“Is it the flight? The flying?” I asked, recalling the footage of the plane crashing into the tower, how the initial shock of it had silenced us into staring at the screen all day and all night.
“No, it’s not that.”
“It’s okay if it is. I know a lot of people who are scared of flying now.”
“I said it’s not that. I’m not scared. Okay.” He sat up, and pressed his hands against his forehead. “I’m just tired. I’m going to bed.” I waited for him to ask me to come with him, to put his arms around me like he had in those nights and weeks after 9/11 when neither of us could stand to be alone, but he didn’t.
On the morning of the terrorist attack, Sunny had called me from the office, telling me to turn on the news. I’d sat up in bed and flicked on the television, and was confused by the dust and chaos. Sunny and I were quiet, staring at separate tv screens, holding receivers to our ears for an hour before I asked him to come home, and when he did we sat on the sofa watching the news coverage in disbelief, stopping only to translate the events to my mother who had called asking what had happened. Sunny told her about it in clinical terms, in ways he thought she could understand, and as he spoke, I imagined her on the other end standing in her living room, wide-eyed, tv on, the images flickering in her dilated pupils as she experienced it just like every other person being fed the intravenous live news feed. We fell asleep in front of the television and when I woke up the only light in the room was the glare of the screen, the snow and hiss of it. I switched it offand lay in Sunny’s arms, our bodies curled into each other until morning came. We spent the next three days in bed tangled in each other, confusing love and desperation until the shock of it, the universal shock and compassion of it all, turned Sunny’s fear into anger. He stayed up late watching television, indoctrinating himself with misplaced patriot-ism and like so many others took refuge in telling anti-Muslim jokes and watching the late-night Bin Laden comedy sketches. When I’d scold him for it, his rebuttal was: “They’ll get what they deserve. Everyone does.”
The sound of cars slicing through slush and ice woke us before our alarm clock did. I got out of bed and grabbed my robe, yanking it on as I looked out the window.
Sunny sat up. “Well?”
The street below was cut into an imperfect grid of black and white, and edged in piles of dirty, plowed snow.
“It looks fine. I’ll call and check.”
He kicked the blankets offand got out of bed. “Call my parents and let them know as well.”
After I’d confirmed the flight departure, Sunny showered and raced around the loft, packing his carry-on, looking for his camera equipment, asking me to get him things from this room and that room, refolding all the shirts that I had already folded until finally all the bags were packed with anything he might possibly need for his six-week stay.
“I think that’s everything,” I said.
Sunny patted his coat pockets, checking and triple-checking his wallet, his keys, his passport in his almost ocd way. Threes. He did things in threes when he was scared, and everyone that knew it pretended not to notice.
“Ready?”
He nodded three times.
Kal and I drove Sunny, his parents and their luggage to the airport.
My mother-in-law had four suitcases and two trunks stuffed with my old Indian suits, which she would donate to the poor. “We will buy new things. So many things.” She said it like a promise, showing me pictures of the newest fashions that she would bring back. I tried to be thankful.
She baulked when the luggage attendants told her that her suitcases were over the weight restriction and huffed when they insisted she open the bags and remove some items. I told Kal and Sunny to go and buy an extra bag from the airport store while I pried the luggage keys from her and opened the biggest suitcase, which promptly popped open when I undid the latch. Bright-coloured saris and chunnies spilled out of the case like streamers out of a clown can. She yelped, embarrassed as other passengers looked on. “I am donating these,” she said to anyone who was listening. “They are for the poor.”
My father-in-law knelt down and helped me sort through the clothes and repacked them into the new bag. “No good deed goes unpunished,” he said, laughing as we locked the case and loaded it onto the conveyer belt.
Sunny hurried us along, reminding us all that they had a plane to catch. At the security gate my mother-in-law hugged me. “Don’t forget to check on the house every day.” She handed Kal and me a list that included alarm codes and bank account numbers, then reviewed them with us in huddled secrecy. “I’ll call every Sunday. Like clockwork,” she said, hugging me in a real embrace that left me feeling a little guilty that I couldn’t wait for her to leave. As she continued talking, repeating her houseplant-watering schedule, Sunny checked his newest cellphone compulsively, and when it was time to leave he put his arm around my shoulder and kissed me the way a brother would kiss a sister. He saw Kal watching and kissed me again, this time hard on the mouth so that I felt it like a branding or a bruise. Kal looked the other way.
3.3
After Sunny left, the snow melted in drifts, icing over at night and then melting into downhill streams that collected in murky puddles at the foot of storm grates already plugged with plastic bags and dead leaves. The city returned to its grim prospects of grey skies and slivered light. The homeless came out from their shelters and slept on the street; the commuters went back to work, and walked by as if the street people weren’t even there. Adam—the homeless man who sometimes slept beneath our building’s awning—had a white tumbleweed beard and blue eyes as clear as a seer’s, and any time he saw me he smiled and tipped his hat and I dropped in whatever change I had. Sunny only gave him grim looks, but Adam said he preferred that to being ignored—it was better, he said, than the concerted effort most people made to not notice, “to look away, look away.”
Every time I saw Adam, I thought of Liam, and the homeless people he used to befriend. I remembered his big toe sticking out of his dingy sport sock when he took his shoes offand gave them to the man who lived by the dumpster. Every time I drove by that dumpster or saw a shoe dangling by a lace from an electrical wire, I smiled and wondered whose shoes they were.
A few days after Sunny’s departure, I cleaned out our closets and donated all of our old shoes to charity, saving Sunny’s new Ferragamos for Adam.
“Happy late Christmas,” I said, handing him the box.
He smiled, opening it cautiously, lifting out each shoe as if it were a piece of art, something delicate and breakable.
“Well, put them on,” I said.
He tossed his broken runners aside, pulled the shoes over his callused soles, and strutted down the street singing “Stayin’ Alive” as if he were John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. I watched him until he turned the corner. Then I went back inside smiling, and took the stairs instead of the elevator. The phone was ringing when I got in. It was Sunny’s mother again. Sometimes she needed me to wire her money, but mostly she talked about how hot it was, how dirty it was and how jet-lagged she was. At some point in the call, I would pretend that the connection was bad and repeat “hello, hello… are you there?” until one of us hung up, usually me. But this time I didn’t bother and let the call go to the answering machine. I listened to her message, which began and ended with “Hello… Surinder… ” As I heard her repeat my name I felt bad, and I lifted the phone just as she hung up. I dialled her back at the number she’d just left, and waited for the call to connect. Sunny answered. I hung up and sat with the phone in my lap, half-expecting him to call back and ask me why I’d hung up on him. But of course he didn’t have call display; he didn’t know it was me and he didn’t call back.
In those first nights without Sunny, I went to sleep on my own side of the bed, but eventually slid into the warm space between the pillows—legs and arms sprawling, taking up space. His absence made room for me and as the week progressed, I spread myself out more and more, leaving my
clothes on the floor wherever I’d undressed, filling the fridge with all the foods he hated—Gouda, sushi, anything with garlic, anything that smelled. I did my laundry in one load, not separating the whites from the coloured, and ate crackers in bed without worrying about crumbs. I went to see the foreign films that he would never go to, and one night for the first time in years I went out with my colleagues for drinks after work.
It was game night and the pub was packed with the soon-to-be middle-aged and pot-bellied men staring at the large tv screens, pints swish-ing in their hands as they lamented missed goals and bad calls. They patted one another’s backs and bought pitchers, talking to one another out of the sides of their mouths, their eyes never offthe puck for more than a second.
“What’ll you have?”
I leaned into the bar, barely able to hear myself over the rowdy crowd.“A beer.”
The bartender looked bored. “What kind?”
I looked around to see what other women were drinking. “Stella.”
I clinked glasses with my co-workers and guzzled one pint and then another, enjoying the sudden buzz of alcohol and male attention. I wondered if that was what my life would have been like without Sunny, if this is what my life would have been like if I’d never met him. A tall blond man sat on the empty stool next to me and shook my hand. His palms were sweaty, and his breath was loose. He leaned closer and said something directly into my ear. I nodded, though over the constant hub I couldn’t make out a word he said and wasn’t sure what I’d agreed to. He bought me a beer and talked some more. I sipped and nodded.
“Meena, is that you?”
I turned around to see who was calling me and elbowed my beer off
the table and onto myself. I reached for a stack of napkins and blotted the stain. “Kal, what are you doing here?”
He looked slightly horrified. “What am I? What are you doing here?” He looked at the blond man sitting next to me and grabbed me by the elbow. “Does Sunny know you’re here?”
“No, of course not. It’s just a work thing.” I waved to my co-workers that I was fine. “He’s a friend,” I shouted.
They nodded and went back to watching the game. The blond man moved down the bar and chatted another girl up.
Kal handed me some more napkins. “Look at you. You’re a mess.”
“It’s no big deal.” I dabbed at the beer stain that had spread and soaked through my white blouse. “Stop looking at me like that.”
He shook his head. “Like what?”
“Like that. Like you’re disappointed in me.”
He didn’t disagree. “Cover up, will you? I can see everything and so can everyone else.” He held his jacket in front of me.
“Well, what are you even doing here?” I asked.
Kal pointed to a group of Indian hockey-jersey boys sporting baseball caps and goatees. Some of them were Sunny’s friends. “Watching the game.”
I put on my coat and grabbed my purse. “You’re probably right, I should just go. I’m a mess.”
He followed me out of the pub. “I’ll drive you.”
“I’m fine. I’ll walk.”
“Come on. Sunny will kill me if he found out that I let you walk.”
I turned around. “Sunny… Is that all you care about? What Sunny will think?”
“It’s not like that and you know it.”
“Fine. Then let’s go,” I said, walking across the street towards his truck. Kal opened the door and I slid in next to him. As he started the engine, I unbuttoned my coat and then my blouse.
He glanced my way. “Meena, what are you doing?”
“Stop looking and just drive.” I slipped the blouse past my shoulders and pulled my coat back on, fiddling with the clasp of my bra, trying to undress and dress with the discretion of a Grade 8 girls’ locker-room version of myself.
“Meena, what the hell?”
I shoved Kal in the arm. “I said don’t look. I’m soaked and stink like beer, okay?” I pulled offmy blouse and bra, yanking them through the sleeve of my coat like a magic trick. “Voila.” I buttoned my coat up to the very top and fastened my seat belt. “That feels better.”
Kal looked at the bundle of clothes on my lap. “How did you do that?” “It’s a girl thing. We can all do it.” I smiled and shoved the bra and blouse into my purse. “I just haven’t had to do it for a long time.”
He smiled, his mouth curled on one side like he was thinking or perhaps remembering the times when we used to undress in such haste. “Meena, when was the last time you went out?”
“You mean for fun? Before tonight?”
He nodded and waited for an answer.
I sighed, not bothering to calculate. “It’s been a long time… Sunny goes out but, well, he’d rather go alone.”
“Why don’t we go out?”
“I don’t know, you tell me.” I was giggling for no apparent reason other than the beer buzz.
“Well, do you want to?” He glanced at me, then the road and then back again.
“What, like now?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll take you home. You can change and we can go out, like we used to.”
I stared at him as if he should know better. “Things aren’t like how they used to be.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean we can’t go out. We used to have a great time together. Remember that one night we went and heard the Matthew Good Band play.”
“I remember. That was before anyone had even heard of them. ”
He nodded. “It was amazing.” He reached into the glove compartment and handed me a cd. “Have you heard their newer stuff? “Strange Days” is amazing.”
“Yeah, I love that track.” I put the cd—Beautiful Midnight—into the deck and we both listened and sang along to every other word.
We started listening to it all over again. When it reached “… and you’re gone,” Kal turned the music down, nodded emphatically and pulled over. We had reached my building. “We should go out,” he said. “Tonight. We absolutely should… There’s this new place in Gastown, great live music and…” His cellphone rang before he could finish. I could tell by the way that he talked, his voice flattering, that it was his girlfriend Irmila. She’d lived in Hong Kong most of her life but moved to Vancouver when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule. This was the footnote that seemed to be added to her name whenever anyone spoke of her. As if being from Hong Kong made her more special or less Indian. Her accent was intriguing, a cadence that was foreign but not at all like the Bombay British accent of other Indians. It was staccato, and overly formal, devoid of contractions and slang. It hinted at aristocracy and, like the rest of her, was difficult to place. “She’s not like other Indian women,” Kal had told me. She was older than him and had never been married—and in fact when they’d started dating, she’d told him that she was not the marrying kind. As if to prove how different she was, she liked to boast that she was the only Indian person who lived on Commercial Drive, the old Italian strip that was now being revitalized by granola crunchers and New Agers. She could read auras and when I first met her she said mine was blue, but didn’t explain any further.
Kal nodded on the phone, smiling at me. Apologetic already.
He shut the phone and before he could say that something else had come up, I told him: “Another time, then.”
It wasn’t until a week later that I saw him again. I was in a coffee shop, contemplating writing in a journal that I had bought from a nearby store, when he and Irmila walked in. She was asking the dumbfounded barista if their coffee beans were fair trade. He called over another employee, who then went to the back to ask the manager. As they waited, Kal seemed bored by the whole thing. He glanced around, saw me in the corner and perked up, as if I were the shot of caffeine that he needed. He tapped Irmila on the shoulder and motioned my way. She nodded and he walked over, dragging a chair from another table.
“Small world.”
“The beans are fair trade.” I pointed to the sign.
He nodded and looked back at Irmila, who was in deep conversation with the manager. “She’ll figure it out.” And in just a few minutes she had, and was sauntering over with two cups of coffee to go.
“You remember Sunny’s wife,” Kal said.
She put the coffee on the table. “Of course, Surinder with the blue aura.”
“Meena,” Kal corrected.
“You’re a writer?” she asked, looking at the journal. I tucked it into my bag. “Hardly.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I long for someone to talk books with. I adore writing. I wanted to be a writer once, after I read Tolstoy, but that was before I met Marc, who taught me to paint. So many colours.” She sighed, in a way that made me understand that Marc was a former lover. She was the kind of woman who struck me as having many lovers, men and women alike. She was all about experience. Poor Kal.
“Meena, Irmila’s having a thing tonight. You should come.”
Irmila’s laugh was throaty and elegant. “Kal, it’s not a thing.” She leaned over him and handed him his coffee, touching his shoulder, fingering the collar of his shirt, every movement a request. “It’s a showing at the gallery where I work, and you should absolutely come. Everyone will be there,” she said, in a way that made me wonder who “everyone” was.
When I told her I couldn’t she insisted, writing down the address on a napkin for me, reminding me several times before they left that they both hoped to see me there.
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