Read Online Seven Shades of Grey by Vivek Mehra - Free Book Online Page B

go shop for the few things I need. We should be back home close to four and then go meet her.’
    Now why didn’t I think of that?
    Simple! I was too caught up in the commotion that numbed my thinking capacity, one that engulfed me - focusing singularly on meeting a chat friend in the flesh, too lost to find a simple solution to a simple problem. So simple!
    And so I logged into Messenger the next day to leave her a message. To my surprise she was online. Without wasting any more time, I sent her a message. I told her about the shopping spree Dolly and I were to take the coming Friday. I was tactful, my sole aim being clear, the meeting had to take place. If I projected my excitement there was a good chance that I might not be made privy to information that would help me find her. If my probing appeared to be even remotely fishy, there was a good chance that Bindu would merely go scurrying for cover a lot like women in chat had done before.
    She was apprehensive about meeting me - she did have a family member with her and three kids in tow - scared too of the prospect of being face to face with a stranger, one who had been in chat with her just a few times. I could understand all of this and more. I could be a murderer or a rapist, a psychopath or a child molester or just all of these rolled into one. Then again my honesty, and the fact that I insisted on Dolly’s presence should such a meeting take place, encouraged her to divulge her car make, color and license-plate number.
    I had enough to try to track her down and nothing to fire my imagination of her looks. My diplomacy had never given me an opportunity to extract information on a physical description - nothing to suggest her height, her hair-length, her weight, the color of her eyes.
    Color of her eyes?
    What in heaven’s name was I going to do with that? Would I go peering into every female face that crossed my path, or would I stand slap-able distant away from strange women, desperately trying to gauge the color of their eyes? There were surely easier ways to commit suicide.
    Friday morning seemed to take forever to arrive although it had been just a couple of days from the day Bindu messaged me - giving me a rough map supposedly leading to hidden treasure, a chat-friend-in-the-flesh. I know I tried to keep my mind very calm and outwardly, I did appear that way. Inside me a thousand butterflies took flight, a thousand drummers pounding their way to glory appeared where my heart supposedly was, and yet my face gave away nothing.
    My pet emotion Confusion flirted with me, what with Dolly getting more excited than I was at the impending meeting. In a scheming, diplomatic way, I had tried to dissuade her from allowing me to meet a strange woman. I must have been testing the waters, a lot like a swimmer tests the water-temperature before an early morning swim. She brushed it away almost with disdain, stating that there was nothing wrong in meeting a friend, even if she was first introduced on the Internet. And I was back to being excited.
    For some strange reason, Dolly was more accepting of this issue than I was. I knew Bindu had a husband, I was not very sure if he was coming with her or if she had discussed such a meeting with her husband or not. And yet, she had given me her car number and the time when she was going to be in my neighborhood. The butterflies flying, drummers pounding feeling returned with relentless enthusiasm whenever I tried to rationalize the situation or think about the ominous meeting.
    We finished the shopping early by every stretch of the imagination. A woman let loose in a shopping mall was prone to gorging quite like the lioness who gorged on her first kill after a few days of abject hunger. But Dolly had been swift, like a Thomson’s gazelle prancing away, aware that any slack in speed would mean the jaws of a cheetah swiftly sucking out the last breath of life. And the drummers were relentless that day. The heat and humidity of a Bombay