If she does that three more times I think my heart will melt completely.

Then she got up and said she had to go meet some friends for dinner. I asked her if she was free and wanted to stay for dinner. She said no. I asked her if maybe we could go get a drink at a nearby pub. She said no. I asked her if maybe we could order two beers and have them in my room. She said no. Then I broke down crying and told her that I didn’t want to be alone on my birthday. Through the corner of my eye I saw some hesitation on her face. So I got up, walked to the window, looked out of it and began to sob. Then I stopped, wiped the (fake) tears from my eyes and apologized for loading my personal problems on her when we were nothing but casual work acquaintances.

Then I walked over to the bowl next to the TV where the apartment people occasionally leave fruit. I took the fruit knife and began to look at it with very sad eyes.

After a minute she said maybe she could stay for a beer or something in the apartment.

I thanked her, patted her gently on the shoulder in thanks—soft, mildly bony, but not overly so, 7.5/10—and then asked her if she knew how to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew.

Jenny said that this is one of the things you learn when you organize events and people forget things. She said that the trick was to hold the bottle strongly by the neck and then tap the bottom repeatedly till the cork popped out by itself.

Having never heard of such a thing before I just stared at her with an open mouth. Seeing this Jenny quickly picked up the bottle, told me to hold the neck firmly and point the bottom at her. She began to slap the bottle with her palm. Then she stopped and told me that if the cork was too tight it could pop with force. So to avoid damaging the TV or the windows we changed our positions.

She knelt on the bed and slapped the bottle. I held it up so that if the cork popped it would just hit the wall. And she began slapping again.

You won’t believe this. But the cork slowly started coming out.

And then there was a knock on the door and Gouri burst in holding a huge bouquet of flowers in her hand and screaming, ‘Surprise!’

For just one second Jenny and I screamed a little bit.

And then Gouri stopped screaming and began looking at Jenny and me strangely.

Under the circumstances I can imagine what it must have looked like to her.