Mr. Brandolini's Assignment

An Excerpt from Jürgen Lilienthal's Diary, 19.2.2014

 ‘Sorry,’ I said, but it came out weird and hoarse because I hadn’t used my voice in a while. I cleared my throat and was about to say it again but by that time she had already turned around and was paying for her coffee.

 She got her coffee and then she stood aside near the coffee bean machine, blowing on it while I ordered and paid. The cashier was mean but he gave me change without me having to beg for it. My sundae looked very good. When I turned away from the counter, Leena was standing there, idly swirling her stirrer around.

 ‘Mind if I join you?’ she said, and I knew from her tone that she wasn’t expecting me to mind. And I didn’t.

 ‘Sure,’ I said.

 She raised her eyebrow.

 ‘Sure as in sure you mind, or sure as in sure I can join you?’

 Her top button was unbuttoned and under her reindeer-shaped pendant I could see the tops of her breasts ------ what am i writing

‘I mean sure you can join me,’ I said. Or at least I think I must’ve said something along those lines.

 We took a table near the glass wall, the one that had that gorgeous view of the car park and, once you looked past the ditch filled with dead leaves, the main thoroughfare of campus and the football field. It was very romantic.

 ‘I’m Leena,’ she said bravely as we sat.

 ‘Jürgen,’ I said. ‘Nice to meet you.’

 ‘Afraid I can’t say the same,’ she said. ‘It’s too early to tell.’

 It was one of those situations where an erection would be the worst possible thing to have but it’s the only thing you can feel coming, instead of a witty reply to a beautiful girl voluntarily having coffee with you, alone and unsupervised. I put my bag on my lap.

I think she’s waking up

‘I don’t set my standards too high,’ I said, poking at the ice-cream in my sundae.

She narrowed her eyes as she sipped her coffee.

‘I don’t know whether to be relieved or insulted…?’

‘A bit of both.’

She put her cup down and I like to think, even today (even though she denies it), that she was impressed by me. I daresay I’m a better conversationalist than most males my age.

 ‘So…Jürgen. You’re German?’

 ‘Yeah.’

She said I didn’t have much of an accent. I told her I’d been in India since I was 14, in Bangalore before Chennai, and accents were easy to lose if you wanted to lose them, and that I was only half-German. She said I didn’t get much brown in my genes. I agreed. She asked me what I was doing on the IIT campus.

 ‘Spicmacay,’ I told her. She nodded.

 ‘Same.’

 She looked out of the window and I looked at the shape of her nose and her earrings. She was wearing these huge, wooden blue and red ugly danglers with a yellow, low-cut top. She tells me today that she was going through a ‘contrast phase’. She also had an awfully horrendous patchwork Indian handbag thing.

 ‘What’re you having?’ she said, as I took a bite of my sundae.

 ‘Uh…a Dark Passion,’ I said.

 She looked me in the eye and she grinned, for the first time in fifteen minutes.

 ‘Mind if I share some?’

 I pushed the glass and spoon towards her.

 ‘Go ahead.’

 She had a spoonful of the sundae.

 ‘Mm. That brownie goes deep.’

 I took the glass back.

 ‘It’s very moist,’ I said seriously. ‘Soft and wet.’

 She was pressing her lips together. I think I won her approval then, and we were friends. In almost three years, we’ve progressed from ‘friends’ to just somehow existing within each other’s spheres and not questioning it, not labelling ourselves as ‘best friends’ because that brings a lot of social responsibility. And yes, I would give anything to date Leena Mathew, but she wouldn’t  and that’s okay. Wouldn’t date me, I mean. I feel like the word ‘date’ trivializes it though. ‘Date’ is what Nina and Ben do. I don’t want to do that. I just want to be her significant other. And maybe I already am, just not in the romantic way. I can still pumice her feet when she’s too sick to move and she still pretends like she’s interested in my kites, so I guess we love each other but she wouldn’t have sex with me…which is fine, if you think about it.

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