Outside People and Other Stories

by Mariam Pirbhai

  “I thought I did…?”

  “I’m Can—” Lata cut herself off, seeing Arjun smile impetuously. “You know what I mean!”

  Arjun seemed to be talking to himself as he contemplated whether to open the Jamaican Hot Sauce or the French Mustard first, settling on the former. “I just thought things would be different here.”

  “Different how?”

  He took a substantial bite of his hotdog in a way that reminded her a little too much of Jeff. “Just different.”

  Lata groaned. She had looked for a husband on the other side of the world precisely because she didn’t want “different.” “And what does that have to do with starting a family? All I said this morning was that it’s time to have a baby!”

  “Correction: you said it was time to have an ‘heir’.”

  “You know I was kidding. It’s just that the Royals are celebrating the birth of their second child and it’s been on the news twenty-four-seven…” she said, hoping her added emphasis on “second” would have some effect.

  “It is not just that, Lata. There are far bigger things we need to work out first. Tell me, how are we going to pay for this house? It is well beyond our means, do you not agree? And speaking of finances,” he continued, licking a drizzle of the brownish sludge from the corner of his mouth, making Lata cringe in disgust. “Perhaps we need to talk about expectations in that regard also. I was under the impression that we would be discussing such matters openly.”

  Lata tried to wrap her head around how the “baby talk” had morphed into the “money talk.” Anyway, what was there to talk about? She assumed he would just take over all the major expenses, especially when they had kids. It’s not as if she was wedded to her career or the whole nine-to-five thing. And for now what the hell did he have to complain about? She earned way more than he did. He was hardly in a position to talk about finances. “So this is about money, then?”

  “It is not about money. It is about being honest. About reality. Or how do you say it? Keeping it real.”

  Lata was not so much listening to what Arjun was saying as she was listening to how Arjun was saying it, as if she were hearing him speak for the first time: the way he didn’t use contractions, the formality of his speech, the extra emphasis he placed on ‘a’—like re-aa-lity, as if every ‘a’ was an ‘aha’ moment. Who did he think he was, anyway? Oprah?

  Lata shifted uneasily in her chair as she watched him take a last bite out of his hotdog, its medley of mismatched sauces oozing onto her designer kitchen table like it was an aluminum thal or cheap patio furniture. She knew he was waiting for her to say something before he got up and washed his plate and utensils by hand, which made Lata crazy because they had a state-of-the-art dishwasher.

  Maybe she had got it wrong, she thought, softening to him again. Maybe he was just trying to tell her he didn’t want to start a family before he was better off, financially speaking. Maybe this was just the stubborn male pride her mother had advised her to be extra sensitive to. A little macho pride she could totally accept. “Did you want to get a real job before having a baby? Is that what this is about?”

  “A real job? I thought I had a real job.”

  “Your Subway manager job? You’re not serious…”

  “I worked hard to get that job. You try getting employed with no Canadian experience. And what if I want to work at Subway for the rest of my life? They have great sandwiches and they help people lose weight.” Lata suppressed a chuckle, fondly recalling how amused Arjun had been by Subway’s ad campaign that eating more bread, of all things, would lead to weight loss.

  “This is my point, Lata. These are the big things.… You can’t even tell your parents what I do for a living but you want to have my children? It does not make sense.”

  “You don’t make sense!” Lata threw up her hands instinctually and brought them down on the table with a thud. The Patak’s jar fell on its side and rolled towards the table’s edge.

  Arjun grabbed it just in time it and placed it back with the other condiments. “What is it about me that does not make sense?”

  Lata anxiously toyed with her iPhone, as was her nervous habit. “I don’t know. Nothing. I mean, everything.” She noticed three messages from her mother. How had she missed them?

  “Just ‘everything.’ Like what?” Arjun needled her. He was far too calm for her liking. Shouldn’t they be having a screaming match? Or calling each other names like those couples filmed on the nanny-cams on Dr. Phil?

  “Well, like I said, I don’t get it. Your family pursued this as much as mine. Why bother if they … I mean, if you didn’t want this?”

  “It is true: they really wanted this. But they did not marry you. I did. It was my choice. Did I come here kicking and screaming? And unlike you, I am not ashamed of the way we got married. I know you have not told your friends at the bank about me.”

  “What did Priya tell you? I knew she couldn’t be trusted.”

  “Priya said nothing. In fact, all she did was sing your praises and talk about how much she admires the fact that you finished your MBA. She regrets not having had the chance to go to university.” Lata didn’t believe a word of it but before she had the opportunity to say as much, Arjun added: “Anyway, what is important is that I did not do this for anyone else’s approval, so I certainly do not care about anyone’s disapproval. I did it because I felt it could work out. I just thought things would be a little different here, that is all.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by this ‘different’ business. You’re the one who’s turned out to be different.”

  “Perhaps we both had the wrong impression, then.”

  “Why are you making things so complicated, Arjun?”

  “I am making things complicated? I am not the one living in a fantasy world.”

  A fantasy world? Lata wanted to scream. Didn’t Kate have a fantasy? And now she’s produced the future King of England!

  Lata could not have seen this one coming: Arjun, her perfect Customs-approved match, was starting to sound a lot like Steve. It was one thing to drool over Steve, but to marry someone like him! That was a fantasy she had put out of her mind a long time ago.

  “Please tell me what you are thinking, Lata,” Arjun prodded.

  You want to know what I’m thinking? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, Lata fumed. I want a full refund with default interest for time and benefits lost, not to mention compensation for throwing me back into the marriage market at second-hand value! I want to sue for damages for what my father would call a shameful breach of contract! And while we’re at it, I want my abbu-ji’s money back!

  Lata dropped her iPhone into her purse and got up to go. She was already late for Spin Class and she still hadn’t checked her PVR settings. Arjun had an infuriating habit of messing up the pre-set timers, and she was not about to miss the season finale of The Bachelor.

  “Where are you going? Can I make you something else for dinner?” Arjun asked after her.

  “I’m on a diet! And for God’s sake, barbeque those grease-bombs outside next time. You’re not supposed to eat beef, remember … or was I wrong about that too?”

  SUNSHINE GUARANTEE

  LUCITA WIPED THE residue of detergent from her hands on an all-purpose rag salvaged out of a spaghetti-stained napkin. She glanced at her chart, a list of check-outs she had to clean in preparation for incoming guests.

  “Dios mio,” Lucita sighed quietly, thinking of Señor Gonzalez’ reprimand earlier that morning. You’ve been late far too many times this month; another slip-up and I’ll have to take action; if you think you’re irreplaceable, I’ve got a filing cabinet filled with applications from younger workers to prove otherwise, and on and on he had chided. He didn’t seem to recall the eleven years of service she had already given the Siete Mares Resort and Spa, so named for the seven private ocean-front hotels dotting the Yuc
atán Peninsula. (Rumour had it Siete Mares was undergoing a numerical name change to reflect its recent expansion in Honduras and Nicaragua.) Some of her coworkers hoped this would mean promotion or relocation. Experience told Lucita that the only difference between these resorts and their working conditions would be the quality of air brought in by the Pacific or Caribbean seas.

  “Excuse me!” a nasally voice called out. Lucita noticed a round, sun-burnt face emerge from the doorway of what she made out to be Room 23B. The girl waved a shampoo bottle in her left hand. Lucita understood the gesture and searched her cart for bathroom supplies. It was against hotel policy to provide more than one such complimentary item per day, a policy enforced by regular inventory checks at the end of the week. On the other hand, the staff were trained to always put the guests’ needs first. Any complaints of poor service would reflect badly on everyone during upper management’s annual review, which usually appeared in the month before high season. Were it not for the promise of increased tips they would all most likely have preferred a few extra hurricanes per year over the December-January high season and its “no hay lluvia” or “sunshine guarantee” policy.

  Lucita first heard of this policy from one of the younger staff, a front desk clerk named Angélica who was working the graveyard shift while completing her last year of university. The phrase rained on Lucita’s Catholic ears like an epidemic of locusts: How can a hotel guarantee what even Jesus Cristo can’t promise? Do they not realize that they are God’s servants, not the other way around?

  Angélica chuckled at Lucita’s naiveté, saying, “Ay, no seas tonta. Even one day of rain makes the gringos feel that they’re not getting their money’s worth.”

  “And what if it rains? What then?” Lucita pursued what seemed to her an absurd line of argument, but if anyone could help her make sense of it, it was Angélica.

  “If it rains, they’re just offered something free, like a day at the spa or a snorkeling lesson. You know how much the gringos love free stuff. It is the religion of the consumer, as Professor Hernández says. Mira: people like you think that nothing good comes for free, and working hard is the only way to heaven. But most people think that because nothing comes for free, heaven must be a place where you get more for less. And Mexico is where the gringos come to get more for less. I bet you didn’t know you’re already in heaven, Lucita. Now you can forfeit next Sunday’s confession and live a little.”

  Angélica’s cynicism notwithstanding, Lucita missed her conversations with her companion from Guadalajara. Angélica possessed the same spirit of contrariness as her own son Miguel. How perfect they would have been for each other, she reflected wistfully.

  “Why do we kill ourselves to earn a few measly dollars?” Lucita once overheard Angélica berate Carmen who had made the mistake of bragging about a ten-dollar tip she had received from an admiring guest. Carmen was hired to guard a small kiosk advertising local agencies and attractions, though she spent most of her day texting her boyfriend whom Angélica suspected was a small-time drug dealer who was dating Carmen for her hotel access pass.

  “Why can’t we value our labour in our own currency? Why can’t our currency value our labour?” Angélica continued, unperturbed by Carmen’s characteristic disinterest, as the latter pretended to busy herself with the re-organization of promotional brochures: boat rides through jungle mangroves; day-trips to the pueblos; submarine expeditions; “authentic” Mayan dance troupes; turtle farm excursions; water parks; nightclubs, casinos; something for everyone.

  Ay, Señor! Lucita sighed again. Mexico? Heaven on earth? If only! Is that why Miguel has left me? Is that why Ramón has left me?

  Her brother Ramón’s migration “North” had cultivated in Lucita a particular fascination for Canadian guests who made up the bulk of their clientele. Sometimes she would steal a moment to feel a fur-lined winter boot or hat in one of their closets. These glimpses into another world reminded her of the early snapshots of her brother’s family clad in oversized coats, misshapen woollen hats, and mismatched gloves, clothes that they had no doubt bought second-hand as ill-equipped newcomers. What struck her most about these scenes was not so much the snow that blanketed the city like a tired cliché, but the flushed faces peering out from long, hooded coats or so many layers of clothing that they reminded her of nuns in their habits.

  “Shampoo, por favor!” the nasally voice called out again.

  Lucita rummaged through her cart, relieved to find that she had not as yet utilized her week’s quota. She prided herself on her ability to turn less into more. By God’s grace, they had never done without, Lucita thought, stopping to kiss the pendant cross that was her only adornment. Even now, without her son’s contribution, she stretched her meagre salary into something both she and her mother could survive on. She marvelled at her younger coworkers who didn’t seem to care if they ran out of supplies, like they didn’t seem to think twice about spending a day’s wages on frivolities like nightclubs and an arsenal of electronic devices. Their defiance of management also unsettled Lucita. But she begrudgingly admired their unorthodox resourcefulness. When it came to hair products, they would save the empty shampoo bottles, and refill them with the cheapest local brand they could find. They did this with an almost scientific attention to the scent, colour, and texture of the hotel product, which simple deduction revealed to be a generic Mexican brand repackaged in Florida with the hotel’s logo.

  Even as far as a few doors down from 23B, Lucita could feel the crisp, cold air wafting out of the girl’s air-conditioned room. She instinctively rubbed her warm palms against the gooseflesh sprouting on her upper arms. If the canadienses expected a “sunshine guarantee,” then why did they keep their rooms so cold, she wondered. The rooms were so unbearably cold that she had taken to bringing a sweater to work.

  “Champoo,” Lucita smiled courteously. The girl snatched the bottle from Lucita, reciprocating with neither a smile nor a frown but some kind of facial twitch, which was promptly followed by a shut door.

  Lucita returned to consult her chart. She had to make her way round to the rooms marked for an early group check-in from Québec. The group check-ins made everyone’s day the hardest and longest. It was little wonder that Señor González was especially unforgiving on such days.

  Again her mind strayed to the morning. Her tardy appearances to work were becoming more frequent. But what was she to do? She had no control over her mother’s health and even less control over the increasingly capricious mood swings that overcome the elderly. There was no doubt that her mother’s mind was taking a tumble down the muddy hill of life. She lost ten precious minutes every morning just trying to convince her that it was Thursday, not Sunday, and that Padre Lopez was not expecting them at la iglesia. And then on Sunday mornings she had to remind her that it was time to get dressed for la misa.

  She had even taken to mistaking the neighbour’s daughter Albertina—who delivered a weekly batch of homemade desserts—for the sister Lucita had lost during her infancy. Sometimes the memory lapses were so great that she would find her mother sending Albertina back home with dulces de guayaba and plátanos fritos, because they had been her deceased daughter’s favourites. Lucita and Albertina went along with the charade to protect the old woman and themselves from further grief. And she was too proud to admit it, but Lucita longed for a sister, if only for the helping hand she’d imagine her to be. It was no doubt a selfish desire that sent her to many a confessional.

  And the high season complicated an already difficult situation. Every night when Lucita returned from work, no matter how late it was, she prepared the next day’s meals in the likely event that she was asked to stay on for a double shift. If this were not an exhausting way to end a long day’s work, three mornings ago she missed her bus because she had to make a second batch of tortillas. Her mother refused to eat the ones made the night before, because those tortillas had been poisoned by the devil’s hand, a pu
nishment apparently meted out to mark the sin of “godless” grandchildren. Lucita retorted that for someone who seemed to be enamorada con la muerte, was not a poisoned tortilla besmirched by the devil’s hand a welcome facilitator of what was, after all, her desired state? This of course had led to more outbursts, including her mother’s favourite aphorism: pórtate bien cuatito, si no te lleva el coloradito. And any reference to devilish misbehaviour would predictably lead to her tiresome adulation for Ramón who, unlike his ungrateful sister, would have spoken to his mother con respeto.

  Lucita wanted to point out the obvious: that Ramón lived at the other end of the continent; that in fifteen years he had come for a brief visit with children who only whined about the heat and the food and the accommodations; time he spent tracking down an old friend who owed him what Lucita could only surmise was some meagre amount of money; and his bravado about sponsoring his mother’s immigration had never materialized. But Lucita dutifully prepared a fresh batch of tortillas with greater alacrity when she realized that her mother’s remark about godless grandchildren was directed at Ramón’s children, and not her own Miguelito.

  And today! Por Dios! Today, her mother’s appointment with her Maker seemed to have arrived without the devil’s interference. She had fallen on her way to the kitchen and, for an excruciating moment, Lucita imagined a broken hip bone or a blow to some other irreparable part of her fragile body. Sometimes it was all too much to bear alone. Things were so much simpler before, Lucita thought. Now she even worried about the dreaded day she would have to arrange her mother’s funeral alone, though her mother still held strong to the belief that a mother’s burial was a son’s honour, not a daughter’s obligation.

  At least at work she didn’t have to concern herself with the morbid preoccupations of the elderly. All day she heard the delighted cries of children, giddy with the fun and games the pool-side animators designed for them. Or she was surrounded by her youthful coworkers. Girls with heads full of silly dreams, and young men free to turn their heads in admiration of abundant beauty. She loved to hear them talk in what they called their “twilight hours,” those short periods of respite between shifts. At such times, their uniforms and unnatural smiles would be shed and they revealed themselves in partial slices of gossip and idle chit-chat.