He has studied the art of restraining his sexual self so fully that he never knew what lay beyond the restraint. He has thought of ballet dancers whose legs stretch farther than he could ever stretch his; this is because they are used to years of bending and stretching and scurrying. He has thought that he couldn’t attempt a leap where he has only ever attempted a walk.
But now he sees that he has to. He has to learn these things now or he will simply stay in the same spot, trapped while people like Ranjanaji try to show him that a leap is possible. She has come into his life so that he can open himself up and begin to answer some of the questions about his life that he has been afraid to answer for so long.
Teddy comes into the room and seems about to say something until he sees the wonder in Harit’s eyes. He sits down next to Harit and sighs. The sigh carries with it an air of understanding mixed with exhaustion. He does not move. In fact, he does not move for so long that Harit sees that he will not move. It is not Teddy’s movement to make. So Harit puts his hand on Teddy’s, and Harit nestles into Teddy’s chest. In a short but thorough monologue, Harit tells Teddy everything about Swati and his mother—everything, that is, but his many times wrapped in a sari. He has just now decided that he will keep this between his mother and himself. He will not even tell Ranjana about the sari. This confidence makes him finish his monologue gracefully and strongly. Only then does Teddy lean his head on Harit’s head and wrap his arm around him.
ATTENDEES WHO WANTED to do so could sign up for a one-on-one consultation with a publishing professional. Ranjana had signed up for this, not thinking about how daunting it would be; the head shot–like pictures of the agents and editors had looked benign on the Web site. This morning, however, after the tension of the past couple days and after having seen many of these people in the flesh, Ranjana was terrified of what this meeting would be like. She had been inspired by Pushpa Sondhi’s talk, but now she panicked again, worried that her writing was as insignificant as ever—flimsy, aimless, uninspired. And since the consultation was over a sample and not a full manuscript, the writing would seem even more insignificant.
Her meeting was with Curtis Strong, an editor at Crumley. Curtis’s photo on the Web site showed an intense young man with a sea foam scarf swooped around his neck and shoulders. He edited “literary fiction and narrative nonfiction,” a phrase that almost made Ranjana’s teeth fall out. One of Curtis’s books, about a schoolteacher who had taught a school of Ghanaian children how to salsa dance, had spent months at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Another was a memoir by a cop-turned-chef whose pen name was Miranda Rice.
The consultations were being held in another nondescript multipurpose room: a dozen small, round tables were spread at even intervals on its hibiscus-printed carpet. Each table had a tablecloth with a sunflower pattern, giving the entire experience the aura of being trapped in Alice’s Wonderland. On each table was a white placard bearing the name of the agent or editor, and there was (thankfully) a volunteer who directed people to their tables.
As Ranjana approached Curtis Strong’s table, she was surprised to find that she felt calm. Her lack of confidence in her writing made her feel practically invincible.
Curtis Strong was wearing a gray jacket and thick black glasses. Ranjana knew right away that he was hungover. The gray jacket seemed like an attempt to hide this. Ranjana’s confidence deflated. He couldn’t be receptive to her work if he was hungover.
The first thing that he said was “How do you say your name?”
Ranjana sat down, letting her purse fall unceremoniously to the carpet. “RUN-juh-nuh.”
“Ha-ha, OK. Well, we’ve got twenty minutes, so I want to make sure we spend it the way you want.”
“OK,” Ranjana said, straightening herself and getting ready to deliver her prepared sound bite. “The most important thing to me was—”
“Tell me what you want the story to be doing.”
“Pardon?”
“What do you want the story to be doing?”
Ranjana had never heard this type of sentence before.
“‘To be doing’?”
Curtis laughed and looked askance, as if his eyes couldn’t be bothered to watch such stupidity.
“What is your book about?”
Ranjana had the distinct feeling that this man hadn’t read her work at all. After everything that she had endured with Cheryl last night, she didn’t have the patience for this.
“Did you read my sample?”
Curtis took his hands off the table and crossed them over his chest. Ranjana was aware of the pair seated near them, a woman and a man who were discussing a crime thriller.
“There’s no need to be rude. I read your sample. I was just trying to get a sense of your book. What happens after she notices the ring on the vampire’s finger?”
Damn. He had read it.
“Um…”
“I like you,” Curtis said, reaching for his glass of water and taking a big sip. “I have to say that I’m very charmed by your whole shtick.”
What to say to this? What did this–
“How are you on social media?” he asked.
Possible meanings of this:
(A) How did you come to be on social media?
(B) What is your demeanor on social media (which you use rarely)?
Ranjana couldn’t answer either of these questions easily, so she remained silent.
“I like your writing. I mean, this isn’t the type of thing that I normally see,” Curtis said.
“I know. I wasn’t sure why they paired us,” Ranjana said. Curtis’s face fell at this comment. “But I’m glad that they did!”
This was a disaster.
It continued to be. Curtis segued into a discussion of his experience with Indian people, which involved a childhood friend named Priya, who had gone on to be a professional model, and an editor in his office who had just given birth to twins. (“Her husband’s white, so they’re obviously adorable.”) How could the world put people like this in positions of creative power while Ranjana sat at their beckoning? This man had published New York Times bestsellers and had once been at a book party with George Plimpton and Francine Prose (thanks, Google Images), yet Ranjana hoped that Prashant had never read a word that Curtis Strong had edited.
Twenty minutes passed. Ranjana’s work was virtually untouched. Curtis was gray with hangover.
“You know the vampire thing is over, right?” Curtis asked.
“Pardon?”
“I mean, it’s kind of over. Twilight was years ago at this point. You might want to rethink that angle.”
“Um, thank you,” Ranjana said, thinking of the long ride home.
“Good luck,” Curtis said, getting up and shuffling past. He approached the volunteer and said, “Quickest way to Union Station?” Then he was gone.
His printout of Ranjana’s pages was still on the table. It was unmarked.
“Excuse me,” said a woman nearby. It was the “professional” half of the duo that had been seated next to them. Ranjana pushed away the sleeve of her salwar kameez and looked at her watch.
“It’s nine thirty-four,” she said.
The woman sloughed this off with a laugh. She was African-American and very pretty, with red lipstick so bright that it looked orange. “No—sorry. I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Don’t pay attention to Curtis. He’s an asshole. Did I hear that you write paranormal fiction?”
* * *
“You made brownies to bring for a weekend away?” Ranjana asked. She was holding a smushed brown wedge that Cheryl had pulled out of a Ziploc bag. Harit and Teddy were nowhere to be found; there was no answer when Ranjana called their rooms, and Teddy’s cell phone was apparently dead. In the meantime, she and Cheryl were sitting at the round wooden table between their maroon-curtained windows.
“This is my special recipe,” Cheryl said. “I make it for special occasions.”
“You didn’t know today w
as going to be a special occasion.”
“Some part of me did. I have a sixth sense, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
The unmarked pages that Curtis had left on the table were now in the hands of Christina Sherman, the agent who had been sitting right next to Ranjana. Ranjana already had Christina’s card in her pocket and a text on her phone: Love love love these pages!! Drop me a line this week. xx Christina
This had all happened in the past hour.
Cheryl was right: Ranjana deserved a treat. She took the brownie and bit off half of it. Cheryl’s eyes widened, and she half-rose out of her seat while a smile flickered on her face.
“What?” asked Ranjana after swallowing. There was a strange taste in her mouth—dense and plantlike.
“Bottoms up!” Cheryl said as she took the other half of the brownie and popped it into her mouth.
“Are these mint brownies?” Ranjana asked, though the flavor was clearly too rough to be mint.
“No—not mint.” Cheryl got out of her chair and flopped onto her bed. She lay on it as if she were about to make a snow angel.
Something slithered up Ranjana—a scent memory. Prashant ducking into the house on a Friday night in high school and hugging her briefly, then swerving upstairs to his room and shutting the door. “Cheryl. What was that?”
“Come and lie down on your bed. This is your celebration.”
“Cheryl. You didn’t.”
Ten minutes later, Ranjana felt as if her own mouth were telling her a story.
“It’s just that—I’m—he’s my husband, but even I don’t understand how he could do this to me. I do everything for him. I raised his son! I’ve done—I’ve—I deserve good things. And who knows what things he’s up to while I’m here?”
“You do deserve good things!” Cheryl said, several seconds or several minutes later. “You deserve all the good things in the world! You’re going to be a famous author.”
Even in her hazy state, Ranjana found these words unlucky. She rolled over, turning her back toward Cheryl, and shook her head. “No. No. I don’t want to curse myself. Just because she said she liked the pages doesn’t mean she’ll represent me.”
“Loved the pages—not liked them. She loved them. You’re as good as gold. You’re as good as gold!”
Suddenly, Cheryl was flailing around, almost dancing. “You’re as good as gold, good as gold!” Cheryl kept saying. Ranjana writhed with chuckles.
Obviously, she had never tried pot, but even in this state, she could see the appeal of being high. Her limbs were loose, her head expansive, and she allowed herself to be legitimately, unobtrusively excited about the prospect of being represented by Christina Sherman. She had worked hard and endured so much. She deserved to be successful! She deserved to be seen as an important and unique writer! All the other people at this conference were slow-moving farm animals compared to her, a literary steed, and she would charge ahead, hair billowing in the wind, and claim the success that she deserved.
“Fuck Mohan,” her mouth was telling her. “Fuck him.”
“Yes—fuck him!” Cheryl screamed. “Fuck him! Wait a second—what did your husband even do?” Cheryl asked.
Ranjana realized that she had begun her tirade against Mohan without having divulged the details of his transgression. The pot was making her jump forward in her thoughts. This is what pot did, apparently: it made you race toward a lofty conclusion, leaving all nuance behind.
Ranjana found this luxurious. She was glad that she hadn’t stated outright what Mohan had done because, truthfully, she didn’t want Cheryl to know the truth. Ranjana was hot off a great success—Christina’s interest in her writing—and to reveal the cracks in her marriage was to relinquish this crown and open herself to Cheryl’s criticism. Instead of letting the pot push the truth out of her, she would harness its comforting messiness and roll on this bed, rub the tough fabric of the comforter against her cheek and move her legs as if riding a unicycle. She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing through the knots until some of the strands came free.
THERE WERE OVER TWENTY GAS STATIONS within five miles of Mohan’s house, and they were all owned by bastards.
The stations in his area collaborated to plot against everyone. They knew how to control prices so that no customer could ever feel satisfied. Constant innovations in wireless technology made it all the easier for them to communicate with each other. Mohan lay awake some nights and imagined the cellular signals flying like silver bats through the air, all of them working to mask which station had the lowest gas price at any given point in time.
Perhaps this was true of establishments everywhere. When Mohan visited other parts of America, he looked at the crooked black letters or red digital clicks of their gas station billboards and wondered if the men who controlled them were equally odious.
Today, the first four stations he visited were all on the same intersection. He glided among their entrances. The Sunoco and the Marathon were both down five cents, whereas the Shell was down seven and the Mobil down eight. Although they were all lower, they were still too high. Then he drove to the BP, which he always assumed, ever since that catastrophic oil spill years ago, to have the lowest price. Nope. So then he drove another mile to the Speedway, which, down ten cents, was not a blessing from God but at least tolerable.
During the first year of their marriage, Ranjana would join him in this pursuit. In fact, she had been more enthusiastic than he. They would pass a billboard, their necks craning in sync, and she would chuckle with exasperation or delight as the price revealed itself to be too high or acceptable. Mohan would think of how valuable pennies could be: they could lead to a joyful game shared by spouses.
It wasn’t this fact alone that propelled him to love the game so dearly. It was that Ranjana was participating in a game that he had created.
When Prashant was a baby, he would tap his toy car against the window and cry out at the billboards. When he was a teenager, he began to voice his disapproval. By this time, Ranjana had grown tired of the game, too, and although mother and son didn’t always see eye to eye, Mohan could tell that their shared annoyance with the game was one of their most enduring bonds.
Mohan thought that his wife and son were very, very wrong to ignore his obsession with gas stations. After all, one of the main things that anyone discussed in polite conversation was gas prices. The local news, the national news, people in line at the grocery store—they talked about this subject as often as they did the weather.
When he spoke on the subject with his friends, he did so moderately so as not to reveal his secrets. Delighted and jealous, his audience would shout out the names of specific stations and ask what their latest prices were. Mohan had all of the numbers memorized. Seeing his friends grin into their tumblers of whiskey, he treasured this knowledge. He was proud that he had put in the effort to earn it.
The owners of the stations all knew him. Many of them shouted at him for parking on their blacktop, standing in front of his car, and scratching his pencil into his notebook, but he would just shout back, “Saving money is not a crime!” before slouching back into the front seat and driving to the next station. A part of him felt remorse for antagonizing the fellow South Asians who ran the stations, but he also felt a sense of injustice about their practices: if he had played fair and square and made his way honestly in American, then they should be expected to do so, too.
His madness was informed by math. After many years of simply recording the figures for his own knowledge, he began to have his students take the data and interpret patterns in the numbers. And they did, even though they were chemistry students and not statisticians. They were able to see that the stations worked in a specific pattern, the numbers dropping at every other store to keep people guessing. It wasn’t just something from Mohan’s imagination, a theoretical system that he kept trapped in his brain. It was a legitimate trap of checks and balances, a group of men feeding each other’s coffers and families.
This was unacceptable.
For many, many years, Mohan had been wary of using the Internet to solve his problems. He associated the Internet with that one-time Hollywood actress whose name was like his—Lohan, which people pronounced either “Low-HAN” or “LOW-en,” the latter closer to the pronunciation of his name—and he thought it to be a foolish, dangerous place. Although he was a scientist, and although he had seen men of his generation amass their fortunes by bending the Internet to their will, he saw his status as a chemist as hallowed, loftier in its bonds and formulas than the nutty code of computer engineers. Recently, though, upon noticing his wife’s behavior, he had relented. It was useless to resist the knowledge that could be uncovered by typing a few words into a thin, clear box and hitting ENTER. Not using the Internet was the same as pretending that he didn’t notice his wife’s actions: she was driving around, traveling to places that were eating up their gas. (Of course Mohan kept track of how much gas they both used, not least because he was guilty, too. Every mile that he spent driving among the gas stations, keeping track of their prices, was a lost mile of gas, even if it was in service of eventual savings.)
He would use the Internet now—Lord, would he. Mohan went to the university library, and in forty-five minutes of research, he was able to see that the gas stations were owned by subsidiaries. In five more minutes of research, he was able to see that these subsidiaries were linked by a holding company owned by one family. In one more minute, he wrote their names down and placed an anonymous call to the police about their price-fixing.
He parked at a Dunkin’ Donuts near the intersection where those four stations faced off—the Sunoco and Marathon, the Shell and Mobil. He went inside the store to get two glazed doughnuts and a hot tea. The owner, Kailash, served him quickly but with a smile; he knew Mohan’s usual order and didn’t miss a beat. Mohan went back to his car and watched.
He had used the Internet as if he were a detective. He wanted to use it again to figure out what was going on with Ranjana. He loved her dearly. Couldn’t she see that? No, she couldn’t. She was sick of him—he knew this. He always prepared himself to be kind, but he found himself reacting with defiance instead of kindness every time he spoke to her. It was too difficult for him to tell her the truth:
No One Can Pronounce My Name Page 30
