by Divya Sood
“Jess,” she whispered. She was wide-awake now and I started to think of ways to please her.
I kissed her body again, prolonging the pleasure that was to come. As I touched her gently in what I believed was foreplay, she came instantaneously.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Why?”
“I wasn’t finished, you know.”
I lay next to her and we both laughed.
“You seriously came just then?”
“It’s you, Jess. For you the world.”
“For me the world and easy come easy go?”
“Jess…”
“Yeah?”
“Remember I haven’t been with anyone for over a year. I mean what did you expect?”
I had expected this conversation not to come up again. Or maybe I had just wanted this conversation not to come up again because it made me feel like shit. But nonetheless, here we were.
I lay on top of her and traced her ear with my finger.
“I expect to love you forever, Anjali Chopra. Forever and a day.”
She was silent.
I kissed her and she kissed me back but there was a hesitation in her kiss, something like caution. Did I blame her really?
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said quietly as she looked away from me.
“Is something wrong?” I asked although I knew I was wrong, the reason for her hesitation, the reason for everything that seemed to go awry in our lives. But I still had to ask, hope that maybe there was something or someone else to blame for the thin sheet of tension that lay between us.
She was silent.
“What’s the matter with you?” I snapped, my voice full of agitation.
“Nothing. Just don’t see how you can love me forever and a day but not be ready for my ring all at the same time.”
Honestly, I didn’t know either so I kept quiet. I turned towards the wall and watched raindrops on the glass. I thought back to the one photograph of the rickshaw taken from inside a window while it rained outside. I wondered what the photographer was doing now and decided I wanted her to be dancing in the rain, her thumb ring glistening with rain water, her hair slick and shining. I made her live my own Bollywood fantasy. Although I knew at the same time that lying next to me was my heart, my soul, my reality. Could I possibly reconcile them both? Could I just fucking figure it out?
I drifted into a soft sleep as a series of questions drifted into my head.
“What do you want? What is it you want? Do you even know?”
Softly, into the night I whispered what it was that I really wanted. It was a simple sentence that would change my life forever.
“I want to love and be loved.” I said as I lay next to Anjali and envisioned kites flying against an azure sky and a squatting stranger below, selling photographs.
I sensed in the dark coolness a slight whisper of jasmine. And the jasmine said, “Love changes you, Jess. Love changes you.”
Chapter Three
I awoke to thunder. I lay in bed and closed my eyes, allowing the sound to wash over me. Then I walked to the window and watched and listened to falling rain, roaring and descending like the monsoon in its intensity. The sight of so much water made me think of a fish market where I had once seen a fish in a bucket, almost folded onto itself, flailing in shallow water. I had wanted to buy it, to release it from its uncomfortable plight. My grandfather had said we were not going to buy it and had moved to the next table to inspect more fish. But I had stood transfixed, watching the gleam of its body, the terror in its lidless eye.
I heard Anjali enter the room and the scent of freesia drifted to me. I remembered the smell of jasmine and the glow of incense in a flowerpot.
“Good morning, princess,” she said as she came to stand behind me, “What would you like for breakfast?”
“Princess.”
I even remembered the sound of her voice as she had said the word. Anjali walked around to face me and kissed my lips softly. She kissed my temple. I swallowed hard but the guilt caught in my throat was almost solid and could not be dissolved.
“Bacon,” I quickly said hoping she wasn’t hoping for last night to resurface or repeat itself.
“What else?”
“As long as you make bacon, I don’t care what else you make.”
She rubbed my back.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Fish at a fish market.”
She nuzzled my neck.
“I was thinking,” I said, “about seeing a fish in this bucket.”
“A fish in a bucket? I get queasy getting so close to anything alive,” she said.
“I felt bad for it,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because it barely fit in the bucket and I felt like it deserved to be comfortable.”
“So what did you do?”
“I waited for the fisherman to turn away. Then I took the cleaver off the table and threw the fish on the table and cut off its head.”
“Jess! Why would you tell me that?”
“I thought it was interesting.”
“It’s just disgusting.”
I watched her walk away, her anklets chiming in rhythm with her footsteps. Then I turned once again to my private monsoon, to thoughts of my fish market and the smell of the ocean.
Anjali couldn’t appreciate my fish. She took a cab home every day. Then she had a vodka martini on the couch while she waited for me to come home from wherever I was. Of course she sometimes changed the flavors in her martinis. But Anjali had no intention in life. Everything she did was tasteful and sensible and correct and predictable. There was no exploring life with her and if I wanted to eventually buy a house and live in a suburb somewhere in Jersey, I guess she would have been ideal. But I wanted different. I wanted someone who had purpose. I desired someone who appreciated a fish head every once in a while or someone who sold her essence in photos for $20 in the middle of Central Park. Wasn’t that what I wanted? I wanted art, risk and adventure, didn’t I? I didn’t know. But was I willing to toss Anjali aside to find out?
“Jess!”
I looked up at the ceiling. It was so high that I could not see the detail of the curves and crevices that lay in a pattern around the edges. It was a daunting ceiling. I wondered how many women had screamed their lovers’ names under this ceiling. I wondered how many women, like me, had stayed silent as they enjoyed the affections of one who loved them.
“Jess!”
I went to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth with slow, gentle motions.
“Baby, your breakfast will get cold.”
“And so we have microwaves,” I said to myself.
I spit the toothpaste into the sink and rinsed. I washed my face and the cool water felt refreshing. I wiped my face and then folded the towel into squares to see how many times I could fold it. Then I unfolded the squares and threw the towel onto the bar where it usually hung. I missed. I did not pick it up. I liked the idea of a fallen towel in Anjali’s life. She would question me about how it got there, what happened to it, had it fallen? It amused me how the little asymmetries of life frustrated her. As I stepped out of the bathroom onto wilted rose petals, I felt guilty for my thoughts. I looked at half burnt candles and slips of paper here and there. She had planned a proposal and not only had I ruined it, I was annoyed with her. And for what? I didn’t even know. What was wrong with me?
When I went to the kitchen, I found her pulling a bagel out of the toaster.
“It’s stuck,” she said.
“Of all the things you have in this place, why don’t you have one of those wide slot toasters?” I asked.
She looked at me with some confusion. Then her eyes cleared and were simple and beautiful once again.
“We’ll get a toaster. I never really ate enough toast to notice what I had.”
She chuckled. I watched her walk over to me. She stood still. She placed her hands on my shoulders and then moved them to m
y back. She kissed my mouth before she hugged me. Then she held me. Even though everything in Anjali’s life was free of risk and unpredictability, I was her greatest risk, her imminent downfall, the one thing she pursued and loved with reckless abandon. And while I knew that, I didn’t know what to do with that.
I did not understand her giving me a full throttle hug all because I said she should get a wide slot toaster. Was all this affection necessary? Was it at all warranted? Did I deserve this love? I would say “No.” But she couldn’t stand to see me upset about anything, not even toast. And that is how she loved me, regardless of my own shameless manipulations. And instead of being grateful or accepting, I was indifferent and increasingly irritated.
“Anjali …” I said.
She pulled away and looked at me. Her eyes were clouded with expectancy, the green in them obscured by some fear or threat.
“Jess, last night was amazing.”
I said nothing.
“Didn’t you enjoy it?”
“I came,” I said.
“See. We are so, so good together. Last night, last night was…amazing.”
I looked towards the window. The sky was a pale blue with streams of clouds.
“If we are meant to be together,” I said, “then we will end up there, right? We’re together here and now as we are, let it be.”
Sometimes, I hated myself for the lines I recycled and reused. But it came easy to me, this game of words, this circle where the exits lay in the corners. Why the fuck do you love me so much, Anjali Chopra?
“You really believe that?” she asked as she ran her fingers through my hair.
“Yes.”
She walked away from me and looked out of the window. The silence between us said more than we ever could have. And, ultimately, it said we were both fools.
She was still facing the window. I walked to her and wrapped my arms around her waist. She turned around and placed her head on my shoulder.
“Let’s eat,” I said.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Yes, very.”
She smiled. And with that smile, I felt both absolved of my guilt and yet guilty as sin.
She allowed me to sit as she buttered half a bagel and prepared a plate of food for me. I was sitting at the table with my hands folded when I had a flashback of my stranger squatting on the ground in Central Park. I remembered most her thumb ring and how it caught the light. I wondered how she would react if I were to slide my fingers inside her. I wondered how long it would take for her to entice me to undulate my tongue inside her. I thought of us in Central Park as we were but I would move closer to her as she squatted. I would somehow unbutton her jeans and slide my fingers inside her as she sat with her incense and her photos. I would make her moan as wisps of jasmine air encircled us and everyone watched me make love to this beautiful woman by the fountain.
“Jess?”
I focused my attention on the bacon in front of me. I shifted my gaze to the steel finish of the toaster. The bar between the slots was dusted with bagel crumbs.
“You want to eat in the living room or in here?”
“The living room,” I said.
“Here’s your food. I’ll be right there.”
I had finished my eggs and half my bacon by the time Anjali came to eat with me. I watched her eat delicately and wondered how anyone could go through life never being raw. I was annoyed by her lack of savagery.
“So what do you want to do after breakfast?”
I want to find the girl I met yesterday and bring her here so we can make love all day. And I want to make her scream my name again and again. And I want you to hear it ricochet against your perky eggshell white with a hint of champagne painted walls.
“I have plans,” I said.
“You want to meet for dinner tonight?”
I placed my fork on my plate. I made sure I looked directly into her eyes before I spoke to her.
“Anjali, we fucked last night. I came. It was good. That’s what happened. If you want, we’ll fuck again. I like fucking you. Surprisingly, I do. But that’s what I like about you. I like the way you touch my body inside and out.”
“I love you, Jess. You say you love me too. And then you act like an asshole.”
Her voice seemed on the verge of cracking into pieces. I promised myself that if she cried, I would leave. Even if I had no place to go, I would leave.
She cried.
“I’m not saying that you have to feel a certain way because I do. But you say you do. And last night was amazing. Last night was…just magical.”
I walked to her and stood behind her. I placed my arms around her. I kissed her head and the smell of her hair aroused me. I ran my hands over her breasts and kissed her neck. I kissed her ear.
“You are so beautiful,” I said.
When I closed my eyes, I saw my squatting stranger.
“I have some things to do today,” I said. “I have to study for an exam. I want to write at least a page of the manuscript. Why don’t I see you tonight when I get home?”
She turned to face me. She started crying again.
I kissed her mouth. I ran kisses along the length of her neck and back to her lips. I felt my eyes begin to tear because somewhere, I did have a conscience and I realized she was right; I was being an asshole. And for what? She had loved me, made love to me, cooked me breakfast, and fed me, all despite me turning down her Tiffany’s proposal.
She cried. Watching the tears run over the slight pout of her mouth, absorbing her sadness into myself, I started to cry too.
“Hey,” I said, “We’re trying right? We will get there. Just let things be. Remember?”
“But then you say it was just a fuck.”
I sighed. I looked around for a minute. I blinked away tears. Then I forced myself to look into her eyes.
“It wasn’t. And we both know that.”
I held her and closed my eyes.
“If I say I love you, will it make things awkward again?”
“Try me.”
“I love you, Jess.”
“I love you too.”
I heard her laugh, a slight beautiful sound.
“What’s so funny?”
She said nothing but kissed me fully for long time.
“Jess, can I ask you something?”
I was fearful of what she would ask when I replied. “Sure.”
“What’s going on with the manuscript? You never talk about it.”
“It’s coming along.”
“What’s your fear?”
I stared at her.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what are you afraid of?”
“Nothing.”
“It just seems like you want to write this story and then you really don’t want to write it at the same time.”
How did she know me as well as she did? It was true I did want to write this story. But it was also true that I was scared shitless. I pushed the thought away, far, far away, deep inside my brain so even if I wanted to, it would be hard to think of again. At least for now.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, nervous that she would make me discuss it and spill my fear across the table for both of us to see.
“You never do. Seems like you never want to talk about anything with me.”
“It’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s just that I don’t want to talk about this. Why the fuck is that so hard for you?”
“Why are you screaming at me?”
“Sorry. I am.”
In the silence that followed, we tried not to look at each other. I wondered how we had gotten here, what steps we had taken and what steps we had missed that we could love each other so much and yet not even be able to talk to each other. I felt compelled to say something, anything at all.
So I said, “Anjali, listen, you do your thing and I’ll do my thing. And if…when…when at the end we are together, then it will be beautiful.”
I put m
y dishes in the sink and turned to leave.
She was crying softly, tears slowly slipping from her pale green eyes.
“Don’t go, Jess. If I said something wrong, forgive me. Please don’t leave just yet.”
She hugged me and then held me. I put my arms around her.
“You said nothing wrong, jaan. Nothing.”
“When at the end we are together, then it will be beautiful,” she said so softly I almost didn’t hear her. But I heard her enough to realize she hung on my every word, my every sound, my very being. I swallowed and the guilt was back in a lump in my throat. I looked away from her. Then at her. I kissed her.
I did not leave.
Chapter Four
I did not leave forever but I did leave for the day. I put on some blue jeans and a short black kurta that my mother had sent me along with two boxes of sandalwood soap and a tin of incense. It was the first time I was wearing the kurta and I liked the way it felt, the cotton cool against my body. It billowed when I moved, a sliver of skin visible around my waist if I reached upwards. I slipped on a pair of black ankle socks and Nike sneakers, all black, soft, supple and low. And then I quietly left the apartment, Anjali on the couch pretending to watch TV as I left, some Bollywood movie that I knew was too old and too violent to actually hold her attention.
“Bye. I’ll be home early,” I tried.
She nodded her head as if she were so engrossed in her movie that she barely understood me when I knew full well that she had heard and she would be waiting, martini in hand, for my return as dusk approached. I almost didn’t leave. But then Poet’s Walk caught my eye and uneasiness filled my entire body. I knew I had to see her again if only to buy another photograph. I closed the door quietly.
As I sat on the subway, I sensed sandalwood and Queen of the Night mingled with mogra as scents mingled and rose to me from the fabric of my kurta. I closed my eyes and thought of my mother, making pale brown paste and then anointing me at a temple amidst the sound of bells and chanting pundits. I could almost feel the petals of hyacinth beneath my feet and the cold marble underneath. I would return someday when I had nothing to lose.
“What do you have to lose now?”