Dinner was on, and it was the kind of scene one would imagine in a stock video that is part of a pharmaceutical ad. Glasses clinked, cheese melted and polite laughter effused.
Such polite laughter of course might fit such an ad. But why would it emanate from a dinner at a 4-star restaurant. Well, it all had to do with the cast of said dinner.
“What a nice meal,” Sita, a slim Indian South African lady said when the silence after the last chuckle lasted too long.
She was by far the one person at the table with no real agenda in life. Working at a large airline head office, she had a child at home and right now just wanted to get home. Socializing does take a toll, especially with the kind of people she was with.
“So sorry we couldn’t get into the other place,” Liz quickly inserted, beating anyone to bringing the issue up. “I don’t know what happened. It’s never happened before like that.”
Such a happening was typical of Liz, however. She claimed to have big connections; but they never seemed to be in place for her friends to see.
“It’s okay hun,” Priya said, moving her arm to touch Liz’s shoulder, and then stopping.
Priya was a huge lady, and had grown sideways a fair bit over the past few months. No one could tell how this had happened since her plate was empty, as always. Though not always, since she ate by herself – usually a couple of McDaonald’s burger meals paired with chicken nuggets. Casual dining places like TGIF and Applebee’s were favourites as well.
The cause of her recent growth, Amrit, sat next to her, dwarfed by her size. He was the moon to her planet. Except that the heavenly bodies were stewing after a harsh argument about how much they would spend at the dinner with their deflating funds.
“It’s on me of course,” Liz said as the waiter hovered to clean the table so that he could press them to get dessert.
“Guys, we have to get back to our 120,000 Dirham 3-bedroom villa,” Doyle said.
Doyle was as almost as big as Priya, but of course got away with his weight because he had snagged Sita somewhere along the way and impregnated her. He was also as dark as the night itself, also like Priya. All night he had spent his time mentioning his LV shoes, job and extensive whiskey collection. Alarmingly, he had brought cheap Flirt vodka to the pre-party before dinner.
“Maybe we should head too,” Prakash threw in.
He was a fitness instructor Liz was dating. The fact that he was out of work but had laser-cut facial hair meant that Liz could afford some fine things if not the connections to reserve a table at their first-choice establishment.
“Dessert?” the waiter asked, ignoring the two hints because the party was clearly not one that had spent enough money on dinner alone.
“I drive a Denali,” Doyle mentioned to the waiter, apparently.
“No dessert,” Amrit said, sighing with relief because he had been so afraid of the bill combined with Priya’s post-dinner bumper meal.
“I have a huge dick!” Doyle yelled, loud enough for other diners to turn and look.
Things were quiet for a while. Sita apologized profusely on his behalf as they both left, leaving the foursome staring at one another.
“Bye Mr. Babe,” Doyle said as a parting shot to Amrit.
Amrit wished he could spit on Doyle’s neck. But everyone in the room knew he did not have the balls for such a feat.
“So how’s the operation holding up?” Liz asked, finding it far less awkward to talk than Priya since Doyle and Sita were the latter’s friends and not hers.
“Okay,” Priya said. “But I went in again because of some leg pain. “They said there’s some back issue.”
“So lose some weight,” Prakash said, not looking up from his phone.
He did not even look up in the awkward silence after this.
“I don’t need to lose weight,” Priya said with conviction, wanting to bring up the fact that he had used her credit card to pay for Liz’s surprise birthday cake.
Then again, Amrit had used her credit card to get even balloons for her own birthday, as well as movie tickets and dinner. She had of course posted on Facebook that Amrit had bought all these items with his non-existent funds.
“And how’s work?” Liz asked as Priya opened her phone to scroll Facebook.
“Good, good. We’re having an open boat day. You guys should come,” Priya replied as she looked at the screen and Amrit sighed.
Amrit wanted to badly to kick her in the back so that she would drop the phone. In reality he would never do this since even his threat to leave her if she didn’t lose weight had fallen like a stuffed cabbage to the floor as they both knew he had nowhere to go except his parents’ place in Nahda. With his shouting matches with his dad and declarations that old Dubai was a shithole, he was then stuck between a rock and a fat place.
With two people on their phones and Amrit looking as if he were about to ask her where she was on getting him a job, Liz also picked up her phone. She wondered how to post pictures of her birthday surprise without Priya’s big body getting in the photos. Of course she could not post everything except Priya since that would lead to tension.
“God these Muslims,” Priya clicked her tongue. “So much terrorism.”
“It’s gotta piss you off that you look Muslim,” Rakesh replied, still not looking up.
Priya shot daggers at him with her eyes closed, and then slumped into her screen, looking even more like a canon ball.
Amrit, as in all tense situations, began to plans his next masturbation session. Likely next morning as soon as Priya left for work. As in, as soon as the door shut.
“Ahm.”
They all looked to see a uniformed policeman, with facial hair so manicured that Rakesh was thinking of firing his barber.
“Ese-cuse me. Who is Priya?”
“Um, me,” Priya said, her South African accent getting suddenly very thick.
“You come to station,” the man said matter-of-factly.
“Why?” Priya asked getting up, and pulling Amrit up with her.
“Bank issue foreclose,” the man said, leading the way.
“Wait, I can sort this out,” Liz said as she got up. “I have vasta.”
“You shut,” the policeman said without turning around. “Use vasta to fix your teeth first.”
____________________
“Hello police,” Amrit said as he walked through the door, reverting to his Mickey Mouse-esque voice.
“Sit,” the policeman instructed Amrit at the benches, who immediately obeyed.
The man went to his desk with Priya and began procedures.
“You no pay credit card, so time for jail,” he said. “7 days, tayib.”
“No wait,” Priya said, trying to sway her hair from side to side like she had heard Philipinos did to get out of these situations.
Her hair did not have the Philipino sheen and so did not cooperate.
“I have expenses,” she plead.
“Ah we see,” the policeman said as he booted up his computer.
Amrit meanwhile had found the station vending machine, not far from the bench.
“Potato chip,” he exclaimed at the machine. “I’ll get you.”
Instead of putting money in the machine (he had none), he pawed at the chip packet from outside, which was both above him and behind plexi-glass.
“Expenses,” the policeman read side to side. “Is all McDonald’s, restaurant. How much food you eat?”
“Not that much,” Priya began.
“Vox Cinema, Bollywood Park. Are you child? Even my son spend better his allowance.”
Two women police walked up and guided Priya to stand.
“Baaaaaabe!” Priya called.
Amrit was jumping up to get the chips.
“Baaaabe!” her voice went down in volume as she looked at the floor when the cuffs slipped on.
Amrit stopped jumping and panted for a couple of minutes. He looked around and saw that his girlfriend was gone.
“Priya?”
But there was no one in the room except a few policemen working away on their computers.
“Oh well, time to go home and take care of Lil’ Amrit,” he said, swinging his hands from side to side.
Lil Amrit was of course Amrit’s dick.
Rainbow Kandura 