All Eyes on Her

by Poonam Sharma

  I deserved a facial and a massage of my own, I decided, and fished the cell phone out of my purse to redial the spa. But when I flipped it open the screensaver of Raj and I reminded me of what I really wanted: simpler times. Times like the beginning of my relationship with Raj—when things were new and uncomplicated between us—and he’d booked us a poolside couple’s massage as part of an overnight stay at The Mondrian Hotel for our one-month anniversary.

  Rather than make the call, I made a right onto Pacific Coast Highway. I opened the sunroof and skipped through my presets on my radio, looking for something that might take me away. Naturally, Stevie Nicks was belting out “Dreams” and I turned it up, although it made me miss Raj even more.

  four

  “WHAT’S STRANGE IS THAT THIS DOESN’T FEEL ODD,” RAJ HAD told me across the twelve inches separating our poolside massage tables that sunny March afternoon a year and a half before. “Wouldn’t you have thought that since we practically grew up together, this would seem bizarre?”

  “You only moved back from London two months ago,” I pointed out.

  To be fair, we weren’t moving fast at all. It was true that in the first few years since he had left for college in the UK, Raj and I hadn’t spoken much. We had no reason to; he was one of a group of about twenty kids whose parents had settled in Orange County around the same time in the 1970s and formed a mini Indian community to keep us in touch with our heritage. Amid the series of dinner parties and weekend picnics and poolside Sunday afternoons our parents took turns organizing at their homes, Raj was only one of the many boys and girls I grew up with but barely knew anymore.

  Yet when my father passed away just after my college graduation, the Raj that I had scarcely remembered had burst back on the scene and was determined to be there for me. It began with the obligatory condolence call, and evolved into a sort of transatlantic e-mail penpal-ship with little more than the hazy image of him, aged seventeen, remaining comfortably etched in my mind. Perhaps the lack of romantic expectation was why we became fast friends. We opened up to each other to the point that when his work as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company brought him back to Los Angeles some three years later, he knew I would be there to receive him at the airport.

  I was there, but I wasn’t prepared for the vision that was waiting for me when I pulled up curbside to LAX. Besides a much-needed growth spurt and a new truly fantastic European sense of style, Raj had become the sort of man whose stance made it clear that he knew where he was headed. And the moment he saw me the smile that spread across his face was at once familiar and full of things I wanted to discover.

  “Yes, and you are certainly not the proper little girl I remember,” he teased and raised a mischievous eyebrow at me from his massage table two months after we sped away from the airport.

  Besides his confidence, his clothes, and the encyclopedia of little British sayings he sprinkled casually throughout our conversations, he had even developed something of an aristocratic accent in all his years overseas. It made me think of horseback riding across the countryside and scoundrels whose flirtatiousness almost compensated for their bad teeth. Looking back on it now, I can see that I didn’t stand a chance.

  “You’re not a bit proper either.” I bit my lip, savoring a flashback involving room-service bananas flambé all over my breasts the night before. “I don’t remember playing any of the games we played last night at those family dinner parties.”

  “If we had been playing any of those games at those parties back then,” he stated resolutely, “I never would have left for London in the first place.”

  So proper yet so naughty. Like I said, I didn’t stand a chance.

  “If we had known any of those games back then, our parents would have sent us both away to convents in India,” I mused.

  “Agreed. But I’m being serious. Our families know each other. My God, Monica, our fathers used to play thaash together,” he said for emphasis, and then reached to connect us. “We have a lot of history behind us, and yet none of this feels even the least bit awkward to me.”

  And I remember watching his fingers inch toward me. That strong, familiar hand lifting and intertwining with my own. Until then I wasn’t sure what I wanted from all of his attention. A friendship? A relationship? Something in between? It wasn’t that I felt nothing, exactly. It wasn’t fire but it wasn’t apathy; and more than familiar, it was comfort. At the very least I could feel how definitely he wanted me to be ready for everything he was saying.

  And why shouldn’t I be? I had asked, looking into those earnest eyes. After all, I had known him my whole life. And the last time I had felt so close to anyone had been in college…so why shouldn’t I give in to this?

  I squeezed his hand, but remained silent.

  “I think we should tell our parents that we’ve been seeing each other,” he said hopefully. “I think they’ll be absolutely thrilled.”

  And the thing was, I knew that he was right.

  Pushing up my sunglasses and tilting the sun visor to better shield my eyes, I switched off the radio, calculated the time difference to London, grabbed my cell phone and dialed Raj.

  No answer.

  “Listen, honey, it’s me,” I began. “I, umm…I’m sorry. You have every right to be angry with me. But we need to talk about it. So call me. Today.”

  So I’m not the touchy-feely type. I never said I was. Besides, men are supposed to respond better to facts they can use, right? And the fact was that I was ready to talk, so now it was up to him. But he was so thin-skinned sometimes. And the truth was that he was the one who had overreacted. Although I wasn’t going to hold a grudge over it. Because in comparison to the irrational behavior I witnessed every day from my celebrity clients, Raj and I were doing fine. He was just testing my commitment by making a mountain out of a tiny pile of salt. Dust, even. And being a management consultant to major international corporations, he was paid to identify proverbial landmines and sand-traps, even where there weren’t any. So he probably couldn’t help himself.

  All right, and in some small part, it could also have been about the peanuts.

  “Whatever you fancy, darling,” he had told me over the phone two weeks ago as we both converged toward my apartment in the evening. “Just remember to make sure there’s no peanuts on the pad thai. And I’ll get a bottle of that chardonnay you like. I think you’re running low.”

  He was right, I thought, tossing my cell phone aside. And how very like him it was to notice that sort of detail. After picking up the takeout from our usual Thai restaurant in Santa Monica, I made my way home. Sipping on my Thai iced tea, I heaved the door open to find that he had beaten me home. The candles were lit and the table was set. The Maxwell CD reminded us of high school as it played in the background. And the Riedel stemware was dripping with condensation from the chilled chardonnay breathing inside. As usual, he had thought of everything.

  He hefted the takeout from my arms, planted a kiss on me and zipped off to the kitchen. I dropped my briefcase, kicked off my shoes and slipped off my suit jacket. I thought about heading into my room to change clothes before we ate, but something about the image of a man in the kitchen never failed to do it for me. So I snuck up behind him, nuzzled into his neck and indulged in the urge to be playful while he was defenseless, since his hands were busy ladling out the food.

  “Madam, as difficult as I know it may be in light of my raw animal magnetism, I’ll have to ask you to keep your hands to yourself,” he said, putting down a dish of chicken with basil in order to pry my fingers from his lower abdomen and pull them instead toward his mouth. “Because as of six weeks ago, I’m permanently off the market.”

  Since, in his opinion, I had such elegant fingers, Raj always kissed them individually. And to keep it interesting—since he knew how much I detested PDA—he would also lick, nibble and occasionally violate my fingers until I squealed or recoiled in disgust and wiped them on my clothes to make a point. Of course, my protests
only encouraged his behavior. Normally it was also his way of teasing me because he knew that I was insecure about my hands. As a child, I used to bite my nails. But on that particular evening, amidst all the nibbling and giggling, he stopped when he reached my ring finger.

  “Where is it?” he asked abruptly.

  “It’s right here, baby.” I stepped around to face him, motioning at the three-and-a-half carat princess-cut ring dangling from a chain around my neck.

  “I thought we talked about this,” he murmured, then switched his focus to the business of the basil chicken.

  “Umm…we did talk about it,” I said haltingly, following him to the table. I took a seat and folded my arms across my chest. “But we did not resolve it.”

  “So until we resolve it, you’re not going to wear the ring,” he huffed and sat down. “God, Monica.”

  “I am wearing it,” I protested, “around my neck.”

  “Like a noose.” He folded his arms to mimic mine. “Once again, your commitment to this relationship is astounding.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic.” I waved his comment away, knowing before the words were out that I’d made a major mistake.

  Because it wasn’t the first time that I had accused him of that, and the hurt registered clearly on his face. Raj had proposed to me during a moonlit stroll along the San Diego waterfront during a weekend getaway. We were sharing an ice cream cone, which he was holding, when he almost tripped over a shoelace. He asked me to hold the cone while he knelt down to tie it, and that was how he managed to catch me off guard.

  Monica, he began and looked up from bended knee, I think I have always loved you. And although it took a tragedy to bring you back into my life, I like to believe that maybe this was the good that came out of that sadness. Your father was an honorable man, and he raised an incredible daughter…who will become a phenomenal mother…and who will make her husband a very lucky man. I have never met anyone I would rather share my life with than you. Will you be my wife?

  I knew that I’d said yes because a moment later he was slipping the ring onto my finger and smothering me with kisses. I assumed the dizziness that followed was the result of some engagement-triggered chemical release in my brain. And I decided the best thing to do was to try to stay calm until things came back into focus. Why ruin the moment for Raj? It was fine. I was happy. Everything was fantastic. Really.

  Until he said it. Tucking my hand into the bend of his arm, he took a deep breath and exhaled those fateful words: Monica Shah. The air was gone. The world stopped spinning. It was as if I had watched while the door to some small, previously unnecessary room was swung tightly shut. It didn’t slam, and it didn’t squeak. It simply slid closed, bolted itself tight and refused to entertain the idea of being reopened. Perhaps my own last name had crawled inside, and was packed away neatly in a cardboard box marked “Things I’ll Never See Again.” Maybe it had been greeted by what little connection I had left to my father, since Indians always believed that after marriage, a daughter no longer belongs to her birth family. It was possible that my detachment to being engaged was a defense mechanism against the idea of my former self being jailed away. None of this had anything to do with Raj, I reminded myself, and went about playing the role of the blushing fiancée.

  But the next morning I awoke with his arm around my neck in what for the first time felt so much more like a thick rope than a bear hug. I tried to keep it to myself. I slipped out of bed and into the shower. However, in the time it took to shower and get wrapped in towels, I had realized exactly what I had to do. And I probably should have waited until the room service delivery guy had left before blurting it out, but…

  I won’t give up my last name, I declared, for myself or my future children.

  To his credit, Raj tipped and dismissed the confused delivery guy before responding to me.

  Good morning to you, too, he replied, and collapsed into a seat before the beautiful breakfast spread. Okay, look, baby. I can understand you wanting to keep your last name, and I’m willing to talk about that. But on the topic of the children I think I am a bit more traditional.

  Being an adult, I narrowed my eyes and dug my heels in further: Trust me, Raj. If this is going to be about who’s more stubborn, you’re not going to win. You’re not gonna negotiate your way through this one with me. So don’t even try it.

  How can you be so unreasonable? He had gotten flustered. You aren’t even prepared to discuss it! Am I going to be a part of this marriage?

  The thing about me is, I don’t tolerate weakness well—in men or animals. It’s the lawyer in me I’m sure, but basically I think that if you’re dragging the pack down, you should probably be shot or left behind. That’s why I reacted so…poorly. I knew it was a bad idea even as I did it…called him the adjective to end all adjectives: melodramatic.

  That was the day I learned that even though both parties are usually well-aware of who’s more emotionally involved, nobody wants it announced out loud. Whereas a woman would have taken it as an observation, a man hears it roughly translated as: you’re the woman.

  I might have tried to smooth things over, but his silence on the drive back to Los Angeles gave me no choice but to twist the knife. If this was how we were going to start our married life, I reasoned, then I had to set a precedent. So I slipped the ring off my finger and onto a chain around my neck, and it had remained there ever since. Later that night we agreed that we didn’t want to fight; everything didn’t need to be settled in a day.

  Mistakenly, I assumed that refilling both of our wine glasses was Raj’s way of putting an end to our Mexican standoff over Thai food that night.

  Thank God for reliable Raj, who never ever let things spin too far out of control.

  “Actually, I have some news.” He spoke in between shoveling heaping spoonfuls of chili-doused pad thai into his mouth. “McKinsey has offered me a one-month assignment in London. They requested that I be on the team since I worked with this client on another project a few years back.”

  “Mmm-hmm…” I played along, tipping back my glass and dropping my shoulders a bit. “And when would it start?”

  “I could leave as early as tomorrow or as late as next week.”

  “Oh.” I rubbed my ring between my thumb and forefinger, concentrating hard on the plate before me.

  “A client requesting someone specifically is always good news, so it might even lead to a promotion if I can get enough visibility for the project. Could you imagine if it turned into a full-time offer?”

  I’ll admit it. I actually laughed out loud. Through a mouthful of green coconut curry.

  He glanced up without moving his head.

  “Oh, yeah,” I joked, “because this is the 1920s and all women have to quit their jobs and follow their men across the ocean.”

  “So you wouldn’t even consider it?” He spat out the words and his nostrils literally flared. Not sexy. A little scary, actually.

  “Well, I mean…come on…” I was quite the articulate litigator. “It’s not really an option. They haven’t made you an offer, so we’re talking hypothetically here.”

  “And you won’t even consider it hypothetically?” he asked, sucking at his teeth.

  “Raj,” I said.

  “Monica, has this whole thing always just been about you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I knew what I was getting into when we became friends. Partially this is my fault because our friendship was based on me helping you talk about losing your dad. And it was understandable when we started dating that the focus was originally going to be on you. But I always thought that…in time…in time, things might change. They might become more equal. But they haven’t, Monica. And I don’t know if that’s because of how I allowed this relationship to center around you, or if it’s because that’s who you are.”

  “I resent that,” I began, but then stopped when he held up a hand.

  “Oh, crikey!” He choked and dropped his fork, p
ushed his chair back and rose to his feet.

  I was actually shaken by the sound of his yell. Never before had I heard him raise his voice.

  “There’s sodding peanuts in the goddamn pad thai, Monica!” he said laughingly in disgust, while he shook his head. “And I just lost my appetite.”

  He stomped straight into the bedroom, leaving me alone to think about what I had done. He didn’t help me clear the table, and he didn’t face me that night as we slept. When I awoke in the morning, he was gone.

  His text message from the airport read:

  Decided to leave this morning. Will be in London for at least two weeks.

  We need a break anyway. This may be good timing.

  It was cold, to the point, and exactly what I deserved. Not at all like him. For the first time since we had gotten together, I thought maybe he wasn’t the one with more skin in the game.

  And I haven’t heard another word from him since.

  All right, maybe you can never be certain of anything. But I am at least as certain that I am heterosexual as I am that some hot teen-queen celebutante under the age of thirty will one day make use of Steel’s promise that After your first four divorce proceedings, the fifth one’s on the house!

  Still, even I couldn’t help staring at the buxom Angelina Jolie look-alike wiggling her way across the intersection of San Vicente and Bundy about twenty minutes later. Unlike most men in my position, I wasn’t wondering what it might be like to sleep with her. Instead, I was wondering if such a woman had any idea what it felt like to stare at a cell phone all day, willing it to boil.