Just One Day 02: Just One Year

by Gayle Forman

  “Some tea, perhaps, while you look?” Nawal asks. I look under the counter and see that, like yesterday, the tea is already prepared.

  “Why not?”

  At which point, the script ends and conversation takes over. Hours of it. I sit down in the canvas chair next to Nawal’s, and as we have done for the past four days, we talk. When it gets too hot, or when Nawal gets a serious customer, I leave. Before I do, he will drop the price of the tapestry by five hundred rupees, insuring that I’ll come back and do the whole thing again the next day.

  Nawal pours the spicy tea from the ornate metal pot. His radio is playing the same crazy Hindi pop that Prateek loves. “Cricket game on later. If you want to listen,” he informs me.

  I take a sip of the tea. “Cricket? Really? The only thing duller than watching cricket is listening to it.”

  “You only say that because you don’t understand the particulars of the game.”

  Nawal enjoys schooling me about all the things that I don’t understand. I don’t understand cricket, or soccer for that matter, and I don’t understand the politics between India and Pakistan, and I don’t understand the truth about global warming, and I certainly don’t understand why love marriages are inferior to arranged marriages. Yesterday, I made the mistake of asking what was so wrong with love marriages, and I got quite a lecture.

  “The divorce rate in India is the lowest in the world. In the West, it’s fifty percent. And that’s if they even get married,” Nawal had said, disgusted. “Here, I tell you a story: All my grandparents, my aunties, my uncles, my parents, my brothers, all had arranged marriages. Happy. Long lives. My cousin, he chose a love marriage, and after two years, no children, the wife leaves him in disgrace.”

  “What happened?” I’d asked.

  “What happened is they were not compatible,” he’d said. “They were driving without a map. You cannot do that. You must have it arranged properly. Tomorrow I will show you.”

  So today, Nawal has brought a copy of the astrological chart that was drawn up to decide if he and his fiancé, Geeta, are compatible. Nawal insists it shows his and Geeta’s happy future, ordained by the gods. “With matters such as these, you have to rely on forces larger than the human heart,” he says.

  The chart looks not unlike one of W’s mathematical equations, with the paper divided into sections and different symbols in each one. I know W believes that all of life’s questions can be solved through mathematical principle, but I think even he would find this a stretch.

  “You don’t believe in it?” Nawal challenges. “Name me one good love marriage that lasts.”

  Lulu had asked me a similar question. Sitting at that café, arguing about love, she’d demanded to know one couple who’d stayed in love, who’d stayed stained. And so I’d said Yael and Bram. Their names had just popped out. And it was so strange because in two years on the road, I had never told anyone about them, not even people I’d traveled with for a long time. As soon as I said that, I’d wanted to tell her everything about them, the story of how they met, how they seemed like interlocking puzzle pieces and how sometimes I didn’t seem to fit into the equation. But it had been so long since I’d spoken of them, I hadn’t known know how to do it. Though in some strange way, it seemed like another unsaid thing she already knew. Still, I wish I’d told her everything. Add it to my list of regrets.

  I’m about to tell Nawal about them. My parents, who had a pretty spectacular love marriage, but then again, maybe it was there, in the charts all along, how it would end. I have wondered: If you could know going in that twenty-five years of love would break you in the end, would you risk it? Because isn’t it inevitable? When you make such a large withdrawal of happiness, somewhere you’ll have to make an equally large deposit. It all goes back to the universal law of equilibrium.

  “I think this whole falling in love business is a mistake,” Nawal continues. “I mean look at you.” He says it like an indictment.

  “What about me?”

  “You are twenty-one and you are all alone.”

  “I’m not all alone. I’m here with you.”

  Nawal eyes me pitifully, reminding me that, pleasant as these days have been, he is here to sell something and I am here to buy something.

  “You have no wife. And I’ll wager you have been in love. I’ll wager you have been in love many times like they always seem to be in Western films.”

  “Actually, I have never been in love.” Nawal looks surprised at that, and I’m about to explain that while I haven’t been in love, I’ve fallen in love many times. That they’re separate entities entirely.

  But then I stop. Because once again, I’m transported from the deserts of Rajasthan to that Paris café. I can almost hear the skepticism in Lulu’s voice when I’d told her: There’s a world of difference between falling in love and being in love. Then I’d dabbed the Nutella on her wrist, supposedly to demonstrate my point, but really because it had given me an excuse to see what she tasted like.

  She’d laughed at me. She’d said the distinction between falling in love and being in love was false. It sounds like you just like to screw around. At least own that about yourself.

  I smile at the memory of it, although Lulu, who had been right about me so much that day, was wrong about this. Yael had trained as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces, and she once described how it felt to jump out of a plane: hurtling through the air, the wind everywhere, the exhilaration, the speed, your stomach in your throat, the hard landing. It always seemed the exact right way to describe how things felt with girls—that wind and the exhilaration, the hurtling, the wanting, the freefall. The abrupt end.

  Oddly enough, though, that day with Lulu it didn’t feel anything like falling. It felt like arriving.

  • • •

  Nawal and I drink our tea and listen to music, talk about upcoming elections in India and upcoming soccer tournaments. The sun blazes through the canopy roof and we go quiet in the heat. No customers come this time of day.

  The ringing of my phone disturbs the idyll. It’ll be Mukesh. He is the only one who calls me here. Prateek texts. Yael does neither.

  “Willem, is everything tip-top?” he asks

  “A-okay,” I say. In Mukesh’s hierarchy, A-okay is one step above tip-top.

  “Excellent. Not to worry you but I call with a change in plans. Camel tour is canceled.”

  “Canceled? Why?”

  “Camels got sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “Yes, yes, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible, terrible.”

  “Can’t we book another one?” The three-night desert camel tour was the one part of his planned itinerary I was actually looking forward to. When I extended my trip a week, I’d asked Mukesh to reschedule the camel trip for me.

  “I tried. But unfortunately, next tour I could get you on was not for another week, and if you take that, you miss your flight to Dubai next Monday.”

  “Is there a problem?” Nawal asks.

  “My camel tour was canceled. The camels are sick.”

  “My cousin runs a tour.” Nawal is already picking up his mobile. “I can arrange it for you.”

  “Mukesh, I think my friend here can book me on a different tour.”

  “Oh, no! Willem. That will be most unacceptable.” His ever-friendly tone goes brusque. Then, in a milder voice he continues: “I already booked your train back to Jaipur tonight, and a flight back to Mumbai tomorrow.”

  “Tonight? What’s the rush? I don’t leave for a week.” When I asked Mukesh to extend my Rajasthan trip by a week, I also asked him to book my return flight to Amsterdam for a few days after I am due to get back to Mumbai. I had it all timed out perfectly so I’d only have to see Yael for a couple of days at the tail end. “Maybe I could stay here another few days?”

  Mukesh clucks his tongue, which, in his particular ar
got, is the exact opposite of A-okay. He starts rattling on about flight schedules and change fees and warnings of me being stuck in India unless I come back to Mumbai now, and finally there is nothing to do but give in. “Good, good. I’ll email you the itinerary,” he says.

  “My email’s not working right. I got locked out of it and had to reset the password and then a whole bunch of recent messages disappeared,” I say. “Apparently there’s a virus going around.

  “Yes, that would be the Jagdish virus.” He tsks again. “You must set up a new account. In the meantime, I will text you your train and flight itinerary.”

  I get off the phone with Mukesh and reach into my backpack for my wallet. I count out three thousand rupees, the last price Nawal had dropped to. His face falls.

  “I have to leave,” I explain. “This evening.”

  Nawal reaches behind the counter for a thick square wrapped up in brown paper. “I set it aside on day one so no one else would get it.” He peels back the paper, showing me the tapestry. “I put a little something extra in it for you.”

  We say good-bye. I wish him luck with his marriage. “I don’t need luck; it’s in the stars. You, I think, are the one who needs luck.”

  It makes me think of something Kate said when she dropped me off in Mérida. “I’d wish you luck, Willem, but I think you need to stop relying on that.”

  I’m not sure which one of them is right.

  I pack up my things and then walk to the train station through the late afternoon heat. The city looks golden up the hills, the sand dunes rippling behind it, and it all makes me feel wistful, nostalgic already.

  The train gets me into Jaipur at six the next morning. My flight to Mumbai is at ten. I haven’t had a chance to set up a new email, and Mukesh has texted nothing about a ride from the airport. I text Prateek. He hasn’t replied to any of my texts in the last two days. So I try ringing him.

  He answers, distracted.

  “Prateek, hey it’s Willem.”

  “Willem, where are you?”

  “On a train. I’ve got your tapestry here.” I rattle the package.

  “Oh, good.” For all his manic enthusiasm about this latest venture, he seems oddly blasé.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Better than okay. Very good. My cousin Rahul, he is sick with influenza.”

  “That’s terrible. Is he okay?”

  “Fine. Fine. But bed rest for him,” Prateek says cheerfully. “I am helping him out.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “With the movies.”

  “The movies?”

  “Yes! I find the goreh to act in the movies. If I can get ten, they will put my name in the credits. Assistant to assistant director of casting.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” he says formally. “But only if I find four more. Tomorrow, I return to Salvation Army and maybe to the airport.”

  “Actually, if you’re coming to the airport, that’s perfect. I need a ride.”

  “You return on Saturday, I thought.”

  “Change of plans. I’m coming back tomorrow now.”

  There’s a silence, during which Prateek and I have the same idea. “Do you want to be in?” he asks at the same time I offer, “Would you want me to be in . . . ?”

  The line echoes with our laughter. I give him my flight information and hang up. Outside, the sun is setting; a bright flame behind the train, and darkness in front of us. A short while later, it’s all dark.

  Mukesh has booked me a sleeper seat in an air-conditioned car, which India Rail chills like a meat locker. The bed has nothing but a sheet. I shiver, and then think of the tapestry, thick and warm. I unwrap the paper; out tumbles something small and hard.

  It’s a small statue of Ganesha, holding his ax and his lotus, smiling his smile, like he knows something the rest of us haven’t figured out yet.

  Twenty-five

  * * *

  Mumbai

  * * *

  The movie is called Heera Ki Tamanna, which translates, roughly, as Wishing for a Diamond. It is a romance starring Billy Devali—big star—and Amisha Rai—big, big star—and is directed by Faruk Khan, who apparently is so big, he needs no further description. Prateek tells me all this in a breathless monologue; he has hardly stopped talking since he swooped me out of the arrivals hall and rushed me to the car, barely glancing at the various Rajasthani goods I painstakingly shopped and bargained for over the past three weeks.

  “Oh, Willem, that was the last plan,” he says, shaking his head, dismayed that he must explain such things. “I am working in Bollywood now.” Then he tells me that yesterday, Amisha Rai swept by him so close that the edge of her sari brushed his arm. “Can I tell you what it felt like?” he asks, not waiting for me to answer. “It felt like a caress from the gods. Can I tell you what she smelled like?” He closes his eyes and inhales. Apparently, her odor defies words.

  “What exactly do I do?”

  “Do you remember in Dil Mera Golmaal, the scene after the shootout?”

  I nod. It was like Reservoir Dogs, but on a ship. With dancing.

  “Where do you think all those white people came from?”

  “From the same magical place as the go-go dancers?”

  “From casting directors like me.” He pounds his chest.

  “Casting director? So it’s official. You’re up to ten?”

  “You make eight. But I will get there. You are so tall and handsome and . . . white.”

  “Maybe I can count for two?” I joke.

  Prateek looks at me like I’m an idiot. “No, you count for one. You are only one man.”

  • • •

  We arrive in Film City, the suburb that houses many of the studios, and then we pull into the complex and then into what looks like a large airplane hangar.

  “Oh, by the way, the payment,” Prateek says nonchalantly. “I must tell you, it’s ten dollars a day.”

  I don’t answer. I hadn’t planned on being paid anything.

  He mistakes my silence. “I know for Westerners it is not much,” he explains. “But you get meals, and also lodging so you do not need to commute back to Colaba each night. Please, please tell me you’ll agree to it.”

  “Of course. I’m not in it for the money.” Which is exactly what Tor used to say about Guerrilla Will. We’re not in it for the money. But half the time she would say this as she was carefully counting the night’s take or checking weather reports in the International Herald Tribune to determine the sunniest—and most lucrative—places to hit next.

  Back then, I was very much in it for the money. Even the little I earned from Guerrilla Will kept me from having to return to an unwelcoming home.

  Funny that, how little things have changed.

  • • •

  On the set, Prateek introduces me to Arun, the assistant casting director, who takes a brief pause from his mobile phone conversation to appraise me. He says something to Prateek in Hindi and then nods at me and barks, “Costume.”

  Prateek squeezes my arm, as he leads me to the costume room, which is a series of rolling racks full of suits and dresses, tended to by a harried woman with glasses. “Find something that fits,” she orders.

  Everything is at least a head too short for me. Which is about the amount by which I tower over most Indians. Prateek looks worried. “Do you have a suit?” he asks.

  The last time I wore a suit was to Bram’s funeral. No, I don’t have a suit.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Neema, the wardrobe lady snaps.

  Prateek grovels, apologizing for my height, as if it were a personality defect.

  She sighs impatiently. “Wait here.”

  Prateek looks at me in alarm. “I hope they do not send you back. Arun just told me that one of the ashram people left this morning and now I am back down to
seven.”

  I slouch, make myself shorter. “Does that help?”

  “The suit still will not fit,” he says, shaking his head as if I’m an imbecile.

  Neema returns with a garment bag. Inside is a suit, freshly pressed, shiny blue, sharkskin. “This is from the actors’ wardrobe, so don’t mess it,” she warns, shoving me into a curtained area to try it on.

  The suit fits. When Prateek sees me, he grins. “You look so first-class,” he says, amazed. “Come, walk by Arun. Casual, casual. Oh, yes, he sees. Very good. I think I am almost assured a spot in the credits. To think, one day, I might be like Arun.”

  “Dare to dream.”

  I’m teasing, but I keep forgetting that Prateek takes everything literally. “Oh, yes. To dream is the ultimate dare, is it not?”

  • • •

  The film set is a faux cocktail lounge, with a grand piano right in the middle. The Indian stars circle the area around the bar, and then deeper into the set mill the fifty or so extras. The majority of them are Indians, but there are about fifteen or twenty Westerners. I go stand next to an Indian in a tux, but he narrows his eyes at me and scoots away.

  “They’re such snobs!” a skinny, tan girl in a sparkly blue dress says, laughing. “They won’t talk to us.”

  “It’s like reverse colonialism or something,” says a guy with dreadlocks tied back into a band. “Nash,” he says, sticking out a hand.

  “Tasha,” says the girl.

  “Willem.”