by Divya Sood
Chapter Six
When I stepped outside, there was still light, but the sun was low in the sky. I thought of Tiffany with her hand in her hair, an almost imperceptible smile upon her lips. I stopped. Maybe I should have asked her about my nameless photographer. But then I almost knew she would tell me to stay away. But then I also knew that Tiffany, of all people, knew about falling in love away from love, the ways of a wayward heart. But I wasn’t in love. I couldn’t even explain the attraction. I thought again of my squatting stranger’s smile, uninhibited and unafraid. Instead of returning into the restaurant, I walked towards Central Park.
I didn’t know why I was so fascinated with finding her again. Part of me thought it was because she was so elusive to me. But that wasn’t totally true. Anything a woman had worth chasing another woman would give me freely. That had been my life and perhaps, I should say, my luck. I had never found anything in anyone that made me feel as if there was such uniqueness in her soul that I needed to be with her. Until now…and I didn’t even know her name.
I returned to my place on the fountain rim where I could sit and face Poet’s Walk.
I looked to where I heard a cry. A woman in a sari was holding an infant, stroking his back, whispering in his ear. The father stood a few steps away, his eyes darting around the park, wondering who was looking. He wore a V-neck shirt and shorts, his thin ankles exposed in his blue flip-flops. I watched his unease and wished he could see me watching him.
I turned my gaze back to the woman who had managed to soothe her son to sleep. I watched her sari billow in the slight breeze and remembered for an instant burying my head in my mother’s lap, crying that I did not want to go to New York. I remembered the scent of her Pond’s powder and the feel of her rough palm across my forehead. I had been 16 then but somehow, I don’t think anyone’s ever too old to cry in the lap of a beautiful woman.
I turned away from the sleeping infant and looked towards Poet’s Walk as if my squatting stranger would run down the path towards me, a hand on her shoulder to keep the fabric of a sari from flying off her body. She wouldn’t wear a sari, I reminded myself. Although Anjali had worn saris for me many times. There wasn’t much Anjali hadn’t done for me.
I remembered the last time Anjali had worn a sari for me it was sheer blue with golden embroidery on the border. I remembered how she had chosen to take a shawl rather than her coat because she said it looked ridiculous to wear a winter coat over a sari.
“I’ll look like an Aunty if I do that,” she had said.
“You’ll fucking freeze if you don’t. And I’m not going to take care of you when you get sick.”
It was cold and snow was imminent, the skies a light grey and the horizon dark. We had taken a cab to The Pierre and all the while Anjali was shivering with cold.
“Why the fuck did you wear a sari?” I asked her more than once.
She said nothing. She didn’t even answer me.
It was only when we were seated, a bottle of wine almost half gone that she took my hands in hers and said, “Happy Anniversary?”
I think I had just looked confused.
“Today’s the 23rd, Jess. We met for the first time today during that stupid snowball fight. After that horrible party. Do you remember?”
“I remember. I fell on my ass that night and it hurt like hell.”
“And I gave you my hand to help you up. And while everyone else was throwing snowballs we just stared at each other.”
“That’s right,” I said as I remembered the first time Anjali had taken my hand, her lines of fate meeting mine, neither of us realizing that our lives were mixing, mingling, and becoming one for much longer than that night, with more complication than a simple touching of skin.
“Well that’s why I wore a blue sari, Jess. Because you love women in saris. And you love blue.”
I had looked into her eyes and they were so sincere I was ashamed.
“Anjali, if I was rude to you about the sari, I’m sorry. You look beautiful.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You can make it up to me when we get home.”
I didn’t make anything up to her that night. When we got home, I couldn’t stop vomiting and I had a fever. I didn’t know if I had food poisoning or if I was just sick.
Anjali stayed in a chair by the bed all night with cold compresses and ginger tea. I woke and slept in spurts until dawn broke. And Anjali was there, seated next to me the entire night. Anjali…
I turned my thoughts to jasmine and thumb rings. I wondered if she had tattoos. I would sit for hours, I decided. I would…I stopped. What the hell was I doing? I had agreed to Anjali’s rules myself. Then how could I entertain anyone else? But I just wanted to talk to her. I wasn’t going to fly away with her. I closed my eyes to think harder and suddenly there it was, unmistakably…jasmine. It couldn’t hurt just to see her.
I walked halfway around the fountain and there she was, incense and photos, squatting on the ground. I became nervous. What would she think? Would she think I was stalking her? Would she remember me? Was I just someone to whom she had sold a photograph? But then she had written her number on the back for me. But she hadn’t written her name. What about Anjali? What about what I had promised her constantly for four years?
I walked to her slowly, admiring her more with every step that I took.
She looked up before I stopped walking. Her eyes searched me.
“Hey,” I said.
She nodded but did not smile or say anything. I felt like a fool.
“I saw you yesterday so I was here today and I thought maybe I would say ‘hello.’”
She kept staring at me and I felt embarrassment heating the back of my neck.
“I’m sorry to bother you, I just thought I would say ‘hello.’ I wanted the photo of the rickshaw that you showed me yesterday and I was wondering if you still had it.”
She laughed so hard that she placed her hand on the ground to steady herself.
“You don’t want a photo. You want my ass,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t completely true yet it wasn’t completely untrue.
“I didn’t come here to ask for your ass. I came here to ask if maybe you would like to go for a drink sometime.”
She rose to her feet and walked to me. She ran her tongue over her lips and smiled as she spoke.
“You want my ass. That’s why you came back. You haven’t stopped thinking about me. And I bet you a skinny dip in a fountain that you fucked someone last night because you were so restless at the thought of getting into my pants.”
Was that why I had slept with Anjali? No, it wasn’t. But I couldn’t deny that I had thought of her throughout the night, amid Anjali’s caresses, when I came and long thereafter. Her audacity was striking but it didn’t offend me. I just stared at her, like recognizing her from a time where I had had the luxury of forgetting her. But I knew no such time existed. I also knew that I could walk away and spare myself the unraveling of a story or I could stay and live out what was destined to be. I chose destiny.
“If you want me, say you want me, princess.”
“Yes, I wanted to see you,” I said.
“And you want to get in my pants.”
“And I find you attractive. But it’s not just looking at you.”
She came closer and whispered her words to me.
“I know, princess. I wasn’t the best looking baby in Puerto Rico and I’m certainly not the best looking woman in Manhattan. But you know what? You want me and that’s all you can think about. I bet the girl you got to go down on you last night is a thousand times more ‘attractive’…was that your word for me? Well, she was gorgeous and after you came, you released her from your mind. But me you kept thinking about through the night. But you know what? I thought of you all night too. Just like that. Even as I lay next to a girl who was so eager to please me, I came twice.”
“Are you in a relationship?” I asked.
“As much as you are.”
“I’m not. I’m in a situation.”
“Aren’t we all damned?” she said.
I tried to look at her eyes but she walked away and started fumbling with the zippers on her backpack.
“So, what do you want to do tonight?” she asked.
“Whatever you want,” I said. “I had thought we’d just go for a drink.”
“You won’t get laid tonight so don’t let that influence what you say to me. Just tell me what you want to do.”
I looked at her face in the shadows that were forming around her like ghosts. Her eyes were bittersweet chocolate and, in sunlight, they mellowed to a lighter brown, almost to the honey that they were the day I met her, a day of ample sun and then fading light. Her skin glowed with a tan I was sure she had carried her entire life. I looked at the length of her hair that fell straight and black and beautiful to the middle of her back. She was right. Anjali was much more attractive. But my squatting stranger was the woman I had thought of as I had come the night before.
I remembered that Anjali had said we might do dinner. But she hadn’t called. I knew that she wouldn’t because despite her love, despite her faithfulness, she was with Ish and when Anjali was with Ish, time slipped through the cracks of her fingers like soft sand. The thought of it burned me. “You do your thing, I’ll do my thing…” hadn’t I said that?
“It’s not all about getting in your pants,” I said. “I like you.”
“And how do you know me again?”
“I don’t but I feel like I do. And like I should.”
“It’s easier,” she said, “sometimes just to keep to the basics.”
“I want to know your name,” I finally said.
“Vanessa,” she said softly, “And you, princess?”
“Jess,” I said.
“Let me get my things and then we’ll go.”
“Where are we going?”
She shrugged off my question as if to dismiss it. I watched her collect her photos and put them into her backpack. She emptied the flowerpot of its ashes and placed that in her bag as well. She gently dipped the orange tips of the incense into the fountain. When there was no glow to them, she clutched them in her hand and slung her backpack over her shoulder.
“Let’s go,” she said.
I walked beside her not knowing where we were going. The evening was slow in coming and the sun shone brightest where it was about to sink into grass and trees. I thought of the evening and although my thoughts wanted to linger on impending darkness, I could think only of Vanessa, this girl beside me who, hours ago, had been my squatting stranger. I walked behind her slightly just so I could appreciate the way her hips swayed ever so gently and appreciate her soft curves.
After we climbed the stairs and were walking along a ridge of grass, she tossed the half burnt incense sticks gently under a tree. Then she took my hand without explanation, without reason, and something inside me tumbled. I allowed myself to feel the skin on her palm, rough yet somehow a promise of gentleness. It reminded me for an instant of my mother’s hands, rough with wear, gentle with affection. I looked at Vanessa and waited for her to say something. But she did not. She only held my hand a little tighter.
I closed my eyes for a few seconds. I held my breath and the warmth of her hand reached inside me and warmed my heart. A heart, I knew, that had become comfortable residing in cold places. I allowed my senses to tell me of the evening. I smelled the remnants of cut grass and somewhere the faint memory of cigarette smoke. It reminded me of the Tolly Club in Kolkata where I had played hide and seek in the lawn while my father had sat with mustachioed men, smoking 555’s and Dunhills. I heard birds chirping at each other and I imagined I was home, sipping a Thums Up now and then, the taste more pungent than my Diet Cokes. I would return someday, perhaps with Vanessa at my side. And then there was Anjali…. I opened my eyes again. I wondered what Anjali was doing at that precise moment. Was she out at a fancy bar with Ish or was she on the couch with her martini? Was Ish in our apartment, sitting on the couch with her? I could have abandoned the whole idea of Vanessa and returned home to sip martinis. But I didn’t.
“Jess, you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
I realized I wasn’t about to go home.
“Vanessa?”
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You haven’t said anything either.”
“Enjoying the moment. Why fill everything with words? Life is enough. Kind of why you closed your eyes just then.”
“I was just…”
She stopped walking and faced me. She placed her hands on my face. She looked at me and I started to wonder what she saw.
“If you want to close your eyes, you can. I got you. While I am with you, I got you. You can enjoy the world with me. No need to fill perfectly full spaces with words.”
She kissed me so softly, I wondered if her lips had ever touched my cheek. I wanted to keep looking at her. I wanted to look inside her. But she turned again and took my hand. We kept walking. And I realized for all her talk of basics, she had a soul too. And perhaps she had her own fears about the chemistry of it all.
We walked a long time in silence. As we passed the swarms of people that always seem to be walking to nowhere in New York City, I started wondering about their destinations. I wondered about the circles they would walk this night. I thought about the first date hellos and tasteless cosmos. And I felt like I was swimming in a great transparent lake of air above all these people who would not close their eyes unless they were asleep to the world and to themselves.
“You ever wonder where all these people are going?” I asked.
“Always,” she said, “Sometimes I’ll follow someone into a bar just to see what they do there. Whom they meet. What they drink.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
She stopped walking and swung my hand back and forth. Her eyes met mine.
“Why not?” she asked, “I don’t interrupt their evening. I don’t talk to them. I just take a seat and watch them. And I get a feel for how they live, what they know. It’s interesting.”
“What are you, a stalker?”
She laughed.
“No, I’m a writer.”
I didn’t know how to feel about Vanessa being a writer. Every coffee shop I knew had many writers most of whom used “writer” to mean jobless and slightly depressed. I was somewhat turned off by this image and I felt as if my magical evening of full worlds and empty words was coming to a quick end. I asked the question I thought needed asking.
“Have you ever published anything?”
“I don’t talk about my writing.”
I was relieved. I didn’t want to hear about her writing either. I didn’t want to hear about anyone’s writing. We started walking again towards our unknown destination.
“I’m employed as a schoolteacher,” she finally said.
“So you’re a teacher?”
“No, I work as a teacher. I define myself as a writer.”
It was a lot of bullshit for someone who spoke of empty words. I wanted to change to the subject to whatever it was that would allow me to float in my great transparent lake again.
“So what do you do?” she asked.
“I am employed as an optical sales professional.”
“Smart ass,” she said.
“That I am. But mostly, I am studying for MCATs this summer. I want to take them over and hopefully go to med school.”
“Oh,” she said.
This time the silence was awkward. I wondered if she was judging me. Was this connoisseur of empty words criticizing my decision to go to med school? I thought perhaps she could see into me. Did she know that I did not want to study? Did she know I did not want to go to med school? Did she know I envied her because, despite my agitation with coffee shop writers, I had failed as a coffee shop writer and I wished that I had not? I wished that
I were not scrambling for a life I did not want because I had failed at the one I had desired.
“Jess?”
“Yeah?”
“Listen, you do your thing and I’ll do my thing and we’ll leave it at that. Personally, with your body and those eyes, I don’t care if you live in a fucking cardboard box in Union Square. I’d still do you.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“Hey, four walls are four walls. Cement, wood, cardboard, whatever you got to give us some privacy, babe.”
I laughed and was relieved. Vanessa was back to herself, back to the woman that had intrigued me with photos and incense and raw beauty. I forced myself to abandon my thoughts. The evening started to feel comfortable again. I was walking without a destination with a stranger whom I somehow adored. It seemed as if everything was in place and full of a promise I had never even tasted let alone believed was possible.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t a believer; it was just that I had never known exactly what to believe in. I never doubted that anything was possible or impossible. Yet that faith that people seemed to have in the Universe was lost to me. Anjali had immense faith in the Universe and its doings. But then she had immense faith in me as well and here I was. But wasn’t she with Ish? Hadn’t she neglected to call me? Despite it all, I knew I was wrong, reaching and grasping for explanations that were so frail that I couldn’t hold them within me without them breaking. Anjali…
“I don’t want to do you,” I blurted out. “I have someone waiting for me at home. And I love her. But I’m here because I feel safe with you. I can’t wait to see you. I somehow like being with you.”
Vanessa stopped walking. I felt like an idiot and my face felt hot. She placed a hand in my hair and moved it slowly. She smiled at me.
“You don’t even know me,” she said. “You know nothing about me.”
“But…it’s true.”
I wanted her to tell me the same. She did not. She kissed my forehead and my temple and my cheek.