by Farah Heron
The Sparrow was Amira and Reena’s favorite dive bar. They had spent countless hours drowning away their fucks over bourbon, beer, or gin, depending on the number of fucks they had to kill on a given day. Today felt like a gin night.
“I know, sweetie. I wish I could come, but I have a really early meeting tomorrow. Go without me. Don’t forget to wallow the next few days. Eat crap and drink whatever. Pick yourself up later.”
Reena nodded to herself. “Yeah. I could go alone.”
After hanging up with Amira, Reena looked out the window. It was pretty warm for early September, and the leaves were still vibrant and green. It didn’t seem right for it to look so cheery outside. But when had her life ever felt right? She peeled herself off the couch, slipped on a pair of yoga pants and flip-flops, and headed to her car.
At the Indian grocery store, she bought a half-dozen samosas, a bag of gram flour, and some starchy potatoes. Samosas were great, but when she was upset Reena craved potato bhajias the way others craved French fries. She suspected that later tonight, once this news really sunk in, she’d feel even worse than she did right now, and right now was pretty low. She’d need the bhajias. She dropped her groceries and her car home before walking to the Sparrow, since she was planning to take Amira’s advice and drink. Maybe heavily.
* * *
Reena believed strongly that everyone deserved a dive bar, and the Sparrow managed the unlikely balance between boneless comfort and indifferent hospitality that suited her perfectly. With walls covered in signs, stickers, graffiti, and knickknacks customers brought from their travels, the Sparrow made it easy for Reena to blend into the cluttered decor.
She sat alone at the bar, her forehead in one hand, her second gin gimlet in the other, and contemplated the cosmic purpose behind the cruel pranks the universe had been pulling on her since birth. Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned.
“Okay, so I guess you probably don’t hate me because you appear to be stalking me,” Nadim said.
Reena tilted her head in confusion. What the hell was he doing in her bar? She narrowed her eyes.
“If looks could kill,” he said, sitting heavily on the stool next to her. “You alone?” After she nodded, he put his elbows on the bar, making himself comfortable. He motioned to Steve, the longtime bartender, who immediately started pulling a draft beer, seeming to know what Nadim wanted. “Well, whether you hate me or not, I’m joining you. I need to keep a close eye to see if you’re glaring or scowling at me.”
She was doing neither, but she could bet her expression wasn’t all that welcoming. She was in no mood for forced niceties today.
His mood didn’t seem too hot, either. His suit was rumpled, and his tie was not just loosened but hanging off his neck undone. Doubtful his day had been as bad as hers, but Nadim looked and sounded as miserable as she felt.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I should ask you that. You following me? I told you I go to the pub after work.”
“But this is my bar.”
He glanced around at the busy decor. “There is a lot on the walls here, but I don’t see the words ‘this pub belongs to Reena Manji’ anywhere.” He turned back to her. “I’ve been coming here regularly for weeks and have never seen you here.”
“I know,” she agreed, dejected. “Amira left.”
“Who is Ami…never mind.” He took a long sip of his beer, almost emptying the glass before turning back to her. “Tough day at work?”
Reena bit her lip. She no longer had a work, but she couldn’t tell this man that. She didn’t trust him not to tell Dad. Especially since every third thing out of his mouth seemed to be does your father know?
Deflect and distract. “You look like you’ve had a rough day.”
“The utter worst.” He took another long sip of beer, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “But I can’t talk about it. Especially to you.”
Well. That would almost be offensive if she hadn’t just thought the same thing about him.
Reena drained her glass. How serendipitous. A drinking buddy who didn’t want to talk about what was bothering him. She didn’t care if he had a secret. She had enough secrets to fill all the beer kegs in the Sparrow.
She smiled. “Shall we drown our private sorrows together then?”
He nodded. “Steve?” Nadim called out. “Bring my neighbor here another…” He lifted her empty glass and sniffed it, then looked at her appreciatively. “Gin? Nice. Make that two. On my tab.”
“Tanqueray gimlet on the rocks,” she added, resting her head back down on the bar.
Once Steve placed the two goblets in front of them, Nadim grabbed her arm and pulled. “C’mon.”
She picked up her drink and let him drag her toward the back. When they reached a table, his eyes swept over her body.
“Interesting outfit. You’re all investment banker upstairs and yoga mom downstairs.” His gaze trailed lower as his eyebrow raised. “Are you mocking me?” he asked.
“What?”
“Why no socks? It’s September.”
“It’s warm. I hate socks.” She slid into the seat.
“You know, Sunshine, you just might be my soul mate.”
Reena squeezed her cold drink as a lump formed in her throat. “I’m not marrying you.”
“Yeah. So, you said.” He lifted his glass. “To finding this fine antidote to misery.” He hummed with appreciation after sipping the drink. “I always forget how much I love gin. I rarely drink it when out, but I always had a bottle of Beefeater in my flat in London.” He took another sip. “This tastes like another.”
The room had spun slightly after her first two drinks, and with a third already in hand, a fourth sounded ill-advised to Reena. But maybe this was all part of his plan. Maybe he hoped the gimlets would render her more pliable for…what, exactly? Reena hiccupped and waved a finger at him. “Don’t think you can pour drinks into me to make me more acquiescent. I’m still not going to marry you, no matter what my parents want.”
His eyes crinkled in mirth. “You can say acquiescent while drinking? You, my dear, are a woman of many talents. And anyway, after today, don’t be so sure what your parents want anymore.”
Could there be trouble in this business relationship between their respective families? She leaned a little closer to Nadim, ready to dig out the dirt.
But…wait. Ugh. She slumped in her seat. If she wasn’t willing to come clean about her job, she couldn’t expect him to tell his secrets.
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about our problems. Or about our parents.”
He nodded, still frowning. “I’m all for that.” He sipped his cocktail. “And I’m all for this drink.”
Reena swirled hers around in her hand, watching the lime wedge crash against the ice cubes. “Can I ask you something? No obligation to answer me.”
“Um…”
Reena patted his hand reassuringly. Ooh, that skin was soft. She patted him again. Hand cream maybe? He laughed as he inched his hand away.
Right. Questions. Gin on the brain had distracted her from the topic at hand. And the topic at hand was not Nadim’s hands.
“Okay,” she said, straightening. “Why is your British accent so strong? My father said you were from Dar es Salaam, but you said you had a flat in London?”
A small smile appeared. “Yes. I am technically from Dar es Salaam. I attended a British private school there and transferred to a boarding school in England at age twelve. I went to the London School of Economics for both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Afterward, I moved back to Africa but ended up in London again a few years ago. And now”—he grinned widely—“I’m here.”
“So, do you consider yourself English or Tanzanian?”
“Tanzanian, one hundred percent.” He lifted his sleeve to show her the tattoo of the African tree on his forearm, smiling fondly at it. “I’ve moved a lot, but my soul knows when I’m home.” He chuckled as he pushed his sleeve back down
. “I tend to pick up dialects and accents easily wherever I am, though. Give me a month in Canada and I will match your eh’s and aboots.”
“I don’t aboot!”
“Yes, Reena, you do. What about you. Were you born here?”
“Yup. Toronto girl, through and through. Both Mum and Dad are from Tanzania, though. And going further back, my great-grandparents are all from India. I’ve been to Tanzania a few times. Pretty country.”
“I love it.” He looked wistfully sad at that thought. “I’d like to move back one day. I’ve lived in a lot of places, but it’s hard to really feel at home, you know? Tanzania did that for me. I am surprised at how much I like Toronto, though.”
“Remind me, one day I’ll take you out to see all the underrated sights.”
Reena bit her lip. She shouldn’t have said that. She should be distancing herself from him, not offering to be his Toronto tour guide. “Why do you want to go back to Africa?”
“I don’t know. I feel the most…me, there. I told you I pick up dialects easy, right? I think I’m a little too adaptable. I acclimate to environments so easily that I forget who I am, sometimes. I think I’ve only felt like me, really me, at home in Tanzania.” He looked down. “I’m not making sense. Ignore me.” He sipped his drink.
Reena smiled sadly. She understood exactly what he meant. She was also the adaptable one. The amiable one. The one who made friends easily whenever she changed jobs. Adapted her interests to whoever she was dating. Cosplay, hockey, barbecue, tabletop gaming. She even played in an axe-throwing league once with a boyfriend. She never faked interest—she honestly enjoyed those things. But she understood what Nadim meant when he said he didn’t feel like himself. She only felt like herself when baking bread.
She felt for him. But at the same time, his revelation raised new questions. Like: Why did he move here if he wanted to be in Africa? And more importantly, did her parents know that this potential husband wanted to return to Africa at some point? Was this their way of shipping Reena off the continent?
She took a gulp of her gin. Can’t ask those questions. She closed her eyes, feeling a sharp prickle behind them.
She. Fucking. Lost. Her job today. She could move to Africa, and no one would care.
A squeeze of her hand jolted her eyes open. “Hey,” Nadim said, concerned. “You okay?”
“Yeah…just really crappy day. Let’s talk about something else.” She gently removed her hand from under his.
“Okay.” He grinned. “Can I ask questions then? Don’t feel you have to answer them.”
“Deal.”
“Why do you make so much bread?”
She shrugged. “I love bread. Always have. There is nothing like the feeling of creating something so complex with my own hands. Sourdough bread is pretty much three ingredients—flour, water, and salt. But when you play with the other variables: hydration, fermentation, wild yeasts, temperature, or flour types, you can create something that tastes nothing like—and is nutritiously nothing like—the original ingredients. Bread is truly magic.”
“I fully support and enable your habits, so long as you share.”
She smiled.
His hand waved in the direction of her head. “Another question: How long does it take you to do that with your hair?”
“Do what?”
“Make it so perfectly curly.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t do anything. Just a bit of hair product. It grows out of my head this way.”
“Bullshit. My ex used to curl her hair with this weird hot cone-shaped thing.”
Reena laughed. “I assure you, my curls are natural. I don’t need a curling iron.”
“But yours are like, perfect. They’re like little springs. Like bungee cords.”
Well, that was a new one. “Bungee cords?”
“Yeah. Look.” He picked up the bottom of a ringlet near her face and held it on the top of her head. “You could bungee jump with your hair.” Still holding the end of the curl, he mimicked bungee-jumping by launching the hair up and then down, pulling it taut before letting go and watching the curl spring back in place.
Reena frowned. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re very strange?”
“It’s been mentioned, yes.” He sipped his drink.
“You asked two questions. My turn. Why are you so buff?”
He laughed, head falling down to his arm on the table. Clearly, he was as drunk as she was. Also, he had thick hair. It looked soft. As did the skin on the back of his neck. She was resisting the urge to touch when he finally raised his head and leered openly before answering, flexing his biceps to give her a show. “Glad you approve. I try to lift every day at lunch and on most mornings. I love the rush of weight lifting.”
“Oh, god, you’re one of those ‘do you even lift, bruh?’ guys, aren’t you?”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
She waved her hand in the direction of his body. “I mean, like, what’s even the point? You work out just to look good? You do anything else physical with that body?”
She squeezed her lips shut. Must stop drinking gin. Must stop saying things he can construe as an intentional innuendo. “That’s not what I meant,” she said before he could even consider a side-eyed smirk or eyebrow waggle.
He laughed again. “You are fantastic at cheering me up. And, as a matter of fact, yes. I bike, I run, and I played football in London. Need to find a team here.”
“Ah, so a jock, then. I assume you mean soccer.”
He waved a finger at her. “Just because I live in North America now doesn’t mean I have to bastardize the name of the world’s most popular sport like you people do.”
Wrong. She tried to explain to him that soccer-football was the original name of the sport, and in North America they shortened to it to soccer, while the rest of the world shortened it to football, thus forever confusing it with rugby-football. But the crystal-clear thoughts in her head weren’t translating to coherent statements from her mouth.
She blew out a puff of air before draining her glass.
“You really are a lightweight, aren’t you? How many of those did you drink before I showed up?” he asked.
“Two. But I missed dinner. I think,” she slurred, frowning. Her tolerance should be better than this. “Shit…sinus pills.”
He shook his head, disappointed, before turning back to the bar and calling out, “Steve? You have any more of your lentil soup? Could we get a couple of bowls? And some of your mixed pickles?”
“This isn’t 1952, bud. I can order my own meal,” Reena snapped.
“Sorry. Hey, Steve? Only one soup. Lightweight’s going to have…” He looked at her.
Reena sighed. “Lentil soup. Extra bread.”
Nadim laughed so hard he nearly fell off his seat. Who was he calling a lightweight?
Reena had always loved the lentil soup at the Sparrow. Even better, the country bread from the bakery up the street they served it with, complete with cultured butter. But the soup did nothing for her lost sobriety. The room still spun when she finished eating. Nadim paid and led her out of the bar.
“C’mon, sunshine, fresh air will do you good. I’ll walk you home.”
“No need.” She stumbled, wondering if the sidewalk was always so far from her head.
“Relax, Reena. I’m going there anyway. This isn’t unwarranted patriarchal chivalry.”
His hand on her elbow, he guided her along the busy main road. The dark sky looked clear, spotted with more stars than she expected to see so early in the evening. But maybe it wasn’t early—how long had they been in there, anyway?
As they got to the building, she felt herself waver a bit on the stairs up to the front door. “Put your arms around me, sunshine,” Nadim said.
She looped her arms around him and rested her face in his neck as he unlocked the door. He felt warm and solid, grounding her as the world spun. Mm…he smelled good.
“Have you eaten anything other than
the soup today?” he asked once the door was opened and they were entering the building.
“A samosa. Wait, no. I forgot to eat the samosas.”
“Do you have any homemade bread right now?”
She blinked. “You don’t know me that well, do you?”
He laughed, pulling her toward her door instead of his. “C’mon, I’ll make you some toast.”
She let him into her apartment. A part of her realized just how terrible an idea it was to bring a man she was seriously attracted to into her place at this hour, but considering the effects of both cold medication and gin were still coursing through her veins, she wasn’t able to make the leap from realizing the danger to doing anything about it.
He walked in, looking around with a huge grin. “Ah, nice to see what my place could look like if I shopped somewhere other than…well, nowhere.”
“My parents’ basement.”
“Yeah, but we’re not supposed to mention them, right? Cozy in here.”
Reena looked around, frowning. Her apartment was fine—a bit of a mess right now, and her furniture may look comfortable, but it wasn’t anything but cheap box-store stuff. She fell onto her couch, resting her head on the soft cushion.
Okay, so maybe he had a point. This was cozy. She closed her eyes.
“So, you don’t want toast?” Nadim asked.
She sat back up. “I do. Just…” She rubbed her face. “Give me a second, and I’ll show you where to find the bread and the bread knife.”
“I can get it,” he said.
No, he couldn’t. Reena might be intoxicated, and Nadim may be a bit of a foodie himself, but there was no way she was going to let someone she barely knew be unaccompanied in her kitchen.
He was suddenly sitting next to her on the couch. “You really feeling that drunk?”
“No.” She sighed. “I think I’m sobering. This is more of an emotional crash than an alcohol crash. It’s been a hell of a day.”
He didn’t say anything, so she closed her eyes again. Maybe she should just go to bed. Maybe asleep, she wouldn’t feel so worthless.