by Pasha Malla
Beside the bed a shelf held all the novels and plays and poetry that Ash had barely cracked in school. He spied Don Quixote and pulled it free. One of many classics he’d always lied about having read. Maybe he was growing tired of lying. Also the novel was fat enough to occupy him for a while. Also he’d long used the term ‘quixotic’ without really knowing what it meant. So he took it to bed, lay down and set it on his stomach. But didn’t read. His thoughts instead caromed between memories of this room—the virginity he’d lost, swiftly and apologetically, on its floor; or long before that, waiting in bed for his mother to read him to sleep—and what it meant to be here now.
It had been years since Ash had made it home for the holidays, obliged as he was to attend various seasonal functions in Toronto. These were held for and among the darlings of the Canadian media industry, self-appointed creatives who performed such soaring feats of artistry as typing out celebrity gossip and building websites for banks. And while Ash attended their parties resentfully, he went seeking something—approval, or maybe just recognition, though invariably he lurked unheralded and unknown on the periphery like some brighter light’s valet.
He felt that part of what set him apart, or below, were his clothes (Levi’s, thrift store blazer, sneakers), so the previous year, in a panic of inadequacy, he’d visited some slick downtown haberdashery. Immediately he felt identified as an imposter when the nifty, vested salesman (Yves) asked him, with palpable irony, if he needed help. Ash emerged ninety minutes later having spent only slightly less than his mortgage. Yet, cheered on drippily by Yves, those duds (waistcoat, cufflinks, shoes pointy enough to skewer cubed meat) had suggested a metamorphosis: from boy to grownup, from layabout to gentleman. The outfit required a corresponding haircut and salves and gels, which would eventually coagulate to buttery sludge in Ash’s bathroom cabinet.
But when Ash dressed at home, the transformation was not repeated. Instead the clothes looked like a costume and his sculpted hair replicated a toupee’s naive hubris exactly. And the shoes! Their scabbard tips were sneers. On the streetcar ride downtown, the other passengers’ stares—what a dandy!—mortified him even more.
The party, hosted by a vodka company, thumped and thudded away in a derelict warehouse turned lavish with ball gowns and ice sculptures and double-kissed cheeks. Ash checked his coat and lingered in the doorway. A few heads turned appraisingly in his direction, then back to their conversations. For the next few hours he drank his way through passive aggressive dismissals (‘I had no idea people still listen to the radio. Good for you!’) until last call, when the lights came on to dispatch the few forlorn, shiftless drunks who remained, and Ash staggered outside and vomited thunderously all over his shiny new shoes.
Upstairs the dog barked and the door clattered open and his mother whooped, ‘How’s my pooch? How’s my pooch?’ Silence followed. In it Ash imagined Rick whispering to his mother of her son’s return, a note of apprehension in his voice, his mother’s pointed questions—‘How does he seem? Is he okay?’—and the two of them shaking their heads in a forlorn, pitying way.
So he climbed the stairs to head them off, and found his mom transferring groceries to the fridge and Rick dancing down the driveway leashed to Burt, off into the night.
‘Ashy!’ His mother came at him for a hug. ‘Rick thought you might have gone to bed.’
‘I slept on the train.’ This was untrue; Ash couldn’t sleep on trains.
‘I got everything you’ll need for Christmas dinner. Help me put it away.’
Ash squeezed a tub of cranberry sauce into the fridge beside a cling-wrapped bowl of something pasty and beige.
‘You’re okay taking charge of cooking?’ she said. ‘You do a better job than me these days anyway. Rick’s the chef around here so I’m out of practice.’
‘Always happy to cook,’ said Ash, hoping he sounded amenable. He was handed a turkey the size of a gym bag. Kneeling, he wedged the bird into the fridge, where it occupied an entire shelf like a corpse awaiting autopsy.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ said his mother. ‘And your sister should be in tomorrow morning—the whole family together again! We’ve got the craft fair at the arena most of tomorrow, but Rick’s really looking forward to spending some time with both of you.’
‘Rick.’
‘He finally read your book.’
Ash stood. ‘Why’d you let him do that?’
‘He’s just trying to get to know you. He’s a very interesting man. Well read, well travelled. Give him a chance.’ Her ironic smile suggested that Ash never gave anyone, or anything, a chance. ‘You’re not mad, are you?’
‘If you really wanted to blow the lid off all my secrets, I’ve got some old journals downstairs. Or I can give him my email password.’
‘Ashy.’
‘I wrote that book like ten years ago. It isn’t me. When you write, you change things. You make stuff up. You’re just trying not to make something bad, not expressing yourself or whatever inane thing people say. That’s it. It’s no way to know someone!’
‘You’re yelling.’
He’d also seized the edge of the kitchen table, he realized, as if he might tip the whole thing over. He let go, rubbed his sweaty hands on his jeans.
‘You look tired,’ said his mother.
An excuse to head downstairs. Sequestered in his basement lair Ash finally texted Sherene: Do your parents bring out your inner Hyde too? Waited five minutes for a reply. Ten. Twenty. Gave up and lay in the dark—for hours, was it? Though he must have dozed off because an incoming call startled him so badly he nearly fell out of bed.
‘Bro!’
‘Oh god. You realize there’s a time difference, right? It’s like four in the morning!’
‘Oops.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Merry Christmas, I love you too.’
Ash flopped back against his pillow. ‘So you’re there, I guess. At my cousin’s?’
‘Yeah, except he’s away. Sumit’s here though.’
‘Who the hell is Sumit?’
‘I dunno, his butler or something. Dude had me on an itinerary today: into the city to see that big mosque in the old part, then across the road to the Red Fort—big lineups there, but you get the gist from the car—then out to the countryside to see some tower, then we drove around and he yelled the names of embassies as we went by, then back out here to Gorgon. Dang that guy’s got some sweet fruit, though. Do you like my chikoo?’
‘Don’t do that accent. You sound like a Jamaican leprechaun. And it’s Gurgaon.’
‘Sumit’s my man, he’s hilarious. I got my phone out so he could take my picture with this broad I met at the mosque, and he asks me how many megapixels, so I tell him four, it’s old, and he just laughs and goes, “I will be in the car.” What a guy.’
‘Wait, you met a woman at a mosque?’
‘I’ve got game, what can I say.’
‘At the mosque.’
‘It’s not really a mosque.’
‘It is! It is totally a mosque! Jama Masjid? It’s the biggest mosque in India!’
‘You had to take off your shoes and I was sure a leper or whatever was going to steal them but we got out and there they were. I thought you said I was going to get ripped off?’
‘So who’s your new lover?’
‘Oh, we didn’t seal the deal. But we’re going to Goa, so maybe there.’
‘Wait. What? You realize that’s the opposite direction from Kashmir, right?’
‘That’s where the party is, she says.’
‘The drugs, you mean. Who is this woman?’
‘Mieke. She’s Dutch, from Norway or whatever.’
‘Holland!’
‘I know, bro. Duh. Just yanking your cord.’
‘But wait. Goa? When?’
‘Tomorrow, I think she said?’
‘Done with Delhi already, are you? Seen enough?’
‘Thing is? I don’t really know when tomorrow is. Isn�
��t it still yesterday back home?’
‘Are you going to marry this woman?
‘Doubtful. She’s lesbian.’
‘Sounds like a nationality, the way you say it.’
‘Netherlands. Nether-region-lands. Heh heh. Hey, you weren’t kidding about all the gay dudes here. Cuddling, snuggling, dry humping. I saw one guy with his buddy’s head in his lap, combing his hair. Another two dudes walking around holding pinkies. I thought it was super homophobic here? Seems pretty homo-tastic.’
‘No, no. They’re not gay.’
‘What?’
‘They’re just…Indian. I told you this, remember? My dad? His buddy? New York?’
‘Maybe that means I’ve got a shot with Mieke?’
‘How would it possibly mean that?’
‘Just, you know. Stuff’s different here.’
‘I can’t imagine you see her sexuality as an impediment.’
‘More of a challenge.’
‘You’re a bad person.’
‘I’m making memories!’
‘I know. That’s what worries me.’
2
MATT ARRANGED WITH MIEKE that he and Bitu would collect her at her Connaught Place hostel and go for dinner anywhere she wanted, price no object. She chose one of the city’s five-star hotels, of which he approved for its lack of online diarrheal testimonials; the last thing he wanted was for his bowels to prevent a score.
Ash had provided strict instructions on what not to eat: anything raw, basically, despite however tempting a platter of sliced pineapple might look paraded by at a stoplight. He’d also suggested avoiding street food of any type. Normally Matt wasn’t afraid of a rough gut. Through his twenties he’d lived on Taco Bell, fifty bucks’ worth at a time, eat what you can and freeze the rest as groceries. But India was different. The stakes were higher, and weirder, and potentially fatal.
Even if this wasn’t a date, Matt prepped for one. (Rule #8: Doing it up = pants coming down.) A four-hundred-dollar shirt was all a guy needed to get a leg up, and he’d brought his go-to number. Baby blue and tastefully embroidered and tailored snug as a glove, it anchored his outfits to night clubs, to auditions, to court. Then there were his other ablutions: a scalding shower, a shave (face, throat, scalp, shoulders, perineum), a quick go with the penis pump, and a final spritz of body spray through which he nudely twirled, the mist settling into every pore.
Before heading out he eyed himself in the mirror. What he saw looked good, obviously, yet still Matt felt atypically unsure. He’d been with a lesbian before, sort of, as a third party in a threesome, though his role had been mostly observational. He’d dated a few bisexuals and even attempted a brief, gruff make-out with a coked-up Swedish guy in Whistler. The experience had been more pugilistic than sensual—like one of them was trying to win—and eventually the two men had pulled apart with a comradely, concessional pat on the back.
But he’d never turned a gay woman before, though at least four girlfriends had turned from him to one of their own. Would Mieke be down? Maybe being in India would give him a better shot, per the various laxities—hygiene, core values, etc.—enjoyed on holiday. But should he act less masculine than normal? Shaving had occasioned debate: down to the skin, or leave a little stubble? Mieke was girlish, so he figured she preferred manlier women—though how feminine a man?
Outside the door, Sumit swayed expectantly, his hands clasped behind his back: ‘For this evening’s meal, sir, we shall prepare veg or non-veg?’
‘Whatever floats your boat, Sumit,’ said Matt, edging past.
‘Sir, I take my wife’s food only. I bring from home.’
What was this? Sumit had a wife? And a home!
And kids, the photos displayed almost smugly on his phone. The girls were identical to their father, minus the moustache: same gap in their front teeth (Matt could fairly hear the s’s whistling out), same obsequious sheen to the eyes, same pot bellies. ‘I see them weekends only. Monday-Friday I stay here.’ Sumit gestured to the kitchen. Did the guy sleep in the oven? ‘And now, your meal?’
‘Truth is, Sumit? I’m not here for supper. I’ve got a hot date.’
It was as though Matt had announced he was trafficking the guy’s family back to Canada. The shoulders slumped, the head bowed. Sumit was taciturn in summoning Bitu, and shook his head mournfully from the front step as the Jeep reversed down the driveway. ‘Be careful, Mister Matthew,’ he cried.
Matt pressed a hand to the window and mouthed, I will.
Twilight was descending and the traffic into Delhi seemed less anarchic than restless, like a pride of lions gearing up for a nocturnal hunt. Mieke was waiting on the appointed corner wearing a sarong, her hair up in a fat bun held together with chopsticks. Sliding into the backseat she smacked Matt on the leg.
‘Thanks for getting me! Is this our chauffeur?’
‘My driver,’ said Matt, the lift of his eyebrows indicating a whole realm of possibilities. (Rule #5: Power wins.) ‘He’ll take us anywhere we want.’
‘All I want is to eat,’ said Mieke, retracting to the window. ‘I’m starving.’
The hotel bar was lit intergalactically with tubes of blue neon. The music gurgled and pulsed. Decaled on the walls were instructions: RELAX, MEET, CHAT, CHILL. And the clientele, mostly young couples in stylish western attire, obeyed. Standing in the doorway, as he often did upon entering a room, Matt was conscious of his size—and now his colour too, as a dozen brown faces turned his way.
A host in a soulpatch and Nehru jacket escorted Matt and Mieke to a table on the edge of what, presumably, would later become the dance floor.
‘I’ve never been to a place like this in India,’ said Mieke. ‘So modern!’
‘We can go somewhere else,’ Matt offered. ‘My driver—’ Mieke pointed to an imperative pasted above the bar: ‘Just chill, okay?’
The menu was fusiony. They ordered a few small dishes, Mieke proceeding tentatively until Matt smacked down his credit card. ‘Whatever you like. It’s on me.’
She lowered the menu. ‘Give us one of everything.’
‘And a fork,’ said Matt, holding up his hands sadly. ‘Can’t do chopsticks with these meathooks.’
Drinks came. Mieke began telling a story about Burma or Bhutan or Bangladesh, which Matt ignored: three people had slid into the adjacent table, and one of them was the most stunningly beautiful woman he’d ever seen. More of a girl, really, maybe nineteen, and boasting that severe brand of beauty particular to former Soviet states. Flanking her were two men in pinstriped suits, hair slicked wetly to their scalps. While she examined the menu, they peered around the room with predatory intensity.
‘My god,’ whispered Mieke, nudging Matt under the table. ‘That girl is gorgeous.’
Did this make the Dutchwoman an accomplice or competitor? Matt played it cool. ‘You think?’
‘God,’ said Mieke. ‘Are you joking? Look at her.’
Given permission, Matt did, and met the girl’s eye, and winked. She smiled back—a smile that went sizzling through Matt’s soul and landed hotly in his lap. Was it on? It might be. But how to dispatch Mieke? And who were the girl’s companions? They looked old enough to be her dads. So, what, a family vacation—father, daughter…uncle? Or business associates. More likely: the CEO and VP of some Russian conglomerate, here on business with their finest executive assistant along for the trip.
As Matt stared, one of the men spoke into the girl’s ear. She nodded, rose, moved into the empty space in the middle of the room and began dancing.
All conversation ceased. Every face—patrons, staff, Mieke, Matt—turned to watch her. The girl knew it: she wriggled and writhed, hands twisting in gestures both eastern and serpentine, slinking down into a crouch and then shimmying back up. Her dress was sheer and short and slack; beneath it the contours of her body appeared for tantalizing glimpses only to dissolve inside the fabric.
‘Sweet merciful Vishnu,’ whispered Matt.
Mieke echoed him in
Dutch.
Then something happened: one of the men stood, buttoned his jacket, strode across the lounge, and joined two middle-aged/middle-management types in a corner booth. His comrade, who remained at the table beside Matt and Mieke, checked his watch.
Meanwhile, the young woman kept dancing.
‘Should I ask her friend to join us?’ Matt whispered.
Mieke shook her head. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘He’s all alone!’
The guy must have heard this, passed a gaze of appraisal their way. A scar curled from his eyebrow to cheekbone, like a fishhook poised to snag his eye.
A young couple had interrupted the girl’s dancing to have their picture taken with her. Matt jumped up and offered to play photographer. He framed the shot just-so, taking a moment to ogle the young woman through the viewfinder: her eyes seemed to look right through him. Then the flash flashed and the couple retreated to their seats, checking the camera’s display screen and beaming as though they’d met the queen.
Matt sat, winked at Mieke, and tilted his beer at Scarface. ‘So,’ he said, ‘where are you from?’
Mieke dove at her drink.
‘My friend and I come from Moscow. But her’—he gestured toward the dancing girl—‘we have brought from Ukraine.’
The other Russian returned with the Indian men in tow. Scarface summoned the Ukrainian girl. She received some instructions and, with a roomful of people watching, took one of the Indians to the elevator and upstairs into the hotel.