SHE stood at the car park, huddled under her umbrella from the steady, heavy drizzle, hoping for a car to pull up soon. There were none at the park at that mid-afternoon hour, most likely because of the rain. It had been raining continuously for the past three days, and the young woman shivered a little from the chilly wind.

“I don’t want to reach home late,” she said to herself.

A few other passengers were waiting also, and about half an hour later, two cars pulled into the park. She managed to get into one and heaved a sigh of relief.
She was slightly wet, and as she settled into the front passenger seat, she took a small towel from her bag and dried her arms and face.
The driver, a young East Indian guy, got into the car at the same time and, looking at her, said with a slight smile, “Refreshing fragrance.”

She looked at him and smiled a little as he turned to the other passengers in the back seat, one woman and two gentlemen.

“Is everyone good there?”
“Yes,” they answered.
“Okay, let’s go.”

“This weather is bad,” the middle-aged woman said. “Please take your time, driver.”

“I always do,” he assured her.

Melissa sighed a little and relaxed against the seat during the drive home. She had just come from the Corentyne after visiting her grandmother. It was something she did once every two months to make sure her health was good, refill her medications, and restock her kitchen with groceries.

“Bless your heart, child,” her grandmother always said to her. “You have been taking such good care of me.”

“It’s nothing compared to what you did for me,” Melissa had told her. “You took me in after my parents went their separate ways, and you took great care of me.”

It always gave Melissa a good feeling for all she could do for the woman who had been her world. Today, though, she was returning home with just a few dollars that couldn’t pay the car fare, but she had called her boyfriend, telling him to take the money from the emergency fund at home and stand by to pay the driver. She always carried extra money in her purse, but that late morning, as she was leaving her grandmother’s house, a single mother from the neighbourhood approached her, asking for assistance for her young children.

She smiled to herself, remembering the relief on the mother’s face, and came back from her musing when the driver asked her, “Do you like Bollywood music?”

“Yes,” she answered, for though she was an African girl, she loved Bollywood music and dance.

He played songs from the hit movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and she said with a pleased smile, “I saw that movie twice.”

The African woman at the back quipped, “I saw that movie too, let’s hope you don’t stop the car and we have to go dance in the rain.”

Everyone in the car laughed, and the driver shook his head, quite amused.

“Well, that’s a good one.”

He seemed like such a pleasant guy with a warm personality, something that Melissa liked in a person.

She reached her destination at Non-Pariel on the East Coast, just as the rain had eased up, and said to the driver as he handed her her overnight bag, “Just give me a moment, please, to collect the money.”

“Sure,” he responded.

Her boyfriend, Trevor, was outside the yard under a makeshift tent playing cards with a few friends. Melissa signalled to him, “The money, please.”

“Just now,” he responded. “I can’t leave this game.”

She turned to the driver to say, ‘Just now,’ but Trevor continued with the card game, and Melissa signalled him again: “I can’t have the driver waiting.”

“All the emergency money is in this game,” he said to her under his breath.

“What?!” Melissa exclaimed in disbelief.

The driver approached her and said, “The other passengers can’t wait any longer.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologised. “I asked him to stand by with the money, but he’s gambling with it.”

“Darn,” the driver said. “I can’t wait for that game to end, but you know what, you can pay me whenever you see me again. Take care.”

That left Melissa feeling so embarrassed. She went into the moderate flat concrete house she shared with Trevor and sat wearily on the sofa. He came in fifteen minutes later and threw a wad of notes in her lap.

“I told you the money was in the game.”

She sat up, took the money, and put it down on the centre table.

“Do you know how embarrassing that was for me?”

“It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t spent all your travelling money on helping people.”

“I can’t believe you said that,” she said, displeased. “It was our emergency fund, suppose you had lost?”

“I don’t play to lose,” he smiled with confidence.

That night, sitting alone on the sofa, not focused on the TV, she sighed a little, disheartened. She and Trevor had been living together for three years now, with a plan to work and save to acquire their own home and get married. She had a small catering business, and he worked in construction, but there were days when he didn’t go to work, and now he had started gambling.

It began raining again, and she closed her eyes. “Should I worry?”

She went to bed with the thought that she may have to have a serious talk with him about the gambling, but she didn’t get to address the issue because he went to work all week, and life returned to normal, but not for long. Two weeks later was one of his close friends’ birthdays, an all-night celebration at one of the top clubs in the city. Melissa did not go with him because she had to work late that night to deliver a big order the next morning.

In addition to that, she wasn’t much of a party girl or club girl; she liked simpler things like a beautiful dinner at a classy restaurant. Trevor blew two weeks’ salary at the birthday, leaving Melissa to cover the bills for that month.

“How are we going to build for a future like this?” she asked herself, a deep worry in her mind, but she did not say anything to him because it was starting to make less sense to her to remind him a bout their plans to build for their future.

Two weeks later, Melissa received a message that her grandmother wasn’t doing too well.

“Dear Lord,” she prayed silently as she travelled down early the next morning, “Please help her get better.”

It was raining again, and at the New Amsterdam park, she looked around for the driver to whom she owed a fare. He wasn’t at the park, and she asked two other drivers there for his description.

“Oh, it’s Nikhil,” one of them answered. “He hasn’t come to the park as yet.”

“I owe him some money,” she said.

The rain came down heavier, and one of the drivers called Nikhil, “Bro, there’s a beautiful girl here looking for you, says she owes you some money.”

After a short while, the driver told Melissa, “He’s on his way,” and quietly said, “I wish a beautiful girl could owe me some money.”

Melissa heard him and said quietly, “Oh boy.”

About fifteen minutes later, Nikhil arrived at the park and approached Melissa, surprised. “In all the rain, you’re waiting to pay me?”

“Well,” the driver who had made the call said, “her description of you was, ‘He’s quite good-looking.’”

Nikhil looked at her, pleasantly surprised, and she hurriedly explained, “That has nothing to do with it. I really felt bad about what happened that day.”

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “Anyway, come in the car, it’s raining too heavily.”

He opened the car door for her, and once she was settled, he asked, “Where are you going in this bad weather?”

“To the Corentyne, I received a message that my grandma is unwell.”

He looked at her, the worry on her face, her half-wet skin. Then he looked at his watch and said, “I have an airport trip in half an hour, but I will take you to your grandmother. Can’t leave you here in the rain.”

“Thanks, that’s kind of you.”

“Well, I like to help as much as I can.”

“That makes two of us.”

She looked at him and smiled, a strange warmth surging through her being, and on that rainy day, something changed for her.

To be continued…