"Betty, Monalisa and those girls you've met, right? Just one more left..."

Ira worked at the Grey House, the technological section. He was an engineering passout and also an MBA, and all those flying colors' degrees fetched him a high paid position at the Grey House right when he walked out of the interview hall.
He, though had always been the boy who hid himself away from the world. He had talents which the world stayed unconscious of. Even his parents knew too less of what he could do. If they did, he would have probably been either a cricketer, or a photographer, or a writer, or a painter and never an engineer.

Ira Harold Armstrong was born in Portland, to a fairly well earning father and a loving mother who thought she took the best care of him. Which she actually did!

Since childhood, he had been given the best education that was possible to avail. And, since childhood, growing up in a sports-maniac family, he had become sports-maniac as well. Never did he miss any game to watch or to play.

Being a pampered child, he barely knew the real life. He was brought up by a small nuclear family that consisted of only his parents. Barely having known the rest of the extended family, he often found visitors irritating. He once told a talkative pregnant relative, who was constantly offending his mother, Mrs. Jess Armstrong, to give her voice a bit of rest lest the baby may born deaf.

He clearly remembered his mother saying afterwards that what he did was immature and unexpected and disrespectful. When she went out, his father, Mr. Adam Armstrong gave him a high-five and said, "You're a lion, my boy. Never be afraid to open your mouth wide and roar out what you want to say."

Ira had always been closer to his father than anybody else. Starting from making him walk with him holding his long fingers, then to teach him cycling, helping him when he fell, preaching him the basic morals of life that he himself followed, doing his homework with him, having fun, teaching him biking, then driving, and pampering him all the way, Mr. Armstrong watched him grow older and older until he became the man he dreamt of making.

Ira had lived up to all the expectations of his parents and he had done it not just for them, but for himself as well. True that he wanted to be many other things as well, true that he barely knew how atrocious real life can be, he knew that all he needed to survive was money and respect.

His Dad hadn't taught him that. His Mom did. While his father had been looking after the side of him which was to grow into a generous, genuine and lovable man, his mother wanted him to become independent and free of worries. Though she cosseted him a lot, she had been careful and artful enough to put this one thing into his head.

As a child and as a teenager, Ira with Mr. Adam often went to a place of their own - their secret place, they called it - outside the urbanization of Portland. The vast meadows where they used to play had a scenic beauty worth staring at.

At long stretches, the land beside the highway consisted of almost unattended meadows. Long grass grew all over and small insects buzzed around and about the visitors whenever they came, as if to welcome them, as if to try to tell them how delighted they were to finally have guests.

Once, when the father and son returned from the meadows, they were the ones who told themselves to check the news channel at least once before going again. When they were out, playing on the bank of a small distant stream, Mr. Armstrong, for the first time ever, had missed watching for dark clouds in the sky.

They were having a gala time, boys' time and none had thought it could rain that day. And, just when Dad had started a new story about when he was a child himself, the clouds started pouring down.

"Dad," Ira had shouted in joy as he got wet in the rain. He was never allowed to get wet, lest he may fall sick. "Ira," his father had shouted out to him, "c'mon, boy, let's get into the car. Don't get wet." "Dad," the ten-year old boy screamed again, "Dad," and again and again. He seemed to have gone barmy as he let himself get drenched in the pouring of holy water from the heavens above.

His father picked him up and forcefully carried him to the car and made him sit inside. The drenched t-shirt stuck to the little boy's body as he struggled to escape from his father's bondage to be let out in the rain again. "No, Ira," his father scolded, "you'll fall sick and I'm not going to let that happen."

Ira had made a grumpy face as he sat inside the car while Mr. Adam again got out to run to the belongings to carry them back to the car. Getting a loophole, Ira tried unlocking the door again. Seeing him struggle with the door, his father smiled as he walked around the car to get in. "I thought," he said, putting the belongings in through the back door, "that you wouldn't try to get out. But, I didn't take a chance. Good thought, eh, buddy?"

All the way, Ira didn't speak a word to his father. Both of them, dripping wet, when returned home, in the evening, got scolded by Mom. Just as the scolding ended, Ira ran to his room and closed it from inside. If his parents would have been worried about him that day and had been banging on his door, they would have discovered one of his talents, which he had decided to keep quite hidden from them. And, since that day, he told everyone he hated the rain.

He had always been one of the best in school. The brightest and the most intelligent in the class, every teacher had expectations for him running wild. And, to satisfy those wild expectations, all he had to do every year was to have an almost full point of GPA.Math, Science, Literature, Foreign language - he was ahead at every subject.

There was no doubt he would take up science-based learning in high school and he did. Portland Central High School had welcomed him for his 98% GPA at the middle school final. Everyone knew him by name and teachers always preferred his answer to anybody else's.

Students who had been in the same school since the lower classes somehow couldn't accept his popularity much. The previous toppers, very peculiarly, started conspiring against him.

Every plan of theirs failed initially, until they discovered Ira's soft corner for Demi, an ex-girlfriend of one of the conspirers. The gang unanimously anointed her as their plan executor.

When, inspired by the closeness Demi showed the next few days, Ira built up his courage to speak his heart out to her. When he did, the girl immediately accepted him, making him wonder how it could suddenly be. She made him feel better every passing day and kept him engaged in things like partying, smoking cigarettes, drinking and others that did not concern his studies and career.

His irregularity in school and late-night returns worried his parents and the result of all that was what they had expected. He failed two subjects at the Mid-terms and Demi left him straightaway, without stating any reason at all. She got her money from the conspirers and Ira got a lesson.

When he appeared for the next exam, he returned with a bang. He had taken the lesson and the heart break way too seriously and took it as a challenge.
After that, he had never stopped, or looked back or waited for any girl or anyone at all. He had dated a few women in college, but nothing ever turned serious. Not that he even wanted!

His all perfect GPA brought him to the Washington University of Technology and then, willed him to travel to Boston to take up a course on MBA and finally land up working at the Grey Enterprises Holdings back in Seattle.

In the few months that he worked there, he had gathered more money than he thought he would. He bought for his parents a new car and a new house in Seattle yet stayed at a small apartment himself. Why he stayed alone was a mystery.

The only person other than his parents who witnessed his journey to success through tough times and all the hardship was his cousin. Though he barely met his relatives, this one sister of his was of much fondness to him. She was like a gift to him on his 7th birthday when she was brought home from the nursing home, a week after she was born.

"Theresa," he had named her immediately at that young age and had promised to take care of her and fulfill her wishes for as long as he could.

She grew up with him, with his guidance and, whenever they stayed apart, they constantly kept in touch and were like each other's advisors. When his failure in the sophomore year went viral, she was the one to lift him up and inspire him.

Whenever she got confused over Simon, the guy she had retained for almost a lifetime, he resolved her problems so that they never set apart.

Theresa, on the other hand, had an absurd fantasy for her brother. She wanted him to have the best girl in the world as his lover. She had seen how he had become after learning about the way Demi had cheated on him. It was as if he had been fragmented. She knew that his feelings for her were true and yet he was repaid that way.

His heart had been broken so drastically that he was scared to surrender himself to anyone anymore. He wanted to be strong and he even pretended to be stronger on the outside than he really was.

On the contrary of the imagery he had created on the outside, he was actually a coward. Not coward in the manly sense, but coward in the case of falling in love. He never wanted to fall only because he was scared that his heart would be broken again. And, this time, he wasn't sure if he could take it any longer.

Theresa tried hard to get him hitched with girls she knew, but every time he did a blunder. Either he did not arrive or he arrived so late that the girl was gone by then or he straightaway told her that he did not want a relationship and his sister was retarded. And, Theresa knew that he did that on purpose.

She had become tired of trying to find a girl for him.

So, she talked to her Uncle Adam and they both chalked out a party. A party where Theresa was supposed to invite all of her best girl mates from college, the sorority, ex-school and anywhere she could and introduce all of them to Ira one by one. Adam believed that there would be at least one girl in Seattle who would be able to arouse interest for herself in his son. When he said that, he didn't even know how right he was.

He helped Theresa by arranging the party and ordered for stuff and appointed himself to make the party interesting. Theresa took the duty of calling up her girls and asking them to attend the party.
Unluckily, half of them were either out of town for the summer already or were sick or had other appointments. "Never mind," the older man had said, "invite the ones there are. I'm sure the one for him would be among them."

If Arianne had not consented to come, there would have been only ten girls with almost double the boys invited.

"Why do you need to party all the time?" Ira asked Theresa, sitting on his bed, watching his sister struggle through his wardrobe for a nice shirt. "This party is special," she had replied, "you'd love it."

It was the morning of the party and she had excused herself from the sorority by saying that the party needed some last minute arrangements which needed her attention. She did not want any of the girls to know already that the party had a purpose of hitching any one of them with her cousin. If they knew, half of them would have resolved to wearing a thousand pounds of make-up and a thousand centimeters high heel. She wanted Ira to see each of them like they were.

That evening, Ira dressed up as quickly as he could and set off for the property of his late grandmother. He had worn the blue shirt that his sister selected and the yellow tie with it made him look cooler than he actually was.

"Oh, you've arrived," the seven year younger sister jumped in glee and took him for a drink. When he'd had one, she told him, "there are some friends of mine whom I'd like you to meet."

"Again?" he said, pretending to be exhausted, "is it about having a girlfriend again?" "Ira, I can't believe this. Don't you trust me?" "Of course I do," he said.

"Will you meet?" she asked again.

"There's no other choice," he said.

"Ira, this is Betty," she had started introducing him to her friends, "my friend from the Language classes." He saw a lot of girls that evening but he did not seem to care at all. Two of them he had already gone out with earlier. When they came to a halt, he thought that it was over.

Theresa ordered for another drink and as they had it, she said, "Betty, Monalisa, and those girls you've met, right? Just one more left - Arianne."

"You want me to date a guy?"
"Why would I?"
"Aryan then? Isn't that the name of a guy?"

"No, it's Arianne, a girl. She's my roommate at the sorority house. Ira, tell me, did you not like any of those girls?"

"Theresa, please, get over it. I'm not thinking love right now. I'm not thinking anything right now except for work."

"Shut up. You done drinking? Let's go to Arianne. She's very shy, by the way. You'd have to do the talking, okay?"

"Shy? Is anybody you know shy at all?"
"She is. Where is she?"

Ira waited as Theresa went round the bar table to a guy and asked him something. As they talked, he looked away. His eyes, though not wanting to capture anything at all, captured a figure while in a Beduin motion around the room. He replaced his vision immediately to where it had located it and concentrated.

In the distance, he saw a figure of a woman standing in one of the balconies that surrounded the mammoth room. He did not know why, but it intrigued him. She intrigued him. Her posture, her hair moving with the summer wind, the glass of wine in her hand, the simplicity of her clothing, her loneliness in the crowd - everything intrigued him. And, all he had seen was her from the back and, that too from a distance. Adam Armstrong was right, after all.

"C'mon," Theresa came back to him, "I found her." He got up from the stool and followed her through the party. As he hoped and expected, she led him to the balcony where the intriguing woman was standing.

"Arianne!" She called her and as she turned around, he saw her for the very first time and, after a long long time, it felt good to him to have seen someone.

"Arianne, this is my cousin," Theresa introduced them to each other, "Ira Armstrong. Ira, this is Arianne Daveson, my roommate. I told you."

"Hello, Arianne" he produced his hand and waited for her to shake it.