The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  All the while, I was aware of the boyfriend on the balcony, who appeared not to notice or care that the guests had arrived. Seeing my glances, Bill called out with a proprietary smirk, “Michael, visitors are here.”

  Michael gave a little smile and raised his hand, but he kept his eyes on the page until he had read as far as he wanted. Then he snapped the book shut, slipped on his loafers and stood up. In his white, cuffed shorts and lavender dress shirt—its sleeves rolled up above the elbows, collar pushed back—he looked, I imagined, like someone on a yacht. As he strolled into the apartment, I tried not to stare at his rumple of curls, aquamarine eyes, angular features and lips whose colour spread beyond their borders, like a stain of pomegranate juice.

  The others seemed to know him well, because they greeted him with lazy familiarity, not getting off their seats. He saluted them playfully, then turned to me. As we exchanged names and greetings, I was aware we were under scrutiny, as if Bill had arranged this meeting to entertain his friends.

  I noted the book Michael was reading and said, stuttering, “Oh … um, Clear Light of Day, my sister has that. I’ve read it. I liked it.”

  “She’s an author my mother loves,” he replied, turning the book over and looking at its cover. “So I thought I would give her a try.”

  Anita Desai was not the sort of writer one might find easily in a bookstore. I knew this from working in one and browsing through many. I wanted to ask how Michael’s mother had discovered the writer, but instead nodded stiffly and accepted the glass of wine Bill was holding out to me with a smirk that said, Yes, you have undervalued my charms.

  Now I was sure I had been invited to learn this lesson and that the other guests were in on the plan. I glanced at Michael, but his remote smile conveyed nothing. With a polite nod to me, he went to put his book away in the bedroom and emerged sometime later, curls slightly damp.

  The evening progressed in the way these parties always did for me, with white people talking while I remained silent, my fixed smile gradually dissolving as I drank more, my laugh increasingly hectic. Michael moved with graceful ease among the guests, sitting for a time between the couple on the sofa then sprawling over the arm of the woman’s chair, hand resting on her shoulder. They treated him with fondness, as they would a nephew, and he took their attention with what I felt was the entitlement of the beautiful.

  At one point I went to get some wine from the galley kitchen, and Michael sauntered in and stood by the fridge, right foot perched on left like a stork, hands jammed in pockets, his neck strained back as if to look over a fence, something diffident in his posture. He said nothing for a moment, observing me with a restrained smile. Then we both spoke at once.

  “Bill tells me you work—”

  “How come your mother—”

  We each gestured for the other to speak, and I said, “How does your mother know of Anita Desai?”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Some small bookstore in Kitsilano … you know, for people who consider their tastes to be above the plebeian readers.” He said this fondly, as if he found his mother’s snobbishness endearing. “Besides, Desai isn’t nobody. She’s been nominated for the Booker a couple of times.”

  “Indeed,” I said, nodding vigorously. After the silence came between us again, I asked, “What were you going to say?”

  “Oh, just that I might be starting work at the university too. I’ve applied for a job.” Then, seeing what I was surmising, he added defensively, “And no, it’s not Bill’s influence. A completely different department.”

  “Of course, of course,” I said quickly.

  Then we were grinning at each other, as if our exchange had been funny.

  “Well, if you do get this job, one of the perks is the long lunch break. Enough time to get down to Wreck Beach and ogle the nudists.”

  “I don’t need the lunch break for that. I occasionally go down there anyway.” He waited for his meaning to sink in and caught the quick flit of my eyes as I mentally undressed him. Then he let out a throttled laugh, head thrown back as if struggling to release the mirth from his throat.

  In an instant Bill was in the kitchen. He gave us both a sharp look. I blushed from being caught out and Michael smirked. “Young men,” Bill cried waspishly, “away with you. I must begin le dîner.”

  After that, though Michael and I did not talk again that evening, I was aware some connection had formed between us, that we were oddly on the same side against the other guests.

  About a month later, the phone rang one evening, and when I picked it up a man asked for Shivan Rassiah. His accent was Canadian, and yet, remarkably, he pronounced my name correctly.

  “Who is this?” I demanded.

  “It’s Michael,” he said, as if surprised I had not figured it out.

  I was silent, then I blurted, “How did you …?”

  “My contacts at the university.”

  “Oh,” I said, and then “oh” again, puzzled that Bill had provided my phone number, given his apparent jealousy over our conversation in the kitchen.

  “No, no,” he replied with a chortle. “The dean of arts. My mother. She’s had this secretary for years, Anjula Wickramatunga. Sri Lankan,” he added, not realizing I could figure this out from her surname. “I just asked her to inquire around. You’re the sole Sri Lankan guy working in the President’s Office. Then I looked you up in the directory. There is only one of you in Vancouver, by the way.”

  “My goodness, I’m unique,” I quipped to hide my astonishment. “Well, you’re quite the detective,” I added, wanting confirmation of his interest. “That’s a lot of trouble to take.”

  “It was worth the effort,” he said quietly. “How about dinner? Would you like to come on Friday?” There was a sheepish lilt to his voice.

  “Yes, sure. Where?”

  “Well, Madam Dean and Mr. Dean are away for a few days and I have their well-appointed home in Point Grey to housesit. Wanna come over?” He gave me the address. Before he got off the phone, he said, “By the way, Bill and I are no longer an item. That ended a couple of days after the party.”

  “Ah,” I replied. Now I understood why Bill had seemed curiously subdued in the last month, not coming by my desk to chat and flirt in his old way.

  Michael’s family home was so charming, I stood for a while on the pavement outside to admire it. A two-storey house with a broadness that hinted at spacious rooms, it nonetheless had a cottage-like charm because of its greyish-blue clapboard siding, multicoloured stained-glass windows and steeply sloping slate roof with wide eaves. The fence on both sides of the house was long, and like many fences in this moist city, its slats had the water-logged blackness of driftwood. A green creeper spilled wildly over the top, pink flowers in the tangled tendrils.

  Michael had left the front door open, screen closed. I rang the bell and watched him come towards me down the gloom of a hallway, emerging into light on the other side of the door. As he let me in, he smiled, lips pressed together. “Ah,” I said and gestured at his Sri Lankan batik shirt, unmistakable in its gaudy colours and border of trumpeting elephants, “a gift from Anjula Wickramatunga, worn in my honour?”

  He laughed in that nerdy way of his, and I was pleased my humour worked with him. His laugh made his beauty less intimidating.

  Michael gestured for me to go past him into the hall, then turned on a light. As I offered him my bottle of wine, I took in the polished oak floors and the expensive-looking kilim beneath our feet. Beside the antique hallstand stood a tall wooden African carving of an antelope, graceful and stylized in the way a tourist trinket would not be. As we passed two doorways on our left, Michael waved his arm, saying, “living room, dining room,” drawling out the vowels to show he was being dismissive of the expensive Persian rugs, the comfortable sofas and armchairs, the Arts and Crafts dining set, the silver coffee and tea services, the walls lined with books that looked well read because of the way they were crammed in, spines faded and loose.

  The
hallway ended at an enormous kitchen with an island in the middle, expanses of quartersawn oak floor between it and the surrounding cabinets, which were of a light-coloured wood and made in the Shaker style. The countertops were black slate, the appliances stainless steel. At one end of the room, a bay window looked out over the extensive garden. Michael had been preparing dinner, and he went back to it. An Indian meal, I could tell from the smell and spice containers on the counter. Unlike my mother’s old jam and pickle bottles with their faded and peeling labels, Michael’s little glass jars had black lids with spice names stencilled on them. They had magnetic bottoms, and after he had used one, he would stick it back on a stainless steel panel so its name faced out front. I watched him for a short while as he pretended to be absorbed in his task, bending periodically over a cookbook, elbow on counter, hand cupping chin. He was trying to make me comfortable by keeping at his task. There was an assured grace in this gesture; it was how the family made guests feel at home. Taking my cue from him, I drifted over to the bay window, knelt on a distressed red leather seat in the alcove and looked into the garden with its massive ferns and hostas, purple-flowered thyme growing in the gaps of the cobblestone patio.

  I noticed the bookshelves on either side of the window and called back to Michael, “Someone in your family must really like poetry.”

  “Mr. Dean’s,” he called back. “He’s a poet, a published one.” I turned to him in surprise, and he nodded as if confirming gossip about someone we both knew. “One of those West Coast types. The poetry’s all about driftwood logs, kelp and the sea. Oh, and of course the working man.” He grimaced. “Don’t be fooled by all this. Madam Dean and Mr. Dean are old hippies. Michael is my middle name, which fortunately my grandparents insisted on. Guess what my first name is.”

  I drifted back, stood close to him and shrugged as one might with an intimate, a boyfriend.

  “Breeze.” He started to laugh, but seeing I was looking at him solemnly, he stopped, mouth slightly open, then leaned in and kissed me dryly on the lips.

  “I like that,” I said, reaching out to grip his bicep as he pulled away.

  “What?” he asked, hoarsely.

  “That you make all the first moves.”

  “Others don’t?”

  I shook my head slowly, not taking my eyes off his.

  “Huh,” he said, as if surprised other admirers could have been so apathetic about trying to win me. He returned to chopping tomatoes. The rapping sound of knife on cutting board reverberated between us.

  “Waiting …” I said, grinning.

  He threw down the knife with a huff of amusement, washed and wiped his hands, then came to me.

  “Ah-ah.” I gestured at his stained apron.

  He shook his head to say I was incorrigible, shucked the apron off, then moved in again, his knees against mine. He took my face in his hands and looked at me solemnly, then kissed me, his hands sliding back to caress my ears.

  We made love in Michael’s bedroom, which was the same blue as the house’s exterior, accented with darker blue baseboards. The bed had a coral duvet; the walls were covered with framed Japanese film posters. I’m not sure why I thought he would be an awkward lover, but he moved up and down my body with fluidity and grace. He kissed without fully opening his mouth, taking my tongue between his teeth and biting on it gently, this refusal to grant me entry increasing my desire. There was a slight roughness to him, his hands and teeth leaving marks on my skin, which added a charge to our lovemaking.

  And yet, aroused as I was, a familiar despair soon materialized, as it did whenever I made love now. It was not a particular memory of Mili, but rather an inner hollowness into which I sank, then surfaced, again and again; and in those moments of surfacing, the colour of Michael’s skin, the part of his body I was running my tongue or hand over, was crushingly alien.

  When we were done, I lay on my back with Michael’s head against my chest and looked out the window, a great sob welling up in me. I kept it down by clenching my fists. “I am starving,” I finally said, after I had gained enough control of my voice. Michael raised his head to kiss me before getting out of bed. I wanted to keep lying there, to have some time to myself, and he must have sensed this, because he drew the duvet up to my chin and whispered, “No need to hurry down, hey?”

  Once he was gone, I waited for my despair to propel me out of bed, make me scramble into my clothes, go downstairs and offer some brusque excuse about why I had to leave. Instead, to my surprise, the despair began to subside, becoming muted, it seemed, by the peaceful colours of this bedroom, the blue-haloed mountains through its window. When I went down to dinner, however, I saw it was really Michael who had subdued my desolation. There was a graceful ease in his relations with others, the same ease I had seen with the guests at Bill’s party. Loving or liking someone, thinking well of someone, came effortlessly to him. He felt no anxious need to amuse or entertain me or keep up the conversation, and this made me relax too. During my years in Vancouver, I had never stayed over at a lover’s place. Michael seemed to assume I was going to, and I found myself slipping into his assumption without protest.

  This ease of being with Michael continued over the weekend. On our first morning together, after we had been out for a walk and returned, Michael picked up a translated Japanese novel called Kitchen, which he had left facedown on the hallstand, and became instantly absorbed, right foot balanced on left ankle, not ignoring me but somehow encompassing my presence in his absorption. I went to the washroom and came back to find him in the living room sprawled across an armchair, lost in the book. He finished his paragraph, marked the page, looked up at me as I stood over him, and asked mildly, “What would you like to do?” as if we were an old married couple. We ended up reading for an hour, me pretending to be engrossed in a book but looking over at Michael from time to time, filled with wonder at this new tranquility I felt. For lunch, Michael dug around in the fridge and produced olives and cheese, then made a salad of tomato, basil and bocconcini drizzled with balsamic vinegar. I had not yet heard of cheeses like bocconcini, nor tasted balsamic vinegar, and was surprised at how much better these olives were compared to the brine-soaked ones I had eaten from a bottle.

  That evening, after we had gone for a swim on Jericho Beach and were on our way home, Michael took me to an expensive grocery store nearby, on 4th Avenue. “What do you want to eat?” he asked.

  I was taken aback, having assumed he’d come with a recipe in mind. “Mussels,” I declared to test him, smiling wickedly. He winked, nodded and moved quickly about the store, picking various items and holding them up with a grin to say he was meeting the challenge. That night, we had seafood pasta in a white wine sauce, and it was delicious.

  The next day, we came back from an afternoon movie to find his parents’ car in the driveway. “Ah,” Michael said with satisfaction as he took my hand, “Madam Dean and Mr. Dean are home.” He quickened his pace as if he couldn’t wait to present me. His confidence lessened my nervousness.

  Suitcases crowded the hall and we heard someone moving around upstairs.

  “Michael?” A woman’s voice fluted down.

  “Yes, Hilda, ‘tis I. Where’s Robert?” I gave him a sharp look, and he smiled, enjoying my surprise that he called his parents by their first names.

  There was a flurry of footsteps across the floorboards above, then his mother came lightly down the stairs. Hilda was a tall, slim woman with greying hair cut in a bob, her light cotton dress showing off tanned limbs. With her narrow chest, small breasts, long neck and sinuous legs, she looked like an ex-ballerina, an effect enhanced by her flat satin slippers. She gave me a friendly nod and kissed Michael in a formal way, cheek brushing cheek.

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Shivan.” She shook my hand without waiting for an introduction, seeming genuinely happy to meet me. Though soft spoken, there was a focus and confidence in her bearing and I imagined she could be formidable without ever raising her voice. “Did you boys hav
e a nice weekend here?”

  I nodded, a little embarrassed that she presumed so blithely I’d slept over in their home.

  “Ah, kiddo,” a man called out from the kitchen end of the hallway, and Robert came towards us. Michael had got his looks from his father, who, even in his late fifties, was handsome, his soft greying curls and round tortoiseshell glasses giving him a boyish look.

  Michael’s parents had brought a chicken pie, and they invited me to join them for an early supper before going. By now I was at ease with them; like Michael, they made no extra fuss to please me and went about their tasks as if I were an old friend. While Robert tossed a salad and Hilda opened a bottle of wine, Michael set places at the kitchen island, where I was perched on a stool, telling Hilda about the goings-on in the President’s Office, pleased that she was so impressed at my rapid rise in the university. Michael kept smiling and nodding, and at first I thought he was trying to reassure me, but then I realized he wanted confirmation that his parents were splendid, that I admired them as much as he did. Earlier, I hadn’t known how to take his “Madam Dean and Mr. Dean,” unsure if it was boasting. But now I saw the nicknames were just an ironic way to hide his genuine admiration for Hilda’s achievements.

  Once we were all seated, Robert asked me, “Now, how did the two of you meet?”

  “At … at the home of someone I work with.” I glanced quickly towards Michael, unsure what his parents knew.

  “Bill,” Michael added.

  “Oh, goodness, Bill,” his mother murmured and shook her head. “I’m very glad that is over. I can’t believe I introduced the two of you.”

  Michael grinned at me. “Bill used to work under Hilda in the dean’s office.”

  This was the first time Bill had come up, and I held Michael’s gaze for a moment. He looked away easily, as if he had nothing more to communicate on the subject.