Continued...

And so I wasn't anything less than flummoxed when she walked up to me, to the traditional loser's table and offered, "Umm, Are you a writer, babe?"

She was staring at my unblemished, starched-white kurta. I was offered a choice: go the conservative way and answer to the point, or,

"I suppose you've been intimate once with a writer whose pool-table skills left much to be desired. I suggest you quit generalizing and grow some brains," drowning what was left in the pitcher.

"I suppose a sore loser and moronic defensiveness will always be joined at the hip."

"What would you know about soreness?" I said this in a scathing way but I suspect it wasn't the riposte I was aiming for.

Yet, contrary to the image burned at that moment on my mind - of her skewering me with a pitying lance-glance, of me being impaled yet again on the loser's altar, this time by a wide-eyed goddess who had no business lathering my wounds with red pepper - she reacted rather unpredictably, generously. (Which, on hindsight, should have been rather predictable by this time, but I'm a latecomer even to the Eureka theatre, to the absurd drama of forehead-slapping insight.)

She looked thoughtful. "You're right. Here I am, a pampered little bitch not lacking for anything or anyone, so how could I possibly know about, what was that word? Yeah, soreness. Why don't you tell me about it then?"

I was gone. Did I mention that before? No, so here it is. I was beguiled, captivated, entranced. Clammy palms, parched throat, a dull metronome against my right temple - all the vital signs of infatuation. Or jealousy.

I said, "To answer your question - which once again shows traces of generalization - allow me to paint a portrait of you in words. Will you tell me your name?" She sat across me on a high-backed rickety stool, usually preserved for jeer-mangled losers - the unwitting, unwilling jesters of the rarefied baize.

And she said, "I'm Suzanne. You can call me Suzanne."