A few months go by and I am nowhere near my goal.

The work is backbreaking and monotonous. I continue to take the midnight shifts and meet no one but rowdy college boys whose fathers are way too rich for their own good, and the occasional lone diner looking for some peace and quiet.

But none of them catch my eye like that dark stranger I met that night.

Aaron.

The man who had wanted to sleep with me the first time he met me. One of life's takers.

That's how I should be thinking of him. But somehow I can't. I know to stay away from men who ask women to their hotel rooms for some discreet sex, but something stops me from marking him merely as pervert.

Maybe it is the way he was dressed- stylish yet muted. Maybe it is the way he carried himself- like he knew his own worth in the worth. It's the way his whole countenance had changed when he smiled- yet he wasn't handsome in the classical sense of word.

Aaron. I taste the name on my tongue. It is a common enough name, but the accent that goes with it made it more guttural, more lyrics. As if, you feel when you pronounce Aaron.

I've since found out that Hebrew is mostly spoken in Israel. But he could be from anywhere. Anywhere the Jewish community is.

I didn't ask which country he belonged. I wish I did.

Focus, Preeti.

I bang on the door for the umpteenth time till my groggy mother opens the door. She scowls heavily at me.

"Why can't you return earlier?"

The long hours have been killing my feet and I was sleepy. My body still hasn't accepted that it needs to stay awake past midnight and wake up again at the crack of dawn. Most of all, I am exhausted. So I snap right back.

"Why can't you earn your own food?"

The instant the words leave my mouth, I regret them; but I am too frustrated and angry to take them back. Mostly, I refuse to apologise. Apologising would mean that I feel guilty for those harsh words, and I have spent too many hours being made to feel guilty over circumstances beyond my control.

The lines of my mother's craggy face don't change. The only sign that my words hurt her is the way her eyelashes lower over her eyes. She has been taunted in this line since she was a teenage bride and I am not sure she doesn't think she deserves such words.

She has learnt not to react. She knows not to kick a gift horse in the mouth. She is a practical woman. And I am a bitch for brimming with such cynicism for my own mother. But, that is life.

Hunger does that to you. It blurs out all other emotions except the fierce will to just live. To do anything to survive.

And we both knew how to survive.

Without another word, she turns to return to her room.

Sighing, I turn towards mine. To say I have a room is an overstatement. It is just all one room, separated by a blue plastic sheet in the middle. As I get ready for bed, I tell myself it is all temporary. I will soon move us out of this shithole.

I will find a fella who will love me and whisk me off; away from the crushing reality of life. I won't have to burn both ends; I won't have to sleep on the hard floor on threadbare mattress. I won't feel like being a bitch to my mother; instead we will be like those TV mothers and daughters- gossiping and shopping all day long.

A warm feeling flows through me as I go to sleep with the dream of a small house set at the edge of a forest. A house filled with a husband, kids and my mother.

After all, it doesn't cost anything to dream. And if I am to dream, why dream of just plain rice, why not a feast?

But sometime during that night, my dream changes. And I wake up in the morning with the memory of a pair of extraordinary brown eyes smiling mockingly at me.

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