Ex

"Hi. How is Rahul?"

"He's good. He had to leave for some urgent work, something suddenly came up."

 

"Really? I think the more likely reason is me, his ex-girlfriend, with whom it ended quite badly."

"No, some work actually came up."

 

"Seriously?"

"Okay, I guess there is no point in lying to you. You know him as well as I do. I don't think he expected to see you at this party."

 

"Well, these are my friends as well. Of course, I was going to come, and I am sure he knew this as well. Anyway, shouldn't you be with him?"

"I did, but he just wants to be alone for a bit. He said he will just walk around for a bit outside and then we will leave together."

 

"Oh, classic Rahul. Do you know he has been doing this since he was a child? He always uses this technique to cool down. His mother had once mentioned this."

"Yes, I know"

 

“When did you and Rahul start dating?"

"Around 6 months ago."

 

"That is just about the time that we broke up"

"Yes."

 

"Weren't you in his office? I think I remember seeing you in one of his office parties."

"Yes, that is right. I don't think we have ever spoken though, before today. I am in HR, and he is in operations."

 

"Interesting. Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

 

"Actually, would you like another drink? I am guessing he will take at least 15 minutes."

"Sure, let’s have something"

 

"This looks interesting, take this drink. Cheers to Exes."

"Cheers. What did you want to ask me?"

 

"Was our breakup very hard on him? We had been together for quite some time, we were good friends before that; it was difficult for me. Was it difficult for him as well, given the circumstances?"

"It was. You were very close to him, and he hated that he was the reason for the breakup, reason for hurting you."

 

"He had tried reaching out to me a few times after we broke up, but I didn't respond."

"Yes, I had asked him to. I don't think that Exes can never be friends again. It can happen."

 

"I guess, though I am not friends with any of my Exes."

"Can I ask you something?"

 

"Sure"

"When you were dating him or the time that you knew him, did you ever think he could be...?"

 

"I didn't know, I was quite surprised. Many of his close friends were as well."

"Yeah frankly, I would never have guessed either."

 

"Okay too much serious talk to accompany these amazing cocktails. Have you met his mother? Seema Aunty is a fun person to hang out with.”

"I haven't yet. Rahul is still waiting for the right opportunity"

 

"Oh yeah, he took ages to introduce us as well, and now there is another level of complication. But his parents are cool. His mother is really nice."

"I can't wait to meet them."

 

"Oh, looks like he is back, he is waving out to you. It was nice meeting you...I am sorry I didn't get your name?"

"Mohit, Mohit Bhatt. Nice to meet you as well, Kavita. Take care."

Kavita saw the two men leave. She and Rahul had been good friends in college, which had later developed into a relationship. Rahul had later realized that he wasn’t straight, it had been a difficult time for both of them. He looked happy with Mohit now. She was glad things had worked out well for him.

Speed

I entered the bar. Rakesh and I always met at this bar before we broke into any house. Rakesh thought this bar was lucky for us. Well, we had never been caught after completing this pre-heist ritual.

“Hey Lakshman. Over here!” Rakesh called out to me. He was in our usual corner table.

I remembered the first time we had met here. Rakesh was in his late 40s back then. I had just crossed 30. I had been laid off and out of desperation, I had agreed to this meeting. A mutual friend had set this up. It has been over 15 years since that first meeting, we have had a good run.

I sat down. I could see Rakesh had ordered a burger and a Pepsi. I am sure his doctor would not have been happy with this order, but he didn’t care much about that. I ordered the same. While we did meet at a bar, we never drank before a heist. I had had a few beers once, but Rakesh had never broken this rule.

While eating a few fries, I laid out the plan again.

We had been doing this for many years, our pre-heist discussion had a fixed format now. I would start with the address and layout of the house along with the expected loot value. Rakesh would then run through how we will be tackling the heist step-by-step, right from who breaks the lock of the main door to our exit strategy in case of any issues.

We would then discuss risks and how we plan to tackle them. Lastly, we would always make our predictions on how fast we will complete the heist. Rakesh was obsessed with these numbers. He maintained an Excel file with just these numbers, our timings for all our previous heists. He had dates earlier too, but then I got them removed. I don’t want to be caught and have the police find a neat Excel file in my partner’s laptop linking us to all the other heists that we had done.

“This is our last job, Lakshman. We must beat our best timing of 17:27. In fact, it is ages since we have done a heist in under 20 minutes. The average of our last 10 heists is 26:23. Age is probably slowing us down. No wonder it is time to retire,” said Rakesh.

I just smiled. Yes, it was our last job. Probably the reason why I was nostalgic when I entered and remembered our first meeting. Rakesh was over 60 now, his health issues were starting to become severe, and he couldn’t handle this level of stress now. While he wanted to continue, I had decided that this will be our last one. We had had multiple discussions on this topic over the last few months, finally he had agreed.

“If we precisely follow the steps of the plan, I think we should be able to do it within 17 minutes. That’s my prediction. Let’s go out with a bang,” said Rakesh.

“I will stick to a safe 25 minutes,” I said. I wasn’t really interested in the speed of the heist. We always kept a buffer and if we did it carefully and within that buffer, it was fine with me.

Burgers done, ritual done, we decided to leave. Rakesh paid the bill, and we stepped out and walked towards today’s target. The house that we had picked today was just over a kilometer from the bar so we could walk it in 15 minutes. Weather was pleasant so we had decided to just walk over to the house instead of taking our bikes.

We reached the building and went up to the third floor. It was an old building with four floors and two flats per floor. Five of the eight flats were occupied, all by senior citizen couples with kids settled abroad. These were the houses we usually targeted. Also, there was no security guard today. There had been some miscommunication between the residents and the agency that provided the security. While one security guard and gone back to his village, the replacement wasn’t assigned yet as the agency hadn’t been informed. So, the building was without a guard for these 3 days. Of course, Rakesh already knew this, and which is why we had picked this day.

He carefully broke the lock, and we were in. This was a 2BHK. One room had a safe in a cupboard, the other had some jewelry and cash kept in the desk drawer. I made my way towards the safe, Rakesh went to the other room.

I started working on the safe. In most heists, the bottleneck is the safe. It could be either locating it or breaking it or both.

“Something seems to be weird,” Rakesh said from the other room. “There are no family photos or any kind of photos on the walls. Although the owners do have good taste though.”

I looked around. There weren’t any photos, just normal paintings and other artefacts kept here and there. I decided to get back to the safe. It took some time but finally I was in. I emptied the contents in the bag I was carrying. Rakesh was almost done as well. I always worked on the safe breaking while Rakesh would go through the rest of the house, carefully checking cupboards and drawers for other valuable items. He had a better eye for such items.

“Let’s go,” I said. This was the last job and I quickly wanted to get out of here. Rakesh nodded and we moved out. He locked the door, and we went down the stairs and out on the road.

“What was the time?” I asked Rakesh.

Rakesh was grinning. “16:42,” he said.

I smiled. We had been fast. I wasn’t surprised.

We walked over to his doctor. He had an appointment today, so we had timed the heist well so that he doesn’t miss it. We reached the clinic in just over 10 minutes.

I hugged him. I wasn’t sure when I was going to see him again. I wasn’t sure if he will even remember me. His Alzheimer’s had been getting worse and he was permanently going to be kept under watch going forward. In fact, it had become so bad that he had even forgotten his own house, the one that we robbed today. I had been observing his condition regularly and I had timed this last heist perfectly.

And yes, I had moved all the photo frames from his house to the clinic a few days ago. He hadn’t even realized they were missing the last few days.

And yes, that is why I wasn’t surprised with the timing, my partner of 15 years had just helped me rob his house.

Rakesh walked into the clinic. He waved enthusiastically; he was very happy with the timing. I waved back.