Petra is one of those kinda meek individuals you sometimes meet. She's clever and stuff, no doubt about that, but she's a bit short on self-confidence... Just the way she is. Perhaps it's because she's not pretty.We chat for a while about nothing much, which is fine by me, I'm not in the mood for deep conversation, but before long Petra starts droning on again about her non-existent love life. Yawn. This is pretty tedious to listen to even if you haven't heard it before, as I have. Several. We sat and ate together. Kavita kept on saying how much she loved me, and she liked the idea of this dinner. Even I was enjoying this moment with her, and that’s when my phone beeped.“Come to the men’s washroom,” was Reddy’s textI came back to reality and looked around. Still, I couldn’t find Reddy. I still thought of walking back with my wife. But I knew that I wouldn’t do that.“I will be back, baby,” I excused myself and walked to the washroom.“Your wife’s wearing a nice dress,” I heard. ‘Beth?’ he said softly, and I could hear a slight bit of panic in his voice, which brought me out of the light sleep into which I’d fallen. ‘Ricky? What’s wrong?’ I said in a voice still thick with slumber. ‘Something’s not right,’ he said. ‘I can’t get comfortable, and I’ve got this … weird feeling in my chest, like I’ve got a hard ball in my esophagus, and a tingling feeling down my left arm.’ He sat down heavily on the chair in our bedroom, and that’s when I got up and looked him over. I was. For thetwenty-odd years he had been working this kitchen, she had beencoming in; old, grey-haired, and senile. (AdProvider = window.AdProvider || []).push({"serve": {}});He gave her a scoop of stuffing, and she gave him a semi-toothlesssmile in return. They knew each other well. Three strangersshuffled along behind her, each more anxious than the last to gettheirs before the food ran out. In twenty-odd years it never had,but they probably didn’t know that. Even if they had, they.