Quarantine

by Rahul Mehta

  Outside, Paul put Asher in a cab headed for Queens, and he put his arm around Sanj and said, “Let’s go.” His place was nearby. It was a large, loft-style apartment, beautifully decorated. Sanj recognized the black chaise longue as a Le Corbusier. In bed, when Paul started to enter Sanj, Sanj asked, “Where’s the condom?” Paul said, “We don’t need it. I’m clean.” When Sanj tried to push Paul away, Paul said, “C’mon.” He kissed Sanj on the mouth then said, “It doesn’t feel as good with one of those things on. It kills all the sensation.” Sanj said, “Fine, but if you come inside me, I’ll kill you.”

  Afterward, it was too late to catch a train back to Long Island. Lying next to Paul, Sanj couldn’t sleep. He felt guilty for betraying Asher, not that he’d actually promised him anything. But more than that, Sanj couldn’t believe, knowing all that he knew, that he’d let Paul fuck him without a condom. Sanj lay awake the next few hours, imagining Paul’s fluids, infected fluids, Sanj imagined—a few drops of come or pre-come—invading his body. He imagined he could actually feel it: tiny cells of Paul—a complete stranger Sanj wouldn’t even recognize were he to see him again—coursing through Sanj’s body, up his torso, down through his arms and hands, up through his neck, the liquid pooling in his head in the hollows just behind his eyes. It was like Paul was a part of him now.

  At five, Sanj got out of bed and left, Paul still asleep. He slogged onto the A train to Penn Station, waited half an hour for the next train, changed at Jamaica, walked the twenty minutes from his stop in Long Island to his uncle and auntie’s house. The shops along the main street were just beginning to pull up their metal shutters. When he arrived at the house, Lala Auntie was in the kitchen in her nightgown and dressing coat, scraping into the garbage the food from the plate she had left out for Sanj the night before. She barely looked at him as he walked past her.

  Sylvie’s words about Chad echoed in Sanj’s head: He’s come home to rest. Sanj realized he needed to leave. Now. His parents were due back in just a few more days, but Sanj couldn’t wait. He had to get out while he still could. He thought of the visit to Sylvie’s a few days earlier: the sagging porch, the buckling linoleum floor, everyone in sweatpants. He remembered the promise he’d made to her four years ago, when he’d said, “You’ll get out of here, too. I’ll help you.” He thought, too, of what his father had said on the phone about Chandu Uncle and their early years in America, how neither of them could have made it without the other. He decided that, this time, he wouldn’t leave Sylvie behind.

  Sylvie didn’t need much convincing. She told her parents she was going on a week’s vacation with Sanj, though she and Sanj—in words whispered to one another, as though saying them too loudly might jeopardize or jinx them—both hoped it would turn into something more. Aside from occasional trips across the river to Ohio, she hadn’t set foot outside West Virginia since high school. She was ready for an adventure.

  They took a cab to the bus station, a bus to Charleston, and a train from there to New York. The train would take twelve hours overnight.

  In the row in front of them were a large woman and her young daughter, who must have been about eight and who was clutching a Bart Simpson doll. Across from them was an out-of-work coal miner—muscular and compact, with dirty fingernails. He was planning to show up, without forewarning, at the New Jersey house of his half-brother, with whom the man had never been particularly close. But he had nowhere else to go, or so he explained, over the course of a couple hours, to the large woman across the aisle. “I tried calling, Lord knows I tried. But I could never finish dialing. Partly because I was worried he’d say no, and then where would I go? But mostly because I’m just so embarrassed for screwing everything up.” Later, he said to the woman, “You’re so easy to talk to. Why can’t everyone be like you?”

  Sitting behind Sanj and Sylvie were preteen boys on their way back home to the Bronx (reluctant to be returning—“The Bronx is tough”—after having spent the summer with their aunt in South Carolina). As Sanj passed their seat on his way back from the toilet, he thought he’d heard one of them mutter “faggot,” but wasn’t sure. Later, the same boy popped his head over the seat, and asked Sanj if he could borrow the batteries from Sanj’s Walkman to use in his own Walkman, and Sanj, for reasons he couldn’t understand—given what he’d thought he’d heard the boy say earlier—complied. The boy blasted Tupac, sharing the earphones with his brother, listening through one speaker while his brother listened through the other.

  It was night. Most of the lights in the train car were off, but many passengers hadn’t pulled their curtains shut, and Sanj could see the lights from the streetlamps outside roll across Sylvie’s face. The half-light gave everything in the compartment a dreamlike quality.

  Sanj heard giggling, then moaning from the seat in front of him. When he ventured a peek, he saw that the man and the little girl had switched places. The man was now in the seat with the large woman, the woman’s daughter sitting by herself across the aisle. Sanj saw the man on top of the woman, one hand over her breast, the other under her skirt. Sanj thought about the man’s dirty fingernails.

  Sanj and Sylvie slumped down in their chairs, their knees pressing against the seat in front of them. Sylvie whispered, “I want this to work. I want a new start.” Sanj took her hand. She rested her head on his shoulder. In the dark car, cocooned among these people all coupled off—the man and the woman in the seat ahead, the boys sharing the earphones behind them, the little girl across the aisle hugging her Bart Simpson doll—Sanj felt the train tracks rumbling below him, the train car hurtling forward, and he felt hopeful, like they were heading toward something.

  Early the next morning, groggy-eyed, they switched trains at Penn Station, and hopped on the LIRR to Long Island. Chandu was waiting for them at the stop.

  Sanj hadn’t told him he’d be bringing a friend, much less a female friend. Chandu Uncle looked surprised, then disappointed, shaking his head, but he didn’t protest. At the house, The Jasmines gave Sylvie the once-over, their lips curling in disapproval as they tossed their perfumey hair. Only Lala showed any sympathy. Speaking to Meghana in a firm tone Sanj hadn’t heard before, she arranged for Sylvie to share Meghana’s bedroom. She also managed to teach Sylvie, through a series of gestures, how to eat Indian food properly, how to tear the roti with only one hand and to use it to scoop up the vegetables.

  Still, Sanj could tell, almost immediately, it was a bad idea to have brought Sylvie. Whatever courage or resolve she had managed to muster in the dark on the train had quickly vanished. Instead, she retreated into herself. She didn’t want to leave the house. When she did venture out—Sanj dragging her through SoHo (“This is the newsstand where I saw Naomi Campbell buying three copies of a magazine with her face on the cover; doesn’t her manager provide her with copies?”)—she lagged behind, barely looking up from the sidewalk.

  By the third night, Sylvie had given Meghana the emerald green Yves Saint Laurent cocktail dress which she had bought at Bergdorf four years ago, and which she had packed for the trip, not out of any rational belief that she would be able to wear it again, that she would be able to fit into it or have the life that would warrant it, but out of a hope she was too frightened to even fully imagine or name. When Meghana, cooing over the dress, asked with disbelief, “This was yours?” Sylvie replied, “No, it belonged to someone else.”

  By then, Sanj’s parents had returned from India with his grandmother. He spoke to them on the phone. His father told him about his briefcase, which had been stolen at JFK (“I only set it down for a minute in the restroom”) and about his grandmother, who had pouted the whole way and had barely spoken a word since arriving. “She’s miserable,” Bipin admitted. “But that’s to be expected. It takes time.”

  Toward the end of the conversation, Bipin said, “You shouldn’t have left your grandfather alone.”

  “He didn’t need me.”

  “How do you know?”

  Sanj had resumed his charade of
pretending to go to work at Vogue, leaving Sylvie, most afternoons, alone with Lala. One day, he said, “Great news! They’re letting me write the preview after all, the one about the emerging writer.”

  “I know,” Sylvie said.

  “How could you know? I just found out myself.”

  “No,” Sylvie said. “I know.”

  “Know what?”

  “The truth.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything.” She was looking directly at him, something, Sanj now realized, she rarely did. He noticed, too, for the first time, her eyes: emerald, like the dress, and glowing.

  Sanj said, “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “I know why you were asking about Chad Webster.”

  Sanj didn’t respond.

  “I know you’re gay.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “I know you don’t work at Vogue.” She looked to Sanj for a response, but he was quiet. It was he, now, who was averting his eyes. She said, “You’re not fooling anyone.”

  “My parents . . .”

  “Your parents,” she said, interrupting, “don’t want to know the truth.”

  He wondered how she knew about Vogue, and for how long she’d known. Had she known sitting on the sectional in his basement, watching La Double Vie de Véronique, when he told her about Anna Wintour and the Lucite watches? Or when they sat together in the Van Gogh room? Had she listened to him rattle on and on about the article he’d pitched, knowing he was making it all up? When he’d said he was lucky, was she secretly laughing at him? Lucky, my ass.

  “You’re jealous,” Sanj said.

  “Of what?”

  “My life has possibilities. I may have had a rocky start here in New York, but I guarantee I have a bright future. What does your future hold? Getting fat in your parents’ house in West Virginia? Another failed attempt at fucking community college? Sitting on the couch with your brother, smoking pot? You’ll never be anything other than a loser.”

  Sanj took a step back, looked her up and down—the way The Jasmines had when she first arrived, the way so many had over the past four years—and said with disgust, “Look at you.”

  He stormed out of the house and toward the station to catch a train into the city. The LIRR was empty, as it usually was this time of day. No one was taking the train into the city; rush hour was long over. Sanj had a whole row to himself; in fact, he practically had the whole car to himself. He lay down across the seats, on his side, curling his body into the smallest ball he could manage. He wanted to disappear. Was it true, what Sylvie had said? Did everyone know? Had everyone always known?

  When he arrived at Penn Station, he pulled on his headphones, and started walking. The city still seemed so strange to him. He tried to imagine what it had been like for his father arriving in Oklahoma at age seventeen. How many times must his father have stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, seeing the houses and the lawns and the trees and the cars in the driveways, and, remembering his village, wondered, “Why am I here?”

  Sanj looked around. Without realizing it, he’d wandered over to Bryant Park, where he’d often spent time when he was pretending to be at work. Over the summer, several days in a row, Sanj had noticed a South Asian homeless man, which shocked and surprised him. He was more accustomed to the Indians in their mansions in Mulberry Hills. Several times Sanj tried approaching the homeless man, often with his handheld tape recorder, but the man always retreated. Sanj wanted to ask him what it was like for him. “How do you survive?” Now the man was nowhere to be found. Summer was over. It was fall, the first in seventeen years when Sanj wasn’t preparing to go back to school.

  He sat down by the statue of Gertrude Stein. He’d admired her work when he’d read it in college in a twentieth-century literature class. The statue’s artist had rendered Stein round and sage as a Buddha, her eyes cast downward. Sanj remembered a quote, which he now imagined Stein leaning over and whispering to him: “A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.” When he’d read the quote in class, he’d instantly felt a connection, and had scribbled it on the cover of his lit notebook; it seemed appropriate, since, though he wasn’t quite failing the class, he wasn’t doing particularly well, either. Still, Sanj wasn’t quite sure what the quote meant.

  First L.A., now New York: Sanj’s attempts at carving out a life for himself had been failures. He thought of his father. He had come to a new world and built a life in the unlikeliest of places. He’d constructed a mansion, erected a fountain, encircled it with scenes from his life. Sanj couldn’t even manage to keep an unpaid internship.

  “A better life,” his father had said. When Sanj pressed him about what that meant, Bipin said, “More opportunities for myself and for your mother. But mostly for you, my darling son.” He had held out his hands, as if offering a gift. “It’s all for you.”

  It was eight by the time Sanj returned to Long Island. The house seemed particularly quiet. He could hear clattering dishes from the dining room. He found the family there—Lala, Chandu, The Jasmines—along with Sylvie, eating dinner. Sanj sat down. Lala had already set his place, even piling the plate with food. Little was said at dinner, but Sanj couldn’t help feeling that he was being stared at. The Jasmines shot him harsh glances, narrowing their eyes. Had Sylvie told them? Had they told Chandu Uncle? Lala Auntie?

  After dinner, Sanj found Sylvie in Meghana’s bedroom. She was sitting alone on the large, queen-size bed, curled up on top of the pink duvet, reading. She looked up from her book for a moment, but then went back to reading.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” Sanj said. He realized how insincere it must have sounded. It seemed to have become a mantra in their relationship, Sanj saying over and over to Sylvie sorry, sorry, sorry.

  He noticed that she had packed her suitcase. “Are you leaving?”

  Sylvie didn’t answer. He couldn’t believe the horrible things he’d said to her. He wondered if his father and Chandu Uncle had ever fought those first years in America. Surely, they must have. Had they hurt one another? How had they mended it?

  “Please stay,” Sanj said. As he formed the words, he realized how desperately he meant it—not for Sylvie’s sake, but for his own. “Please don’t leave me here alone.”

  He said, “Or maybe, if you’re going back to West Virginia, I’ll come with you.”

  Sylvie put down her book. “No,” she said. “You can’t.”

  Sanj stood in the doorway, blinking. He understood.

  Downstairs, Lala was sitting in the living room, reading a Gujarati-language newspaper. Sanj sat down next to her. They were silent. They had nothing to say to each other, no common language to speak.

  At first, Lala didn’t look at him. Sanj sat quietly for a minute or two, and then found himself, almost without knowing it, scooting a little closer to her. Sanj felt his eyes well up with tears. Lala put her newspaper down, and looked at him. Her eyes were soft. She lowered her lids slightly. She opened up her right arm, and Sanj slid in, eventually resting his head on her shoulder. She held him.

  He knew he would have to call his father and tell him everything. Safe in Lala’s arms, he imagined it now. He would say, “Dad, I need to talk to you.” His father would be in the enormous living room, which was a sunken room, two steps down from the rest of the level, making the already high ceilings even higher. He and Sanj’s mother would be sitting on the sofa—a divan, really, with red brocade. They’d be watching a Bollywood movie, as they often did in the evenings, the videocassettes shipped to them from the Indian grocery store in Columbus. So many of the Bollywood films Sanj had seen had the same plot—a boy falls in love with a girl, but his parents have already fixed up an engagement to someone else, have already planned out another life for him—and this one would be no different. Bipin would pause the movie and say, “Tell us. We’re listening.” Sanj would be on speakerphone, and he would try his best to make his voice heard, to not let the cavernous house swallow him.

/>   Acknowledgments

  I am full of gratitude for the many, many people who have provided encouragement and support over the years and who have had faith in me even when I didn’t. A complete list would rival in length the short story collection itself. But I would like especially to thank the following:

  My agent, Nat Jacks, for finding me, for being patient with me, and for believing in me.

  My editor, Rakesh Satyal, for his generous and incisive readings of my work and for his unflagging enthusiasm (no one could ask for a better editor); his assistant, Rob Crawford; Katie Salisbury; Joseph Papa; and all the other wonderful folks at HarperCollins.

  The tremendous team that launched my book in India: Chiki Sarkar, Rachel Tanzer, and Sohini Bhattacharya.

  All the editors who have published stories from the collection: Diane Williams at NOON; David Lynn at The Kenyon Review; the editors at Fourteen Hill; Colleen Donfield, Andrew Snee, and Sy Safransky at The Sun; Michael Koch at Epoch; Rajni George at The Caravan; and Kathy Pories and Madison Smartt Bell, for selecting my work for the anthology New Stories from the South.

  The students, faculty, and staff in the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program for sharing their tremendous talents with me, particularly my classmates Stephanie Carpenter, Phil LaMarche, Monique Schmidt, Nina Shope, Christian TeBordo, and Erin Brooks Worley; my teachers Bob O’Connor, Arthur Flowers, Brian Evenson, and Mary Karr; and my amazing, amazing thesis adviser and hero, George Saunders.

  All the additional readers whose feedback helped shape this manuscript, especially Anne Coon, Gail Hosking, and Susan Morehouse.

  John Laprade and Kate Hawes, for somehow managing to make me look, in my author photos, a little less like the total dork that I am.

  Erin Brooks Worley, whom I’ve already thanked, but must thank again (and again and again and again . . .) for invaluable critiques and for the birds.