Lakshmi was wearing a strappy black top, a leather skirt, and spike-heeled boots. Her glossy lips shone as bright and wet as her laughing black eyes, which were lined with kohl. She was so beautiful.
We waited for a long time at the gate for Isabelle, Noor’s best friend, who was apparently French and super-hot and brilliant and sophisticated, but also really sweet and protective. Finally Isabelle turned up, looking younger than I had imagined, wearing a fluffy white cardigan. She had been unable to bring the tequila.
“I feel terrible,” she said, with a French accent.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lakshmi said. They kissed each other. Isabelle hailed a cab to go to her mother’s friend’s gallery opening. As we walked to the T, Lakshmi spoke with despair about Isabelle’s cardigan, about how smart it was, and how effortlessly Isabelle trod the fine line between sexy and angelic. A bearded self-deprecating man was singing folk songs near the station entrance. As we crossed the street I noticed Ivan and Eunice in the crowd of listeners. Ivan was holding his motorcycle helmet, and Eunice was holding the bike helmet. They seemed completely absorbed. At the end of the song, they neither applauded nor made any move to leave.
“So,” Lakshmi said at the subway platform. “How’s your mystery man?”
“We actually just walked past him,” I said. “He was with his girlfriend.”
“What? Where?”
“Outside. They were listening to that guy with the guitar.”
Lakshmi wanted to run upstairs and look, but she couldn’t afford another T token—she was always short on pocket money. “I just can’t believe he was actually there,” she kept saying. “I can’t believe he really exists. You never tell me anything about him.”
Lakshmi always asked me questions about Ivan that I didn’t know how to answer: how attractive was he, how smart, how well dressed, which movie actor he most closely resembled.
“He’s really tall,” I said.
“What a description, from a writer.”
I told her he didn’t remind me of any movie actor. “Isn’t that the point of liking somebody?” I said. “They form their—”
“Their own type,” Lakshmi chimed in. It was one of her mannerisms; she guessed what you were going to say and then said it with you. It didn’t mean she agreed. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I think he has to fit a prototype. Love at first sight is possible only because you recognize a type. You’re already looking for him. You know, he’s your father, your schoolmaster. He’s someone you’ve seen before.”
A train rumbled into the station, but it turned out to be going in the opposite direction.
“How about the girlfriend?” Lakshmi said. “Is she attractive? Is she well dressed?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must at least have an opinion.”
“I know it’s weird. But I honestly can’t tell.”
“In relative terms, is she more or less attractive than you?”
“That’s the most depressing thing you could possibly say to me.”
“I’m only trying to help you come up with a prognosis.”
“I can give you a prognosis right now, in three letters,” I said. “Bad. The prognosis is bad. It doesn’t matter what I look like. I could look like Juliette Binoche, and it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“Juliette Binoche doesn’t have a good body. Of course, she has an angelic face, but have you really looked at her legs?” Lakshmi paused. “I suppose what you mean is that it wouldn’t make a difference if you were stunningly gorgeous.” She started to laugh. “Why not? Because of your insufferable personality?”
We were both giggling about my insufferable personality when the train pulled in. The car was too crowded for us to talk. We just stood there clinging to the ceiling bar, swaying in our stupid shoes. The train emerged briefly from the tunnel and crossed a bridge. The glass turned from distorting mirrors into windows, and you could look out at the world—at stars, water, lights, boats.
Lakshmi had borrowed an ID from an Indian medical student named Denise. Five-foot-three and twenty-six years old, Denise bore little physical resemblence to Lakshmi, and almost none at all to me. Lakshmi showed Denise’s ID to the bouncer. He waved her in. She slipped the ID into my hand from behind the velvet rope—I was supposed to walk around the block and come back in ten minutes. I went to a diner and ordered a coffee. A group of Pakistani guys was sitting at the next table. “Hey, are you Pakistani?” one of them asked.
“No,” I said.
“Why are you lying? It’s obvious.”
“I’m not.”
“Why are you ashamed to be Pakistani?”
“I’m Turkish,” I said. “We look the same.”
“Why are you saying that, why are you ashamed?”
I left the money on the table, went back to the club, and showed Denise’s license. The bouncer waved me in.
The music was pulsing like a bodily function. I saw Noor right away at the turntables, wearing headphones. I knew from Lakshmi that he was extremely attractive and dressed really well. I looked at him and tried to understand what an attractive well-dressed man looked like. He had facial stubble and an earring.
Lakshmi’s eyes were shining. She touched my waist and pointed out a guy and said that if I went over and flirted with him, he would give me some ecstasy. I looked at the guy. “I’m okay,” I said.
Dance songs turned out to consist of one sentence repeated over and over. For example: “I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain.” Why would a desert miss rain? Why wasn’t it okay for a desert to be a desert, why couldn’t anything just be what it was, why did it always have to be missing something?
Short aggressive men kept dancing up close to Lakshmi, who had found a way to incorporate rejection into her dancing, rolling her eyes and tossing her hair and angling her lovely shoulders away. Less frequently, one of the men would try to dance with me. I would nod in a businesslike manner and then turn away as if I had remembered something important I had to do. It went on and on, the dancing. I kept wondering why we had to do it, and for how much longer.
? ? ?
On Sunday night, the third night after our swimming excursion, I found a voice mail from Ivan. He sounded the same as always. He said he was calling to see how I was. I didn’t know what to say to him. I stopped answering the phone. He left messages again on Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday was the last day of exams. I spent Wednesday with my second cousin Murat, who was in Boston for an engineering conference. I showed him around campus, and he came over to my room to help me carry some boxes to storage. As I was taping the boxes closed, the phone started to ring.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Murat asked, after the third ring.
I let it ring two more times, then picked up.
“Selin, hey,” said Ivan.
“Hey.”
“What have you been up to?”
“Nothing.”
“I thought you must be busy with something. I’ve called you a few times. Maybe you got my messages.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
“Well. I just thought it would be nice to see you. Do you have plans this afternoon?”
“My cousin is here.”
There was a pause. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just can’t really talk now.”