Pants Down: Micro-Fiction

Lake Victoria, Entebbe

I don’t know about premonitions. I don’t think moments heat up from significant happenings. But, yes, you guessed right: I don’t know anything.

I am that kind of dunce that gets lucky. Yes, I get lucky, till I don’t.

Every good thing that has come my way jumps at me and I am too passive to resist a good thing or anything at all.

So a lady walks into my office at the nick of closing hour with a late application and profuse apologies and a low-cut blouse. Yes, low-cut blouse with her boobies pouring out.

Did I try to look away?

Madam, I said in a stiff voice. The day is over.

She bats her eyelids like Barbie and contorts her mouth like a toddler who got spanked. In two minutes, she reels her life to me. How she became a widow at 19. Mother at 20. Homeless at 24. Married again at 26. Divorced at 30. Divorced widow some few months ago. Job-seeker now.

Benevolence. The word suggests itself to me and I took in her application.

Minutes later, she is saying thanks to me in the most unusual way with her knees on the ground and her mouth full.

I was thinking through contrasting realities: my wife with whom I had not had sex in five months, a dirty kitchen sink and late evening motel sex.

Suddenly the door bolts open and she is there in person, my wife.