It was Achyut Bakshi. He was grinning, a newly smoked cigarette still fresh on his breath. In the daylight, he looked even older.
“Mr. Bakshi,” Ranjana said, putting a hand to her chest. “Did you forget something?” Even though his demeanor was far from threatening, Ranjana could not shake the general unease of being surprised by a man.
“No, auntie.” Ranjana was taken aback that he would call her this. He had skipped professionalism entirely and was on a decidedly friendly basis. “I was wondering if you might want to get a coffee.”
Ranjana’s voice caught in her throat.
“Or a chai,” he said. “Would you like to get a chai?”
She laughed at this, and Achyut chuckled nervously. His nerves made her wonder if she had been mistaken. Perhaps he was not gay. Perhaps he was making a pass at her. She had seen his chart, though; he had checked a box indicating that he had sex with men. Just to be safe, she said, “I’m married, Mr. Bakshi.”
“I’m not trying to seduce you, auntie. I just don’t have many Indian people in my life right now, and I could use someone to talk to.”
Ranjana almost said yes. She looked at this young man and remembered his age: he must be just out of college. She thought of Prashant, and she softened. Then her mind darted to Mohan; she imagined him in his ridiculously high tube socks and too-tight tennis shorts and the determination in his eyes when he lunged for a ball, his tummy jiggling. If he could have his fun afternoon, couldn’t she have hers?
No, she couldn’t. She could write about doing something daring, but it was much harder to do daring things in real life. “Thank you, Mr. Bakshi,” she said, “but I must be getting home.” She hurried to her car and drove away as if he had been yelling after her, but in her rearview mirror, he was silent and motionless.
*
“You don’t get out enough, yaar,” Seema said, placing some pastel-colored sweets on a plate and setting them in front of Ranjana. Seema was growing in health, a fact made evident by her bare arms, which seemed to have been dipped in a fountain of youth: her elbows were like ripe walnuts, the folds of her armpits as smooth as a baby’s mouth. “When was the last time you did something for yourself?”
Ranjana wanted to tell her about the encounter with Achyut Bakshi but wasn’t sure how to explain it. She worried that Seema would turn it into something vulgar, would suck out all dignity or grace that it might have contained.
“I do my writing,” Ranjana said. “What could be more personal than that? I still don’t share that with Mohan.”
“That’s not all you don’t share with Mohan, yaar,” Seema said. She grinned as she broke up a pink, powdery chunk of barfi and placed the crumbs on her tongue as if counting them. “When was the last time you had sex?”
“Seema!” Given what she had recently discovered about Mohan, Ranjana did not find this question even remotely funny, even as Seema continued to grin and put more sweet crumbs on her tongue. Ranjana wanted to stand up and storm out, but she knew that Seema would see this only as entertainment and learn nothing from it. “You go too far.”
“No one else is home, Ranjana,” Seema said. “You can tell me. Don’t pretend like you don’t think of these things.”
“‘These things.’ This is one thing, and it would be nice if you respected the privacy of such matters.”
“Arré, don’t act like you visit me to ‘respect such matters,’ Ranjana. This is what girlfriends do. This is how we keep each other sane.” Seema switched into Hindi for this last sentence, an obvious effort to make the conversation respectful, at least linguistically.
“Seema, this is not your yoga class,” Ranjana replied back in Hindi. “I am not like those women. You should learn to understand the difference.”
“I think you should learn to let out your frustration, Ranjana. I’ll tell you what: Satish and I have sex once a week.”
“Seema!”
“And not just some preplanned day of the week, like Monday mornings or Wednesdays at midnight or something. We keep track of each other.”
Ranjana put her face in her hands.
“Fine, yaar, we don’t have to go into ‘such things’ now. But I am simply trying to help.”
“How?” Ranjana slurped through her hands. “By reminding me that it’s been years since Mohan and I did that?”
“Years?”
“Oh, don’t act like you didn’t know that, Seema,” Ranjana said, switching the conversation back into English and dropping her hands back into her lap. “Years. I couldn’t tell you the last time we did … that.”
“It wasn’t when Prashant was conceived, was it?”
“Oh, Seema.” Ranjana smashed up her own piece of barfi and dropped the carnage into her mouth as if downing a fistful of pills.
No, Prashant’s conception had not been the last time. But Ranjana was not lying; she did not know the last time that she and Mohan had made love. Ha—made love. As if it had ever had that tinge to it. She found the expression horrible and cruel anyway. Making love could not be confined to a bed. You could be reminded by any number of things that you weren’t making love, that love wasn’t being made. When Mohan grabbed a roti off a plate, a plate that contained rotis of decreasing heat as one went farther down the stack, the stiffness with which he performed this act made no love at all, just carelessness or annoyance. The way in which he slumped in a series of maneuvers, like a beached seal, while turning in his recliner—what sort of love did that make? The bony grip of his fingers on the steering wheel when he was driving, Ranjana’s own hands clasped in her lap or massaging her temples—what sort of love did any of this make? They were making excuses—that’s what they were making. A marriage was a series of excuses made with your bodies in tragic, taxing collusion.