Here's another English assignment I got from school, only more recent. It starts right after the main character, hiding behind a newspaper (classic!), realizes that Anna (the woman he'd chased across half the globe) was apparently involved with someone else. Now I don't know if the main character was Nicholas Coleridge himself, as that is never explicitly mentioned in the original text. But I assumed it to be him, even though I didn't explicitly mention that either, rather suggesting it through a few not-so-subtle hints. I just hope this doesn't go against site regulations...

Of All Things...

I continued hiding behind my paper, sweating profusely as I did so. Cornered, that's what I was: after having followed her all the way from London to Jaipur through Turkey, having turned up at exactly the same hotel as herself, there was simply no way that she would NOT take me for some deranged stalker. Revealing myself at this point was out of the question, especially if that was her boyfriend with her. No doubt it'd just cause a big hassle.

So there I sat, hidden behind a newspaper, pretending to read while eavesdropping on their conversation. From it, I could easily deduce that they were indeed romantically involved. It was a pain listening to it, but what choice did I have? If I made the slightest move that'd expose my face I ran the risk of being discovered. At most I turned a page or two so as to not appear suspicious. If I could just hold out till they were gone, I could slip out of here without even the slightest clue to my presence.

When they finally did leave, I put the paper down on the table at let out a big sigh of relief. Wiping the sweat off my forehead, I noticed two big wet stains on the daily where my hands had been, just how much had I been sweating?! With that much water lost, I seriously needed something to drink, so I raised my hand to get the waiter's attention.

"Mango juice, and lots of it!"

It was an awful day, to say the least. Not that anything was particularly bad about it, aside from that fiasco in the morning. It was such a blatant and miserable failure that I couldn't get it out of my head no matter how I tried. How stupid was I, really? What were the chances of some random woman, who I'd only met once before in my office, would possibly fall for me? I was 27 years old and she was about to go to university, she couldn't have been much more than 19, perhaps 21 at most. The age difference was almost ten years! What was I thinking?!

To try and rid my mind of all these deprecating thoughts, I decided to go out for some sightseeing. For all the times that I'd been to India, I'd never gotten the chance to visit Jaipur, a city known for its beauty, so I might as well make the most of my stay here and try to enjoy myself. Thus, after a quick shower, a left to take a look at all the amazing sights this city had to offer. Suffice to say, despite all its wondrous sights and the remarkably pleasant weather, it was far from enjoyable.

I spent the whole day going from one place to the next, hoping every next place would relieve me of this hopeless state of misery. It didn't help, though it did make me realize one thing. It happened as I was sitting on a rather crowded bus on my way to my very last sight before leaving. Suddenly it struck me that I had yet to check out from the hotel and that all of my things were still left in my room. Thus I would have to go back, which meant I was at significant risk of being exposed. What a perfect nightmare scenario!

I didn't spend as much time looking at the palace I was visiting as I did on trying to come up with a good excuse to my presence here in Jaipur. I could always say that I'd gotten a call from one of my superiors who'd told me to get over to India quickly, while I was still in Asia, to report about some big thing or other here. But then the question was, what interesting was there here? There was that chess master who'd won some award, true, but he lived in the other end of the country! Why would I then be in Jaipur if my interviewee resided in Chennai? It was such an obvious lie!

Although I could say that I'd taken a day off since I'd been so stressed with writing and collecting material for my (nonexistent) article in Turkey, and so had chosen to come to Jaipur for some relaxation before moving on to the next task. It would mean that I'd be building a lie upon another lie, but it sounded convincing enough, so what the hell.

Though why would I be at the same hotel as her?

Mere coincidence?

That didn't cut it.

I could add that I didn't like living too lavishly (which wasn't a lie), which is why I chose this place. That narrowed the possibilities down quite a bit and significantly increased the chance of us winding up at the same hostel, which made my "explanation" seem much more plausible. Especially if I added that I'd leave for Chennai the next day, which would reinforce the notion that I hadn't come to Jaipur for her. While perhaps not watertight, I couldn't come up with anything better at the time, and so settled for that.

I returned to the hotel at around nine PM and guess who I ran into? Exactly. It was good of me to have prepared that lie, otherwise I might've ended up in a very uncomfortable situation. The good thing of being prepared beforehand is that then I'll have the luxury of practice, which in this case meant that I could tell my lie without the slightest hint of falseness.

She never suspected a thing.

Ten years later, the seemingly impossible happened: I stumbled upon her once again. Or rather, she stumbled upon me.

It was the strangest of meetings. Although she hadn't seen me more that twice, at that one time in my old office at Carnaby Street and then in that embarrassing encounter in India, she'd still managed to spot me amongst hundreds of other nondescript people… in Germany of all places!

Of all things… she'd bumped into me… in Germany… exactly ten years after that terrible fiasco…

This was just weird.

However odd it may have been, we sat down at a café not far away from the fair itself and caught up on all that'd happened since, even though we barely knew each other. She was more than a little surprised when she found out who I was. At first she didn't want to believe it, but when I started counting up all my articles, I managed to convince her. Only this time I wasn't lying.

She said she'd read some of my articles in Vanity Fair and Easy Living, as well as some from the Sunday Telegraph. I was a bit surprised that she knew of me, and glad as well, I wasn't exactly among the most famous of journalists after all.

Talking about the past, I decided to come clean about the Indian ordeal, thinking that as it had been ten years already, she wouldn't mind too much.

I couldn't have been more right.

She laughed hysterically at it, drawing the attention of every single person in the room, I felt embarrassed beyond words, though at the same time relieved that she'd taken it so lightly. I can't believe how she did that anyway, most people would've left by now!

As our conversation carried on, she revealed that she was single at the time, having broken up with her boyfriend years ago. Instantly I saw my chance and I fully intended on capitalizing on it, ten years after my first try. So when I felt it appropriate, I snuck that little deciding question in at the near-end of our conversation.

"You doing something this evening?"

"No, why?"

Jackpot!