Chapter Five

It came about on this particular evening when I had to drop her (Libby) home because Kamal had gotten himself involved in an accident with his car and another vehicle on the way while driving into town to pick her up. It wasn't a total write-off, but the car had to be towed to a repair shop. Kamal himself was not injured. Other than for injured pride, perhaps that, yes, he was quite a bit shaken up in that regard.

He'd called to inform Libby of the accident and advised her to take the train or get a taxi home. I happened to be sitting right there next to her when the call came in. "No need for the train or cabbies, I told her, I'll take you home." Of course, she protested.

"I can't let you do that," she said, "This is not your responsibility."

"Is this your brother's, Kamal's, responsibility, and his only? And who made it out to be so, who was it that decides that: nobody must ever take you home except your brother?"

"No, no, it's not like that, it's just that I have never done it before. I mean, Kamal has always been the one who drives me to school and back. No one else has ever done that, and I hardly ever ride the bus, nor have I ever taken a taxi. Except for my dad's car, of course. He's a taxi operator, you know?"

"Well." I said, "Today is your lucky day, sort of. I mean, I'm neither a cabbie nor do I operate the bus, but I will get you home safely."

The rush hour traffic was as it has always been?-?slow. We went along with the flow. Libby took the opportunity in the slow-moving traffic to venture into telling me more about herself and the family. Kamal, she said, was having a hard time with his newly wedded wife. "They'd gotten married just over a year ago. And immediately went to work, aunting me up." They're now expecting their second child, but all is still not well with them. Selma had arrived from India for the expressed purpose of marriage to Kamal. It was an arrangement. "She's quite a good and decent girl, a proper homemaker and all.

But Kamal is still not satisfied with her, it would seem. He said she doesn't know how to please a man. I suppose that means sexually," she added. "He said she's old-fashioned and boring. The problem is, he hasn't been able to articulate the trouble he has been having with her in a way that could make dad and mom understand why he seemed to be so unhappy ever since he got married."

"But he tells you this?"

"Yes, he tells me everything. We have always had a good and open line of communication like that, Kamal and I."

While she talked on, she was playing toss-up with my right hand. She'd picked it up off the transmission shift lever and thereafter virtually claimed it as her very own. For the entire duration of the drive from downtown Montreal to her house on the West Island, it was hers. The golden setting sun on the horizon makes her face seem encircled by a halo every time I turn around and look at her. She'd picked up my hand, my right hand, and placed it palm-to-palm in her left hand. Then covered it over with her right hand.

As we talked, she would work on the hand, from tossing it up and down, patting it, rubbing it, onto interlocking fingers. Both hers and mine. Finger to finger. She rested my hand on top of her leg at the point of the knee, but as time went by. It slowly inched up her thigh, and soon it was right there in the groin area. She was absentmindedly tracing her fingers all over my hand. She then ran her finger over my fingernails. That's when he spoke up again. Yeah, Bubbles, that was when I heard him say: "Hey, check this out, she's checking for jagged edges, dude, you'd better not be flunking on the manicure routine thing?"

Before long, my hand and fingers were working on tracing the inner thigh, and she noticeably signed off the radio dial?-?her radio dial. The conversation slowed. Her eyes closed; her head tilted backward to hit the headrest on the seat. Her lips parted. Gradually, the gate opened and closed, opened, and closed. Then opened again, wider. Then it closed, opened, and stayed open. I moved in slowly and slid into her hot, throbbing wetlands. "Ahhh?" She exhaled, covered her mouth with the back of her hand, and bit on the knuckle of the arched middle finger. Bubbles again chimed in: "Yes, mi fren, mi good fren, we back a street again." He started chirping in my inner ear.

"Don't you start that shit again," I said, in my inner voice.

Was it her idea, or were their parents' hands there at work? Still, trying to control her at twenty-four years of age? The latter is my best bet.

Kamal and I arrived at the family home at almost the same time. He drove home the delivery cube truck from the store. Said the car will still be in the garage for a couple of days yet, to get the repairs done. I pulled the car up behind the truck that had just pulled up and parked minutes before we (Libby and I) got there. Libby pointed out the truck to me during the drive-in while we were still on St Charles Boulevard on the route in. It was just before they turned onto another street leading to their house off Brunswick Boulevard, where we stopped and parked.

"Look," she had said, "that's our truck, Kamal must be using it as a replacement for the bang-up car." She was right.

"Who's this person?" Kamal wanted to know before I even got out of the car. I'd stopped the car alongside the truck and was positioning myself for a parallel park. But before I could begin backing up, Libby wanted to get out and quiz her brother about what had happened. With the accident and all.

"Kamal, this is my friend Manley," she chirps.

"What kind of a friend are you?" He asked right off the cuff.

"Hi Kamal, I'm Manley, Libby's a friend of mine, and I'm mighty happy to meet you. I've heard a lot about you, and would sure like to get to know you a bit better too."

"What kind of friend are you to my sister?" He asked again while quickly pulling back his hand after taking and shaking mine.

"We're the kind of friends who happen to meet and sometimes share a chat over a meal at school, and?" This was getting way too uncomfortable for me, so I bade them farewell and parted? We were to meet again, though.

To be continued.�

WritingElk.