The curious incident of the broken vase

Shimmy chechi was the most beautiful person in the whole world- at least to me. I'd grown up believing so. I still do. Graceful, pretty, talented- she was to me the perfect woman. Nothing I could ever hope to be.

I'd never stepped foot inside a beauty parlor in all my school years and college except to cut my hair. And that usually happened after my mother made a mess of trying to cut it.

So when chech asked me to go with her to the parlor, I was more than willing. I've spent hours doing things I detest with her- shopping, parlors and what not. Around her things were always different.

So we walked into the parlor and she sat on the revolving chair that makes me think of the dentist.

'Yes mam?' the lady asks.

'I'd like to get my eyebrows trimmed', she says.

They are already perfect. Now I realize what it is to work on perfection. 5 minutes later, they become perfecter.

Looking at her with absolute adoring eyes, I say, 'Wow'. She smiles at me.

Looking at her eyebrows, I ask, 'Chech, do you think I should get mine done?'

If she is surprised, she doesn’t hide it.

'Why not!'

'Do you think they'll look good?'

She's kind enough not to tell me that they'd perhaps look less awful.

'Sure. Am sure they'll look really good.'

It took hours or 10 minutes. People passing outside would have thought they'd passed a labor room. The pain! Excruciating! No, not even the time I fell flat on the ground from the first floor of a house! But well, I was unconscious then.

Wiping away tears that refused to stop, I look at chech.

She should have taken to the stage.

"Oh! They look great."

I smile through my tears.

I am handed a hand mirror.

I hand it back hurriedly. I'd seen enough.

Getting back home, I sit down with an ice pack on my eye.

He-who-should-have-known-better walks in.

"When did you join boxing class?"

I scowl through my tears.

"But what happened?"

That's when I burst into tears. Crying into his shirt, I make irregular stains. I watch the material absorb with alarming rapidity the salty drops. He's horrified by now. Gruesome thoughts flash through his head.

I sniffle.

"Don't you see anything different?"

Apart from the cuts above my eyes and red eyelids, nothing much I guess.

He-who-knows-a-woman says carefully.

"Which parlor did you go to?"

I-who-should-have-known-better reply.

My head on his shoulder and comfortable I hear him say.

"It looks very good. You look nice."

I smile. "Really?"

"Yeah. The facial's made your face brighter."

That's how the vase was broken.
He was responsible for it.
He shouldn't have ducked.