Jesse had fluid feet that accented the length of his body. Sean and Charity danced close enough to be a straight couple. Tyler stood against the wall. Amber danced with complete abandon alongside two handsome strangers. This wasn’t exactly fun, but it wasn’t a chore, either. In fact, maybe this was fun. Ranjana hadn’t defined humor until now, so perhaps her concept of fun needed similar renovation.
All the while, Achyut was back behind the bar. Every time she looked at him, a customer had an arm around his neck or trending that way. He looked truly happy. His parents had thrown him out of the house, but he had been reclaimed by the men in this room. The bar, in essence, was a loving foster home, and she understood why he wanted her here—to cement that metaphor. She had been so busy thinking about why this was not a place for her that she had forgotten the true purpose of this friendship, which was to mother and mend him.
After an hour of nonstop movement, she managed to extricate herself from the group and make her way to the bar. By this point, sweat was an outfit. Her hair probably looked as big as Amber’s now. Another Sprite was in order. She hoped for a moment of peace while she waited for Achyut, but this was not to be. A tall, amply round gentleman, whose age she could not guess in the dim, sidled up to her and took one of her hands in his.
“I do believe you’re the most darling thing I’ve seen,” he said.
Oh, god, she was defying the odds and getting hit on after all. Then she noticed how smooth his hands were, smoother than hers, and surmised correctly that she had nothing to fear.
“Thank you,” she said, averting her gaze and trying to catch Achyut’s attention. As strange as the situation was, the smoothness of his hands was certainly out of the ordinary, and she began to stretch her eyes back to him, giving in to the inevitable conversation.
“How did a lovely Indian woman like yourself end up in a place like this?” She could smell a sweetness on his breath that was more like candy than alcohol. The wrinkles around his eyes were kind, and it occurred to her that his age was much closer to hers than it was to that of the other people in this bar. He was, then, a possible confidant.
“I—came to visit the bartender,” she said. A better explanation didn’t come to her, and she felt in this moment the pathos of her evening, the tenuous correlation between herself and the glistening man who had invited her.
The gentleman sucked in through his teeth, as if impressed, but his pudgy face contorted at the same time into a look of exasperation. “Atch-yoot. How did you come to know that genteel Om?”
She smiled at this baffling phrase and didn’t know how to respond. Shrugging, she looked back in Achyut’s direction. The man’s grip on her hands tightened.
“I’m Teddy,” he said, with meaning. His eyes flashed with some hidden agenda. “I know someone that I’d really like you to meet.”
And this is how Ranjana came to know Harit.
IN THE MIDST OF HIS COLLEGE LIFE, Prashant could not help but recall the fumbling of his high school years: a succession of forming crushes and being crushed, then finding new crushes. He came to understand that a guy like him—most guys, in fact—lived in a world of soiled sheets, soiled tissues, and damaged egos. The ones that didn’t were obvious winners, guys who excelled at sports or who had been blessed with heads of hair that belonged in J.Crew catalogs and who could attract real girls to fulfill their desires. Eventually, he and his Indian friends had to admit that if they were going to make it with anybody in high school, they were going to have to aim for a one-off encounter with an Indian girl.
This girl could not be one of their district but someone removed, an interloper whose school system didn’t intersect with theirs. If the girl’s family appeared only rarely at their regular gatherings, then the threat of retribution (should the situation prove a failure) was not as much of a danger. Therefore, blasphemously enough, he began to think that a “function” during Diwali or Holi would make the best opportunity. Typically, these took place at a nearby community college, bringing together different Indian families from various parts of the state. These functions featured an assortment of “performances”—mostly dances by girls decked out in saris and dupattas and lots of makeup. For a situation that was far from ideal, this was as ideal as it got.
A few of the performances included boys. Prashant had been blessedly freed from the responsibility of performing a long time ago, but a couple of his friends—chiefly, Sanjay and Gaurav—still got badgered by their mothers into joining a dance number. Prashant always took pleasure in seeing his friends flinch as one auntie or another applied makeup or an extra sash to his costume. At the same time, it was perhaps more of a punishment to be in the audience, sandwiched between his parents and forced to watch every act. They were excruciating, the countless dances, the same moves—and often the same songs—used again and again. If insanity were truly doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then en masse Indians represented the most dangerous of psychotics.
A Holi function held during his sophomore year of high school: after about four hours of pounding feet, slapping hands, clacking sticks, feeble applause, and the audience’s constant talking, Prashant emerged from the auditorium with almost his whole body asleep. The one part that wasn’t asleep—never, in fact, seemed to rest—was looking forward to this after-performance respite, when it might actually find some release. Prashant found an inconspicuous bathroom on the other end of the building and rubbed one out in a stall.
Afterward, he went to the lobby, where a huge buffet had been erected. Gaggles of Indians cut each other in line just to get a plateful of food, after which they would go off to some corner to gossip with people they saw only twice a year. Prashant found his crew easily enough. Sanjay and Gaurav had already doffed their headdresses and sashes but still wore kurtas and half-erased eyeliner. None of the guys had the energy to chide them for their girly attire today; the river of punch lines seemed to have run dry.
“I’m so not in the mood for this shitty food today,” Sanjay said. “Who wants to make a Chipotle run?”
There was never a time when they didn’t want to make a Chipotle run, so fifteen minutes later, they were huddled around a stainless steel table at that establishment, their mouths gnashing at dripping, lettuce-laced burritos that took Sanjay’s and Gaurav’s lipstick off better than any napkin or tissue. They knew that their mothers would be furious if they found out that they’d ditched the prasad for this place, but there was something about the camaraderie of fast food that fused them together way more than any shoddy religious get-together.
“See anyone promising?” Vipul asked. His family was strictly vegetarian, but in recent months, he had introduced meat into his diet, like a desi version of taking up smoking. A string of pulled pork dangled from his burrito like crushed sinew from a giant’s mouth.
“Did you see that girl Sandhya?” Sanjay asked.
“Totally,” said Gaurav. “She is ridiculous. She doesn’t even look Indian.”
“I know—that’s hot,” said Vipul.
“Do we know anyone who knows her?” Prashant asked. He had definitely noticed her. She was a passable dancer onstage, but it was actually her indifference toward dancing that made her so attractive. She seemed like the kind of pretty girl who impressed parents but who probably lit up a joint from time to time and could hang just fine with the guys.
Vipul confirmed this. “I heard that she parties with some of those douche bags—Nikhil, Avinash, Roshan. I think she sticks around for the weed.”
“Who’s got some, by the way?” Gaurav asked. He was still wearing his kurta, as was Sanjay, and Prashant felt embarrassed sitting with them. There were now so many Indians in their area that kurtas and salwars were pretty standard sights, but Prashant still felt odd sitting with two guys whose pajama bottoms were so tight that their junk was visible.
“I’m out,” Vipul said. “Smoked the last bit I had two nights ago. I could call Chalaak.” Chalaak, whose name meant “c
unning” in Hindi, was their dealer, a rare Indian high school dropout who dated white girls exclusively even though he insisted on blasting bhangra music. He worked part-time at an Indian video store to put on a convincing front, but he made thousands of dollars by supplying people like Vipul with steady fixes. Thankfully, Prashant knew another one of Chalaak’s customers: Gori, Seema Auntie and Satish Uncle’s daughter.
“Gori’s always packing,” Prashant said. “I saw her sitting by herself in the auditorium, totally baked out of her mind. She’ll probably cough it up for us easily enough.”
This all seemed perfectly logical to them: exhorting the drug services of one girl at a religious function so that they could impress another drug-inclined girl in attendance. They found Gori soon thereafter, seated in the same place where Prashant had seen her. She was a chill girl, barely interested in anything but pot, and there was a laid-back inflection to everything she said. Most of the guys suspected that she was a lesbian, but Prashant somehow knew that this wasn’t the case. His friends just couldn’t accept the fact that a girl like this didn’t find them attractive. Prashant assumed that she had some good-looking guy of indeterminate ethnic background whom she hung out with when she wasn’t at home.
“Yo, Gori,” Prashant said as he slid next to her in the auditorium. There was a tabla-and-harmonium duo performing for the lunchtime crowd. “You packing?”
Gori snickered. “I’m doing just fine, thanks. How are you?”
“Sorry,” Prashant said. “Sorry. How are you doing?”
“I’m just fucking with you,” Gori said. Her voice was deep, gravelly, and she was twisting a tangle of her hair between two fingers. She was clad almost exclusively in sweats; her parents had clearly given up the idea of getting her into traditional garb for events like this. “Here you go,” she said, producing a long cylinder in which religious incense was normally kept.
“Really?” Prashant said, mocking her choice of transport.
“Hey, this is as religious as I get. You want it or not?”
And so that afternoon found Prashant and the gang loitering against the wide brick wall of the community college with a joint. Naturally, once they were high, all they could wonder was what would horrify their parents more—getting high or attending community college. Then the conversation turned to where they wanted to go to college—even though they were only sophomores—and then, finally, they seemed to remember, as if it were a ribbon tied around their fingers, that Sandya, the hot girl, was the project of the day. Since Prashant had scored the weed from Gori, he claimed the conquest of Sandya as his own. Because the others were so stoned, they relented.
“Should I just invite her out here to join us?” Prashant asked. “She was just sitting with her parents, watching the shows.”
“She probably realized what assholes those other dudes were.” None of them could think of anything in particular that those guys had done, but they were the rare Indian guys who were tall and good-looking and as popular with white girls as they were with Indian girls, so they were easily worthy of hatred.
“Then I’m going to go find her,” Prashant said, heading back toward the school’s entrance.
“No,” Vipul said. The so-called whites of his eyes looked as if they were made of cotton candy. “I’ll get her.”
“Why?” Prashant asked. “I called dibs.”
Vipul laughed, which looked like someone was shaking him by the shoulders. “Right. You called dibs. Whatever. You can’t just go and ask her to come and smoke weed. You’ll look like a douche. And you’re too high.”
“I’m too high?” Prashant said, now giggling through his purple haze. “What about you?”
They were all laughing now, complete idiots. How they thought they could score with someone like Sandya was totally mental.
A few hours later, all the rest of the guys had gone inside and Prashant was by himself, looking at the sun as it moped into the horizon. It was Holi, springtime, and the world was getting warm and dusted off. Soon, it would be summer and he’d be smoking even more and still trying to get laid. Materializing as if from some fantasy, Gori appeared, probably not as baked as he was but not entirely sober, either, and Prashant found himself making out with her and feeling her up. They had known each other practically all of their lives, but not even that kind of connection could have prepared Prashant for the taste of her mouth, its alternate sweetness and toughness. Due to her baggy clothes and demeanor, he’d never been able to see that she was stacked, which made her personality instantly more interesting. They made out for maybe ten minutes, hardly a word exchanged between them, and then Gori pushed herself away, took the tube of incense out of his hands, and playfully smacked him on the nose with it.
They would continue to see each other at all of the usual gatherings, but Prashant would find no instance in which to rekindle this nascent romance. For the rest of high school, the closest he would come would be a peck on some homecoming date’s cheek or, in one rare moment of confounding luck, a chance to touch Shalini Patel’s bared right breast on their prom date. Luckily, he was coming of age during the Golden Times of Internet smut, and a tanned barrage of porn stars would constitute not just the bulk but the entirety of his dating life.
Then he went off to college, to succeed in all the ways in which he had failed. But college had brought him to Kavita Bansal, and now he felt more unprepared and lost than ever.
II
TO HARIT, WHO WENT TO TEMPLE regularly, though unobtrusively, it seemed quite shocking that he had never seen Ranjana before. He had a rather impeccable knack for remembering those in attendance, and it seemed odd to him that someone like Ranjana—someone so, in a word, peculiar—would escape his notice. He had often thought of his own face as being striking in its uniqueness—and not of the good kind—but Ranjana’s was its own kind of oddity. He had to admit, with the physical affinity that exists in shivers instead of words, that he found her eyes alluring, even though they were uneven founts of exhaustion. It dawned on him that he was seeing in her a reflection of his own body—in essence, a female Harit, this one in slacks and a sweater instead of Swati’s sari.
They convened at a French restaurant, of course—La Ronde. It was a dim, many-tabled affair with tablecloths that Teddy called burgundy instead of red. Teddy had insisted that he treat them to dinner, and he wore an outfit that, even for him, was comical in its sophistication. His blazer had lapels like a tux jacket, and the dress shirt he wore was so crisp that it could have been made of meringue. He had some strange pomade in his hair, and even his skin seemed cheerier.
Harit and Teddy came together in Teddy’s car, and Ranjana showed up ten minutes later. Harit knew that she had purposefully arrived late, so as not to be a married woman waiting eagerly for two men, neither of whom was her husband. Harit and Ranjana made weak if well-intentioned Namastes at each other while Teddy grinned like a child. Then he strode forth and announced that they were the Porter party. The difference between Teddy’s reception at TGI Friday’s and this restaurant was incredible. The maître d’ at La Ronde was a charming man around Teddy’s age who gave a little bow when Teddy spoke to him, and he led them to their table with a bounce in his step. They had arguably the best spot in the restaurant, a small plush booth on a raised dais with an assortment of plants overhanging it.
Harit decided to bury himself in his menu for the first few moments so as to buy himself some time. His embarrassment at Teddy’s insistence to pay dissipated when he got a look at the prices. Not that he ate steak, but he couldn’t believe that it cost close to $30. He made a note to order a vegetable quiche. (Harit’s mother had never eaten in a French restaurant; in truth, neither had Harit. Neither of them ate eggs all that often, either, so the entire notion of quiche existed far from their world.) Ranjana seemed to see in the menu the same refuge as Harit; if her nose had been buried any deeper into it, she would have been asleep.
Naturally, Teddy took the lead in conversation.
“S
o, I couldn’t just let a lovely little thing like this get away from me,” he said, flicking one hand at Ranjana. “I gotta tell you, I’ve been going to FB for years, and I have yet to see anything so darling as this one shaking what her mama gave her like she done owned the place.” This statement contained so many turns of phrase that it made Harit reexamine his entire comprehension of the English language.
Ranjana tittered and said, “Oh, Teddy.” In that moment, one might have mistaken them for lifelong friends. Harit felt lonely, and he wondered what his mother had thought earlier tonight, when he told her that he was going “out to dinner with friends.” He had never attempted such a social experiment under her watch. Regardless, she had consumed his Swati act—as well as a couple of samosas that he held in front of her mouth as she chewed gingerly—and Harit even thought he saw a smile on her face when he said the word friends. But then Teddy had pulled up in front of the house, so Harit had rushed back to his bedroom, changed, come back down, and given her a quick peck on the forehead before darting out the door.
Their waiter was a friendly young man in his midtwenties who had wonderful posture. If he was confused by the clumsy trio they made, he didn’t show it. He rattled the specials off in a raft of words that seemed to stun Ranjana and turn Teddy into a firework. Ignoring the concept of “ladies first,” Teddy responded by immediately ordering the French onion soup and something with a very long name that he said was a wonderful veal dish. He also ordered a bottle of wine, a pinot noir, while Harit and Ranjana shifted uncomfortably. Harit knew better than to go against Teddy when it came to spirits, and in any case, perhaps the wine, like their drinks at TGI Friday’s, would make conversation easier.
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