“We aren’t looking for anything too fancy,” Mrs. Jha said. “A simple ring. Or some small earrings. Nothing too flashy.”
Willing remembered the Indian man from last week. He had also come in looking for “nothing too flashy” for his wife, daughters, and daughter-in-law and had left after spending more than Willing earned in a year. But then there had also been the Indian couple the month before who had spent hours looking at everything, talking about money, converting all the prices to rupees, drinking lots of free champagne, taking pictures of themselves wearing the jewelry, and then leaving without spending a single penny. You could never tell with Indians these days.
“Why don’t we have some champagne first?” Willing said. “And I’ll bring out some of the earrings.” He turned to find his assistant.
“Champagne?” Mrs. Jha whispered to her husband. “I don’t want to waste money. Tell him no champagne. Maybe just a glass of water. Or a fresh lime soda. But champagne? This is how these shops make money.”
“Don’t be silly,” Mr. Jha said. “I’m sure it’s complimentary. Champagne breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
Mr. Jha laughed. This was all going to his head. They were sitting at Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue with an old white man bringing them champagne. Had he ever been served anything by a white man before? He must remember all the details to tell the Chopras.
“Just a pair of small solitaires for me,” Mrs. Jha said. “I don’t feel comfortable wearing expensive jewelry.”
She took a sip of her champagne. The fizziness went up her nose and made her want to sneeze, but she didn’t want the kind old man to think she had never had champagne before, so she swallowed even though her eyes teared up. She didn’t like it but she could not waste. She didn’t even know if they were being charged for it.
“Some cake with that champagne?” Willing said as his assistant popped up behind him with a silver tray full of little light blue cakes that looked like gifts wrapped in white bows. Mrs. Jha looked at her husband. Would they be charged for this as well? It didn’t matter. She couldn’t resist Western sweets. She took two and placed them on her napkin. Even if they charged them, it would be worth it. She had to keep remembering that they were wealthy now. They could eat small cakes and learn to enjoy the carbonated wine. They were in New York City, on Fifth Avenue, at Audrey Hepburn’s shop, and they had every right to be here.
Mrs. Jha took another, smaller sip of her champagne and then bravely put her hand on her husband’s forearm. He looked momentarily alarmed by her physical display of affection. But he had already emptied his glass of champagne, so he placed his free hand on top of his wife’s.
“Let’s see a slightly larger pair,” he said. “It will look nice. And do you think we should pick up a small gift for the neighbors here?”
Mrs. Jha took her hand back. The neighbors. Again. She did not understand why they mattered so much. As far as she could tell, Mrs. Chopra was about as dull as the long summer afternoons in Delhi. Mr. Chopra wasn’t so bad, she’d admit, but she didn’t understand why her husband was so determined to impress him all the time.
“No. I’ll just get the small set for myself and let’s go.”
Rupak’s Greyhound bus from Ithaca arrived at Port Authority in the midafternoon, and he got into a taxi to take him to his parents’ hotel on the Lower East Side. They were staying at the Holiday Inn on Ludlow Street. He did not understand his parents. Why couldn’t they be like normal rich parents and stay at the Four Seasons or the W? They would probably try to go for dinner to one of the dosa places in the West Village. His mother always searched for Indian restaurants when she traveled abroad. No, he told himself, he must not start getting annoyed with them before even seeing them. He wanted to get along with them on this trip—he wanted them to see his independent life in Ithaca and see him as more of an adult.
He had convinced Serena to join them for dinner in Ithaca on Monday night, and he was going to tell his parents about her today. They would love her and since they were all Indian, he would just say he was bringing a “friend” with a mild emphasis on the word, and the fact that the “friend” was female would provide enough clues to his parents that she could be more than a friend. Which, in fact, she wasn’t. Even though Rupak had seen her a handful of times since her friends’ party, they had not actually kissed and had in fact settled into a friendship and he had been enjoying it. Having her around made him miss Elizabeth less, even though he still missed her a lot. But it would have been so difficult to have her around while his parents were visiting. Elizabeth would probably have tried to reach out and hold his hand while walking to the restaurant and if he avoided that, she would never understand why and it would become a source of tension. The current situation was simply much easier for now.
He got a text from his father saying,
We are going for a walk to see the famous Katz’s Deli. Meet us at that corner instead of the hotel.
There was no way his parents knew why Katz’s Deli was famous.
Rupak stepped out of the taxi on the corner of Houston and Ludlow and looked around for his parents. He looked down at his cargo pants and black T-shirt. Maybe he should have dressed a bit better for tonight. He couldn’t blame them for treating him like a child.
He didn’t see his parents. They were unlikely to actually be inside Katz’s, because all the meat would make his mother feel ill and they would probably have seen the publicity in the window mentioning the famous orgasm scene and quickly, awkwardly walked away.
In America, there was so much awareness and talk of women’s pleasure, but did the older generation of women in India know what that felt like, he wondered? Maybe Mrs. Ray, but she was different. She would probably have the confidence to guide a man’s head between her legs, but his own father’s head had definitely never traveled down.
His own father’s head was, however, at that moment, peering into an American Apparel shop with what appeared to be a yarmulke on his head. Next to him, his mother was standing in a pair of pleated brown pants with a yellow Fabindia kurta and oversized green jacket. Rupak checked for traffic and rushed across the street to where his parents stood. It was hard to not feel annoyance when his father was walking around the Lower East Side wearing a yarmulke.
“There he is!” Mrs. Jha said, and nudged her husband. Mr. Jha stopped looking at the poster of the young girl in a tight black T-shirt that showed off her nipples and turned to face his son.
“Dad! Why do you have a yarmulke on your head?” Rupak said before saying anything else.
“A Rosh Hashanah, you mean?” Mr. Jha said, adjusting the small circular cap on the top of his head.
“That’s a holiday,” Rupak said.
“Today is a holiday?” Mr. Jha said.