“Ah, yes,” Ranjana said. “My son does that a lot. Everything is an abbreviation. Like this bar—‘FB.’ He uses that phrase all the time.”
Jesse laughed, an extended hiccup. Amber threw her head back and cackled, like a potted plant come to horrifying life. Charity put her hand out and squeezed Ranjana’s shoulder again; if Charity didn’t watch it, Ranjana would scratch her hand off with her newly manicured nails. Tyler shook his head and took a sip of his clear, condensation-pimpled drink.
“Um, I don’t think that means what you think it means,” Sean said.
“It means Facebook, no?”
“No, no, not Facebook.”
“Then what?”
“FUCK BUDDY,” Amber shouted through her giggles.
Ranjana’s head throbbed with shock.
Achyut chose this moment to interrupt. “Hey, what can I get you, Ranjana?” He had dropped “Auntie” from her name.
“I actually have to get going. I’m not feeling that well.”
“Oh, Ranjana, I know a lie when I hear one. Do you have a problem with the bar? I didn’t mention it was a gay bar, did I?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Do you have a problem with gay bars?” Amber asked, and now Ranjana saw why she was being so aggressive: in some crazy way, she saw Ranjana as competition. Why on earth a woman of her stature and outlook and general spirit would feel threatened by Ranjana, who was so out of her element among these tank-topped musclemen, was an enigma.
“No—I. I’ve just never been in one. And—well, just look at this place. Look at me. Some of the men in here are wearing more jewelry than I am.” She paused. “But mine’s nicer.”
Everyone laughed, and Ranjana softened a bit.
“Stay, Ranjana,” Achyut said. “Please. This is the least threatening place for women. Nobody’s going to hit on you.”
It hadn’t even occurred to Ranjana that someone might try to hit on her. She had never been hit on before; the closest she had come to flirtation had been with Achyut, and that hadn’t been flirtation.
So Ranjana stayed, and ordered a Sprite, sniffing it first to make sure that it didn’t contain alcohol, and stayed as quiet as she could, and grew truly antagonistic toward Amber’s chest, which she would have burned with a torch if one were within reach, and held her drink on whichever side Charity was standing so that she didn’t have to endure the shoulder squeeze again, and grew to pity Jesse for his reticence, and felt the beat of the music through her soles, as if the floor were dancing on her feet instead of the other way around, and saw a connection between the spastic moves of these dancing gay men and the ways in which desi teenagers threw up their hands and scalloped their bodies during bhangra, and wondered what her behavior might have been if she were drinking alcohol because now she was on the dance floor, trying to bob to the music and not look like a total lunatic.
Jesse had fluid feet that accented the length of his body. Sean and Charity danced close enough to be a straight couple. Tyler stood against the wall. Amber danced with complete abandon alongside two handsome strangers. This wasn’t exactly fun, but it wasn’t a chore, either. In fact, maybe this was fun. Ranjana hadn’t defined humor until now, so perhaps her concept of fun needed similar renovation.
All the while, Achyut was back behind the bar. Every time she looked at him, a customer had an arm around his neck or trending that way. He looked truly happy. His parents had thrown him out of the house, but he had been reclaimed by the men in this room. The bar, in essence, was a loving foster home, and she understood why he wanted her here—to cement that metaphor. She had been so busy thinking about why this was not a place for her that she had forgotten the true purpose of this friendship, which was to mother and mend him.
After an hour of nonstop movement, she managed to extricate herself from the group and make her way to the bar. By this point, sweat was an outfit. Her hair probably looked as big as Amber’s now. Another Sprite was in order. She hoped for a moment of peace while she waited for Achyut, but this was not to be. A tall, amply round gentleman, whose age she could not guess in the dim, sidled up to her and took one of her hands in his.
“I do believe you’re the most darling thing I’ve seen,” he said.
Oh, god, she was defying the odds and getting hit on after all. Then she noticed how smooth his hands were, smoother than hers, and surmised correctly that she had nothing to fear.
“Thank you,” she said, averting her gaze and trying to catch Achyut’s attention. As strange as the situation was, the smoothness of his hands was certainly out of the ordinary, and she began to stretch her eyes back to him, giving in to the inevitable conversation.
“How did a lovely Indian woman like yourself end up in a place like this?” She could smell a sweetness on his breath that was more like candy than alcohol. The wrinkles around his eyes were kind, and it occurred to her that his age was much closer to hers than it was to that of the other people in this bar. He was, then, a possible confidant.
“I—came to visit the bartender,” she said. A better explanation didn’t come to her, and she felt in this moment the pathos of her evening, the tenuous correlation between herself and the glistening man who had invited her.
The gentleman sucked in through his teeth, as if impressed, but his pudgy face contorted at the same time into a look of exasperation. “Atch-yoot. How did you come to know that genteel Om?”
She smiled at this baffling phrase and didn’t know how to respond. Shrugging, she looked back in Achyut’s direction. The man’s grip on her hands tightened.
“I’m Teddy,” he said, with meaning. His eyes flashed with some hidden agenda. “I know someone that I’d really like you to meet.”
And this is how Ranjana came to know Harit.