My Last Love Story

by Falguni Kothari

When the parish church loomed up like a stone beacon on the right, I eased my foot off the accelerator and took the exit onto the local roads, driving around the church building. A backlit signpost stood, water-smudged, on the front lawn. Every single day, the pastor—an austere-faced though jolly man—would put up a new meme for the world to pontificate on.

  Today, it simply read, Trust in God. He knows what He’s doing.

  My face tightened at the patently false advertisement. Khodai didn’t know what He was doing any more than Nirvaan and I did.

  Trust in God? The God who’d inflicted cancer on a fun-loving young man? The God who’d orphaned children and would leave a wife as a widow? The impotent God who’d done nothing while my eighteenth birthday turned into my worst nightmare?

  Thank you, but no. I could never trust God as His executive decisions had failed to impress me so far.

  And Nirvaan wanted to produce another soul for Him to torture.

  The rain began to pelt down in fat musical drops as I zigzagged through the streets, filling the obstinate silence inside the Jeep. I was glad for the sound. It allowed me a reprieve from all words, emblazoned or spoken or thought.

  At the tip of a quiet long road with nowhere left to go, I eased the car over a pebbled driveway and parked as close to our slate-blue craftsman-style home as I could. Ahead of us, a strange black truck with monster tires blocked the front of the detached carriage house, the rear covered in blue tarpaulin.

  Before I could utter a word, Nirvaan chortled, “He’s back,” in a bizarre falsetto.

  “So I gathered. But what’s he brought back?”

  Instead of answering the question, Nirvaan unbuckled his seat belt in one fluid motion, grabbed my face between his hands, and smooched my lips, as if our recent tense moments had never happened.

  It was typical of him. Nirvaan stubbornly refused to let bad moods win. I approved of the quirk with great gulps of gratitude, as one moody bitch per household was quite enough.

  “Happy birthday to us, baby.” He grinned from ear to ear as our noses Eskimo-kissed.

  I squinted at my husband. Our birthdays weren’t for another three weeks. Mine fell on May 31, and Nirvaan’s was on June 1. I wondered what kind of present had gotten him even more excited than the visit to the fertility doctor.

  Nirvaan spilled out of the Jeep before leaping up the three steps onto the thick wraparound deck where our longtime friend, the third Musketeer of our pack, Zayaan Mohammed Ali Khan, stood under the aegis of the front porch. He, too, grinned like the Cheshire Cat high on cream.

  I’d steeled my nerves before looking at him, but even then a gasping ache speared my heart. Zayaan was the living reminder of all that was wrong in my life, all Khodai had taken from me as part of His grand plan to keep me in line.

  Astoundingly, Zayaan and Nirvaan shared their birthdays. The fact was the deciding factor in their friendship that had been founded one summer on the streets of Surat, the year they—we—turned fifteen. Same birthday, same street address, same damn-the-world temperaments, where could they—we—go wrong really?

  But we’d gone wrong. Like a roller coaster plunging off its tracks, our world had splintered apart one awful night, and I’d been left bleeding and alone, as always.

  Stop wallowing in self-pity. Control yourself, and get out of the car.

  Nirvaan gestured at the truck and said something. Zayaan nodded in reply, still grinning. He held a non-alcoholic beer bottle in one hand, a hand towel in the other. His thick mop of poker-straight hair stood up in glossy spikes, like he’d vigorously rubbed it with the towel, while the rest of him was drenched from shoulders to sandaled feet. His cotton shirt was soaked through and plastered against his torso, delineating every muscle beneath it.

  My throat went dry. I was a sucker for broad shoulders and washboard abs, and Zayaan’s were quite deliciously on display right now.

  Cursing the paradox of emotions he always spawned inside me, I pulled the red hood of my raincoat over my head, as much to serve as blinkers for my wayward vision as to protect my hair from the rain. With a tight grip on my nerves and my purse and the tote bulging with a dozen medical files, I got out of the car and dashed up the wet whitewashed steps.

  Nirvaan grabbed the towel from Zayaan to mop the splashes of water from his own face and arms. Not so long ago, those arms had been thicker than Zayaan’s, the shoulders broader, the bulk of Nirvaan’s body heavier and stunningly sculpted. I’d not lied when I compared Nirvaan to Michelangelo’s David during our month-long honeymoon in Italy.

  I dropped my burdens on a rickety porch bench. Then, I removed my raincoat and hooked it over a rocking chair to dry. I wished that my anxiety could be stripped off as easily as the raincoat.

  “Those had better not be the death traps I expressly forbade you to ride.” I flicked a telling glance at the truck.

  Nirvaan might not care if he died today or a year from now, but I bloody well did.

  “Damn it, Zai. You don’t have to give in to every harebrained idea he jots down on that stupid Titanic Wish List. He’s not supposed to drive a car even, much less ride a motorbike.” It felt good to blast someone even if he wasn’t the target of my anger or worry.

  For a second, it seemed Zayaan would chuck me under the chin, like he used to when I shrieked. My voice had an unfortunate nasally quality to it and a tendency to shrill when I got excited or upset. But the hand moving toward me changed direction and gripped the banister instead.

  Zayaan did not touch me anymore, not if he could help it. Zayaan had stopped touching me the day I asked Nirvaan to marry me.

  Shattered Dreams was the title of an oil painting I’d seen in an art gallery in Mumbai once. The artist had rendered a perfectly featured, golden-hued portrait of a person. It was androgynous in composition, as you couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman staring out of the canvas. What had struck me—the observer—the most about the painting was that the artist had worked in a tornado through the beautifully daubed face, as if one had birthed the other.

  Zayaan’s face had been a tornado of shattered dreams the day Nirvaan and I got engaged, more than seven years ago.

  It should’ve brought me relief, his aversion to touch me even after all this time. Instead, his solicitude left me empty and cold and slightly afraid.

  “They’re not what you think, Simi.” Languid dark eyes snared me in their net, wary but not without humor beneath a fringe of sooty thick lashes.

  I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. Take control. “Really? Those aren’t motorbikes?”

  For years, I’d zoomed around Surat in a yellow Vespa scooter, and I felt confident that the vague T-bar shape under the tarpaulin was a bike. Two massive bikes, in fact.

  “Last week, I physically barred you from walking into a Harley-Davidson showroom, so you enlisted his help?” I groused at Nirvaan.

  How things had changed. When had I turned into a party pooper? A dozen years ago, I would’ve hurdled over the guys and staked my claim on the biggest, baddest bike available. Now, I couldn’t even address my deepest fears to myself, much less voice them to my husband.

  Zayaan’s lips curved upward in a smile that still had the power to devastate me. He looked at Nirvaan, and the smile broadened, turned wicked. My breath soughed out in a huff.

  “Not bikes. Jet Skis!” the guys hollered in unison, slapping high fives above my head.

  “Fucking A, I still can’t believe we won them.” Nirvaan slapped the towel on the bench and stabbed a finger in the air, just shy of Zayaan’s chest. “You were right to stick to our price. Fucker, you’re always right. Luck of the fucking devil.” He grabbed the thick wooden banister with both hands, seemingly ready to leap over and verify the rightness of the purchase with his own eyes, rain be damned.

  Zayaan stopped him with a casual press of his hand on Nirvaan’s shoulder, saving me the trouble of lecturing my husband on the inadvisability of getting soaked with his weak constitution or falling and breaking his bones
by vaulting willy-nilly over banisters dewy with rain. I threw Zayaan a grateful smile, but he’d turned his attention elsewhere. As had Nirvaan.

  The truck and its marvelous contents held both men utterly rapt. Then, with raucous laughter and an F-bomb-sprinkled explanation, they described the events leading up to this momentous occasion.

  Apparently, my thrill-seeking husband and his idiot best friend had bid on the Jet Skis in an online auction. Zayaan had spent the morning fetching the prize—our birthday surprise—from San Francisco. I refrained from pointing out that I was the only one surprised here, and I wouldn’t quite use the word surprise for what was roiling in my nervous system.

  After a point, the dialogue turned bilingual, as it often did with us. The guys’ absolute favorite Gujarati curse word, chodu, made its appearance, replacing fucker intermittently.

  While Gujarati was our collective mother tongue, all three of us spoke it distinctly, apropos to our individual ethnic backgrounds. Nirvaan’s dialect was harsh and guttural, even diluted by his strong American accent. He was a bona fide Gujjubhai, a typical man from Gujarat. Mine, due to my Persian-Zoroastrian ancestry, was the softer, fancier Parsi Gujarati. Zayaan’s was softer, too, idiomatic to his Khoja or Aga Khani Muslim roots and flavored by the accent he’d acquired from the dozen or so years of living in London.

  Having known the guys for half of my life, I’d become immune to their rough talk even though I rarely blasphemed myself. My mother, Feroza Batliwala, had been a true lady and had determined to raise one. So, while I’d failed in the etiquette department as a teenager, I tried hard to emulate my mother as much as I could now in honor of her memory.

  When Nirvaan exclaimed, “To hell with the fucking weather. Let’s test the bikes right now,” I drew on every ounce of self-control I had and kept my mouth shut.

  If I brought up his health, it would only make him mad and more determined to throw caution into the rain. I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t jump on a water bike and ride it to Hawaii just to prove fate wrong. I honestly didn’t know which scenario scared me more—Nirvaan trapped under a motorbike, bleeding to death on a highway; Nirvaan getting Jaws-attacked in the Pacific after flying off the Jet Ski; or Nirvaan catching deathly pneumonia right before his scheduled chemo-radiation.

  I placed my hands on my hips and glared—first at my husband and then his cohort. Even in my heels, I had to crane my neck to look at them. Both men were taller than average. Nirvaan was over six feet tall, and Zayaan was just shy of six feet. I was a midget compared to them at five foot three and slim as a beanpole.

  Our heights and widths hadn’t matched even when we’d first met, but in every other way, I’d been their equal. No, I’d been their boss because I was older—a full ten hours older than Zayaan and close to twenty hours older than Nirvaan. Hence, I was a cougar in my husband’s delightfully twisted mind. Anyway, I’d been a budding teenage girl with promising girl-powers, and they’d been hormone-driven idiots. Of course I’d led them down a merry path. I still would when I plucked up the courage.

  “I claim dibs on one and want mine painted periwinkle pink. The two of you can share the other one,” I declared cleverly.

  This way, I’d command my own ride, and Nirvaan would be chaperoned by default. The cherry on top? I did not come off as the world’s naggiest wife.

  Two masculine faces crinkled with confusion. The looks poured dread into my belly.

  “Please don’t say you bought three Jet Skis.” How much money did they blow?

  Zayaan took my statement as a personal affront, but Nirvaan laughed outright.

  “No stinting, remember? Of course, we bought three. Baby, are we or aren’t we the Awesome Threesome?” So saying, Nirvaan grasped me by the waist and hauled me up in the air. He spun us around and around until I was sure we’d fall and break our necks, all the while singing, “Happy birthday to us,” like a demented Donald Duck.

  “Put me down, you idiot,” I shrieked, swatting at his shoulders.

  He didn’t simply set me down. He slid me down his body, kissing me all through my descent. I felt dizzy, unsteady from his kisses, from the spins, and I wrapped my arms around him until the world righted itself. His heart beat strong and steady under my cheek.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud.

  I closed my eyes and burrowed into his chest. I didn’t want to let go, not just yet. Not ever, I vowed, tightening my hold on my husband.

  He moved then, not to disengage us, but his body went taut, as if he were reaching for something and—

  Oh, crap. I realized too late what he intended and wasn’t nimble enough to pull away in time.

  Just breathe, I told myself. It’s only Zai. You know him. It’s okay. You know him.

  “You’re insane, chodu,” Zayaan muttered right before I became the sandwich filling between two hard, half-wet, male bodies.

  I couldn’t help the shiver that coursed through me.

  The Awesome Threesome.

  A long time ago, we’d been that and more to each other, and in the coming year, we’d probably draw on that bond like we’d never done before. We needed to become a well-oiled machine again, working in tandem to fulfill the promises we’d made to Nirvaan, trying to live a normal life when our situation was anything but normal.

  I, Simeen Desai—a plain-Jane rebel, the mad Parsi chick—was living in a ménage with two gorgeous men, the twin knights of my life.

  I concentrated on that fiction. In my mind, I perpetuated the fantasy we’d once imagined for us because to think about the truth of our situation, about the inoperable metastatic tumor inside my husband’s brain, was anathema to me.

  The late spring drizzle didn’t let up for the whole day, leaving the guys and me pretty much housebound.

  Personally, I didn’t mind it so much. Trips to doctors’ offices often left me sore, sour, and in frantic need of my comfort zone.

  I changed into a simple top and a pair of knit shorts. Then, too restless to just sit around, playing video games with the guys, I started on my chores. I did two loads of laundry and vacuumed every square inch of the house, preparing it for Nirvaan’s parents, who were set to visit over the upcoming Mother’s Day weekend.

  The beach house had come fully furnished and comfortably so. The furniture, if not new or color-coordinated, was made of sturdy cedar wood and wicker that had withstood the water-heavy ocean air and deposits of inadvertently smuggled-in sand for decades. There was enough storage around the house that I didn’t need to worry about clutter when bombarded by our constant weekend guests, and the carriage house with its own bathroom was a bonus even if in disrepair. Zayaan wanted to quick-fix it up—spray-paint the walls, polish the furniture, or replace it with cheap new pieces—and move in there, so we might all have some breathing room. But Nirvaan wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted the three of us together at all times, space or no space. And what Nirvaan wanted, Nirvaan would get.

  He’d say, Jump.

  We’d ask, How high?

  He was dying. We were not. It was that simple.

  It wasn’t that space was an issue when it was just the three of us. The house was sufficiently large with an inviting open layout. The front door led directly into the living area, two bedrooms and a master bath fell to one side of it, and a third bedroom, a tiny den, and another bathroom crowded the other. None of the rooms had any doors on them, except the two bathrooms. Thick damask curtains acted as doors to the rooms, giving one a vague sense of privacy when drawn.

  I could go for hours without bumping into Zayaan, if I wished. The house was that spacious. The thing was, I didn’t seem to want to. I was getting used to him again. And no matter how resistant I still was about our living arrangement, my devious husband had counted on just that. Nirvaan wished I’d overlook Zayaan’s inadvertent transgressions—meaning, I should look more kindly toward his religion and his infamous Pakistani family, including his obnoxious mother. I’d perpetuated those lies for a long time, and I would continue to flam
e them. It was better the guys thought of me as a paranoid bigot than suffer the truth.

  The nonstop rain had triggered a drop in temperature, both outdoors and indoors, and one of the guys had thoughtfully built a fire in the living room.

  My chores done, I decided to serve lunch in front of the cheery crackling fireplace. I’d put together a nutritious bhonu meal of egg biryani and a Greek yogurt-based vegetable raita—a simple dish but plentiful—keeping the guys’ bottomless stomachs in mind. It’d taken Nirvaan a long time to rebuild his appetite, reawaken his taste buds that cancer medications had destroyed, and I dreaded the coming months that would leech it from him again. I determined to spoil him as much as possible until then.

  I wasn’t a great cook. I wasn’t bad either, and could manage simplistic dishes well enough. But given a choice, I’d gladly surrender the kitchen and its sink to a more seasoned power, one of the reasons I looked forward to my in-laws’ visits. No one indulged my husband’s notoriously Gujjubhai palate better than his mother. My mother-in-law was the undisputed queen of the Desai kitchen, and I, her quasi apprentice.

  That reminds me…

  “I should stock up on groceries before your mother arrives. If you guys have special requests, tell me now.” I paused, a forkful of biryani dripping with yogurt poised before my mouth. “Don’t make me or even yourselves run to the store twenty times for ingredients.”

  I exaggerated, but the guys did have a tendency to spring culinary demands when least expected. Like last week, Nirvaan had had a craving for Indian-style Hakka noodles in the middle of the night, and no Hakka noodle packets had been in the pantry.

  Nirvaan chewed on his food and my question, when, suddenly, his face twisted into a frown, as if he’d tasted something bad. Or rather, he’d seen something unpleasant—my bun. I’d bunched my hair into a topknot, so it wouldn’t get in the way of my chores.

  I sighed, reached up, and pulled the rubber band off, letting the weight of my crowning glory drop. “Happy?” I rubbed my scalp and fluffed my hair out.