The Wandering

by Intan Paramaditha

  As soon as the elevator arrived, she hurried in. All those images of ideal women from Bollywood films gnawed at you. After she disappeared, you walked towards the elevator in a state of shock.

  Your neighbour is a mystery.

  You simply can’t connect the elegant woman in the violet sari with the sex maniac who ruined your sleep last night.

  La Candela, located a mere block from West 4th Street Station, is an Italian cafe that has been in business for three decades. It’s not as popular as its historic neighbour Caffe Reggio, which attracts locals and tourists who want to see where famous artists have been hanging out since the 1920s. La Candela, to your knowledge, hasn’t appeared in any movies and isn’t a stop on any nostalgia tours. It’s dimmer and more tucked away than Caffe Reggio, and you’re grateful for that. La Candela fills up on weekends, like cafes all over New York, but on a typical weekday you can relax a little since it never gets overly crowded.

  On breaks, you can take your lunch to Washington Square Park, a mere three minutes away. You recall the times you dropped into the pretty park to sit for a while, and how you enjoyed a garden concert and watched people saunter by in chic clothes. The Cosmo girls and GQ guys who passed by were way more stylish than the morning commuter crowd at Roosevelt Avenue Station, near your apartment. Unfortunately, in winter, the last thing you want to do is have lunch in the park. You’d rather eat in a corner of the cafe or dash to grab a burger from the McDonald’s at the corner of West 3rd and 6th.

  You begin to observe those around you. Tony Saverino is a relative of the cafe’s owners, an Italian American family that’s been in the hospitality business for generations. Some of your co-workers are university students after extra money, but others depend on their jobs as wait staff. One catches your attention because of his good looks – Fernando, originally from Peru. Your interactions begin with a geography lesson; he shows you where in South America Peru is located. You didn’t know, of course.

  ‘Are you an American or something? How come your geography is so bad?’ Fernando teases you. Deftly, he points out the Indonesian archipelago.

  He has thick black hair and long, curved lashes that overshadow slightly wistful, puppy-dog eyes. Had he been a little taller, he’d certainly have been scouted as a model. Of course, you don’t tell him this, even after you go out together a few times to buy lunch. His expression is rather melancholy. You don’t think he realises how handsome he is, or that he understands at all how to treat his good looks as capital.

  The cafe has a diverse range of customers, including women who now count as senior citizens but remain attractive and full of zest. They may well have become entrenched in New York during their glory days as hippies in the late sixties, studying at Barnard or Sarah Lawrence, refusing to leave New York for the sake of a job in Idaho. You’ve been eavesdropping on conversations between these ageing matrons. One group just saw a movie at the Independent Film Center, then popped in for coffee and a debate about film and politics. A crew of young people wearing skinny jeans and large-rimmed glasses seem to be discussing a project of some sort. Maybe they’re writers, designers or film-makers. According to Fernando, Brooklyn is the usual habitat for hipsters.

  ‘Everybody’s moving to Brooklyn. It’s the heart of New York now,’ Fernando says.

  ‘Oh yeah? Says who?’

  ‘People who live in Brooklyn.’

  There are also NYU students, of course, who frequent La Candela because it’s so close to campus. You haven’t worked out how they manage to study. Once off campus, tempting options immediately distract them, from eating and drinking at restaurants and cafes in Greenwich Village to browsing stores in SoHo and shopping for frivolous knick-knacks.

  Many of the cafe customers are regulars. A bald man in his sixties always chooses a seat by the window. He sits alone for hours in front of his laptop enjoying decaf coffee with a splash of non-fat milk, no sugar. You remember this because you take his order each time, and he’s always delighted to see you. Later you learn that people call him Bob, full name Robert Allen. He teaches in NYU’s East Asian Studies Department.

  One night you’re surprised by a young woman with brown hair who breaks into a grin as you hand her a menu. She greets you as if she knows you. The man next to her, maybe from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, is busy texting on his phone. He glances at you.

  ‘Hey!’ she says.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘It’s the red-shoes girl!’

  You’re taken aback for a moment and study the familiar-looking brown hair. Then you grin as well. You have indeed seen her before. She’s the woman in Washington Square Park who told you about garden gnome liberators. She gets up and hugs you.

  Elise, she reminds you, though you don’t recall if you’d even exchanged names.

  ‘Where are those beautiful shoes of yours?’

  ‘At home. Do you think I want to work in high heels?’

  She laughs.

  ‘I thought you’d already gone back to Belgium.’

  ‘I was supposed to go. But,’ she half whispers, ‘it’s really crazy. Anyway, I’ll tell you later. I got a boyfriend.’

  You glance at the man next to her. Elise shakes her head quickly.

  ‘No, no. My boyfriend is still at his office. This is my friend. Let me introduce Vijay, Vijay Prasad.’

  ‘Hello.’

  The man puts his phone in his bag and smiles at you. Elise introduces him as a journalist from India. He has a fellowship to intern at the New York Times and is auditing two courses in NYU’s Journalism Department.

  Your work has ended by the time Elise and Vijay finish their coffee. The three of you chat in front of the cafe because Elise and Vijay want to smoke, then you walk together to the train station. When you’d met at Washington Square Park, Elise had only intended to spend a month in New York, on holiday. After graduating with her bachelor’s degree, she had gone to work for a company and earned a decent salary, but soon got bored. She quit and used some of her savings for a trip. In New York, Elise has been living with a friend kind enough to offer her a couch. She only needs to chip in a hundred dollars a month for the water and electricity bills.

  Elise met her boyfriend on a dating site. He’s a young professional renting an apartment near Prospect Park (you remember Fernando’s words: everybody’s moving to Brooklyn). The boyfriend has asked Elise to move in, and has even encouraged her to attend school in New York. Your eyebrows knit. Can you really snag a good boyfriend on a dating site? Elise is lucky, for sure. Maybe you should give it a shot.

  ‘Are you still taking photos of those amazing shoes?’

  ‘Not so much any more.’

  Elise tells Vijay how you took pictures of your red shoes in different places, like the flight attendant with the garden gnome in Amélie. Vijay, who previously seemed sedate and hasn’t said much, now becomes more animated.

  ‘Are you going to write a book?’ he asks.

  ‘What kind of book?’

  ‘Maybe a book about the adventures of your red shoes.’

  You blush. I just take the pictures for fun, you say, then change the subject. From the conversation that follows, you realise Elise doesn’t know Vijay very well. He’d been invited to lecture on Elise’s campus when she was majoring in Communication Studies at the Vrije Universiteit. The lecturer hosting Vijay introduced him to some of the better students, including Elise, and after that they became Facebook friends. From Facebook, Elise had learned that Vijay was in New York. Because of her boyfriend’s encouragement to go back to school, Elise had invited Vijay out for coffee to ask about NYU’s Journalism Department.

  You nod as you imagine Vijay leaping nimbly from Delhi to New York, and then, with the aid of Facebook, connecting with an acquaintance from Brussels. Elise’s professor in Belgium was a friend he’d met as a correspondent in Bangkok. For some, the world is indeed very small. But a small world such as this is not – or hasn’t been – yours. So far, the world you know is vast and random
.

  ‘I’m just lucky,’ says Elise. ‘But Vijay here is a true cosmopolitan.’

  You enjoy your reunion with Elise, though you’re not sure whether running into someone you hardly know qualifies as a reunion. After that you never see her again, except on Facebook, which you open every now and then. Vijay, on the other hand, is a different story. After you get home you immediately search for ‘cosmopolitan’ on the Internet because the word for you is only the name of a women’s magazine. A number of phrases pop up on the computer screen. Citizen of the world. Transcending national boundaries. OK, you’ve picked up a new word tonight.

  As the three of you walked to the station you stole glances at Vijay. He was skinny and looked a little awkward behind his glasses, but it didn’t take you long to arrive at a conclusion: you think he’s sexy. Maybe it’s because he’s cosmopolitan.

  You’re supposed to have every Thursday and Sunday off, but today you work Fernando’s shift because he’s taking his daughter to the doctor.

  ‘You have a kid?’

  You couldn’t hide your astonishment earlier when Fernando asked you to fill in for him.

  ‘Yes, she’s nine years old.’

  ‘But you look so young!’

  ‘I am young. I’m twenty-nine.’

  You weren’t sure whether your comment sounded like an attempt to flirt. Without additional prompting, Fernando told you that he and his wife have separated. You expressed sympathy and agreed to work that Thursday.

  At three o’clock, you see Vijay step into the cafe, shouldering a backpack. He’s alone and sits down in the spot usually occupied by the NYU professor, who, as it happens, hasn’t come that day. You hurry over with a menu. When he smiles at you, your heart skips a beat.

  You aren’t sure how long Vijay will be sitting there. You tell yourself to be patient and wait until he’s finished his coffee, even if it means going home a little late. But, at precisely four o’clock, he requests the bill.

  ‘Working late?’ he asks, after handing over his credit card.

  ‘No, I’m actually leaving for home now.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Jackson Heights.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ He looks surprised. ‘I promised to meet somebody over there.’

  ‘Want to head over with me?’

  At this point you’re sounding a bit forward, but you don’t really care. Vijay waits for you to pack up. Various scenarios run through your head. Does he really need to meet someone in Jackson Heights? Maybe he just wants to go home with you. You’re starting to get your hopes up.

  It only takes half an hour to get from West 4th Station to Jackson Heights, but that’s enough to sharpen your attraction to Vijay. He’s living the life you want: travelling the world in search of stories.

  Vijay doesn’t know much concerning Indonesia beyond basic information about Suharto’s regime and the 1998 reforms. He’s visited ‘only’ a few countries in South East Asia, including Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar, from when he’d been assigned to cover the Thai military coup two years previously. He makes a pessimistic prophecy about Myanmar: even if Aung San Suu Kyi is released, there will be no justice for the Rohingya. You listen reverently because everything that he says is new to you. What a strange region South East Asia is. The countries Vijay names are so close, yet so foreign.

  ‘How does someone get to be so international?’ You can’t stop yourself from asking.

  Vijay scratches his head. Perhaps your question sounds funny to his ears.

  ‘Networks, maybe.’

  Ah, yes. Networking. That’s beyond the magic of red shoes.

  ‘I’ve never done anything important,’ you confess.

  Vijay laughs. ‘Define important.’

  You ponder. When you made a deal with Devil, travel was the only thing you considered important. Leaving home to wander. Wandering, without needing to think about going home. This was more important than anything for you, and maybe for those trapped in the same city, the same house. But now that you’re here, on the subways of New York where people with all sorts of stories mix as strangers, you feel that what you’re doing isn’t significant after all.

  ‘Listening to stories and recording them. Isn’t that important?’ you ask Vijay.

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘You don’t think your work matters?’

  ‘Well, yes, to me. Because I write I was able to travel, my articles received some praise, and then I won a fellowship to New York.’

  Again he laughs, but this time to himself.

  ‘Stories are a curse when you hear them yet know you can’t change anything.’

  You don’t really understand what he means.

  You hope for something to happen at that moment, like a sudden train breakdown – anything that will buy time. But the train arrives as it should at Jackson Heights Station. He says goodbye in order to head to an Indian restaurant a few blocks away.

  ‘See you later,’ he says. ‘Maybe at the cafe.’

  ‘Yes, please stop by.’

  You walk back to your apartment, wearing a smile the entire time.

  You become the centre of attention in the cafe. Well, maybe that’s a bit too strong. It’s not like you waltz in and turn every man’s head as if you were Marilyn Monroe. You’ve always known you’re not the kind of woman who attracts attention in a dramatic way, but you’re a magnet for some, at least. You haven’t been there a month, and two men have already asked you out on dates: Fernando, the handsome waiter from Peru, and Robert Allen, NYU professor. Nice variety there, from a demographic perspective.

  Fernando invites you to eat at a taco truck in front of Roosevelt Avenue Station. In fact, the station isn’t his final stop. Normally he has to transfer from the E or the F to the 7, and get off at Junction Boulevard. But he’s willing to interrupt his journey to steal some time with you. (Naturally, he doesn’t say this, but what other reason could he have?)

  ‘This isn’t much,’ Fernando says. ‘I’ll treat you again some other time.’

  From inside the truck with its stove and steaming meat, the taco vendor leans forward and hands Fernando two tacos on a paper plate.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘For filling in for me that time.’

  You brush it off.

  ‘I’m serious. Next time we’ll go out to dinner.’

  You hear the clatter of the 7 train pass over Roosevelt Avenue. Fernando bites into a jalapeño, while you’re still blowing on your piping hot taco.

  Meanwhile, Robert – who asks you to call him Bob – starts looking for opportunities to meet you outside the cafe. At first he makes small talk every time you bring him his decaf with a splash of low-fat milk, no sugar. He asks if you’re from Vietnam; your features remind him of someone he knew when he lived in Hanoi. You shake your head and say Indonesia. Bob turns out to have visited Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Surabaya. As a Sinologist, over the past five years he has begun to turn his attention to the Chinese diaspora in South East Asia.

  You chat with him longer after an accidental meeting in front of NYU’s red-brick library. You’ve finished work and want to stroll along Broadway, and he’s just come out of the building carrying a stack of books. For the first time, you study him closely. A warm cap covers his baldness, and thanks to the black overcoat that he is wearing, his belly doesn’t bulge too much. His voice is soft and sympathetic. You can tell that he must have been quite handsome in his younger days. Alas, at that point you were probably still in diapers.

  You realise that all this time he’s been busy trying to figure out your background. He has assumed you’re either a student or an artist on a tight budget waitressing for extra cash. You don’t want to be too honest and say that before working in the cafe you were unemployed.

  ‘I’m writing a book.’

  You steal this idea from the question Vijay asked you some time ago. You feel claiming to be a writer isn’t really a sin. Doesn’t everyone write? Everyone must have scribbl
ed lousy poetry in a diary or blog, or maybe written stories about vacation at grandma’s.

  Bob looks impressed. He’s delighted to meet a female author from Indonesia who’s working in a Manhattan cafe.

  ‘Fiction or non-fiction?’

  ‘Fiction,’ you say. You go on to lie with remarkable fluency. ‘I’m writing a story about a red-shoes adventure.’

  Bob’s eyes grow wider. He’s becoming more and more interested in you, it seems.

  ‘We have to chat more. Maybe we can have a coffee sometime.’

  You nod enthusiastically. The attention is certainly gratifying, but you think of one name alone: Vijay Prasad. He visited the cafe again the day after your conversation on the train, but you only had time to chat briefly because he was busy with friends. No further meetings follow, but you keep thinking about him. It’s all too possible to become obsessed with someone else despite – or, more precisely, because of – infrequent contact with them. You remember falling for Marcus Werner, the expat at EGW, even though the sole thing that dazzled you was when he said ‘Hello, good morning, how are you?’ in Indonesian. Halo, selamat pagi, apa kabar? An Indonesian-speaking white guy might sound sexy, because, after all, isn’t Bahasa Indonesia completely insignificant? English for the Global World: that’s the reality. But whatever the reason, you built up the myth of Marcus Werner every day until the Marcus of your mind far surpassed the Marcus of reality. Perhaps it’s the same with Vijay. You rehearse all his cosmopolitan experience every day until you feel a growing intimacy with him, until in your imagination he has become far more captivating than the first time you met.

  You start wondering. Does he think about you too?

  Proceed to page 168.

  The black turtleneck sweater you’ve worn all day clings to your body. You stand before your large mirror and comb your hair. The sweater’s wool is so dark that your hair almost seems luminous in comparison. You look at the clock anxiously; it will soon be midnight. You set the comb on your bed and pace up and down before the mirror.