I move closer, my right knee pressing against her left one, on the pretext of looking at the book with her. She stiffens and I wonder if I’ve gone too far. But Susan doesn’t shift to the side, does not put her bag between us, the way I expect her to.
I release a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “It’s that stuff Zuric talked about on Friday. You know, how we needed to figure out what the passages meant and transcribe them in our own words? Everything’s so convoluted that I have no clue where to begin.”
“R-right.” She clears her throat. “That’s act 2, scene 4.” She locates the passages—which she probably has memorized—and places a pair of fingers under the first one.
I stare at her hand, the long, slender fingers, the clean, stubby nails and, for a second, am tempted to cover it with my own. But that’ll only scare her off, so I do the next best thing, pointing out the passage that has been giving me the most trouble, my own fingers accidentally—oh, who am I kidding?—purposefully brushing hers.
“Th-that’s a t-tricky one. But look!” Her stammer suddenly vanishes. “You can figure out the meaning this way.”
Surprisingly, as I listen to her, I do.
“Okay,” I say. “So when Lear’s talking about this hysterica passio stuff, he’s really growing hysterical? Like he can’t believe his daughters would betray him? And this part, where the Fool’s talking to Kent, he’s telling him that there’s no benefit in serving Lear now that he’s old and growing powerless?”
The sunlight, at this angle, reflects every shade of brown in Susan’s eyes. They crinkle at the corners now. “Exactly! That’s exactly what it means.”
We go over a few more passages. Even though not everything makes sense, in the end, I end up deciphering a whole passage, with only a single correction from Susan.
“You’re good at this,” I tell her. “Too bad Zuric doesn’t explain things as well as you do.”
“He does. You don’t pay attention.” But her face flushes and she gives me a slight smile.
“Maybe. Then again, Zuric’s not as easy on the eyes.”
A full blush colors her face, which makes me grin. Susan is way too easy to embarrass. She looks away and whispers, “Umm. I think Mr. Zuric’s kinda hot.”
Dead silence. I’m trying to wrap my head around her words and react with something other than What the heck? when Susan’s shoulders begin to shake, laughter pouring out of her like summer rain.
“You should see your face!” She gasps, wiping a corner of one eye. “You actually thought I was serious!”
I suddenly feel like I’m back in middle school, on my first ever date with a girl, where I spilled pop all over my clothes. I force a grin. “Good one. You got me there.”
“Sorry.” She grins back, looking anything but. “I couldn’t resist.”
“What are you planning to do later today?” I ask, changing the subject. “And don’t say homework.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll watch something on Netflix and chill out.”
I freeze, wondering if she’s making another joke at my expense. But this time, her face is innocent, as if entirely unaware of what she said. I bite back a grin. “Oh yeah? Who with?”
“By myself, of course.”
“Ah.” It’s a struggle to keep my facial muscles under control. “Of course, self-love can be a good thing as well. From time to time.”
“Self-lo—what on earth are you talking about?”
I pull up Urban Dictionary’s definition of Netflix and chill on my phone and quietly hand it to her. Seconds later, Susan’s face is buried in her hands, and I’m the one howling with laughter.
* * *
Saturdays at Michelle’s Coffee House are always busy—something my boss, Jay Campbell, warned me about during our first interview.
“We need dedication,” Jay told me with a giant smile on this face and a hard look in his blue eyes. “If you’re not dedicated to your job, we lose money. Understood?”
“Understood,” I said. “It’s what always impressed me about this place. The customer service, the dedicated employees—and the coffee, of course! So much better than Tim Hortons or Starbucks!”
Naturally I didn’t tell Jay that the only reason I even bothered applying for a job at Michelle’s was because there was too much competition for jobs at Tims and Starbucks. Advertised as “Mississauga’s café by the lake,” Michelle’s was located in the village of Port Credit near Lake Ontario, an area packed with restaurants, cafés, and tiny boutiques selling everything from olive oil to vintage clothing in thrift shops. Michelle’s wasn’t exactly on the lakefront—which new customers often complained about—but in a plaza across from it. The doors opened to a busy street, jam-packed with cars, cyclists, and pedestrians, and the windows offered a view of a giant No Frills supermarket, with no water in sight.
Not that this mattered once people were eating the soft, freshly made scones and drinking the frothy cappuccino Michelle’s was famous for. By noon I’m so exhausted that I mess up a customer’s order for the second time in a row.
“I asked for a medium cappuccino!”
The air around us reeks of bacon grease and coffee. Jay’s skin has turned a deep red, which makes his blond beard appear almost white. He slams the cup next to the sink, splattering a few hot drops of liquid on my arm. “Not a medium Columbian roast!”
I pour out the drink without a word or a wince—waste of product, if you ask me—but Jay never lets us consume any orders we mess up, as a part of internal control.
“Any more mistakes and I’ll have to take that out of your paycheck,” Jay warns.
“Yes, sir.” I try to keep my sarcasm in check. And fail from the looks of Jay’s skin, which now matches his purple Michelle’s Coffee House apron.
“Watch it, Vakil.” He gives me one final glare and heads back to the cash register to tell the angry customer that I’m remaking the coffee.
I watch it. While I don’t think Jay will fire me—our other barista, Meg, is worse than I am and she hasn’t been fired yet—I have no intention of pissing him off any more. Ever since he broke up with his boyfriend last week, Jay has been touchier than usual, his usual strict-but-friendly demeanor replaced by a perpetual sulk. There is no telling what he’ll do in this mood.
Get it together, I say to myself, while the right coffee pours into the right-size cup. It has been like this almost all morning. Me minding the cash, taking orders, making coffee, thinking about Susan.
I bite back a grin. It’s been a while since I’ve been this distracted at work over a girl. Susan and I haven’t even kissed and I’m already at risk of getting my pay docked. I force myself to focus again, and make the next few orders perfectly. I take over the cash register when Jay goes on break, my smile professional, my hands moving at record speed. Pouring coffee, bagging doughnuts and cookies, shouting orders for sandwiches to the cook assembling them in the kitchen behind me.
My smile is still in place when the next customer steps up, even though my hands freeze at the sight of him, over the topmost tray of the doughnut display case.
“Hey, Malcolm.”
“What do you want?”
My rudeness does not faze him. If anything, Ronnie Mehta’s smile grows wider, a benign glow overtaking his bony, bespectacled face. Ever since he and Mahtab started dating, Ronnie has been doing his best to recruit me into the ZCC, letting me know about gambhar celebrations and prayers, about volunteer opportunities I have no interest in, about nearly every charity drive in existence.
“Why can’t you be more like Ronnie?” the old man once asked, which instantly made me want to be everything Ronnie isn’t.
In a way, I can see why I’d be of special interest to someone like Ronnie. I am a lapsed Zoroastrian at best. Based on my father’s lectures about good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, and the crap I’ve done in the past, I’ve already paved my way to securing an afterlife in purgatory (since there is no permanent hell in our religion).
To Ronnie, I am a part-afterlife, part-impressing-Mahtab project. It is probably why he shows no hint of surprise when, in response to his comment about the fund-raising concert for Syrian refugees in January, I say, “What can I get for you?”
“Malc, come on,” he cajoles. “It would look great on your university applications. Besides that, we could really use your help—two of our fund-raising directors dropped out. You must have seen the news on TV, right? About the Kurdi boy?”
“I have,” I admit. I’m not as well-versed in world events as Ronnie or Mahtab. But I am following this year’s election—Ahmed, Steve, and I have placed bets on who’ll win—and thanks to that, even I’m aware of the brutal civil war in Syria, the horror of which was broadcast across every news channel earlier this September with the image of a three-year-old refugee boy found dead on a beach in Turkey.
“It’s terrible.” Ronnie’s usual smarmy tone turns grim. “Aleppo is even worse. Kids are dying there without access to medicine and—”
“Hey, I’m dying here!” the woman behind him snaps. “Will you hurry up with the propaganda? Some of us want coffee and don’t have the time for this!”
I don’t have the time for this, the old man told the triage nurse at the ER when I was fourteen, his anger stemming not from a concern over Mom’s worsening condition, but over a meeting he was missing in Michigan at the time. We’ve been waiting four hours already.
Mahtab says she’s not exactly sure when it happened—when his love for Mom diminished into indifference. I, alternatively, wonder if the love was ever there. If the old man had always been the sort who put himself before others, even if they were his wife and kids. For a second I stand there, frozen in a memory I was pretty sure I’d forgotten.
I force myself to snap out of it.
“Ma’am, it’s not propaganda.” I face the angry customer, careful to keep my voice polite but firm. “It’s someone’s life.”
The woman’s face turns beet red. She leaves the line, muttering about “rude staff.”
I turn back to Ronnie who’s staring at me with awe in his eyes. “Seriously now, Ronnie, you need to place your order. Can’t afford to make any other customers mad.”
Ronnie orders a large black tea.
“That will be two dollars and ninety cents.” I hesitate before asking the question: “Why me?” Even when Mom was alive, I was never anyone’s first pick for any kind of school project, let alone something important like this.
“You’re good with people,” he says simply. “Remember that bake sale back in ninth grade? For Intro to Business?”
“You mean that ridiculous little challenge your team won?” I grin now, even though I remember feeling pissed at the time. Losing to Ronnie, listening to his mom crow about it at every ZCC event for a whole month—it had been my nightmare come true, until Mom’s cancer returned.
“We won by a single cupcake. Your team came in second.” Ronnie laughs. “I was so mad at the way you hustled our customers away from us. You would’ve won, too, if you guys hadn’t run out of time.”
I fall silent. I didn’t realize Ronnie knew. Or that he had even noticed.
“There’s another meeting coming up soon.” Ronnie slides the money across the counter: exact change. “The concert’s in January. Think about it, Malc. You could do a lot for us.”
“I thought you already had a committee in place.” This much I know, mostly because of Susan, who asked Mahtab in the last week of September if the art director position was still available. When my sister said that it wasn’t, something in Susan’s eyes dimmed. She remained silent for the rest of the lunch period and later all the way to English, barely acknowledging my presence or my jokes.
“We do. Mahtab has this great idea of hiring this amazing high school choir from Streetsville. And renting out a hall at the Living Arts Centre.” Ronnie hesitates. “But we need money for that first. Getting sponsors is tough.”
“I bet.” It’s difficult to get people to spend a lot of money when they can’t exactly see what they’re getting in return. I saw that at the bake sale in ninth grade, see enough of that at Michelle’s on a daily basis.
I think about what Mahtab and I have done so far: contributing our toys and old clothes to a Syrian family one of our friends was sponsoring in Toronto. It was the best I thought I could do at the time. Now, though, after talking to Ronnie, I wonder if even someone like me can do more. The back door scrapes opens—a sign that Jay has returned from break—so I quickly prepare Ronnie’s tea.
“Sugar and milk are on the side. Have a nice day.”
There’s a break after Ronnie is gone and I take the opportunity to close my eyes for a second. When I open them again, I realize someone’s watching me. At first I think it’s Jay, back with the angry customer I ticked off earlier. But it’s only Ronnie.
He tosses his used tea bag and stirring stick into the trash before raising his cup. “Saheb ji.”
It’s what my uncle Mancher says whenever he sees a Parsi friend: a greeting that men from our community have been using to say hello and goodbye for generations in India. “It’s the highest form of respect, Malcko,” Mancher Mama said, when I asked him about it once. It was the most serious I’d ever seen him. “Call a man Boss and add a ji to it—it’s for the best men you can find.”
Later, I will attribute my reaction to surprise and exhaustion. To not wanting Jay on my case for being impolite to customers. I wave back and echo Ronnie’s words: “Saheb ji.”
* * *
“But when will the ‘good days’ for India come?”
Freny’s voice floats into the front hall, where I’m slipping out of my sneakers and placing them next to a pair of muddy heels.
“Fine. I won’t argue with you. You live there, you know better.” Freny sounds a little out of breath, a clear sign that she’s pacing the living room while talking on the phone. “Oh, I miss our good old days, Jeroo. Back when we were still in college.”
A stray leaf flutters to the floor when I hang up my jacket. I pick it up, twirl it between my fingers. A deep red, like the sweater Susan wore to school this week. I smile slightly to myself.
It has been strange how close we’ve grown over the past couple of weeks. We talk more frequently during classes. We laugh a lot more. We text nearly nonstop once we’re home. These days, Ahmed and Steve instantly begin talking to each other when Susan turns to pass me a new handout or answer a question when I tap her shoulder. They grill me later, when I’m back at my locker, but that’s okay since Susan barely uses hers anyway and doesn’t see how much they annoy me with their teasing.
“We’re friends,” I’ve insisted. “Just friends, okay. I don’t like her like that.”
It’s easier to be friends instead of plunging headlong into another relationship that’ll break my heart into pieces again. Neither Ahmed nor Steve know what that’s like. They’ve never given themselves to a girl—any girl—as fully as I have.
“Malcolm, dikra? How was work?”
Around me, Freny grows nervous, timid. Full of artificial sweetness.
I wrap my fingers around the leaf. “Okay. Work’s work.”
“Y-yes. Of course.”
When I first took this job at Michelle’s Coffee House, the main idea was to make enough money to move out when I turned eighteen. To get a place of my own, away from the old man and Freny. Of course, on minimum wage, that isn’t turning out to be likely. And I can’t exactly leave Mahtab here by herself.
Freny fidgets with a red bangle on her wrist. Parsi women wear them after marriage and never remove them. Mom didn’t, even after she found out about Dad cheating on her.
“I’ve made a snack for you,” Freny says. “Bhakhras. You like them, right?”
They are my favorite. Fried little circles of sweet dough, flavored with cardamom. Mom used to make them for us every Saturday morning, infusing the kitchen with the smell of sugar and masala chai.
“Not the way you make them.” I re
lish the way Freny’s face falls and stalk past her, across the living room and up the stairs. Mahtab is in her room, wearing headphones, giggling at some sitcom on Netflix. I make my way to my own room at the end of the hall. Downstairs the phone rings again. Freny’s voice floats up again seconds later. “Hi, jaanu. How’s work?”
It still irks me that she calls my father what Mom used to call him. Jaanu. Her life. I resist the urge to slam my bedroom door shut. I rip off my black button-down work shirt and the sweaty white T-shirt I wear underneath, exposing my skin to the cool draft of air from the partially open window. When I open my closet, my eyes automatically start looking for a glint of glass at the bottom, among the mess of hangers and T-shirts. The old man’s voice is ringing in my head: He will never come to any good.
There are days when I can ignore my father’s taunts. Moments with Ahmed and Steve and Mahtab that make the Malcolm from the past feel like a distant relative I can barely remember. But then there are days like this. When Freny inserts a hook under my skin and pulls up old, buried anger. My mouth waters for a sip of vodka from the bottle I poured down the drain months ago.
Vodka, Justin said, was the mother of grief. “When love leaves, she takes over.”
I lean against the wall next to my closet, feeling my skin prickle into bumps against its cool white surface. Grief, mom said once, feels like a stone crushing your ribs. Vodka, on the other hand, burns my throat and my insides; it makes me light-headed. I know that if I drink enough it will, for a few brief moments, diminish the weight of my mother being gone for good.
Mahtab’s face hovers briefly in front of mine.
I pull out another T-shirt from the closet and a black hoodie. Drinking with Justin is no longer an option. So I do the other reckless thing I used to do back then. I stick an arm and a leg outside the window and grab hold of the old pipe nailed to the wall.
The Beauty of the Moment Page 10