Thirty
APRIL
Mumbai
As Mukesh expected, the shoot goes over schedule by double, so for six days I have the pleasure of becoming Lars Von Gelder. And it is. A pleasure. A surprising one. On set, in costume, with Amisha and the other actors across from me, Lars Von Gelder’s cheesy Hindi lines cease to feel cheesy. They don’t even feel like another language. They roll off my tongue and I feel like I am him, the calculating operator who says one thing and wants another.
In between takes, I hang out in Amisha’s trailer, playing games of hearts with her and Billy. “We’re all impressed with your abilities,” Amisha tells me. “Even Faruk, though he’ll never say so.”
He doesn’t. Not exactly. But at the end of each day, he pats me on the back and says, “Not bad, Mr. Not Really.” And I feel proud.
But then it’s the last day and I know it’s over, because instead of saying “not bad,” Faruk says “good work,” and thanks me.
And that’s it. Next week, Amisha and the principles are packing for Abu Dhabi where they will shoot the final scenes of the film. And me? Yesterday I got a text from Tasha. She and Nash and Jules are in Goa. I’m invited to go with them. But I won’t.
I have a couple more weeks here. And I’m spending them with my mother.
My first night back at the Bombay Royale, I get in late. Chaudhary is snoring behind the desk, so I take the stairs up to the fifth floor rather than wake him. Yael has left the door propped open, but she’s also asleep when I get in. I’m both relieved and disappointed. We haven’t really spoken since that day at the clinic. I don’t quite know what to expect between us. Have things changed? Do we speak a common language now?
The next morning she shakes me awake.
“Hey,” I say, blinking my eyes.
“Hey,” she says back, almost shyly. “I wanted to know, before I leave for work, if you wanted to join me tonight for a Seder. It’s the first night of Passover.”
I almost think she’s joking. When I was growing up, we only celebrated the secular holidays. New Year’s. Queen’s Day. We never once had a Seder. I didn’t even know what they were until Saba started visiting and told me about all the holidays he celebrated, that Yael used to celebrate when she was a child.
“Since when do you go to Seders?” I ask. My question is hesitant, because the mere asking of it touches on the tender spot of her childhood.
“Two years now,” she answers. “There’s an American family that started a school near the clinic, and they wanted to have one last year and I was the only Jew they knew, so they begged me to come, because they said they’d feel funny having one without a Jew.”
“They’re not Jewish then?”
“No. They’re Christians. Missionaries, even.”
“You’re kidding?”
She shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “I have discovered that no one likes a Jewish holiday quite like a Christian fundamentalist.” She laughs, and I can’t remember the last time I heard her do that. “There might be a Catholic nun there, too.”
“A nun? This is starting to sound like one of Uncle Daniel’s jokes. A nun and a missionary walk into a Seder.”
“You need three. A nun, a missionary, and an imam walk into a Seder,” Yael says.
Imam. I think of the Muslim girls in Paris, and I’m reminded, again, of Lulu. “She was Jewish, too,” I say. “My American girl.”
Yael’s eyebrows go up. “Really?”
I nod.
Yael raises her hands into the air. “Well, maybe she’s having her own Seder tonight.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but as soon as she says it, I get a strange feeling that it’s true. And for a second, even with those two oceans and everything else between us, Lulu doesn’t feel quite so far away.