USA Noir Noir

by Johnny Temple

  A chill has hung between us ever since. “Two strong personalities,” Kareena has maintained over the years, but there’s more to it. I don’t know if Adi has a heart, and if he does, whether Kareena is in it. His smirk says he knows I think he’s not good enough for her, but that he could care less. And, to be honest, they have interests in common. Both have an abiding love for Indian ghazal songs; both excel in table tennis when they can manage the time; both detest green bell pepper in any form. They make what one might call a perfect married couple—young, handsome, successful, socially adept, and with cosmopolitan panache. They look happy together, or, rather, he does. His attention to her is total, as though she’s an objet d’art that has cost him no small sum. He professes to be “furiously, stormily, achingly” in love with her. Every millisecond, I dream of you and you only, he gushed in a birthday card I once saw pinned on a memo board in their kitchen.

  Do the purplish contusions I saw on Kareena’s arm attest to Adi’s undying affection? I grit my teeth now as I did then.

  Adi doesn’t answer my phone call. I think about ringing another friend, but a peek at the red-eyed digits of the mantle clock stops my hand. Better to postpone the call and shower instead. Better to gauge what actually happened before I get everybody upset.

  My nerves are so scrambled that the shower is no more than a surface balm. I towel myself but don’t waste time blow-drying my shoulder-length hair.

  In the mirror, my bushy eyebrows stand out against my olive skin. My nose is tiny, like an afterthought. Although I’m fit, healthy, and rosy-cheeked and my hair is long and lustrous, I’m not beautiful by either Indian or American standards. Friends say I have kind eyes. It has never occurred to me to hide the cut mark under my left eye caused by a childhood brush with a low-hanging tree branch. I don’t like to fuss with makeup.

  Dressed in a blue terry knit jacket, matching pants, and sneakers, I drift into the kitchen. Breakfast consists of a tall cool glass of water from the filter tap. I slip into my greenhouse and inhale its forest fragrance. The sun sparkles through the barn-style roof and the glass-paneled walls. I hope the fear signals inside me are wrong.

  The plants are screaming for moisture. I pick up a sprayer and mist the trays, dispensing life-giving moisture to the germinating seeds and fragile sprouts poking up through the soil. A honeybee hums over a seed flat.

  All around me, the life force is triumphant: surely that’ll happen with Kareena too. Whatever the cause, her disappearance will be temporary, explainable, and reversible.

  * * *

  An hour later I call Veen. “According to Adi, Kareena was last seen with a stranger,” she says. “They were at Toute La Soirée around eleven a.m. on Friday. A waitress who’d seen them together reported so to the police. I find it odd that Adi sounded a little jealous but not terribly worried over the news about this strange man.”

  I’ve been to that café many times. Kareena, who had no special fidelity to any one place, somehow took a fancy to rendezvousing there with me. Could that man have blindfolded Kareena, put a hand over her mouth, and dragged her into a car?

  No, on second thought, that’s impossible. A spirited person like her couldn’t be held captive. Could she have run away with that man because of Adi’s abuse? That’s more likely. I ask Veen what the man looks like.

  “Dark, average height, handsome, and well-dressed. He carried a jute bag on his shoulder.”

  “Oh, a jhola.” In India some years back, jholas were the fashion among male intellectuals. My scrawny next-door neighbor, who considered himself a man of letters but was actually a film buff, toted books in his jhola. He could often be seen running for the bus with the hefty bag dangling from one shoulder and bumping against his hip. Tagore novels? Chekov’s story collection? Shelley’s poems? The only thing I ever saw him fishing out of the bag was a white box of colorful pastries when he thought no one was looking.

  “But eleven is too early for lunch,” I say, “and Kareena never takes a mid-morning break. Why would she be there at such an hour?”

  “Don’t know. And what do you make of this? I was passing by Umberto’s last night and spotted Adi with a blonde. They were drinking wine and talking.”

  “He seems to be taking this awfully easy.” I remind Veen that Adi has the typical Asian man’s fixation on blond hair. According to Kareena, Adi’s assistant is a neatly put-together blonde stationed at a cubicle outside his office. Veen and I discuss if Adi might be having an affair, but don’t come to any conclusion.

  As I hang up, my glance falls on my cell phone, the mute little accessory on the coffee table in front of the couch. Kareena and I get together most Fridays after work, and she often calls me at the last minute. No cause for concern, I assured myself when I left a message on Kareena’s voice mail a few days ago and didn’t hear back.

  Silently, I replay my last face-to-face with Kareena at Toute La Soirée. On that afternoon two weeks ago, I was waiting for her at a corner table, perusing the Seattle Globe and reveling in the aromas of lime, ginger, and mint. It filled me with fury to read a half-page story about a woman in India blamed for her village’s crop failures and hunted down as a witch. I would have to share this story with Kareena.

  Sensing a rustle in the atmosphere, I looked up. Standing just inside the door, Kareena peered out over the crowd, spotted me, and flashed a smile. She looked casually chic in a maroon pantsuit (maple foliage shade in my vocabulary, Bordeaux in hers) that we’d shopped for together at Nordstrom. Arms swaying long and loose, she weaved her way among the tables. Her left wrist sported a pearl-studded bracelet-cum-watch.

  As she drew closer, a woman in chartreuse seated across the aisle from me called out to her. Kareena paused and they exchanged pleasantries. The woman glanced in my direction and asked, “Is that your sister?”

  Kareena winked at me. We’d been subjected to the same question countless times, uttered in a similar tone of expectation. Did we really look alike, or had we picked up each other’s mannerisms from spending so much time together? At 5'1", I am shorter than her by three inches, and thinner. Our styles of dressing fall at opposite ends of the fashion spectrum. I glanced down at my powder-blue workaday jumper, a practical watch with a black resin band, and walking flats. My attire didn’t follow current fashion dictates, but it was low-key and comfy, just right for an outdoors person. Fortunately, Seattle accommodated both our styles.

  “Kemon acho?” Kareena greeted me with a Bengali pleasantry I’d taught her. “Sorry I’m late. First, I had a gynecologist appointment, then a difficult DV case to wrap up.”

  I pushed the newspaper to the far side of the table. DV—domestic violence—is an abbreviation that sounds to me more like a fearsome disease, less like a social thorn. Kareena likes to help women who are in abusive relationships and, as yet, unaware of their legal rights. She was named the top DV counselor in her office and has received recognition for her efforts.

  “I really think you’re overworking.” I touched her hand. “Do you really need the money? Do you need to shop so much?”

  She ran her fingers over her bracelet. “You don’t resent my spending, do you?”

  I shook my head, then stopped to ruminate. Well, in truth, there have been times. She likes to shop at Nordstrom, Restoration Hardware, and Williams-Sonoma, places that are beyond my means, but she insists on having my company. I have an eye for quality and she values that.

  I got back to the subject at hand. “Was today’s case one from our community, another hush-hush?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” She mimicked a British accent: “A ‘family matter, a kitchen accident.’” She paused. The waiter was hovering by her shoulder. We placed our orders.

  Not for the first time, I agonized over the threats Kareena faces due to the nature of her job. Signs have been plentiful. She is frequently called a man-hater and, at least once in the last month, has been followed home from work. The spouse of one client even went so far as to publicly question her sexual orient
ation.

  “You’re the only one I trust enough to talk about this case,” Kareena continued. “She’s an H-4 visa holder, so scared that she couldn’t even string together a few coherent sentences. I spoke a little Punjabi with her, which loosened her up. Still, it took awhile to draw out her story. Her husband beats her regularly.”

  I appraised Kareena’s face. How she could absorb the despair of so many traumatized souls? Listen to songs that don’t finish playing? Lately, her lipstick color had gone from her standard safe pink to a risky red. Brown circles under her eyes spoke of fatigue or, perhaps, stress, and I suspected the brighter lip color was intended to redirect a viewer’s attention.

  “Did you see bruises on her?” I asked and watched her carefully.

  It was still so vivid in my mind, Kareena’s last cocktail party a few weeks before and the freshly swollen blue-black marks on her upper arm. In an unguarded moment, her paisley Kashmiri shawl had slid off her shoulders. Through the billowy sheer sleeves of her tan silk top, I glimpsed dark blue, almost black finger marks on an otherwise smooth arm. The swelling extended over a large area, causing me to nearly shriek. Adi must have attacked her. Upon realizing that I’d noticed, she glanced down and repositioned the shawl. Just then, a male friend approached, asked her to dance, took her arm, and they floated away.

  “Yes, I did see bruises on her forehead,” Kareena now replied. “She’d be in worse trouble if her husband suspected she was out looking for help.”

  “The law is on her side, isn’t it?” I allowed a pause. “You don’t have problems at home, by any chance, do you?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Well, I happened to notice bruises on your arm at your last party. Who was it?”

  I noticed the mauve of shame spreading on her face. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  “Sorry to barge into your private matters, but if you ever feel like talking—”

  Our orders came. Mine was a ginger iced tea and hers an elixir of coconut juice and almond milk. She raised her chin and lifted her glass to clink with mine, her way of accepting my apology.

  I took a sip from my beverage; she drained hers with such hurried gulps that I doubted she fully appreciated the flavors. Typical Kareena; appearances must be maintained. Both of us looked out through the window and took in the sky-colored Ship Canal where a fishing vessel was working its way to the dry docks that lined the north shore of Lake Union. Sooner or later, I thought, I’d have to find out the truth about those bruises.

  When the silver waves died down in the canal, Kareena spoke again: “But enough of this depressing stuff! How did things go for you today?”

  I filled her in on the most interesting part of my day: consulting with a paraplegic homeowner. “Believe it or not,” I said, “the guy wants to do all the weeding and watering himself. It’ll be a challenge, but I’ll design a garden to suit his requirements.”

  “You live such a sane life and you have such a healthy glow on your face. Just listening to you, I seem to siphon off some of it. ” She gave me a smile. “Come on, Mitra. Let me buy you another drink.”

  She signaled the waiter. The room was emptier now, the sounds hushed, and a genial breeze blew through a half-open window. We ordered a second round.

  “Before the alarm went off this morning,” she said after a while, “I got a call from my nephew in New Delhi. He’s seven.”

  “Does he want you to visit him?”

  She nodded and mashed her napkin into a ball. I guessed she was undergoing one of those periodic episodes of homesickness for India, the country we’d both left behind. I, too, experience the same longing to visit people missing from my life. Whereas she can afford to go back every year, I can’t.

  I digressed from this aching topic to a lighter one by pointing out a cartoon clip peeking out from under the glass cover of our table. A tiny boy, craning his neck up, is saying to his glowering father, Do I dare ask you what day of the week it is before you’ve had your double tall skinny?

  That got a spontaneous laugh from Kareena which, in turn, raised my spirits. I didn’t have a chance to discuss the newspaper story with her. Well, the next time.

  * * *

  I go back to my living room. The airy tranquility has been transformed into a murky emptiness, as though a huge piece of familiar furniture has been cleared out but not replaced. I have an urge to confide in someone, but who could that be? The only person I can think of is the one who’s gone away.

  I wander into the kitchen, open and close the cupboard, rearrange items in the refrigerator, and fill the tea kettle with water. With a cup of Assam tea and a slice of multigrain toast, I sit at the round table. Bananas protrude from a sunny ceramic bowl within arm’s reach. I fiddle with my iPod.

  The tea tempers to lukewarm, the toast becomes dense, and the bananas remain untouched. It’s difficult for me to stomach much food in the morning, and this news has squelched whatever hunger I might otherwise have. I stare at the Trees Are Not Trivial poster on the sea-blue wall. Even the cushioned chair doesn’t feel cozy. I itch all over.

  Could someone have murdered her?

  I peer out through the western window. The Olympic Mountains appear stable, blue, and timeless. Somehow I doubt that Kareena could be the victim of a lethal crime.

  How can I help find her? My career focus in art and landscape design—the study of the physiology of new growth, awareness of color and light, and harmony of arrangements—hasn’t prepared me to deal with a situation like this.

  I walk over to my side yard. Bluebells are pushing up from the winter-hardened ground. I notice a slug, pick it up with a leaf, and deposit it on a safe spot. Once again, spring is in the balmy air. I look up to the sky, out of a gardener’s propensity to check the weather. It helps me see beyond the immediate.

  Back to the living room, I sit at my desk, grab a notepad, and begin listing friends and acquaintances who I can call upon. The page fills speedily. The Indian population in the Puget Sound area, described recently by the Seattle Globe in a feature story as a “model” community, is some twenty-five thousand strong. The community’s academic and professional accomplishments are “as lofty as Mount Rainier,” the same article proclaimed. I’m troubled by such laudatory phrases, aware that we have our fair share of warts and blemishes. According to Kareena, the rate of domestic violence among our dignified doctors, elite engineers, and high-powered fund-raisers equals, perhaps even exceeds, the national average.

  I consult my watch. It is ten o’clock, an hour when everyone’s up and about, when the disappointments of the day haven’t dulled one’s spirits. This’ll be a good time to ring Adi and draw him out. He loves to talk about himself in his Oxford-accented, popcorn-popping speech, which will give me a chance to tease information out of him, however distasteful the process might be, however potentially dangerous. Kareena is my best friend. When we’re together, I’m fully present and my voice is at its freest. Day turns into twilight as we relax over drinks, gabbing, laughing, and trading opinions, oblivious to the time. We don’t parse our friendship. It just is. We scatter the gems of our hours freely, then retrieve them richer in value.

  * * *

  With the phone to my ear, I pace back and forth in front of my living room window. Adi, at the other end, is ignoring the ringing.

  The Emperor comes to focus in my mind—an impeccable suit, sockless feet (part of his fashion statement), and eyes red-rimmed with exasperation at some luckless underling behind on a project or the changeable Seattle sky. Adi takes any potential irritant personally. He snatches a ringing phone from its cradle at the last possible moment. The world can wait. It always does for Adi Guha.

  The stand-up calendar on the mantel nags me about tomorrow’s deadline for a newspaper gardening column. Yet, as I pace the cold floor once again, the phone glued to my ear, it becomes clear that such an assignment is no longer a high priority for me. My missing friend is my main focus now. All else has faded in
to the background.

  Adi comes on the line, gasps when he recognizes my voice. I mention Veen’s call, then get straight to the point. “What time did you get home that night?”

  “Your core competency is gardening, Mitra. I’m not saying it’s menial labor, but neither is it nuclear physics or private investigation. Go back to your garden and leave this situation in more competent hands, like mine.”

  I ignore the insult. “Do the police have any clues? Did they come to the house?”

  “I gave them a photo which they looked at, then began to pepper me with questions. They gave me a song and dance about how many people disappear daily from the city. They assigned a laid-back cop, the only one they could spare. It’s obvious they’re not interested unless it’s a blond heiress and television cameras are everywhere.”

  “What about the stranger she met at Soirée?”

  “I’m not worried about that. She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

  “Have you talked to her gynecologist?”

  Adi mumbles a no.

  “Do you think she needed a break and decided to sneak away for a few days? There have been times, like at your birthday party, when she looked like she could use a break.”

  “Everything is fine between us, Mitra, just fine.”

  Everything’s fine? What a laugh. About a year ago, Kareena and I were spending an evening at Soirée when a hugely pregnant woman waddled past our table. I shifted my chair to let her pass. Kareena put her fork down and gazed at the woman.

  In a teasing tone I asked, “Could that be you?”

  “Adi doesn’t want kids.” She returned to her voluptuous plum-almond tart.

  Now I hear a staccato rumbling in the background, a car cruising. Adi has nerve, telling me everything was fine with Kareena. Kareena’s everything and Adi’s everything are obviously not the same.

  “Did you check her closet?” I now ask.

  “Looks like her clothes are all there.”