Osmund James, Contributor
THE morning is sunny and halfway gone. But her bedroom is in gloom due to heavy curtains at the windows.
She comes awake and groans anguish - her anguish, though, isn't physical; it's anguish due to regret over last night's heady hour in the back seat of a car with a man she met only a few hours before (she met him in the company of friends of one of her friends), the first time in her life that she "went" with a man before at least two dates with him; and her anguish this morning is due mostly to the realisation that sometime after their hour in the back seat of his car her heart began pining for him, pining for a man who must think her cheap.
After their heady hour in the back seat of his car in a shadowed corner of a night-club's car park, they rejoined their friends inside the night-club where a carnival fete was in full blast, and he treated her well, kept her at his side until just after midnight when the pining of her heart for him became so intense that the certainty that he must think her cheap caused her to flee the fete without telling him or her friends she was leaving - she hurried home.
Excitement
Now, she gets out of bed with a sigh and curses herself for having allowed a few drinks and the lusty roaring excitement of Carnival Week to have caused her to give herself cheaply. But, although she'll certainly feel terrible over him for a long time to come, she muses, this afternoon she will be in the Road March.
When she arrives at the starting point of the Road March, the man from last night is there with her friends.
Like herself, her friends are dressed in the skimpy and colourful costume of their Road March group. The man isn't in a Road March costume - he's in jeans and T-shirt. He's looking anxious and is clutching a bouquet of red and white roses.
"Hello," he says, "I need a private chat with you."
Hope and dread have her speechless. His nod is mechanical. He takes her arm gently and leads her aside and gives her the bouquet. She takes it with trembling hands, her eyes searching his for hints of an explanation. She's still dumbfounded by hope and dread. His eyes are full of anxiety. But anxiety over what news that he's HIV positive or has some other STD and fear that the condom he used wasn't good enough protection?
He says: "I understand why you're silent. And believe me, last night before you sneaked off I began feeling the great joy I think you also began feeling... Well, from what my gut, and my friends and yours tell me, it's obvious that... ah...the easy way in which you...well...gave in to me was due to drink and the carnival-fever sweeping all. And this morning I dreamed you were saving me from drowning in a putrid pool - you threw me a tyre...So...will you be my date for one of the after-Road-March fetes tonight, and lunch tomorrow?"
Her joyous relief doubles her beauty, makes her heart flip, fills her with life's greatest delight.
She chirps: "Gladly...you're a god amongst men."
He grins and says: "You, my dear, you are the goddess of this Road March. Ah, how I wish I was in it! Next year we'll jump and dance it together, I know."
Arm in arm they walk back to her group of friends, both of them seeing themselves together in love in many Road Marches to come.
