by Neel Patel
“Who is he?”
“Huh?”
“Condoms, Mona. Who are you buying condoms for?”
I held up the receipt.
She started to cry. “It was a mistake,” she kept saying, over and over again, into her hands.
But I was no longer listening.
* * *
My therapist said I blacked out. He said it was common. He said it happened during moments of high stress; that, given the circumstances, anyone could have reacted the same way. But I didn’t believe him. I don’t know how I ended up at the gym with a dumbbell in my hands, a trail of havoc in my wake: broken dishes, splattered walls, scratch marks on Mona’s Mercedes, a pool of spilled red wine. All I know is, I was standing over Landon’s crumpled-up body with a ten-pounder in my hands, waving it around like a buffoon. I looked at my reflection in the mirror.
I couldn’t tell you who was looking back.
* * *
According to my therapist, this was all very normal. He said I was having an existential crisis. He said I needed time, that I should come up with an alternative method of coping, a fantasy world in which everything was reasonable and calm. Visualize it, he said. Imagine that you’re there. Eventually, everything around you will disappear.
It didn’t.
Mona left me, and I had to get a lawyer. I found the advertisement online. M.G. & Associates: defense attorneys extraordinaire. Their office was in a reflective building downtown. In the stone lobby, glass elevators floated up and down like balloons. A perfumed receptionist looked up from her desk.
“Law offices?” she said, lazily. “Third floor.”
I was nervous; I had never been in trouble with the law before. I adjusted my suit and stared at my reflection in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot. My skin was pale. My face was swollen from all the medication: Xanax and some little white pills I’d started popping like M&M’s. It was hot outside, ninety, ninety-five by my guess, and the air-conditioning froze the sweat right off my skin. I went over my story a few times before the elevator doors opened, swiftly, revealing a square of pale light.
He was standing by the reception area in a three-piece suit. It was him, all right. There was no mistaking it. I was terrified by the sheer coincidence of it all, the sudden intersection of our lives, and yet, in some small, strange way, I had expected it all along. I stared at the placard and eventually it became clear: M.G. & Associates.
Michael Gray.
* * *
He hadn’t changed much. His pink skin still shone like a scab. The ash blond hair was still shorn to his scalp. He looked garish in white pinstripes and a bright pink tie. He smiled at a woman, a client perhaps, before leading her toward the door, at which point our eyes met.
I should have appealed to him. I should have shaken his hand. I should have thrown my shoulders back and remarked on what a wonderful surprise this all was, how, when you really thought about it, we were just a couple of ignorant kids. But I bolted instead, past the elevators, down the stairs, into the lobby, and, just as my legs were about to give out, into the parking lot beyond. The last thing I remembered was Michael’s mouth hanging open in consternation, in terror even, as if it were he—not I—who was afraid.
* * *
Later that evening, I logged on to Facebook. I clicked on her page. The engagement in Chicago, the wedding in New York, three children (two boys and a girl, all with Eun-ji’s creamy white skin). Her husband was a heart surgeon named Dominic. He ran marathons and races in which you swam through mud. I scrolled through the history that had once united and divided us, tearing us apart, looking for some signs of Michael’s exit. But there were none. Then I found the picture. The one Mona had pointed out to me in her room.
She wore a lemon-colored coat; her hands were in gloves. We were standing outside a bar we used to go to called Dudley’s. The rest of our class was there, too, making silly faces. I read the comments, lengthy exultations about what a wonderful time it had been, before leaving one of my own.
All night long, I dreamt of an alternate future, a fantasy world in which Eun-ji and I were friends, in which our Facebook contact became real contact and our likes became love. The next morning, I logged on to Facebook and checked if she had replied, if the comment was still there.
But it was gone—deleted. I closed my laptop and went back to bed, shutting my eyes.
Then I opened them, swiftly.
The message was waiting for me at the bottom of the screen: “Hi.”
I clicked on the window and began typing up a response, my heart hammering in my chest, my fingers splayed over the keys. I fired it off. I took a deep breath. I poured myself a drink in the kitchen and waited—seconds, minutes, hours, years—but I never heard from her again. ◆
just a friend
Every now and then, I asked Ashwin about his wife: in line at the movies, or after a beer.
Or after we’d screwed.
He would reach over and take the cigarette from my hands, kissing my smoky mouth. Then he would change the subject. I never believed for a minute they were intimate. I never believed he was in love.
I’d met him at a gay bar. He was shy and even a little rude when I walked over to him and introduced myself, shaking his hand, and later, when he’d rejected me, going home with someone else.
I wanted him then and there.
I didn’t have him until three weeks later, when he called me out of the blue. I didn’t even remember his name. He asked to speak to Jonathan and I told him my name was John. Then he asked if we could meet.
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
“Ashwin Acharya.”
“And we met where?”
“At the Babylon nightclub, three Saturdays ago.”
I remembered him: tall and handsome, with a shock of dark brown hair. He’d worn a pink ascot and expensive-looking shoes; he was alone. I was in my tank top and jeans. I remembered laughing at him, thinking he had taken a wrong turn on his way to the Trump Hotel or something. But he hadn’t. He told me this over the phone. He also told me I was cute, and that he liked my blond hair—I didn’t tell him it was dyed. Instead, I floated off into a dream world of Arab sheikhs and shopping trips to Dubai; I didn’t realize he was Indian at the time. I felt stupid later, making sure to tell him that I loved Indian food—that chicken makhani was my favorite—and that Aishwarya Rai was beautiful. He seemed less concerned with this and more concerned with my educational background. I told him the truth: that I had dropped out of college and I was bartending at a restaurant downtown. I was twenty-two.
He was forty-five. I was shocked when he told me. I thought he was thirty or maybe even twenty-something. He had smooth copper skin and bright eyes. He was rich, too, judging from the Mercedes sedan he picked me up in on our first date. He lived in the suburbs of Chicago. He had driven forty minutes just to see me.
“Where should we go?” he asked.
“I thought you would know.”
He took me to a restaurant on the fringes of town. I figured it was a place he visited regularly but later realized it was because he didn’t want to be seen. He told me this in a motel room, off the freeway, after we’d screwed.
“So you like sleeping with men?” I said.
Earlier that evening, I’d asked Ashwin if he had a boyfriend; he’d told me he had a wife. I was disappointed but not surprised. I’d met men like him before. They had girlfriends or wives and walked freely in two separate worlds, just because they could. They weren’t camp like I was. For a moment, I was envious (though whether it was of Ashwin or of his wife, I wasn’t sure).
“I like sleeping with you,” he said.
I thought that would be the end of it—the way most dates of this nature were—but then two days later he called me again.
“I was thinking about you.”
“You were?”
I was standing on the platform of the L, waiting for a train to take me to Wicker Park, where I stayed in a shared apartment to which Ashw
in had never been. He was driving home from work. He was a dentist and he owned a practice in Highland Park. I pictured him with his leather gloves and his big black Mercedes, pulling out of a parking space or a garage. I wondered about his house—I pictured a large mansion with pretty moldings. I wondered if he had kids. I asked him this on our second date.
“Not yet.”
I was surprised. I’d assumed someone his age would have at least one. My expression must have betrayed this, because later he explained to me that his wife was very young.
“How young?”
He paused. We were sitting at a bar near my apartment, with frosted glass windows. He reached for my hand.
“Let’s not talk about it.”
* * *
We began seeing each other twice a week, sometimes on weekends, staying in motel rooms and, when he was comfortable, in my room. My roommate was never home. Her name was Stephanie, and she was dating some tech guy who lived in River North. When Ashwin saw her picture for the first time he was confused.
“Her parents don’t mind?”
“Mind what?”
“That she is living with a man.”
I laughed. “I’m gay,” I said.
“Her parents know you are gay?”
“Of course,” I replied. “Everyone does.”
He looked disappointed by this, as if there was something undignified about it. Then he glanced around the room. He found it charming, with its mismatched furniture, its multicolored walls, its unopened bottles of discounted wine. He was bold, touching things at random and not caring whose they were. We would order in or go out to eat or else watch a movie in my bed, cuddling up after sex. He was competent in that area—he would pin me down and whisper something sexy in my ear, something sweet even, like he couldn’t get enough of me, or he never wanted to stop. Then he would pin my hands behind my back and pull on my hair. Unlike most guys he would stay long after it was over, smoking a cigarette or else nibbling on whatever we had eaten that day: Chinese noodles, linguine with clams, chicken salad sandwiches from the restaurant down the road. He was the youngest of four children. He had immigrated in his twenties. I asked him what it was like back home and he told me it didn’t matter.
* * *
Only it did matter. It mattered to me. I started to wonder about his life at home, about his wife, Uma, who, according to Ashwin, was closer to my age than his own. He said that prior to their wedding they had never even met; he was thirty-eight and his parents were concerned. They were getting older. They had diabetes. They had asked him once how he would feel, knowing they had died worrying about him. So he agreed. He married. He never looked back.
I found this all very poignant and sad, but Ashwin didn’t seem to care at all. He didn’t seem to care about anything, really. Once I asked him—I asked him what he told his wife he was doing when he was sleeping with me.
He smiled.
“She’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“In India.”
“For how long?”
We were sitting up in bed, watching the news. Ashwin had ordered pizza. He was folding a slice of pepperoni into his mouth.
“She’s been there for six weeks,” he said.
I did the math in my head; it had been six weeks since Ashwin and I had first met.
“When does she come back?” I asked. He was silent. “When?”
“Not for a while.”
I asked him why he never told me this, why he never talked about his wife, why, at the very least, he never invited me to his home. He reached under the covers and smacked me on my thigh.
“You want to see my house?” he said, smiling. “Okay.”
* * *
He invited me for the weekend. I decided to cook him a meal. I borrowed one of Stephanie’s cookbooks and began thumbing through the pages; then I went grocery shopping. It was the first time that Ashwin let me pay for something. I decided on a chicken curry dish with sultanas and steamed rice. I figured he would be surprised: all we ever ate was takeaway.
Ashwin wasn’t home. He’d left the keys under a mat along with a note that read: “See you soon.” I walked around. There was a wide glass staircase, walnut floors, long gray sofas upholstered in leather and suede. The back of the house overlooked a glittering lake and a strip of forest beyond. There was a boat moored at a dock—a white speedboat with red piping, floating under a cobalt sky.
I had seen houses like this before as a child, when my father took me to work with him on Sunday afternoons. He was an electrician who installed hi-fi systems inside rich people’s homes. His clients were mostly doctors or lawyers. They lived in brick houses with circular drives. They had identical children, all with blond hair. Sometimes these blond children would talk to me about the weather in Aruba. I had never been to Aruba, but they talked anyway, their skin tanned, their hair twisted into braids, as if I, too, had been there. Once, in high school, I accompanied my father on an installation at the home of one of my classmates, a popular boy named Dylan Shaw. I didn’t realize it was his house at the time. I felt embarrassed, standing there in my overalls while my father looked up and down the walls. “Geez Louise,” he said, shaking Dylan’s hand. “This is some place you got here.” Later, at school, I ran into Dylan in the hallway, and when I walked into the men’s room he followed me inside.
* * *
I unloaded the groceries and opened Stephanie’s cookbook, thumbing through the pages again. Then I explored the house, peeking into closets and doors. The living room featured a plasma TV, a stainless steel bar, colorful paintings of octagons and squares. There were elegant touches all over the house: silk pillows and white lacquered tables all gleaming under the sun. It wasn’t what I had imagined the home of an Indian person to look like at all—in high school, I’d had a friend named Kareena, and her house was crammed with pictures of elephants and gods. Privately, I had been hoping to see pictures of Ashwin’s wife; I had been thinking about her all along. But there were none. I walked into their bedroom. I glanced around. I pulled back the covers of Ashwin’s king-size bed. Then I got inside. The windows overlooked the lake, which, by that point, looked like a sheet of smoked glass. Moments later, I heard the garage door open and caught a glimpse of Ashwin’s sleek black Mercedes as it glided up the drive. I hurried downstairs.
He was tired but eager, taking me in his arms. He said he had been thinking about me all day.
“It was you that kept me going,” he said. “I was thinking about your face.”
I tried to picture him in his big bright office, holding a dental instrument in his hands. I remembered my own dentist then: a large man named Dr. Morrison who drove a bottle-green Porsche.
“Study hard, John,” he’d said, “and one day this, too, can be yours.”
* * *
Ashwin wore a dress shirt and tie; he loosened them in the kitchen. His dark hair was slicked back from his face.
“Some wine?” he asked, pouring a little into a crystal glass.
I was struck by how formal it was. At my apartment we drank wine out of plastic cups, huddled under my sheets. My living room was unlivable. Suddenly I longed for the intimacy of it, for the way we clung to each other in the middle of the night. Here, in this expansive space, sitting at opposite ends of a glass dining table, we were far apart.
The wine was delicious. So was the food: gourmet cheese, premade lasagna, a chocolate mousse torte. It would be my turn to cook tomorrow. We stayed up late, talking into the night. Ashwin lit a fire. He told me the house was his long before his wife had arrived, the furniture his choice, the design his conception. I couldn’t help but imagine myself living in it. I couldn’t help but imagine other things, too: a dog and a child and a car in which to cart them around. I was thinking about these things when Ashwin looked at me from across the table, smiling.
He screwed me on the floor, pressing my face into the rug. Then he opened another bottle of wine. “Like this,” he said, swirling it aroun
d, explaining that the wine needed to breathe. I felt ignorant in his presence. Ashwin regaled me with his travels—he had been to Cambodia recently, to an ancient city called Angkor, where he had visited the largest Hindu temple in the world. He asked me if I’d ever traveled and I nodded my head.
“To Europe,” I lied.
He asked me where and I panicked. I wasn’t even sure that I could point to Europe on a map. The only places I had ever been were the amusement parks in Florida and California, when I was a child. “To England,” I said.
He had been there three times.
* * *
The next morning, I awoke in Ashwin’s bed, tangled in his sheets. I’d had too much to drink. I looked over and saw that his side of the bed was already made. I went downstairs. He was rooting around in the kitchen, cooking bacon and eggs. He handed me a fork and a plate. “Good morning,” he said.
“What time is it?”
“Ten.”
It was the first time I had seen him this way, with his thin legs exposed, his face unshaven. He looked tired.
“I thought we could go out on the boat,” he said. “It’s warmer today.”
I nodded. I drank three cups of water. I felt nauseous. Ashwin gave me some medicine and encouraged me to eat, rubbing the back of my head. When I was feeling better we changed into our clothes—jeans and sweaters and a light jacket Ashwin let me borrow—and headed out onto the dock.
His boat was long and shapely, with tan leather seats. There was an ice chest in the center filled with sandwiches and beer; Ashwin must have packed it before I woke up. He took the wheel.