Previously:
Chapter 1: Two Lives
Chapter 2: The Spirit of Solitude
Chapter 3: Plausible Distraction
“Dad, did you forget your email password again?”
I was circling a particularly interesting classified ad on the newspaper. It seemed just right for her. He was also a divorcee of three years and was just 35 still. Decent pedigree with a decent job. He would do, right?
“Dad?”
“Yeah, CC?”
She did not appreciate me calling her Choco-Chip anymore. Although that was just the name she had picked for herself when she was barely 5 years old. She never liked the name her mother gave her. And now she did not like the one she had chosen for herself.
“Did you forget your email password again?”
Had I? Not really. It was still the same. I remembered it. Rationality had made sure last time that I did not forget it again — that I could not forget it again. He is very handy sometimes.
“No, baby.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah”
She was coming down now. I never liked the way she just ran down, skipping a step each time. I kept telling her to be more careful. She could slip again — and, god forbid, fall again.
“I just saw your browsing history, Dad. You seem to have been going all over the internet trying to setup a new account.”
She had her hands on her hips when she confronted me with that question. It was her Superwoman Pose or Wonderwoman Pose or some such cartoon character’s stance. I was not much of a cartoon lover, though. I never could remember if Tom was the cat or the mouse. It was her mother who used to be the expert — she knew every character those people in America put on children’s TV.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, yeah. I created a new account. The old one has my name in it. Too publicly recognisable.”
“Isn’t that the point of it, dad?”
“You know my name comes with baggage.”
“Baggage? Is that a word you picked up on TV?”
I had, indeed. I think it was that insipid, intolerable show about the guy who finally met his children’s mother in season eight thousand. It was such a waste of everyone’s time. Of my time, which I generously kept giving to it.
“Why do you need a new account for, Dad?”
“Just.”
She walked over to the sofa and sat down next to me. I knew the look on her face. It was the one she gave me when she was genuinely concerned about me, but was in too much of a hurry to be polite. There was that slight irritation boiling behind her eyes, which would, given more time to fester, burst into a flame of frustration that I would not be able to contain easily.
With a hand on my shoulder, she asked the dreaded question.
“Dad, look at me. And be honest, okay? Are you back to watching porn again? Are you paying away your retirement money for that shit?”
I think I managed a fairly shocked face — just sufficiently hurt without being over-dramatic.
“Then what is it, Dad?”
I think she bought that. Or maybe, she was switching to her good cop mode now. This girl watches too much TV too — except she never watches it on the actual damned machine. Everything is on her phone or laptop or whatever that screen of hers is called.
Rationality had warned me about her questions. He had told me exactly which questions to expect. And now CC was following the script to the letter. Rats had, in his own words, cracked her code.
“I needed a new one to setup that anonymous blog I have been meaning to start. You want to check it out? I already have a new post.”
From the way she raised her eyebrows and popped out her eyes and the slow nods with the downturned lips I gathered that she was impressed. I had been talking about the anonymous blog all through the past year, but had never really gotten around to create one.
She had been pushing me to do it every other week, but I found an excuse every single time. She even volunteered to set it up for me, but I told her I would not write a word in a space that I had not created for myself. She understood me enough to know I was not just saying something to shut her up. She knew I would not touch the blog she made for me.
“Wow, Dad. Nice. I will read it on the train today.”
“I will send you the link, then.”
“Yeah, do that.”
Rationality had been right. Clearing the history would have been too suspicious. Instead, he asked me to go with plausible distraction. “Step one. Give her what she wants but does not expect right now.” The blog was a clear winner.
“That’s some good work, Dad. So proud of you!”
She hugged me with that. It almost crushed me to follow through with Rats’s step two, then. CC hardly ever hugged me these days and I did not really want to ruin the moment now.
“But it has to be done,” he spoke up. Hi, Rats.
“I know,” I sighed.
“Did you say something, Dad?”
“No, no.”
“Okay. I am heading off to work now. Will definitely read your blog post. Don’t forget to send the link, okay?”
She got up and moved towards the steps again.
“Quick!” said Rats, “Before she gets on the steps.”
“CC, baby!”
She stopped and looked back. “Yeah, Dad?” She was smiling.
“Baby, there’s something I wanted you to see in the papers.”
Her smile vanished, her forehead wrinkled into a frown and she pushed her chin out. Wonderwoman pose was back on.
“Baby, this one looks decent. He has his own place too. Quite nearby.”
“Dad! I told you. I told you I am not interested.”
This was the price of Rats’s plausible distraction. Step two: give her something she doesn’t want too.
“Baby, it pains me to see you like this.”
And there came the rolling of the eyes. Rationality must have been feeling very proud of himself. And I was feeling…
“What, Dad? Like what?”
“Alone, single. You are young, baby. And you are beautiful. You should not be stuck in an old house with an old man who can no longer make his own pee without a machine helping him in the morning. Just…here…just have a look. Please.”
She ran up — two steps at a time. Rationality, Rationality.
“See, I told you so.”
“Yeah, yeah. Now she hates me.”
“She won’t peek into our emails, though.”
“Nor would she talk to me.”
“She will come around. We both know that.”
“Yeah.”
“Now, let’s finish that crossword. Come on.”
Rats loved crosswords — the cryptic ones, that is. He loved solving them and made me sit with him. “It will keep you sharp,” he said. I sighed and relented. I could use some plausible distraction too.
CC ran down the steps again, just as I was filling in 3 down. The word was CORPS.
“Dad?”
She was waiting at the foot of the steps, back hunched, thumbs pulling the straps of her backpack.
“Yeah, sweetie.”
“Why did you check out your book from the library again?”
“They had only one copy left. So, I brought it with me.”
“Why? We have loads of copies lying in the closet still.”
“Yeah, yeah. But this was from the library. People write things in books from a public library. They highlight things, underline things. I love going through that.”
“You could have gone through all that at the library too. Why did you bring it home?”
“You know why, baby. If the library doesn’t have a copy, someone looking for it might actually go buy it online. You know how this works, right? Something that is scarce is valuable.”
“Dad, someone who already knows about you is not the person we are trying to reach at the library. We talked about this. We are looking at the guy who has never read about you before. Doesn’t even know who you are. We are looking at the guy who has read Salman Rushdie and is coming to the library to find more authors like him.”
“No one is going to pick me like that.”
“We don’t know that. How many copies does the library have of your book? Four? Five? And you say this was the only copy left, right? Which means others are picking it up.”
I looked at Rationality in the glass top of the centre-table in front of me. He shrugged back. “Tell her,” he said.
“Dad?”
“They keep only one copy, baby.”
“Right. Do what you want, Dad.”
I nodded.
“You know what? I thought you would like it if you went back to the library. I thought it will cheer you up. Maybe it did. Maybe that’s why you are writing again. But this, Dad. This isn’t helping. Will you go there tomorrow and return the book?”
I nodded again.
“Okay.”
She walked over to where I was sitting and planted a quick kiss on my forehead.
“You be good, Dad. Write something nice?”
I nodded once more — this time with a smile.
“And keep off the porn.”
We both laughed to that. I wanted to hug her again then, but I was sure that was off for a lot of days now.
I looked at her as she made her way to the front door. She was young and beautiful still. She should get herself a good guy again.
Before closing the door, she looked back and smiled. It was a warm smile that made me smile too.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“You should log out of Gmail before closing the browser. You have one email waiting, by the way. I didn’t open it.”
I looked at Rationality in the centre-table again. He looked just as surprised as I was.
“And cool ID too. Treasure Aisle. Did you come up with that at the library?”
She did not wait for an answer. She shut the door and was off.
“So much for your plausible distraction.”
“She did say we have a mail, though. Focus on the silver linings.”
“Yeah, right.”
Treasure Aisle is a new original fiction series. In this story spanning two literary decades, the books in a public library will guide a retired one-hit-wonder-writer on an impulsive quest for finding a reason to love again.
The next chapter is out. You can read it here:
