Read Online Ode to Lata by Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla - Free Book Online Page A

quality that I could not quite put my finger on but I recognized as being the same as in my father’s pictures. Both had that timelessness about them. The kind that would elicit a soft gasp from a picture that escaped from an old box and skittered to the floor. The topography of handsomeness. Plains and curves in a face that stirred the eyes that looked at them. One could not help but hope when looking at such a face that Nature had been benevolent enough not to stop right there. A face this beautiful had to have been blessed with a disposition just as gratifying. But I knew from experience that Mother Nature never did have a reputation for being quite so generous.
    In the waiting room, his mother, surprisingly steeled, had told me that Richard had jaundice. Worry was written all over her face, but if she had cried any tears, no one had been witness to them. Her strength both angered and awed me.
    Looking down, I realized that the pallor in his face had done nothing to discredit his looks. And this, much to my guilt, embittered me. Maybe it’s because I’d always considered his looks a weapon that he had been able to use against me. He had always been undefeatable there.
    Jesus! Just thinking about all those times that I had to stand by him and listen to everyone – from my own friends to other hopefuls – coo about how cute he was, completely glazing over me. And him, immodestly basking in their compliments and brazenly undressing them with his eyes while I had stood right there, right next to him, dissolving within.
    Their memory made me want to claw at his face and rip away those features from it like some mask he might have been wearing. To demonically mutilate the attributes in his face that he, and others like him had held up as a mantle over the likes of me.
    And then there was that conflicting, simultaneous urge to touch him with every ounce of tenderness I possessed. Always this war within me.  Part of me wanting to hit him. And part of me just wanting to cry. Most of the time, it was that later urge that overcame and suppressed me – I was back in for the haul.
    I was tempted to run my finger down his stubbled face, to touch his closed eyes and feel the unusually long curl of their lashes against my fingertips. The bridge of his nose and the curves of his lips. But I hesitated for fear of waking him, disrupting the moment. There had been so much chaos. So much anguish. The arguments. The public scenes.  I just wanted to stand there with him in front of me and for there to be some peace. No words. No promises. No defenses.
    Six years had gone by and I was there still standing at his bedside in some hospital because he just might have literally fucked his life away, while I had spent nights with nothing more than my fantasies of him. Nights when my body had cried out for him, ached, as if every nerve ending had become a gaping mouth. Nights when I had felt something much deeper than a yearning.
    Where were all those people he had fucked now?  Only I stood there. Devoted. Praying. Stealing a few moments that his mother and siblings had been kind enough to allow me as they waited outside. 
Everybody uncertain. Still running tests. Hard to say how long they would have to keep him here.
    What if he tested positive?
    I went through the motions, questioning and yet uncertain if I wanted to hear the answers.
How many times have you fucked without a condom? When was the last time you did that? Who was he? Did you even know him? God! What were you thinking? Oh, no, never mind, don’t tell me.
    The anger festered within me again. I started to feel sick. In my mind, I could hear his answers and I wanted to drown him out and vociferate. 
Fuck you!  You did this to yourself! I told you so, and now see what you’ve gotten yourself into! Should have stuck with me. Let me love you instead of fucking, fucking, fucking every goddamn slut like yourself! You deserve this, and I hope that you suffer just like I have for the