2. Coffee Interruptus-3
578 Words
Bernie stood doing her meagre washing-up, while Rupi sat at the kitchen table studying. They were an odd couple, thrown together two years ago at a fund-raiser for a regional animal shelter, manning, or rather womanning, a stall selling gifts and cards. Rupi had just begun studying for her veterinary nurse qualifications, while Bernie was newly graduated from university and had joined the ranks of the unemployed. Rupi was shy and steadfast, Bernie was vociferous and vivacious – both ignited on the subject of rabbits. Bernie was working to improve the rabbit facilities at the shelter and, listening to Bernie, Rupi realised that she didn’t know as much about rabbits as she felt she should.
Bernie had invited Rupi over to meet the rabbit ‘gang’ that she had at the time – a bunch of misfits and medically challenged individuals – which resulted in Rupi coming over to help out most evenings. In addition to being able to use the group’s ills for her project work, Rupi got to study somewhere quiet. Not to mention that getting out and making friends had never been easy, and this arrangement remedied many years of shyness-induced isolation.
It was also introducing an illicit substance into her otherwise dull routine.
Adrenalin.
Because, in exceptional circumstances, Bernie broke the law.
The circumstances always involved the liberation of suffering rabbits, and this had only happened once, but there was another event in the planning. If they could find reliable transport.
Rupi watched Bernie adding fresh hay to each of the three DIY litter boxes; she was finding it almost impossible to concentrate on her revision. It was very hard to deny the excitement. Bernie had a date tomorrow and this was momentous news in their lives. Well, OK, in her life. Rupi was an unreconstructed romantic, a hopeless cause according to her closest cousin, and the only person in the whole family to be held spellbound by Grandma’s stories of forbidden love and arranged, slow-building, passion. She modelled her whole ‘Look’ on the traditional fluttering veils of yesteryear, Bollywood classics or Princesses of Legend – fervently believing that, eventually, something had to rub off on her mundane life.
So, when it came to affairs of the heart, the temptation of vicarious thrills was too great to resist.
‘What will you wear tomorrow?’ she asked Bernie tentatively.
Bernie threw the sack of hay back into the broom cupboard which actually served duty as a rabbit supplies storage area. She leant against the door and looked down at her holey socks, faded leggings and snagged, baggy jumper.
‘I hadn’t thought about it, really...I mean, it’s just a coffee, and if I get too dressed up he might think I’m, you know, too keen or...have expectations.’
To Rupi, who would never approach such encounters without expectations, this attitude made her shake her head in despair.
‘No, Bernie, you’re wrong. If you look good, you feel good. You should be, you know, attractive but just out of reach.’
‘Rupi, you’re such a romantic. He’ll probably turn out to be a psychopath.’
With a sudden dramatic gasp, Bernie clasped her throat, ‘What have I done? I have no idea what I’ve done! Who falls for someone’s voice? It’s ridiculous! Oh, Rupi! Rupi, I need you to be my wing man!’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well,’ said Bernie thinking hard as she sat opposite her friend, ‘I’m not actually sure. I think it means back-up. I mean, would you, you know, come with me; join us, I mean, like a chaperone?’
Rupi struggled; insatiable curiosity did battle with the indignity of being the third wheel.
Insatiable curiosity won.
‘OK,’ she said, then added with artistic cunning, ‘but only if you let me do your make-up.’
***
- Writer
