers. But Sarah, suddenly, has a split-second realisation. Something is wrong, she says, something is wrong. Goddammit! The touch felt so plastic. The lips felt so lifeless. His eyes looked so vacant.
This is all an illusion, my desires are illusions, she screams.
All of a sudden, the air grows cold. Sarah realises there’s no one with her on the road. No Steven Parker. No one.
She looks about frantically. Up in the sky, the moon was already rising. Grey clouds drifted about.
Suddenly she remembers her mobile phone. She fishes it out of her bag and flips the phone open.
She frantically runs through her message inbox and her email looking for his SMS and email. They were gone. Magically.
Sarah sighs in relief. She gathers herself, pulls her cap over her head, hugs her bag tight and begins her long walk back home.