—
“What happened earlier tonight?” she asked. They were drinking whisky. She was yawning. They had been napping.
“What do you mean?”
“Why were you so agitated?”
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling a long time.
Then suddenly he began to speak.
“One day when I was a little kid,” he said, “my father took me to Lala Ka Bazar. This is back when we lived in Meerut. I remember being in a rickshaw with him, pressed up against his body, I’d never been so close to him. We climbed off and we walked through the alleyways. He’d never taken me out like this before. He’d never taken me anywhere. I was so excited. So happy because all my life I’d been ignored. We reached a toy store, and the other customers were asked to leave. There we were, he, I, the shop owner. I was told by my father to pick out any toy I liked, as many as I wanted. “Go,” he said. So I did. I ran around. I spent a good long time searching and finally I settled on a few things—a red truck with flashing lights, a small, hard, yellow ball that bounced really well off the walls, and this toy gun that made different sounds when it fired. My father didn’t say anything to me, but he had them set aside and then we left. I was confused, but I daren’t ask why we hadn’t taken them. I decided they were being sent home for me. I waited and I waited. Days. Weeks. But they never came. I never forgot. I never stopped waiting.”
He paused, tangled up in his memories.
“Tonight,” he went, his voice growing cold, “Dinesh said to me, ‘Your father was like a father to me growing up. All the important moments in my life, he was there.’ He meant it as a compliment. He thought he was flattering me. Then he described one certain birthday, the first time he met his Bunty Uncle. He said he’d never forget the gifts. A gun, a truck, a yellow bouncing ball.”
“That’s awful. Did you tell him your story?”
“Are you mad? Why would I humiliate myself like that?”
“I don’t know.”
They lay in silence for some time.
“What about your mother?”
He breathed slowly. “What about her?”
“Didn’t she do something?”
He shook his head.
“She was dead by then.”
“When did she die?”
“When I was five.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sat up, climbed out of bed. “Don’t be. The bitch hung herself.”
Her phone began to ring.
She ignored it.
“You should get that,” he said.
“I don’t want to. It’s not important.”
It rang off and went silent. Ten seconds later it started ringing again.
“Get it,” he said, “or I throw it out the window.”
* * *
—
It was Dean. She stood naked with the phone, looking at the twinkling sulfury lights of Delhi. He asked her where she was, said he wanted to meet her for dinner at 4S. He said, “How can you resist the lure of chilli chicken and cold beer?” She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less right now. She calibrated her voice as if she were speaking to her mother. She told Dean she was having a drink with a friend, that she’d finish up and call back later. She was still reeling from Sunny’s words. The practiced callousness that could not hide his pain. She wanted to know more.
* * *
—
But back in the bedroom Sunny was on his BlackBerry.
“I have someone coming over,” he said. “So you should get dressed and go.”
She was hurt.
“OK.”
“It’s work.”
“I said OK.”
They both began to get dressed in silence.
After he’d put his trousers on, he stopped to watch her.
“What?” she said.
“It’s Dinesh. I was supposed to be with him all evening. I blew him off for a few hours to see you.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?”
“Don’t get jealous.”
“I’m not.”
“I have a life.”
“So do I.”
“We’re all good, then.”
She finished dressing.
“Listen, about your mother,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well,” she continued, with a fake, breezy smile, “that was fun. I’ll see you around.”
She walked toward the front door, put the key card on the sideboard.
She was almost there when he reached her. Grabbed her and turned her around and pinned her against the wall.
“What?” she demanded. “What!? Get off, you’re hurting me.”
His eyes searched hers.
What did he want to say? Do?
Was he really hurting her?
She didn’t know.
“You’re not . . . ,” he said, “like anyone else.”
“Spare me.”
“I mean it.”
He tried to kiss her, and she turned her face away.
“I mean it,” he said again.
Then he kissed her, and she didn’t resist, and then he let her go.
* * *
—
She met the soft eyes of the elevator operator. Inhaled the nullifying scent of jasmine and lemongrass. The pain around her wrists. Too much whisky in her blood. Her head spun. She was grateful for the lobby. She was grateful for the hot summer air. She stood at the same spot, with the valet, waiting for her Maruti to chug its way up the driveway, but now everything had changed. She drove off and accelerated through the streets rashly until she got a grip on herself and pulled to the side of the road. Her hand was shaking. She lit a cigarette. The day had escalated from nothing, detonated. Laborers passed along the roadside in the dark, smoking beedis, glancing in without expression. She called Dean. “Hey. Yeah. I’m on my way. Yeah, I got out of it. I’ll be there in twenty.”
* * *
—
Dean was already sitting upstairs in 4S waiting for her. He’d taken one of the front two tables, where the light from the sign outside bounced and flashed through the plate-glass window and bathed his face in neon. The narrow space was packed, as usual, with students. Dark and a little grimy and so very comforting to her—the waiters knew her by sight, they greeted her as she came in and twisted up the steep stairs.
He saw her emerge at the top and he already had his hand in the air in greeting.
She smiled at the sight of him, a big kid among all the college kids, an amiable professor.
He’d already ordered two Old Monks and Coke and a plate of spring rolls. She picked up one of the spring rolls as she was sitting down and took a great bite. “God, I’m starving.”
“So,” he said, “how was boy wonder?”
She stuffed the spring roll in her mouth, spoke through the food.
Somehow it was easier to lie that way.
“Oh, you know, world-class this, world-class that, a lot of bullshit.”
He shook his head. “If I hear that fucking word one more time I’m going to scream. I was at an RWA meeting in Sarojini Nagar, they kept saying it, they kept talking about the need to make Delhi world class. That fucking phrase. Global city, world class. The shop window of the world. Anyway, enough of that. I heard you actually asked the question.”
“Yeah, it must have been the wine.”