America for Beginners

by Leah Franqui

  29

  To: boss@americabestnumberonetours.com

  From: satyaroy57@yahoo.com

  Boss,

  Please ignore text of yesterday. Madam enjoying tour very much so. Recommend to all friends. Happy in California very much. Exactly what she wanted.

  Satya

  Sitting in the hotel lobby surrounded by a mountain of luggage, Satya wondered what had become of his tour, hoping Ronnie wouldn’t see his frantic email from the day before when he was sure he had lost the widow. The trip had been going so well until they reached California and she went insane. Or maybe she had been insane the whole time, and had only just revealed it, which was a bit unfair, Satya thought. If you are going to be insane you might as well just be insane from the beginning and not mess about with deception. Now he was stuck with all her belongings, and the only thing keeping him from panicking was a strange phone call from the perverted man who had assured him the widow was alive and well. He was not an experienced tour guide, he knew, but he did believe that keeping track of his clients was probably an important part of the job. He was supposed to be the person in charge here.

  But that was life. People had lives beyond what he could understand. There were more things that could happen and more ways that people could be. He would have to let his ideas of things go, he thought, thinking of Ravi, and simply let things happen. There did not seem to be another option.

  He guarded the bags and waited for Rebecca. The trip was officially ending tomorrow, but he didn’t know if Mrs. Sengupta would do any of her activities for the day, which included a tour of the Hollywood Hills and shopping on Rodeo Drive. Over an Indian dinner during which she had shouted at him about why gay people weren’t perverts and he had wished she would get drunk so he could kiss her again, he and Rebecca had decided that they would leave early if Mrs. Sengupta wasn’t interested in the tour. Or rather, that he would leave early. Rebecca wanted to stay and contact some people in “the industry,” as she called it, though he failed to see what was so industrious about acting, a statement that started her yelling at him again. He thought about the feeling of her breasts when he had leaned against them, trying to clutch one in his hand. He could barely remember, but he thought it had been nice.

  “What are you smiling about like an idiot?” Her voice was sharp, brittle now, as she walked up to him. She was nervous about Mrs. Sengupta as well, he knew.

  “Just like that,” he said in response. Rebecca cocked her head to the side in confusion and seemed to be about to question him, so he cut her off. “The man called today. She is still there with him. Will he try to molest her, do you think?”

  “No.” Rebecca elongated the word so that two letters seemed like twenty. Her eyes were off again, rolling away.

  “But he is a disgusting person.”

  “So are you. Stop looking at my chest. What do we do now?” Rebecca asked him.

  “I don’t know.”

  Rebecca sat down next to him. He could feel her warmth through his shirt.

  “Is this normal?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is this your first tour?” Rebecca asked it in a voice that made it clear she knew what the answer was. He nodded slowly. She sighed. “Should we go pick her up?”

  “But what to do with all the bags?”

  She looked at their assorted luggage. “We’ll have to bring them to her.”

  In the back of the cab they looked at each other over the mountain of things, overstuffed bags and carefully wrapped glass. He didn’t remember bringing this much with them. It was amazing, he thought, the things that people picked up along the way.

  They arrived back at the house and Rebecca paid the driver. He let her. He had no money and no reason to be proud. They unpacked the bags and carted them like pack mules up onto the man’s lawn.

  “What should I do? If she won’t come?” Satya asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Well, he supposed perhaps it was her turn to say it. They rang the bell and waited. Of all the traveling they had been doing, all the places they had been to and all the driving they had done around the country, this seemed like the most arduous part of the journey, and the most overwhelming. It was a strange feeling, to be manipulated by his client, to find that she had been guiding him instead of the other way around. The door opened and he saw Jake’s newly familiar face. He forced himself to make eye contact for longer than he wanted to. The man smiled at him.

  “Much better. You can hardly tell at all,” he said, much to Satya’s confusion.

  Inside the house, the widow was sitting on the couch, as she had been the day before, only this time she was bent over a notebook, looking at something. As they moved into the house, Satya caught a glimpse of what it was, all drawings of snails. Each of their shells curled into itself endlessly, a swirling universe fitting into two inches of space.

  “How are you?” he asked Mrs. Sengupta. He hadn’t meant to ask it in Bengali, but it slipped out of his mouth. It was amazing how they had spoken in English all this time, he thought. Was it because his Bengali wasn’t good enough for her, or because they were both being polite to Rebecca? Or maybe because in some way English seemed more appropriate and neutral than their mutual native tongue? But now he spoke to her with the care and comfort of his own language.

  “Thank you for coming,” she responded in Bengali. “I am well. I am sorry to have caused you distress.” She switched to English for the last part, for Rebecca’s benefit.

  Rebecca shrugged. “As long as you’re all right.”

  “Madam, about the tour . . .”

  Mrs. Sengupta smiled weakly. “I think I am done with touring.”

  “Of course, madam, understood, understood, it is only—”

  “Can you, is there a way to change the ticket? Only, Jake is going to take me to San Francisco.”

  The man looked startled. “I am?” said Jake.

  “I would like that,” said Mrs. Sengupta placidly.

  Jake exhaled a long breath. “I don’t like you,” he said, flatly, to Mrs. Sengupta. Satya bristled, ready to defend his charge. She was still his client for another day.

  “I understand this. You can change this ticket? To leave from there, in five days?”

  “I will ask—”

  “It’s possible,” Rebecca broke in, “but you’ll have to pay for it.”

  “Everything requires this only.”

  “We’ve brought your bags,” Rebecca said.

  Mrs. Sengupta nodded. “Thank you. You are very kind to me. Is tipping required?” Satya started coughing. The widow seemed to have abandoned tact.

  “It’s not required, but it’s appreciated. At least for the medical bills for the heart attack you gave Satya.” Rebecca spoke in a deadpan, realizing too late that mentioning a heart attack was inappropriate. Mrs. Sengupta nodded again and reached into her purse. She handed them each a handful of crisp hundred-dollar bills.

  “Is this enough?”

  “Only you can know that, Mrs. Sengupta.”

  “It is more than generous, madam, thank you, madam.” Satya tried to touch her feet for the last time, but she stood instead and reached out her hand for him to shake it. He fit his palm onto hers. It was the only time they had touched hand to hand, like equals. He looked at his dark hand in her much paler grip. Soon it was over, and his palms felt sweaty. Mrs. Sengupta reached toward Rebecca to do the same thing, but Rebecca hugged her instead. Mrs. Sengupta looked confused and then, for a fleeting moment, sank into the embrace, letting herself be held. Rebecca leaned back and straightened.

  “It was nice to meet you, Pival. And good luck.”

  “You have both been good to me. I came here under false reasons, and I did not tell you of this. I am sorry. I thought if I did not find Rahi, I would die here. I am glad that I have met you, and that I am not dead.”

  Satya did not know what to say, and so he said good-bye. He would never see her again, he thought. He thought abou
t all the people he would never see again, his grandmother, his mother, Ravi, people he had known for much longer than Mrs. Sengupta. And yet she had affected his entire life. He wondered what her life would look like from now on. He wondered if everyone he had ever known would leave him, too. He wondered if he would get better at it, as time went on, or if it would always feel as it did now, that a part of him was forever lost every time someone who knew him disappeared.

  They took their bags, and they left the house, and they said nothing as they hailed a cab and set off for the airport. Satya had changed his ticket, and would be heading off that day, and Rebecca had offered to go with him, ostensibly to keep him company, but really to pay for the taxi. She suspected he would have tried to walk if she hadn’t ordered the cab. Satya would go home to New York that very day. Rebecca would stay behind, with a friend. The widow would do whatever it was she planned on doing. And they would never see each other again.

  Satya looked out the window as Los Angeles receded from view, not that he had seen much of it in the first place. He wasn’t sure if he could do this again, be a tour guide. Perhaps he wasn’t suited for so many hellos and good-byes, so many places passing in front of his eyes.

  “What do you think she meant?” Rebecca asked him this, before he left.

  “I think she was unhappy. Maybe she’s happier now, that she has met someone who knew her son.”

  “Even though he’s a pervert?”

  Satya shrugged. “Disgusting people can be all right as long as they aren’t perverting themselves on you. And maybe he will change. Meet a nice girl. Become normal. She can help him.”

  “Maybe. Will you stay in New York? Will you keep being a tour guide?”

  “I don’t know where else I would go. Or what else I would do.”

  Rebecca thought for a moment. She reached into her bag and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, and wrote something down. “Here. Call this number, when you get back. I know someone who might help you.”

  He smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you. This has been a very interesting tour of America.”

  Satya snorted.

  “It really has. I promise. Thank you.” And she hugged him. He tried to absorb every feeling of her. As she pulled back he kissed her again, hard, sticking his tongue down her mouth as much as it would go. She bit it. Satya reared back, cursing. She looked at him, calm, her face hard.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry. You’re not.” He shook his head. He wasn’t.

  They had reached the airport. Rebecca was going to take the cab back to Los Angeles. Satya apologized for having her go out of her way, picked up his small battered bag from the back of the cab, and waved good-bye. She waved at him once, and then put on her sunglasses. The taxi pulled away. Satya felt empty. He wished it had been different, that she had sunk into him the way he had seen in movies and let him do all the things he wanted to do.

  He walked into the airport alone, and ten hours later he was on a flight back to New York watching the sun set on California as his plane sped east. From the plane he took a train and a bus to get home. In his exhaustion he almost went back to the place he had shared with Ravi and so many others, but he didn’t; he went to his new home and fell into bed, facedown, sleeping before his cheek even hit the pillow.

  Two days later he walked into Mr. Ghazi’s shop and introduced himself. The man knew who Satya was because Rebecca had already called and prepared him, and when Satya walked out later it was with a job. He would have told Ronnie in person, but Ronnie was on vacation with his wife, the first he had ever taken with her, and wasn’t to be disturbed. So Satya left his resignation in a note on the desk.

  Satya got an additional job at a bookstore on Union Square, hauling boxes, nothing that required much of his mind. They did give him books at a discount, however, and he was thinking about buying a few of them. Between the map shop and working as a stock boy, he had just enough to pay for his life, as long as he lived cheaply. That was fine for him; he knew no other way. His grandmother would have been proud of him. He lived now in a world of paper.

  He had received a letter from Ravi’s mother while he was gone. She had thanked him for writing and told him that she was proud of them both. He had read it, over and over again, absorbing the scent and the feeling of home through the words, thinking about where she was when she had written it, what she had been thinking, what of his old life was around her that she had pressed into the page. Then he put it back in the envelope.

  He passed the cart in the street on his way to work one day, the one run by the man who he thought knew Ravi. The man flinched as Satya passed and looked at him, but this time Satya didn’t yell at him. Instead, he passed him the letters. Included in them was a note, a recommendation for all the things Ravi would need to know to work with Ronnie, all the things he needed to become a guide. He hoped, someday, he would see Ravi again. But even if he didn’t, he had given all he could.

  A week later, Ronnie told him that a new man had joined the company. Satya didn’t ask who he was. He didn’t have to. Ronnie told him that the new guide was doing well, training with the other guides, doing New York tours. Maybe someday he would take a group on a tour of the Southwest, Satya thought, and see the Grand Canyon. Satya smiled. One way or another, they would see it together.

  He went to work, and studied maps of the world and thought about where he was in it. And when he was sick of that, he dusted, and brought Mr. Ghazi his tea.

  30

  “I don’t understand why you would build a city in a place that has such hills. It is too much up and down and walking everything. They should have made the city in a flat place, shouldn’t they?”

  Mrs. Sengupta’s face was screwed up with annoyance as she surveyed San Francisco. She looked at Jake, as if challenging him to explain it for her. She had done that often since they had met, looked at him, silently demanding that he give her reasons for the things she didn’t understand.

  “Were you this aggressive with your tour guide?” Jake asked idly, swirling his coffee around in his cup. They sat at a tea shop in the Castro, where Mrs. Sengupta bathed her face in the steam of an expertly crafted Indian masala tea, while Jake had scandalized the establishment by ordering a latte.

  “I didn’t bother asking him questions. It was clear he knew nothing, and when Rebecca had something to say, she just said it. Such an amazing thing, to be able to do that. To have the confidence. I have never felt such a thing.”

  Jake looked away. Mrs. Sengupta, or Pival, as she had asked him to call her, had grown both bolder and more contemplative the more time they spent together. He still wasn’t sure how exactly he had ended up traveling with her to San Francisco, taking a week off work and spending his time escorting his dead boyfriend’s sari-clad mother around the city, but here he was. Somehow she had gotten him there, with her calm statements and her desperate need.

  Part of him was happy to do it, really. Part of him had, he knew, wanted to throw it in her face, the freedom Bhim had had in America, the way his life and self had been acceptable here. Why else would Jake have booked them an apartment in the heart of San Francisco’s historic gay district? Why did he insist on taking her to gay bars, crashing a gay wedding in the Shakespeare Garden in Golden Gate Park, pointing out every same-sex couple that passed them on the street? But if he had meant to shame Pival, his actions were having the opposite effect. Instead, with every couple they saw, Pival seemed to relax a fraction of an inch.

  “Bhim must have been happy here.”

  Pival was looking at the window as she spoke, a soft smile playing on her lips.

  “You can be whatever you want here. He had never had such freedom in his life. He must have been drunk off it.”

  Jake smiled at her description. “I suppose. He often seemed quite reserved to me. I don’t think I would have liked to meet him in India. I can’t imagine him even stiffer.”

  Jake realized as he said it this was true.

  “You
don’t have to. You had him at his best.”

  Pival spoke without bitterness, mournful, but without rancor, and Jake wondered how he had gone from hating someone to caring for her so quickly. For the last few days, since she’d asked to stay with him, Jake had felt a rising tide of panic, fear that as he lost his resentment there would be nothing left to keep him going. But somehow he woke up every morning, breathing, thinking, worrying about his new cat, wondering if she liked her exorbitantly expensive sitter. Somehow, even without the engine of anger he’d depended on for the past year, he was still living. Living better, even.

  “I could not have imagined a place like this where someone could feel so good about who they are and what they want.”

  “You should have visited him.” Jake wondered why they hadn’t, at least before Bhim came out. They had the money, he knew, and he assumed they didn’t have the time or inclination.

  “Yes. I should have. My husband didn’t like long trips, you see. And I did not know then how to travel.”

  “But now you do.”

  Pival smiled at him.

  “I am learning. Every day, it is only about doing it, and suddenly it is happening. I am learning, slowly, slowly. It is worth it. I thought I was too old to learn, but here I am, doing it again. And I am happy, that I am.”

  So am I, Jake thought.

  “Will you take me to where he worked?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is it by the ocean? You know, that is a funny thing about Rahi. As much as he loved water, he never learned to swim.”

  Jake smiled.

  “Funny you should mention that.”

  They took the train to Berkeley, Pival exclaiming the whole time at how clean it was. That was her first comment, most places she went, how very clean.

  “Is India so very dirty then?” Jake asked. He had not asked Bhim much about India, not after it became clear this was another dangerous subject, and never after Bhim had come out to his parents. Pival smiled wryly. She had a dry sense of humor that Jake liked. Everywhere in her he was looking for parts of Bhim, but they never were where he thought they would be. Instead, he found them on the edges of things, in a mispronunciation they shared, the number of spoonfuls of sugar in tea, the way they licked their fingertips and smoothed their eyebrows elegantly and disgustingly at once.