The first time Sungitha met my friends was at my thirty first birthday party that I held at my condo. I had known her almost six months now. I couldn’t figure out how I should introduce her to the other guests, all of whom knew each other. She wasn’t my girlfriend and she sure wasn’t my fiancée although we’d often talked about marriage. It wouldn`t even be appropriate to say that she is my friend. I guess I`d have to settle with addressing her as Sungitha for now.
I asked Sungitha to arrive early so that she could help me set up and so she could be properly introduced to everyone else. I didn’t leave her side until most of the guests had arrived. But if I’d thought she would now mingle with my friends I was wrong as whenever I saw her again it seemed her focus was solely on Jacqueline, the four year old daughter of Elizabeth and Sam.
The face of my birthday cake was made to look like the cover of the first Doom Fighters. The idea for this cake was apparently Frank’s while the cake itself was made by Elizabeth. I could not take my eyes off the cake especially the picture of the five muscle bound members of the Doom Fighters with their bazooka-like guns. I continued to stare at the picture even after I had blown the fire on the thirty one candles and had made a wish.
“You love my cake or what?” said Elizabeth.“I spent so much time trying to make it look just like the drawing on the game.”
“When are we going to cut the cake?” said Sungitha.
“I don’t know if we are,” I said. “It looks so good the way it is.”
“You don’t want to eat my cake?” said Elizabeth, her hands on her hips.
“No, no don’t take it that way. The thing is I just love this cake. I love it so much that I think I don’t want to cut it.”
“What no cake?” said Frank.
“Look there’s enough food here for everyone, including a really nice cheese cake and lots of ice cream,” I said once the cake was in the freezer. “ You won’t go hungry tonight and you will get your sugar fix.”
“Jacqueline is going to be so disappointed,” said Elizabeth. “ She was so looking forward to having some of the cake. What are you going to do with it anyway if you’re not going to eat it?”
“I think I might want to save it in the freezer or maybe we will eat some tonight, but for now I can’t imagine destroying it.”
A little later when I was smoking with Frank and Mike on the balcony and no one else was within earshot, I told them about how I had invited Melissa out for the party.
“After what she wrote to you?” said Mike.
“So what did she say?” said Frank.“ Is she coming?”
“She didn’t write back,” I said
When dinner was served I sat next to Sungitha. After dinner I played the Doom Fighters IX game. I’m not sure what Sungitha did after dinner. She definitely didn’t take a turn on the game, although it’s possible that she watched us play.
It was about half past ten when there came a series of hard, angry knocks on the door.
“Open up you fool!” came a familiar, but drunken voice.
“Can somebody see who it is,” I said. All my attention was on the game and I wasn’t going to pause it just to open the door.
“Melissa!” said Mike.“ How nice to see you after so long.”
I glanced over to my right and there was Melissa walking toward me. I put the game on pause.
“Melissa, glad you could make it,” I said with a smile. My smile left my face as quickly as it had come when I realized that Melissa seemed not to be in a cheerful mood and was walking briskly toward me. “Is something wrong?”
I really liked reading this story. It had a nice flow to it…but the ending sort of left me hanging. I feel like it didn’t quite end. But yes, I did enjoy it and the characters were real and vivid. Well done, Mr S!