The Midnight Cafe

A short story about love and resolving issues in a relationship

                                                              The Midnight Café

Welcome to Midnight Café, it’s a place located on the Bangalore-Mangalore highway, nearby Mangalore. The café’s owned by Mr.Stanley. His wife's name is Sandhya. Mrs. Stanley also helps her husband in looking after the café. The café is a meeting place for many couples and an ideal place for a first date. It was called as midnight café because it was the only place which used work even during midnight. Mr.Stanley loved customer satisfaction more than earning profit from the cafe. Mrs.Stanley worked in the café during the day time and Mr.Stanley and his friend Mr.Nagesh looked after the café during the night time. Mr.Stanley was an Ex-servicemen and he started the café after his retirement from the Indian army. Mr and Mrs Stanley had two sons, who were settled in USA and they wanted their parents to be with them, but their parents had refused to move away from their hometown.

The midnight café was small i and cozy. The left side walls of the cafe were covered with posters which had quotes on love, life and pictures which carried love messages and the right side were covered with paintings of Raja Ravivarma. Customers loved the ambience of the place. Many writers and directors used to arrive there as that place helped them to come up with new stories and even to write the love scenes for their movies.

Mr.Stanley loved seeing the couples who used to come to the café and used to remember the love story of his marriage. Most of the times he used to help guys and girls to get into a relationship and sometimes even resolve misunderstanding between them. Mr.Stanley was interested in writing and he used to write stories of the couples who used to come to his cafe. Now we will read one of his favourite stories from his collection.

For which he kept the title as ‘A date to remember’.

Mr.Stanley expresses the story in the way he saw it.

A Date to remember

One day I saw a man sitting alone in table number 4 and I went to take his order. He ordered two cold coffees and two doughnuts.

I asked him casually, “Are you waiting for someone"?

- “My friend is on the way, she’ll be joining soon.” he said with a smile. I smiled back and thought he is on a date and waiting for his girlfriend. His name’s Sushruth.

After sometime I saw a girl coming and joining him. They started talking casually about each of their lives after that Sushruth called me and ordered two cold coffees again.

Till that time I had seen them as I see all the couples, who come here for a date, enjoy what they have here and go back, but something really drew me towards them. After having cold coffee, Sushruth called me again and asked to get some tissues and after that they stopped talking with  and kept on looking at each other. They maintained an eye contact with  for a long time. They kept exchanging expressions  and after sometime they wrote something on their tissues, exchanged them and then the girl left the place, but before leaving the place she just turned back, smiled at him and left the place.

I wasn’t able to control my curiosity. I went towards him and asked, “is she your girlfriend”? He smiled and then said “no sir, she is my wife, we were married her 5 years ago." I was shocked because of many reasons. The first reason was he told me she was his friend, then she left before him and their body language was like a couple who were on a first date.

I thought how weird these people are, they are husband and wife and still they behaved in that way but I saw him opening the tissue and reading it. Smiles and happiness just reflected on his face while he was reading that tissue.

I got curious again, went to him and asked, “can you please explain me what you guys did just now? I didn’t get anything, you spoke so casually like friends at the start and then you people became silent and exchanged some expressions and wrote something on each other’s tissue, exchanged it and she left early, what happened"?

Sushruth smiled and made me take a look at his tissue and said, “read it once and you will understand a little bit and after that I will tell you what we did."

In the tissue I saw his wife’s beautiful handwriting and she had written like this. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to understand why you were so disturbed and worried and fought with me about small issues last week. I even know why you didn’t like to share anything with me but mistake’s there on your side too for thinking about me like that, even if the whole world tells me that are not trustworthy, I will stand against the world for you. I loved

you not just because you were smart and intelligent. I didn’t see any type in accepting you as my partner for the rest of my life. I loved you and accepted you as my husband because I loved the way you are and the way you loved me. I will be going to the hospital and will check how your friend is and then will be waiting for you in our home for a candle light dinner. Love you forever,

-Preethi”

 “okay.. Now I understood that you two had a fight and you wrote the reason for it in your tissue and gave it to her and she replied you by writing this in her tissue and gave it to you.” 

He smiled at me again and said “you are wrong again sir, I didn’t speak with her about anything, we just saw each other’s eyes and our eyes did all the talking. Non-verbal communication is more effective than the verbal communication because when we fight with each other we get so angry that we will not watch the words we speak and those words hurt both of us, so we will sit together like this whenever we have a fight, it’s one of the easiest ways to resolve the misunderstandings and fights between us, we started doing this from the day we started going out.”

“What was the fight about?” I asked him as I knew only half of what happened between them. -“My ex-girlfriend is suffering from cancer and I took her to a cancer specialist and I was there with her for more than a week and didn’t come home. I had told my wife that I was going on a business trip. I just hid the truth from her and she got to know the truth when she met one of my colleagues and she was angry on me. I thought she was angry on me because I went with my ex-girlfriend but she was angry only because I hid the truth from her so I told the same to her just now and apologized her, now everything’s fine and peaceful."

-“How could you tell everything just by your expressions and eye contact?"

“It depends on how much you love your partner and more than that how much you have understood them. We may be two different people but when we started going out and loved each other, our heart became one, so when your heart becomes one, then no matter what happens between you two, we can resolve any issue between ourselves because we will have a strong belief that nothing can break us apart.” he finished saying this and got ready to leave.

I asked him before he left the place “what did you write in your tissue?”

He said “I wrote ‘I love you like I love myself’… that’s all.”

Finally I got to know how people find their way to be happy forever in their life and preserve their precious love so that it will never die. For them it was just a casual meeting to resolve their misunderstanding, but for me, it was a date which I will remember forever.

By, Abhilash V C

[email protected]

Reviews

[dw817]

⊰ℙℝ⊱ (Private Request)
Something I noticed right off, Abhilash. You are using the quotation mark " in odd locations where there is no spoken text or item of reference, I.E.
Welcome to Midnight Café, it’s a place located on the Bangalore ["] Mangalore highway

In most quoted text, you want to include the quotation mark INSIDE the quote, not inside.
"I don't want to go". (incorrect)
"I don't want to go." (correct)

While "café" is the correct spelling of this word, as you are using it quite a bit, suggest you stick with one or the other. You have sentences where it is not serifed. For convenience, suggest you drop the serif and just use, "cafe" throughout.

Your paragraph divisions are excellent. Not one long run on-sentence like I have seen before. While I know it is a standard practice to insert 5-spaces before the beginning of every paragraph, I much prefer the whitespace as you have done above.

OK, let's get to spelling.

You are using the word, "favourite." this is correct but it denotes a style that you are Canadian or British. If you are neither of these, you may find yourself not spelling favourite this way all the time but as "favorite," breaking up your writing, especially if you do not use ALL the denotative words to show your heritage including, "specialized" for in Britain that is, "specialised."

Just please don't use the "u" in words pell mell. :)

To grammar.

The midnight café was [small in size/small] and cozy. (redundancy, the less 'and' you can have in a single sentence the better)

and sometimes even resolve misunderstanding [between] them
This is correct but I did want to point that if you are referring to an examination of more than 2-items (which in this case you are not) it would be "among" or "amongst." Just so you remember.

I asked him casually “[are/Are] you waiting for someone?” (capital)

- "My friend is on the way, she’ll be joining soon[.]" he said with a smile. (unusual character dash (-) at beginning, and need to add period for end of spoken sentence)

[Till] that time I had seen them as I see all the couples,
Till is indeed a tricky word. There are so many variations of it. You have 'til, til, till, and until. Til according to research is a bad abbreviation of until. 'Til is a bit better. While till and until can be used interchangeably, some people say till is too informal. Just be aware of this when you use these words.

that they stopped talking with each other and kept on seeing at each other. They maintained an eye contact with each other for a long time.

You are using "each other" 3 times in two sentences. Suggest you use some other descriptors for the remaining two so as not to monotone the text. I.E.

I wasn’t able to control my curiosity. I went towards him and asked[,] "is she your girlfriend?"
It's a good grammar practice to insert a comma before every spoken text.

For a bit of reference, if you have someone quote something from a writing, then you are permitted to use a colon ":" especially if it exceeds seven words. Also, this is a guideline, not a rule. There are few strict rules in grammar, but you want to maintain a few 'comfortable' settings readers are familiar with.

asked[,] "[can/Can] you please explain [to] me what you guys did just now." (3 corrections)
There may be more of these corrections desired in your writing in other paragraphs.

I [didn't] get anything.
This is actually used correctly because you are writing in 1st-person perspective. However, were it 3rd-person, then you would be encouraged not to use contractions and instead use, "did not" in this case.

"My ex-girlfriend is suffering from cancer and I took her to [some/a] cancer specialist and I was there with her for more than a week and didn’t come home."
The format you have this written in sounds like someone very young spoke that sentence, which is not the case here. Suggest you change "some" to "a"
Children speak pretty carelessly so you can consider this rule to add for younger speakers.

Also, never have two different people speak on one line, for instance change,
“What was the fight about?” I asked him as I knew only half of what happened between them. “My ex-girlfriend is suffering from cancer and I took her to some cancer specialist and I was there with her for more than a week and didn’t come home."

to

“What was the fight about?” I asked him as I knew only half of what happened between them.

“My ex-girlfriend is suffering from cancer and I took her to some cancer specialist and I was there with her for more than a week and didn’t come home."

Also, if you can, denote the speaker before the sentence is spoken unless it's something important, like an interruption or an emergency speaker. This is useful because the reader will automatically assume it is the same person speaking in a new sentence if the author is not immediately known.