What's it worth?

We walked hand in hand, on that slightly chilly fall evening. We took a slight detour towards the benches outside the museum as we were in no hurry to return home. It was a wonderful office party and even though she dreaded having to go back on Monday and see the same people again, we did have a good time. And it wasn't often that we had a real reason to dress up and look as good and as tipsy as we did.

"You look so cute with a bow tie. I could bite you right now!", she teased.

"If you like it that much I 'll wear it all the time from now on. You think this will look good with my 'Van Halen' T-Shirt?"

Much as it made me look like a waiter, I like the way I look in a tuxedo - gelled-back hair, sleek, black suit with a black satin lapel, a brilliant white shirt, gold cuff-links, wing-tipped oxfords and a bow tie. She was dressed in a black dress that accentuated her form, black heels, and a simple diamond solitaire pendant. It always surpised me that so little could make someone look so good. I was just considering how beautiful she looked, when she caught me.

"Eight years together, still not lost it, have I?", she said, nonchalant. I nodded my consent and held her closer.

People say that once you know what's in the package, you don't really care how it's wrapped, but this wasn't true for me. I knew who she really was from the inside. I had seen and experienced her realities, I had withstood her lies and I knew every one of her subtle expressions so well, that she could never play poker with me anymore. But this was what I cherished deep inside my heart. There were the precious things only I knew. Only I held her decoder ring.

Just then, we turned around a bend and almost walked into a man standing there. It was odd that he would be standing right around a corner on this lonely street. It occurred to me that we might be in trouble, but as correct as my deduction might have been, it was important for me to play the part and simply try to excuse myself and walk away.

"Excuse me, I didn't see you there. I almost walked into you and spilt your coffee. Sorry about that." Saying that, I tried to make our way around him when he put a step in my way.

Love, being an unquantifiable state or quality was a little confusing to an objective and logical man that I was. Therefore, in order to understand it better in the metrics I lived my life in, I had imagined the both of us in several situations of varying degrees of danger and my reactions in each of them.

For instance, if there was tree falling on us, I would push her out of the way and then try to save myself. If we were skiing together and I lost control and was heading towards her, I would just force myself to dive into the snow. If she was coming at me, I would take the hit and stop her before she ran into the trees.

But in case of a mugging, I had always thought that the mature and logical thing to do was to simply hand over the wallet as we could always make money another day. But I know that there are some really crazy people out there, so if the thug made any advances towards my wife, the weapon he was threatening us with would be used against him, be it at the risk of my loosing my life. It was all clearly laid out in my head. I had planned it out meticulously. I had considered that there would be a lot of adrenaline rushing through all of us. I would have to move slowly and always indicate what I was doing lest he thinks I am reaching for a weapon. I would hand over the wallet smoothly and cause no rush of any sort; tell him how much money there was and then simply ask him to leave us in a non-threatening way. Looking down at the ground all the time was important not only for the sake of assuming a non-threatening pose but to also indicate that I would not be able to identify him to the cops later on.

But I never wanted to put these things to the test. But here it was. So I just reacted the way I had always trained myself to do. Just as a soldier in a battle acts by instinct rather than by thinking, I quietly reached into my pocket for my wallet and handed it to him, told him there was four hundred dollars and that we simply wanted to leave without any trouble.

Having acted and delivered my line perfectly, I waited for the result. As nothing came for two seconds, I looked up to see a man with a quizzical expression on his face. He paused for a second, handed me my wallet back and said,

"What the hell have you been drinking? I am a detective of the PPD. This is a crime scene, you cannot walk this way. Take the next street over."

Mortified, I turned around to face her only to be met with that expression on her face that said, "I should have left you long ago!"