The Empty Guest Room

David and Clinton were both one time inhabitants of the corner garden room in our L shaped bungalow. The short end of the L protruded into the lawn, and had a lovely airy bedroom with steps leading down to the garden. Since it was on the ground floor it had naturally been set aside as a guest room.

Every week my brother Aidan brought home one of the hostel boys he boarded with in the city to our spacious suburban bungalow.

Daddy worked with a multinational and this king size mansion was one of the perks of working in a small town away from the exciting urban scene.

but Aidan was studying at a premier engineering institute so he had to find rooms downtown closer to his college campus. David and Clinton were in some of his classes and the trio had hooked up and shared a dorm room between the three of them, at the hostel. A fourth bed lay empty. Each boy was allowed to take turns in having one male guest over from time to time. Usually dad, or David's stepdad, or Clinton's brother or uncle spent a night there. Clinton's dad had died when he was in grade school.

David and Clinton were the two guests Aidan most frequently brought home. Aidan was very social and I had often found strange boys on our Veranda on successive weekends! One even claimed he had got lost in our huge home! Another asked if he could borrow a toothbrush. But David beat all the others at eccentricity by asking if he could wear my orange and black midi dress indoors! He was a closet cross dresser, dainty in stature, lithe and petite.Though he might have fitted into my clothes, without tearing the seams apart, I said a firm no. The charming humbug apologised prettily. "Darling you understand, I meant no harm." "Of course I understood. I was the harmless sibling, kid sister to all my brother's friends, little Reba. They didn't even look at me like I was a girl, though I was filling in nicely at fourteen, and quite feminine, and not at all ugly to look at. But Aidan's possessive streak, combined with my pathological reserve and shyness threw them off. I couldn't take flirting,I blushed, got tongue tied and looked horribly horribly red and embarrassed, like a dark red beetroot.

“You look so comical Ria darling,” David cooed, “with your eyes so wide and mouth open, you will swallow a fly”, he warned snarkily cackling, seeing my discomfiture around Aidan’s other dashing friend, Clinton.

While I was somewhat in my comfort zone with the cross dresser, Clinton, with his Apollo’s physique, mane of dark curls and warm brown eyes was another story. I contained and squashed my crush firmly by telling myself he was out of my league. He was! When Clinton was around, a parade of pretty girls, actually, a bevy of beautiful belles came calling. He usually arrived on Friday evening, and some girl or the other dropped in or drove by picking him up for a movie and dinner. Saturdays, I had the pleasure of gawking at him while blushing my signature beetroot red, while at a leisurely prolonged breakfast. Mom plied Clinton with cheese omelettes and coffee, and simpered and smiled till I gawked at her too! Another charming humbug, I thought, as I saw him pay mom his ham handed compliments. “Mrs. Bell, you make a mean omelette,” I mimicked him mentally. But I could acknowledge his candid charm, the conviction with which he enthusiastically praised the ladies. He always greeted me with a “Hello little Bell flower, your mom should have named you Michelle, then I could croon to you on my guitar, “Michelle, My Belle.” Yes! He played the guitar too, he sang astonishingly well, composed his own lyrics, and spouted sugary nonsense at will.

Casanova Clinton, Aidan joked as Clinton aimed a kick at him.

It was funniest when both David and Clinton visited on weekends. Our house bustled, a merry nest of anarchists who lazed in bed till midday, then showered and went out God knows where. On movies, dates and I knew that they also played tennis, where they managed to inveigle their way into the hearts of yet another gaggle of girls.

Did I mention? Aidan was charming as hell too. He had classic features and his piercing eyes probed the souls of folks as he casually conversed with them.

Sundays, the guest room was cramped, bursting at the seams with the flirtatious trio and their impromptu gang of girlfriends. David was bisexual, ( he later discovered), and stoutly held his own with a tiny sylph like girl he had been dating for over a year.

On Sundays, Aidan bent over his brunette engineering classmate, a pretty willowy girl called Jill, and they whispered quietly together, amidst the noisy riffs Clinton strummed on his guitar. As two or three girls attended to him adoringly. One leaned on his arms, the other two sat literally at his feet as he slouched atop the designer stepladder chair in the window alcove, besides the grey chaise on which the girls sat. David sprawled on the bed with his girlfriend Sally, studiously gazing up at the ceiling fan, whispering sweet nothing to each other. How anybody heard anything over the loud music Clinton played on the guitar or tape deck was beyond me. On Sundays  I was privy to scenes of boisterous young adult camaraderie, (and a lot of necking and surreptitious kissing), though I was barely in my teens. I did go out reluctantly with my own set of friends, but even they preferred to sit like happy campers or groupies at Clinton’s feet. We were all under the influence of puppy dog love I guess.

I remember how indignant i felt when my classmate, the voluptuous Amanda batted her eyelashes at Clinton and won his split second attention. It was a red rag to a promiscuous bull! In an instant he engaged in a pillow fight with her and the two of them started giving each other looks that were so suggestive and smouldering, that even Aidan noticed, and went all big brother on Amanda, much to my glee! “Go home Amanda, don’t you have homework to do?”, he rebuked her firmly, and sent her off packing, a tiny teasing twinkle in his eyes. Since Amanda carried the same torch for Aidan, that I occasionally borrowed on weekends from her, (For Clinton), she giggled, flattered to win his attention and complied. The silly twat probably imagined a twinge of jealousy on Aidan’s part!

Nothing of the sort, I knew. Aidan was twenty to my fourteen, habitually used to bossing me around as a big brother. He was super thoughtful, kind considerate, but also over protective of me. Had Clinton regarded me as anything other than a kid, he would have stopped being such a regular guest. My big brother was always warning me about boys, and softly sermonising me, not to learn the hard way. “Don’t exchange phone numbers at a first date or dance silly, boys will think you’re too easy.”

“Wait till you are sixteen, you are a just a child, and immature for your age,” he contrarily advised me against dating, when Aaron Adams asked me out to the eighth grade Christmas party.

So I was repressed and wary of showing my true colours in public, while daydreaming lucidly in my secretive fourteen year old heart.

 On weekdays the empty guest room carried residual trace memories of the weekend get togethers, which I cleaned up or hid from dad. A glass ashtray full of cigarette butts was expertly kicked below the bed, The lipstick left behind by Sally was pocketed, and treasure of all treasures, Casanova Clinton’s little black book of phone numbers was found behind the bureau.

There were a dizzying list of phone numbers and names, all female, with a few bearing a funny aside as a descriptive moniker.

Monica was described as Foxy, and Sara was Sexy. Apparently his imagination was limited to racy four letter adjectives. Wait! There was also “Busty” Susie and someone called Babes! It couldn’t be the actual name of a girl could it? And funnily enough there were a few lines dedicated inside, “To my sassy babes, You are a question mark, an enigma,  a comma curling in my dreams you are my moonbeam my...” here Clinton had stopped, run out of inspiration, and scrawled “Stream?”, with an interrogation mark.

I giggled a throaty sinful giggle, blushing at my unscrupulous diary stalking ways, nevertheless luxuriating in fantasies of being this mysterious “Babes” who was the object of Clinton’s affection.

Walking up to the mirror, I stuck a seductive pose, and sotto voiced, “Babes loves you too Clinton, you are her moonbeam too.”

The mirror sadly made no reply. I changed the sheets and cushion covers, where a little fruit juice or Cola had spilled, and loaded the washing machine.

The little black book provided me many secret thrills for the next few teen years as I did my growing up, and finally left it in an old shoe box on the topmost shelf of the  guest room wall closet. A coming of age gesture, au revoir if not goodbye to teenage fantasies.

I did take it down occasionally, on whims, or for the sheer kick of it! It always delivered, its implicit promise.

Like the time a photograph of a sensual beauty slipped out from in between the pages, mysteriously on Clinton’s birthday. It showed a smoking hot sensual female face with violet eyes and russet brown curls. She pouted into the camera obviously flirting for the photographer. For the longest time that was the come hither seductive look I practiced in the guest bedroom mirror. Never in my own room which had an adjoining door to mom and dad’s master suite. I would have been mortified had they discovered their little girl blowing kisses and pursing her lips like a fish under water.

But in the guest bedroom, I was not a little girl.

I was, a diva, a siren, Cleopatra, and the red hot memories of flirtations and passes in that room acted as props to my make belief. I sashayed and sauntered, I smiled mysterious enigmatic Mona Lisa half smiles in the mirror, I allowed tremulous tears to slowly well up in my eyes, and oh! Height of my thespian seductive  goddess role plays, I let a single drop course down my cheek, while looking all noble and sacrificing! I was letting go slowly of my imaginary paramour, through play acting! But the play acting was also a preparation for far more adult realities, like finishing high school with good grades, gaining entrance to a good college, dating a suitable guy.

I was twenty when Aidan met with an accident, that took him away from us forever. My big brother, my crazy white knight who had no shining armour when the drunk truck driver mowed him down at eighty miles per hour. I can somehow imagine my brother, quiet, confident and precise, driving carefully within speed limits, with his phone on silent, staring in shock, with those soulful piercing eyes at his swiftly hurtling destiny. His eyes keep haunting me, now so I can barely visit the guest room when I am back home from college.

David and Clinton were not around to attend his funeral. We had all drifted apart. On what would have been his twenty seventh birthday, David called from Hong Kong to wish him. A single tear did course down my cheek then. I happened to have taken the call in the now empty and desolate guest bedroom, which I was refurbishing for my visiting college mates, Joanna and Mel.

“He is no more,” I broke down, then composed myself. "He met with a car accident last November, both Clinton and you were overseas, or you would have heard".

David sounded shattered as he tried to console me, to apologise to me for the fresh hurt, finally in a bid to change the subject he casually questioned me, "How is babes taking it Reba?”

I felt my mouth open and close and turned to the mirror, with two determined steps at it, then narrowed my eyes and resolutely enquired, “Wasn’t babes Clinton’s girlfriend?’

I had already opened the door to the wall closet and was rummaging the top shelf for the dusty old shoe box. The little black book nestled inside was still new, still virginal, still shiny, protected from the elements.

As I fumbled through the pages for reference to Babes, sassy babes, David muttered in embarrassment, "Aidan was not Jill’s boyfriend initially.  Clinton was. Aidan was a very powerful magnet," he joked clumsily, "Jill couldn’t resist his pull, even Casanova Clinton had to let go and give up. Best thing really! Clinton was happy go lucky, a party animal. Babes was better off with Aidan. Clinton my man was more like, out of sight, out of mind.”

Apparently not, I thought as my fingers traced Clinton’s silly poetry. The guest bedroom had always been a love nest, a kind of boudoir of budding romances.

It may be an empty shell of memories now but it had one last duty to perform. I decided I would visit Aidan’s bereaved fiancée, the still grieving, still beautiful Jill alias babes, with the little black book of  curious secrets.

It would be homage to my love for my big brother Aidan, a epitaph on a childhood crush, and a last fond look at an empty guest bedroom, before renovating it.        

© Amrita Valan 2021

2280 words