The Cheap Boyfriend

He was cheap, and not in the way you would think. He didn’t grope me in the middle of the road, or crack explicit jokes at my expense. Instead he just took my money. And though we had bigger issues at hand – for example,  was I actually wasting my time with a man who thought he was doing me a favour by being my invisible, lets-not-tell-anyone-about-us boyfriend. Right now, I was more concerned about the fact that he was pocketing the change brought to me by the pizza guy for the pizza I ordered. What did that say about him? That was my Rs 100, you moocher, I thought in my head as he casually grinned as he neatly filed the note in his wallet and gave me a look that said, “you think I am adorable, right?” I almost barfed my pizza on his face but I had to admit I used to think that once, long time ago, when I first met him. I was in love like fools usually were – I did all the work and got nothing in return. Not a thank you, not an I love you, not even I am glad to see you. It was always about how lucky I was to even meet him. And I bought that theory – maybe because I needed this man to make me believe I was exactly like my portrait in my head -- I, the princess of darkness, the queen of sunshine, the biggest bitch that ever lived, and the gem of this earth. Me, who was every woman a man wanted and every woman aspired to be. I was myself. Hence, I needed a man to make me feel worth all my delusions. But this man was robbing me blind. And I had to get rid of him before I was standing on the street as a bag lady – maybe a Fendi bag lady, but a bag lady nevertheless. I had to kill him. I wanted to see my fingers lined with little red pieces of his flesh. I wanted to see him writhe in front of me. I just wanted to see him suffer the way I was suffering.

Did I deserve what he was giving me? Surely not. But then, I didn't pay attention to that crippled beggar who wanted nothing but a mere rupee. And I had screamed at my mother who woke me up so lovingly in the morning. Me, who lied, and then swore by my father to defend that lie. May be this was all part of some joke played on me by the only woman above me, Mother Nature. Or was suffering from a mid-life crisis at the tender age of 25 and was blaming him for it. I had seen dead rats in better shape than me. I was scared now. I had to work my way through this. Isn't that what life was all about? Just getting by. You spend your childhood trying to bag the snazziest plaything. You spend your adolescence trying to be popular. You work you twenties trying to find someone to love and who loves you back and the rest of your life trying to hang on to them. For a woman, it’s tougher to find someone who would be addicted to her. Men suffer from commitment phobia, along with admitting he loves you phobia, and then letting you go if he doesn't phobia. Women suffer from a different kind of phobia, letting themselves be treated well phobia. Anyway, I had to think of a master plan to get out of this rut. I had to start afresh.

I had to plan it well then. But I was a good planner, I had often been told. In fact, one employer had actually told me I could be a great secretary, when all I wanted to be was a writer. But anyways, I never did take hints well. I would plan it to perfection and use some form of murder that would be classified as suicide, or maybe I would just murder him in cold blood and then turn myself in. Wouldn’t I be a celebrity then? And then I would pen my bestseller in the prison and it would sell millions, maybe even win a Pulitzer. I had to stop dreaming.

Was I being too irrational, thinking about killing a man just because he took some money from me? No. I don’t think so. I had to do it for womankind. He was too dangerous to be left out to graze, because he would then move on to the next gullible victim – squeezing out not only cash, but every shred of self respect in their aching-for-him bodies. So he needed to be got rid of – just to save other women who took his offbeat, aloof charm as a sign he needed to be tamed by them. But he had a way with words. He could say something so horrifying like “you are not pretty” and make it feel like he was doing you a favour – saving you from getting sucked in by the feeling of being vain. He used to make me wait for endless hours, buy him the Nike shoes he couldn’t afford, woo my best friends and rendezvous with them behind my back, kiss my pretty friends in museums while spouting sweet nothings like “you make me feel safe” and even make me believe it was only him who was nice enough to hang with me.

No, this time I had to see things through. I would kill him and make it look like self defense. Maybe I would say he was trying to rape me. But then nobody would believe me. My friends themselves would testify against me with stories of how I had been easy all my life – running after boys in school, stealing boyfriends in college, being the first to get kissed – this girl was capable of anything. It would be better not to take that route. I just had to go and do it, and think of the consequences later. Would I do the deed with a knife or scissors? Maybe I would just shoot him, but I didn’t have a gun. Yes, I would push him off the balcony of his home. It was 15 floors, and I thought it would be enough to finish the mad man’s life. Yes, that was a good plan, or maybe just a possible one.

As I climbed the 15 floors to his apartment – I never took lifts, they strangled me—I imagined his shocked face as I would push him off. He would never imagine I would do something like this – I, who was such a slave to him. It will be fun, and so I was smiling like a fool along with gasping for breath when I knocked on his door. It was open, and I pushed it to find the big bunch of Sunday papers lying inside. As I walked in, I was shocked by how quiet it was. He never liked quiet. He often hummed something under his breath just so he wasn’t surrounded by quiet. Maybe he knew that in the silence, he would hear his inner self telling him what a supreme jerk he was. My smile grew wider. I called his name, and there was no answer. And then there he was -- Lying on the floor, with a sweet smile and a broken beer bottle in his belly. He was dead, and someone had got there before me. She sat just looking at the body, staring at it, and kept playing with the blood on her hands. Her eyes registered my being and then went back to staring at the smiling corpse. And then as calmly as she had been sitting, she got up and walked out of the door.

My smile now became a hysterical laugh. And when I was done, my sides were aching but my heart was healed. He was dead and the women of the world were safe again. Did I want to say goodbye? Hah, even in his death, he looked smug, as if he expected me to beat my chest and bawl my eyes out. Maybe I would cry later, but only tears of joy. I opened the door and saw the newspapers on the mat. I picked them up and tossed it on the dead body. Let him read them. He had always been more interested in the world than me.