Love, loss and trusting your first instincts

“Dude, call it what it is. You’re trying to get back together with her.”
“What makes you say that?”
Louis is in denial about the status of his renewed friendship with his former girlfriend Carmen. She is back in Jo’burg for a brief visit, before she heads back to London. She holds a mysterious power over her ex-boyfriend.
“You’re bunking work so you can drive to Vanderbijlpark and meet her for lunch. Who does that?”
His mate Butch is trying to get him to admit.
“No-no, china. We just good friends.”
“Ah, come on, man. Be honest with yourself. She’s your ex, she’s been in town for two days and you’ve been chasing her around the place like a pig hunting truffles.”
“What are truffles, anyway?”
“Does she know you’re trying to get her back? Or is she just using you as dial-a-date?”
“Dude, I don’t know. I don’t think she’s over her last ex. The oke died.”
“What from”
“Dunno. She doesn’t wanna talk about it.”
“Then she’s definitely not over him.”
By 2am that evening, Louis is beginning to agree with Butch that Carmen is far from over her last boyfriend, the one after he had broken up with her.
As he gloomily watches Vanderbijlpark’s Emerald Casino gradually empty out around them, his role in Carmen’s life becomes all too clear to him. He is now that thing he so did not want to be. He is a shoulder to cry on.
He is a nice guy. Someone to turn to in a time of need. In a throbbing, agonising irony, he is exactly what he’s been claiming to be. He is just a good friend.
What he hadn’t known about Carmen’s ex – Colin, his name was – he certainly knows now.
The guy died in someone’s lounge. The guys came home late from a nightclub, sat on the couch to watch TV and passed out. He woke up dead.
No one knew what killed him. His heart just stopped. There was no trace of drugs in his body, he was 28 years old, and a regular gym-goer. It was just one of those things that happen. People die.
What complicated the situation was that he had died in the lounge of another woman. The infamous Tatiana, “That Russian bitch”, as she was known in Carmen’s telling of the story.
It seems clear to Louis that Colin was conducting an affair with Tatiana when he inconveniently died in her lounge. But Carmen never raises this possibility, so neither does he. He merely nods and beckons the barman closer, as Carmen rants on about how, “She must have killed him. She put a spell on him. I know she did.”
“Mmmm. Ja. Shame, man.”
All that remains to be seen is how much Carmen will be able to drink before she deems herself ready to be taken home.
Then, somewhere around 3am, the barman takes pity on him and calls last drinks. Louis begins jingling his keys, hopefully. But Carmen has other plans…
“I’m far too tired to possibly drive back to Jo’burg. Come, why don’t you get us a room at the hotel. We can spend the night here.”
For no other reason besides extreme fatigue, Louis jumps at the offer. Within 20 minutes they are tucking themselves in, a chaste couple of metres apart in separate beds.
In the second screaming irony of the night, Louis finds himself alone in a hotel room with the woman of his dreams. Sadly, he’s now convinced she’s more than a bit loopy. He wouldn’t dream of trying anything.
As he drifts off to merciful sleep, Louis thinks to himself that on further reflection, it might have been the right idea to break up with Carmen all those years ago.
He was correct too, it had been the right thing to do.
Sadly, he is now back in the same position, sharing a room with the slightly loopy Carmen whom he wronged back in 2001 by sleeping with her best friend.
Around midday the next day, Louis’s body is found in the hotel room by a housekeeper. He is dead. His heart has just stopped. There are no traces of drugs in his body. It’s just one of those things.
By that time Carmen’s flight back to London has already taken off.