Sugar, Smoke, Song

by Reema Rajbanshi

  GALAXIES

  Years later, she’d spot in strangers his gentle hunch and squint harder to reel him in. Luminous planets spinning. Years later, he’d call three more times, alternately yelling and weeping. If I could do it again, I’d do it differently. Years later, she’d be coaching wild-limbed girls, and he’d mirage from a chair in the back. Dwarf suns throbbing. Years later, he’d hear from some law crony, over lobster bisque, how much she’d given up! Not just him but propriety.

  He didn’t hear how, the afternoon Vero and Camus traded rings, Jumi walked to that bridge over the Charles. How a bagpiper blared a ditty that had roused them each dawn. How she wasn’t ready for the tears that sprang up when longboats rowed into the light.

  Swan Lake Tango

  We’re together tonight, Sammy standing right behind me, and still, I want to run down and touch him, my other guy. Chandeliers glitz the lobby, doors open like mouths, and there he is among the black coats. Isn’t it him: Walter Singh? Shoulders sloping with prep school ease? Sweaters and slacks made for wineglass company I’ve never kept, never will?

  Girls like me, who want to make with boys like him, hate ourselves for it, but want it every time. We want to press our fingers between those blades, so those brown eyes feel without shifting, the fundamental message. Walt, it’s Jumi. Your first. Love-love-love.

  But Sammy’s hand, my wrist, saves me from the coats, and that shiny head—an ordinary face—poof! melts into crowd.

  “Everything okay?” Sammy says.

  “Perfect,” I say, hugging him, praying, please don’t let me fuck this up, let me keep this, let me pretend.

  We fold away our usher gloves, hold sweaty hands out into Lincoln Center Plaza—and what do you know? I look for Walt. Here on the street, the starless sky over us, the city lights blurring figures rushing by, I squeeze Sammy’s hand. I clasp two men in one body, I meld past and present, I make amends.

  Sam, don’t tell me magic ain’t real. If your heart’s anything like mine, it can pull some pretty screwy shit.

  Odile, the black swan, swirls only into Tchaikovsky’s third act, to steal the prince from the rightful swan, the white one. I imagine her on thick Russian legs once favored by critics, fluttering her talons for the kill. I imagine her pirouetting her glossy black tail, as if to say, Why choose goodness when you can fling me up, born of ambition and bitterness and my father’s tricks?

  At dawn, I hop the train to reach the studio first, even before Sammy, and dance the tango alone. It’s a tricky dance, this tussle between lovers, and I still don’t have the beat down. Sure, slide-step-step, but your partner’s supposed to change the sequence on you. That’s why you’ve got to hold the beat, you’ve got to have rhythm, something nobody can teach you.

  Another pair of ears, a separate beating heart, arms and legs that cut the stage to their own sweet minutes—and rhythm’s near impossible. I figure I might as well dance alone, but the teachers say I’d have to imagine someone in order to learn. And I don’t know anymore who I’d pick, what I want, how much distance to keep. I don’t know if any tango is worth it.

  After all, the teachers also say movement never lies, it’s the barometer of the soul. Well then, how come I couldn’t tell Walt would waltz me into a scary corner? Why can’t I say if, after one tender reggae, Sammy and I are going to sit the rest of this out?

  Maybe I should’ve seen the signs, like those end-of-relationship mornings when Sammy fetal-curled in his sleep, warding off my memories, or when I started thinking back to why things ended for Walt and me.

  “I can’t take it anymore,” Walt had said. “There’s a limit to how much anyone can take. Maybe I’ve reached mine.”

  Twenty-seven times I’d dumped him, and always we’d reached for each other again, in his dorm room or mine. Our crazy-in-love act had spoiled me.

  “Don’t you care anymore?” I said.

  Girls drifted by our Cambridge bench like Chanel and Gucci models.

  “Jumi,” he said. “Jumi, I don’t know.”

  But Sammy knew the day we paired in the axé, the moment he held my wrist and spun me. He let me know back, with his up-down flicking eyes, his nervous talk of Graham over coffee, his silver Corolla pulled right on time for dinner at Siam King.

  “I’ve never felt this way,” he said the first night, his torso an ivory tusk under a fat Bronx moon.

  “You’re just a baby,” I said, and rubbed my toe up his dolphin limbs.

  He is twenty-two, younger than I was when Walt and I stopped talking, and as white as the early morning paper. Lord have mercy, is what all the aunties are thinking. Jumi, have fun. Jumi, don’t get attached. Jumi, does he do it like an Indian?

  My baby does it like a man. Maybe it was the fake sex that did me and Walter in, how he lay there like a virgin, not knowing push or pull of his God-given gift, waiting for me to strut and work myself on top. Did rich boys need a tutor for loving? Or did they slum to break themselves in, then move on up the ladder?

  When Walter became a man, it was with some Heidi and Laura after me, and he said delectably, like he was sucking on a cherry, “You could say the white woman’s been the ghost in my relationships.”

  (No, asshole, I wouldn’t.)

  And just like that—snap!—my heart a thin brown twig.

  Sammy wouldn’t say it. Sammy says nothing, like a good white boy, till too late. Only once, with my bronze limbs crossed over his pale pink chest, did he say, “The color of my true love’s hair is black.”

  It’s the Irish poet in him that won me over, and the Irish drunk that tries to turn me out. Eight months of him laughing and snoring, eight months of me crying and yelling—and still, I won’t give up. Off the sheet between me and Sammy, Walt shimmers and croons. Jumi, you don’t have what it takes. Jumi, you don’t know what compromise means. Jumi, are you going to fuck this up as well?

  “We’re too different,” Sammy tells the ceiling.

  “That,” I answer, “was visible from the start.”

  Then I roll over and say what Walt said a hundred times, proving to Sammy that his Catholic miracles are real, or to myself that karma’s a bitch. “Give me one more chance. I can change.”

  Black Swan (n). A rare sub-species with black coloring once considered a genetic impossibility.

  The Tango (n). Lover’s duel, believed to have originated with freed slaves and danced between men.

  A Lake (n). An enclosed body of water; a place to fish or drown; a meeting point in Swan Lake, where characters fall in love, morph, and die.

  Playtime’s over, the troupe trickling into the studio, arching their backs and stretching their calves in sun. Sammy pliés with the men by the brightest pole and doesn’t look over, doesn’t say hi, plays hot and cold like a true tango dancer. Sometimes, I think he’s too dedicated to his craft. I know we should feel la alma de tango and all, but that doesn’t entail being a deaf-and-dumb dick.

  A cello worms sadly into the air, and I clippity-clop over and say, “Morning, baby.”

  “Morning,” he says.

  “I left early to warm up,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says. “So did I.”

  On the honey floor, dancers shuffle into pairs, bodies slanted like arrows aimed at the sky.

  “Come on,” I say, placing his hand on my waist, reciting from the postcard on the studio door. “Let’s make a date . . .”

  Slide-step-step.

  “ . . . to tango quite late.”

  Sammy pauses me, shifts us left. “And when we get tired . . .” he says.

  Slide-step-step.

  “ . . . we’ll just hesitate.”

  But he won’t look at me and he doesn’t sound sure.

  Since the Caitlin thing, Sammy and I are working on what he calls “space,” what feels to me like an abyss he’s dropped into, off a cliff he pulled me to in the first place. Already one month, but his sweatshirts and condoms still lie around, and the one weekend night he comes to claim something, we play Boggle
instead.

  Always, I lose. I’m not skilled at teasing points from plurals, reading backward, or jumbling words up. Always, we switch to another game, what he calls my mother country legacy: I’ve got hope, he’s got the diamond, and we make like a luxury item neither of us can afford. When he sweats over me, I tell him I love his fucking jewels, I love a guy like him.

  Truth is, I do, but I also hate the rich, the way they parade their wants, junk what they’ve used, how they can’t fathom any suffering other than theirs.

  “How could you do this?” I said when he first said “space,” right after he’d come back from Texas, where his rich redneck daddy lives, and his beer-guzzling ex, Caitlin. I threw a bottle past him, shattering it into confetti on his bed. “I trusted you. And look where it got me!”

  Sammy held his head. “Like a trained dog, the past rolls over to die, then pounces on you from behind.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You said that. One of those times babbling about Walter.”

  “I said it because I didn’t want to repeat it.”

  But from the start, we were counting our ghosts.

  At dinner, when Sammy rose for the toilet, his daddy said, “What do your folks do? What part of the city they from?” After his daddy left, Sammy said, “He asked if I really like the ethnic type. And said you spoke good English.” When Sammy called it quits, my father said, “These Americans. For them, it’s easy come, easy go. No understanding of commitment.”

  So I lie in my empty bed, the wind howling through the winter branches, and wonder if Walter was right. I’ll never find a guy as good as him; I’ll never work it out with anyone else; no one’s man enough for me.

  I lie in bed, my heart pumping the way it did the night Caitlin called, one month ago.

  “Sammy, I love you,” she screamed. “I’ve always loved you, I always will.”

  “Drunk-dial,” Sammy told me.

  And I lay in bed, stark brown naked, telling him I didn’t like such things one bit. And when he rose to leave, telling him I didn’t mind it from him, I minded it from her. And when he gripped the doorknob to shut it, telling him space was good, space would calm us down, things were mostly fine, we could work things out.

  Dancing again and again into your lover’s heart is no joke when it is as hyped as Texas and you are as jittery as the Bronx and the dance is far-off Argentinean, so standing still seems safer because you are prima donna at running, having long vaulted out the nosebleed section for Love in the front row, except you’ve met the Bad Boy you always outran in this Greco-Roman cowboy who measures out spiced spaghetti sauce from his Grandma’s Scratch before he lures you with gringo Spanish into an unmade bed, and before he backs up, spur-step by spur-step, out the door, scuffed black shoes cocked straight at your heart.

  Water break—and as dancers part, Sammy drops me and rushes to the pole. I trail after him, and when I touch his shoulder, the other guys turn to watch.

  “After you left last night,” I say, “I called several times.”

  “I turned off my phone,” he says.

  For whom, I want to ask, but maybe I know already and maybe it doesn’t really matter. The cello’s wailing again, and when Sammy steers us back to the center, we don’t look at each other. We take our stances like two prizefighters, and I assess the men I could have danced with instead.

  Allen Mackenzie: Mr. Goldilocks in a red ruffled shirt, prancing like some frisky Clydesdale horse. Ryan Leung: Asian flexmaster with his crazy turns, his face stern like he’d murder you if he had the time. Jason Stackhouse: black Jesus with his outstretched arms, his eyes fixed either up at the disco ball or down on the floor.

  I guess I’m lucky, but still. I strain against Sammy when he pushes. I pull away when he would turn.

  “What are you doing?” he says.

  “Dancing,” I say. “Same as you.”

  He dips me then, and because I stare upside down at the next couple, I almost slip.

  “If you don’t want to dance,” he says, “just say so.”

  “I want to dance,” I say. “I want to talk straight with you.”

  “I don’t feel like we can do that anymore,” he says.

  “Which?” I ask. “Wait,” I say as he walks like an injured king to that pole. “Where are you going?” I call, running with him down the dingy stairs. “Don’t leave,” I shout, but he merges into the cab-and-peopled streets.

  And there I stand, on the grating in my tango heels, and every face that turns to sneer is Walter’s. Polished, wide-eyed, hard. Surprise, surprise, Jumi. I don’t feel sorry for you.

  I told Sammy stories about Walter, maybe too many.

  The first few months, I told him how Walter nicknamed me cavewoman, hobbit, bottom-heavy; how when I cried and said he didn’t make me feel beautiful, Walter poked my tummy and mimicked me; how when his little man failed, Walter said I didn’t dress sexy enough, and when I brought it up again, said I never said that, you’re exaggerating.

  The first few months, Sammy cradled me and whispered, “You don’t have to worry with me. I’ll never do that.”

  I told Sammy how, when I got picked as first dancer, Walter said the director was a dirty old man; how Walter would praise this gorgeous girl, but one by one, I had to stop talking to my friends; how when I called Walter, after getting mugged one night, he asked me to call later, his friends were over, the basketball game was about to end.

  In our summer fights about his flirting, his drinking, his plans for what we did when, Sammy said, “Please don’t compare me to Walter. You’ve got to trust me.”

  I told Sammy how Walter’s brother called me volatile, because I’d tried breaking up twenty-seven times, and I’d shamefully agreed; how he finally told me, “You’d teach our son Assamese, and I’d want him to be President;” how in the last days, he’d yell at me for hours on the phone.

  In the end, when Sammy was coming unannounced at the house to return my gifts, he said crossly, “I don’t even want to hear his name. I’m nothing like him.”

  I told Sammy how when my father had cancer, Walter never asked how he was doing; how Walter gave out my email to keep tabs on me after I moved; how, when I called him one last time, he said he’d cheated on his girlfriend, and that he and I should get together.

  Now Sammy says, as he lies beside me on Boggle nights, and it’s this that scares me most: “I don’t care if you contact him. Go ahead.”

  Redemption Moves Like This. When Sammy first brought up classes, he was spinning about the kitchen in just his khakis, one palm over his belly button, another up in the air. Clasping the hand of a woman I couldn’t see. “Once upon a time, it was a pimp-prostitute dance,” he said. “Born in the slums of Buenos Aires.” All I heard was the baleful bandoneon and all I said was “but it looks expensive with those roses and heels and lace.” He slid left past the colander and the knives, and I didn’t wonder where he’d learned the lines he repeated, “Tango’s not in the feet but in the heart.” So I hopped down from the barstool and pummeled into his chest—his frown sloshed up like my Singha—but he drew me in, as I later learned you didn’t do in tango—be close yet free—and misleadingly step-slid us round the kitchen, across the hall, into the living room where we peeled apart on the couch. Arms splayed, feet moist, breathing off-time.

  Stupid heels! It’s like running the ten blocks to Sammy’s apartment on nails, all while trying to think of one good story to convince him.

  Maybe I could say how:

  My two years with Walt, we danced twice. Our first date, he marched his knees up and down, flapped his elbows like wings, grabbed my waist and spun me, howling the words. No rhythm at all, just sheer energy, and I thought what a sweet, sweet boy.

  Our last dance, he left me on the floor alone, so I hung over the railing, watching him schmooze with his friends, in their neat suits, clinking glasses. I hadn’t wanted to witness Harvard kids bopping to rap lyrics they knew nothing about. So I waved for him to take me
home, where, with our shadows rocking on the wall, our lovemaking felt like one of us was dead.

  Or I could tell Sammy that:

  For a white boy, he has the moves, can salsa and samba with any Carnival king. That’s what made me laugh the first time, his serious chin, his flaring nostrils, the way he counted under his breath: one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three.

  “Those numbers aren’t gonna run away,” I said.

  Flare-flare went his nostrils and he glared at me.

  But I had to like a guy who’d try anything, even styles he didn’t know, drinking two beers to get himself going, dancing all night to reggaeton he didn’t like just to please me.

  “Hurray! You scored brownie points,” I said.

  “Good. That’s what I was going for,” and he slipped his palms way inside my belt.

  But now, when I see my baby packing his bags like a soldier, I say instead, “Sammy. Let’s talk at least.”

  He slumps down onto the bed.

  Movement never lies. Is this a ruse of his?

  “Let’s wait,” I say, “for the Christmas show.”

  “What good will that do?” he says.

  I kneel before him and hold his hands.

  “We’ll have time to cool down and think,” I say.

  And bless him—he isn’t Walt—he can’t be—he says like a wary little boy, “I don’t know if I can wait that long. But okay.”

  Tonight’s Christmas stage, men leap like stags, fly with the wings of swans, and I track their shadows darting over Sammy’s face. He’s got the profile of a Roman coin, all angled nobility, not the lush Indian lips, round Chinese nose of Walt, who got called pretty, halfie, a Tiger Woods. All this time I took—two years alone—to pick a different man, and I find someone who’d model Calvin Klein just as easy, fight the hordes just as quick with his stubborn ways, has led too charmed a life to hold my sorrows longer than a hot potato.