If You See Me, Don't Say Hi

by Neel Patel

  “But then you stopped me,” she said. “I don’t know what it was. There was something about the way you were looking at me—this kindness, this innocence—and I thought to myself: there must be some of that in Deepak, too.” She smiled. “And there was.”

  I asked her if Deepak knew about it. She shook her head.

  “Are you kidding me? He would flip.”

  We were silent for a while, drinking the rest of our wine, staring at the pink and purple clouds outside our window, when I reached for her hand. She pulled it away. I reached for it again. I pulled her close to me, forcing myself against her, until finally, she gave in. Instead of kissing her, I wrapped my arms around her and felt the give of her shoulders, the slack of her spine, the warm rush of her tears, dampening my shirt. We’d both had enough wine by then, and I helped her rinse the glasses and dispose of the bottle, too. Then I followed her outside, where Deepak was standing on the patio with a beer in his hand, watching the kids from a distance.

  His hair was beginning to gray now, and his midsection had widened, but he still retained the impressive fact of his height, the same span of his shoulders, the same girth of his arms, and I still admired these things from afar, crossing the patio to join him, waiting, as usual, for the Deepak I once knew to return.

  * * *

  Eight months later, he did, after our father died unexpectedly in the middle of the night—he’d had a heart attack. My mother was inconsolable. It was Deepak who came to pick me up from the airport. We didn’t talk much on the car ride home, preferring to listen to music on the radio instead, but later, in the kitchen, he told me the news.

  “Deepika is leaving.”

  I was stunned. He said it was over—they had tried to make it work, but somehow, in the end, the trying wasn’t enough. I asked him if the divorce was his idea, if it was something that he wanted, and I knew, by the soft, sad look in his eyes, that it was not. So I held him for a while, sitting on our kitchen floor, crying: for Deepika, for my father, for the things we never knew. ◆

  the taj mahal

  It was Mallory who introduced us in the first place: at the shopping mall, then her party.

  It was winter; I was visiting from L.A.

  “L.A.,” Mallory said. “Wow.”

  There was nothing wow about it. The hospital had put me on leave—something about “indecent behavior.” As far as I was concerned, I was the best OB/GYN they ever had.

  “You’ve unraveled,” Dr. Barnes said. “The rest of the staff feels uncomfortable around you.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds that you exposed yourself to Dr. Rosenberg.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You offered him sex.”

  “That’s preposterous,” I said, glaring. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

  Then I took off my blouse.

  It wasn’t always this way; in high school, Mallory was the adventurous one. Mallory was the one who got drunk off rum punch and strawberry Boone’s. Mallory was the one with the tattoo; now she wore rust-colored sweaters and khaki-colored slacks, looking, at thirty-two, like the type of woman we swore we’d never be. We ran into each other at Target, on a Saturday afternoon. Mallory pushed a shopping cart.

  “Sabrina? Is that you?”

  After high school, I had become glamorous while everyone else in my class had faded out of their glamour. Mallory included. She had a thick waist, loose skin; her blond hair had faded to brown. Meanwhile I was bronzed like honey, my hair the color of a cocoa bean. I wore extravagant clothes. The night of Mallory’s party, I wore a raspberry cocktail dress from Neiman Marcus.

  But it was meant to be a casual party.

  I told her there was no such thing.

  * * *

  The party was typical: cheese boards next to a platter full of crackers and grapes. Mallory had strung up Christmas lights—colored ones, not gold. All night long she chased me around the house carrying store-bought appetizers and boxed red wine. She introduced me to her friends. They were the usual sort: women who wore Christmas cardigans over stonewashed jeans. Their makeup was of the drugstore variety. Probably they were schoolteachers or nurses and probably they were afraid of me because I was a surgeon. A specialist. A god.

  Sabrina lives in L.A. Can you imagine?

  They couldn’t imagine. They couldn’t imagine that a week ago I had gone to a dive bar and popped a Klonopin into my mouth—then gone home with the DJ. His name was Yousif, and the next morning, four hundred dollars were missing from my purse. They would never understand me, these women, so I smiled at them, and nodded my head, and answered their questions about the traffic in L.A., and then, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I opened my bag and popped another Klonopin into my mouth. Then I started drinking. When I returned, Mallory had opened a bottle of champagne. Happy holidays, everyone! I imagined spilling it on her floor. I wondered if she would get on her hands and knees to clean it up. I was thinking about this when Mallory’s boyfriend walked into the room, opening a can of beer, and suddenly, just like that, I began to think of something else.

  * * *

  I had no boyfriends of my own: I’d hoped Dr. Rosenberg could be my boyfriend. One morning, we were sitting in the doctors’ lounge when I showed him a book I had read on giving really good blow jobs. Dr. Rosenberg had laughed, but later, when I showed it to him again, he didn’t seem so amused.

  “We’re in a meeting, Sabrina, and you’re being very inappropriate.”

  Mallory’s boyfriend would have laughed. Mallory’s boyfriend worked for a tire shop called Geeks on Wheels. He had a finely trimmed beard. There was something intriguing about him. He wore an Illinois sweatshirt over jeans. He had a dab of Brie on his chin. He stood near the cheese plate and avoided conversation. I walked over to him and spilled my drink on his shoes.

  “Oops.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “They’re not fancy like yours.”

  I laughed louder than necessary. “I’m Sabrina,” I said.

  “Mallory’s friend, right?”

  “Classmate. We went to high school together.”

  “Right. I’m Dave.”

  “Dave,” I said. “The boyfriend.”

  “Dave-the-boyfriend.”

  “Well, Dave-the-boyfriend, I could really use a smoke right now. Know where I can make this happen?”

  He pointed toward the kitchen.

  “Back porch. You’ll see a life-size cutout of Santa Claus. You can’t miss it.”

  “That’s where I’ll be.”

  I could sense him watching me as I made my way through the kitchen, onto the patio beyond. When I stepped outside, the giant Santa Claus was staring me in the face. The backyard was silver with moonlight and the branches were stripped bare. I heard the squeak of a door.

  It was Dave-the-boyfriend. He was holding a beer. From an open window, I could hear someone suggesting a game of Taboo.

  “It’s supposed to snow tonight,” he said.

  “I like the snow.”

  “I guess you don’t see much of it where you’re from,” Dave said.

  “Mm.”

  We were silent a moment; then Dave sat next to me and stared at my cigarette.

  “Want one?”

  “I can’t. Mallory wants me to quit.”

  “Mallory’s not here.”

  He smiled.

  “Aren’t you some kind of doctor? Shouldn’t you be condemning this?”

  “I’m an OB/GYN,” I replied. “Are you pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “Then as far as I’m concerned you have nothing to worry about.”

  He took the cigarette from my hands. His nail beds were dirty. I found this irresistible. He exhaled a plume of smoke; then he closed his eyes.

  “God, I needed that.”

  “It’s our little secret,” I said, crossing my fingers.

  We stayed like that for a while, Dave and I, until the cigarette was finished and th
e evening turned cold. Then he flicked the cigarette into the bushes and brushed off his jeans.

  “I better get back inside. Don’t stay out here too long.”

  I followed him inside, where Mallory was opening a bottle of champagne in the kitchen. She looked even larger than I had remembered. “My god!” she said, handing me a glass. “You’re shivering!”

  * * *

  The thing about being an OB/GYN is that everyone wants to talk to you about their vagina: how to get pregnant, how not to get pregnant, how to get rid of embarrassing smells.

  “Your vagina is like a self-cleaning oven,” I said. “Stay away from harsh soaps.”

  The women flocked to me. Mallory linked hands with Dave and paraded him around the room.

  “It’s supposed to snow tonight,” she told me.

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “So what brings you in town? Are you visiting your parents?”

  My parents were dead; they’d died in a car accident last year. Nobody knew. When the clinic put me on leave, the first thing I did was purchase a last-minute fare to Urbana, Illinois. Then I got drunk in my room. I planned on sticking around for a while, putting the house on the market. I did not plan on running into Mallory or Dave.

  “I’m just home for the holidays,” I said. “It being Christmas and all.”

  “I see,” Mallory replied, going back into the kitchen.

  Dave was staring at her, narrowing his eyes. I wondered if he was in love. Then I realized that nobody who loved somebody would smoke a cigarette behind her back.

  So I opened my bag.

  “Let’s smoke another one.”

  * * *

  Someone had decided to play Christmas carols on the hi-fi system, and there was a game of charades in the living room, so no one noticed when Dave and I slipped out through the back door. The night felt colder; Dave offered me his coat. His sleeves were rolled up and I could see the tattoo on his arm.

  “I have a tattoo,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. But you can’t see it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s on my vagina.”

  He spit out his drink. We sat down in front of the life-size Santa Claus and Dave was looking at my legs. Suddenly I wasn’t so cold anymore.

  “I hate Christmas,” I said.

  “I’ve never heard that before.”

  “That’s because you’re dating Mallory.”

  “Which reminds me,” Dave said. “Back there, inside, you said that you and Mallory were classmates.”

  “Right.”

  “I asked if you were friends.”

  I stared at him, narrowing my eyes.

  “You’re not just a mechanic, are you?”

  “I dropped out of law school.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m an idiot,” Dave said, putting out his cigarette. “And because I thought I was in love.”

  He went inside to get more beers and we drank them one by one, crushing the cans. The music grew louder, and every few moments there was an undulating cheer. Dave was getting drunk. His eyes had glazed over. Meanwhile I was barely buzzed. On a normal night, I had a whole bottle of wine to myself. Sometimes I got so drunk that a piece of forgotten memory would return to me in the middle of the night. Once, I had woken up wearing someone else’s brassiere. An idea suddenly sprang to mind. I grabbed Dave by the arm. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go for a drive. No one will know.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “I’ve got ecstasy,” I said, dropping my voice to a whisper. “And marijuana.”

  There was a loud crash from within the house. Mallory was screaming about the turkey. She ran around the kitchen and began calling Dave’s name.

  But it was too late.

  * * *

  I don’t normally drink and drive, but when your parents die in a car accident, you begin to form your own rules. The world is fucked up as it is. What difference does a few drinks make? I pulled out of Mallory’s driveway in my father’s red Porsche. I felt the heat from Dave’s skin. We stopped at a liquor store so Dave could buy more beer. While he was gone, I adjusted my makeup. I put on red lipstick because I had read once that red lips made men think of all the other places you were red. Then I powdered my nose. My dress, the tube of sequins that cost $850 at Neiman Marcus, had ridden up my thighs. I liked it this way. I felt a throbbing between my legs. I tried to remember the last time someone had touched me there—then I remembered it was only last week, with the DJ. When Dave returned he opened a can of beer and fastened his seat belt, kissing me on the mouth.

  “Oh,” I said, melting.

  Dave’s mouth tasted like menthol cigarettes; his lips were rough and dry. We kissed some more, until our hands were in places that were not so rough—not so dry.

  “Fuck,” he said, slapping the dashboard. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

  I thought about Mallory and her party and that stupid life-size Santa Claus.

  I put my hand on Dave’s thigh. “I’m not sorry.”

  * * *

  My parents’ house was like one of those houses on TV, where the father has an affair and the daughter runs away. It was tall and stately and pushed back from the road. The inside was full of polished white stone. We entered the foyer. I turned on the lights. Dave’s eyes grew wide. I could see him more clearly now. He had broad shoulders, sculpted arms. I wondered what the rest of him was like.

  We drank in the kitchen. Every few minutes, Dave would glance around the room and point out something he liked. I found this annoying; I wanted him to like me. I wanted him to ask about my job. Instead he put his drink down and shook his head.

  “This is so weird.”

  “What is?”

  “This. Us. Together.”

  “What’s weird about it?”

  He looked at me the way Dr. Rosenberg had looked at me, the way everyone looked at me these days. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

  “I guess you’re right,” he said, reaching over to pour himself a scotch. “Hey, how about showing me around?”

  * * *

  In high school, you knew you were rich when people wanted a tour of your house. No one ever walked into a duplex and said: “I have to see this.” The kids in my grade, the ones who rode the bus to school, referred to my parents’ house as the Taj Mahal. It looked nothing like it. But we were Indian, and the distinction between them and us was clear. My father was a urologist. My mother was a professor of physics. I explained this to Dave when he paused to glance at some artifact or painting. After their death, I’d gone home for the weekend and systematically removed every trace of them from the house: the portraits and clothing and expensive leather shoes. My mother’s perfumes and saris were packed away in a box. Her wedding jewelry was melted down and sold. The albums in which I stood between them in pigtails sat at the bottom of a dustbin. It was my aunt who’d phoned me with the news. I was in residency, at a hospital in L.A. After hanging up the phone I’d vomited, then cried.

  My childhood bedroom was plastered in pink; there were pictures of myself all over the walls.

  “You look scared,” Dave said.

  “What?”

  “These pictures.” He pointed to one in particular. “You look nervous. Like you’re afraid of something.”

  No one had ever told me that before. In high school, Mallory and I were queens. Every Sunday morning we met at each other’s houses to organize our outfits for the rest of the week. Sometimes we would exchange blouses or tops; once, we stole a pair of culottes from the Buckle. It was Mallory’s idea.

  “Weren’t we all afraid of something back then?”

  Dave was silent, taking this in. He sat on my bed. After a few moments I joined him. We said nothing for a while, dangling our legs, until the silence was broken and the words tumbled out of my mouth: “I never liked Mallory, actually.”

  And then we were kissing again.

  * * *


  The first time I kissed a boy was in this very room. It was summer, and Mallory had invited someone over: a boy named Calvin Rhodes. His tongue made circles inside my mouth. He unbuttoned my pants. We were listening to Missy Elliott while it happened. I was only sixteen, but I had seen all of the films, had learned all of the moves. I used my imagination to fill in the gaps. When it was over, Mallory came running into the room. Tell me everything, she’d said.

  And I did.

  It occurred to me that Dave was the type of man my parents had forbidden me to marry. I wondered how it would work, marrying Dave. I wondered what my friends would say. They were mostly doctors or lawyers or people who invented things. They didn’t know any mechanics. He’s just figuring things out, I would tell them. He was in law school, you know.

  It might be nice having a man around the house. He could fix things. There was that crack in the bathroom. There were the dogs, too. My neighbor kept Alsatians; they were always barking at me. I pictured Dave chasing the dogs away. I pictured us getting dogs of our own. Maybe Dave would wrestle with them and I would bake pies and then he would come into the house smelling like dog sweat.

  He unsnapped my dress, letting it pool at my feet. He took off his shirt. It was nice in the way it was meant to be. Dave was competent, sweet, even. He took his time. Then my mind began to wander and I said something I probably shouldn’t have.

  “I don’t know what happened…”

  “What?”

  “Mallory,” I said, blinking. “She used to be thin—thinner than all of us. It was her thing: thinness. And now look at her.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Dave was silent, wiping his brow. He pushed himself off me.

  “I think we should go.”