“Hey, this is as religious as I get. You want it or not?”
And so that afternoon found Prashant and the gang loitering against the wide brick wall of the community college with a joint. Naturally, once they were high, all they could wonder was what would horrify their parents more—getting high or attending community college. Then the conversation turned to where they wanted to go to college—even though they were only sophomores—and then, finally, they seemed to remember, as if it were a ribbon tied around their fingers, that Sandya, the hot girl, was the project of the day. Since Prashant had scored the weed from Gori, he claimed the conquest of Sandya as his own. Because the others were so stoned, they relented.
“Should I just invite her out here to join us?” Prashant asked. “She was just sitting with her parents, watching the shows.”
“She probably realized what assholes those other dudes were.” None of them could think of anything in particular that those guys had done, but they were the rare Indian guys who were tall and good-looking and as popular with white girls as they were with Indian girls, so they were easily worthy of hatred.
“Then I’m going to go find her,” Prashant said, heading back toward the school’s entrance.
“No,” Vipul said. The so-called whites of his eyes looked as if they were made of cotton candy. “I’ll get her.”
“Why?” Prashant asked. “I called dibs.”
Vipul laughed, which looked like someone was shaking him by the shoulders. “Right. You called dibs. Whatever. You can’t just go and ask her to come and smoke weed. You’ll look like a douche. And you’re too high.”
“I’m too high?” Prashant said, now giggling through his purple haze. “What about you?”
They were all laughing now, complete idiots. How they thought they could score with someone like Sandya was totally mental.
A few hours later, all the rest of the guys had gone inside and Prashant was by himself, looking at the sun as it moped into the horizon. It was Holi, springtime, and the world was getting warm and dusted off. Soon, it would be summer and he’d be smoking even more and still trying to get laid. Materializing as if from some fantasy, Gori appeared, probably not as baked as he was but not entirely sober, either, and Prashant found himself making out with her and feeling her up. They had known each other practically all of their lives, but not even that kind of connection could have prepared Prashant for the taste of her mouth, its alternate sweetness and toughness. Due to her baggy clothes and demeanor, he’d never been able to see that she was stacked, which made her personality instantly more interesting. They made out for maybe ten minutes, hardly a word exchanged between them, and then Gori pushed herself away, took the tube of incense out of his hands, and playfully smacked him on the nose with it.
They would continue to see each other at all of the usual gatherings, but Prashant would find no instance in which to rekindle this nascent romance. For the rest of high school, the closest he would come would be a peck on some homecoming date’s cheek or, in one rare moment of confounding luck, a chance to touch Shalini Patel’s bared right breast on their prom date. Luckily, he was coming of age during the Golden Times of Internet smut, and a tanned barrage of porn stars would constitute not just the bulk but the entirety of his dating life.
Then he went off to college, to succeed in all the ways in which he had failed. But college had brought him to Kavita Bansal, and now he felt more unprepared and lost than ever.
II
TO HARIT, WHO WENT TO TEMPLE regularly, though unobtrusively, it seemed quite shocking that he had never seen Ranjana before. He had a rather impeccable knack for remembering those in attendance, and it seemed odd to him that someone like Ranjana—someone so, in a word, peculiar—would escape his notice. He had often thought of his own face as being striking in its uniqueness—and not of the good kind—but Ranjana’s was its own kind of oddity. He had to admit, with the physical affinity that exists in shivers instead of words, that he found her eyes alluring, even though they were uneven founts of exhaustion. It dawned on him that he was seeing in her a reflection of his own body—in essence, a female Harit, this one in slacks and a sweater instead of Swati’s sari.
They convened at a French restaurant, of course—La Ronde. It was a dim, many-tabled affair with tablecloths that Teddy called burgundy instead of red. Teddy had insisted that he treat them to dinner, and he wore an outfit that, even for him, was comical in its sophistication. His blazer had lapels like a tux jacket, and the dress shirt he wore was so crisp that it could have been made of meringue. He had some strange pomade in his hair, and even his skin seemed cheerier.
Harit and Teddy came together in Teddy’s car, and Ranjana showed up ten minutes later. Harit knew that she had purposefully arrived late, so as not to be a married woman waiting eagerly for two men, neither of whom was her husband. Harit and Ranjana made weak if well-intentioned Namastes at each other while Teddy grinned like a child. Then he strode forth and announced that they were the Porter party. The difference between Teddy’s reception at TGI Friday’s and this restaurant was incredible. The ma?tre d’ at La Ronde was a charming man around Teddy’s age who gave a little bow when Teddy spoke to him, and he led them to their table with a bounce in his step. They had arguably the best spot in the restaurant, a small plush booth on a raised dais with an assortment of plants overhanging it.
Harit decided to bury himself in his menu for the first few moments so as to buy himself some time. His embarrassment at Teddy’s insistence to pay dissipated when he got a look at the prices. Not that he ate steak, but he couldn’t believe that it cost close to $30. He made a note to order a vegetable quiche. (Harit’s mother had never eaten in a French restaurant; in truth, neither had Harit. Neither of them ate eggs all that often, either, so the entire notion of quiche existed far from their world.) Ranjana seemed to see in the menu the same refuge as Harit; if her nose had been buried any deeper into it, she would have been asleep.
Naturally, Teddy took the lead in conversation.