A Girl Like That

by Tanaz Bhathena

  “Her good little girl was probably the one who contacted Farhan in the first place!” Ammi said irritably after the aunty left. She patted me on the arm. “Forget about her, beta. Girls like that only want to entrap rich and handsome boys like you into marriage.”

  The girl, as expected, had different plans from the mother: i luv u n wil run away wid u, farhan, she texted me one day.

  I never wrote back—not that I was really worried about entrapment or anything like that. I simply found someone else to e-mail. I almost always did.

  Bilal said that girls had this crappy sense of entitlement when it came to being treated “right” by guys. “You have to see how far you can push them,” he said. “How much they will put up with before they tell you to back off. You can be really surprised by the lengths a girl will go to when it comes to pleasing a guy she likes.”

  The girl from the deli, however, was different from the get-go. The way she walked a little ahead of me, as if she didn’t care whether I was following her or not—as if she was sure I would follow her—the way she stopped in front of my car—exactly my car, even though there was another black Beamer parked on the street outside. She stared at me again with a slight frown.

  “Where do you want me to—”

  “Not now.” Her voice was low and curt. “There’s a man watching us from the store. Be an elder brother, Rizvi. Pretend I’m Asma. Open the car and let’s get out of here.”

  She’s playing your game, Farhan miyan, I could hear Bilal say in my head.

  But the way she said my name, Rizvi, like she knew me the way Abdullah knew me. The way she knew enough not to get breathy and excited the way most girls I went out with did—at least not outside the car where anyone could see us. For a second I wondered if she was that chick Abdullah had been telling me about, the one who broke his heart along with his ego.

  A slight smile hovered on her lips. “Scared, Rizvi? Maybe I should walk home.”

  And in that moment neither Abdullah nor Bilal mattered anymore.

  “I don’t scare easily,” I said.

  * * *

  Once inside the car though, I didn’t ask her where she wanted to go. I got the sense that she didn’t really want to go home anyway. Or maybe it was another game of push—testing her limits, seeing what it would take to freak her out.

  A few kilometers down the road, the game began. “Corniche first,” she said. “It’s usually quiet in the afternoons. Good for a smoke.”

  I said nothing and fiddled with the controls of the radio until I found a station playing some Calvin Harris remix. I wanted to see if she was like Nadia, if she would get pissed when I didn’t reply.

  She didn’t. Maybe she simply trusted me. Maybe she could see through the game. Maybe both.

  I pulled up to a parking spot parallel to the shore on the North Corniche, next to the mosque I used to visit as a boy.

  I offered her a cigarette from my pack.

  “Excellent.” The lighter sparked and the lower half of her face glowed orange for a brief moment. “So what kind of fridge do you have at home, Rizvi?”

  Ignoring the question, I plucked a cigarette from the pack and lit up. “I thought you were gonna tell me more about your boyfriend back there.”

  “Porus?” She rolled her eyes. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  I shrugged and exhaled cigarette smoke. “If you say so. I wouldn’t want to be the proverbial bone in the meat of someone else’s relationship.”

  There was surprise in her laughter, a suggestion of genuine amusement. “Good one, Rizvi,” she said. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What kind of fridge do you have at home?”

  “Before I answer your weird question, I’d like to know your name. Unless”—I leaned closer—“your question is simply an excuse to see where I live.”

  “Oh don’t be ridiculous.” The smoke she blew in my direction stung my eyes. I leaned back again. “If we’re stopped by a muttawa or some other stick-wielding authority figure, we will obviously need to lie and say that we’re brother and sister. In which case, my name will be Asma Rizvi, not Zarin Wadia, which I will tell them before they whisk us off to separate areas for interrogation purposes and ask basic questions for which both of us should be able to give the same answers if—”

  “Wait,” I interrupted, her words finally registering in my brain. “What’s your name again?”

  She tilted her head sideways and smirked, almost as if she’d expected me to ask the question. “Zarin Wadia.”

  “Would you by any chance be the same Zarin my friend Abdullah keeps talking about?”

  “Maybe I am. Is there a problem?”

  There wasn’t. Not really. It didn’t bother me that this girl had gone out with Abdullah in the past or that she’d unceremoniously dumped him over the phone a couple of weeks before. When it came to girls, Abdullah and I had a deal: sisters were off-limits, but not exes. Especially hot exes. I studied Zarin’s face—her short black curls, the smooth hollow at the base of her neck, the unusual paleness of her skin highlighted even more by the delicate blush on her cheeks. What her motives were for going out with me, I did not know. Then again, I realized, I did not care.

  “Whirlpool,” I said finally. “The fridge I have at home, that is. It’s rather big. White, maybe off-white.”

  “White or off-white? Be specific.”

  She went through nearly three cigarettes while I shifted uncomfortably behind the wheel and answered questions about my parents, about Asma, about my aunt who gave Hindi tuitions in a building across from the academy’s girls’ section, even the name of the convenience store across from my apartment complex.

  She flicked the last glowing butt out the window. “That’s good enough.”

  I did a quick three-sixty of our surroundings. In the distance, a black speck that was a lone man watching the waves. The afternoon sun beat down on my car. It was a risk. The man could decide to turn around and walk this way anytime. A car could drive up behind us, could slow down to see what we were up to. But then I looked at Zarin’s face again and her lips parted slightly, almost as if she’d turned a little breathless.

  I leaned in.

  Her mouth was smoky and moist. Her hair smelled like sandalwood incense and shampoo. But when my hand crept up her ribs, she pushed away.

  Her breath came out hard and fast, though we hadn’t kissed for more than a few seconds. There was a look in her eyes that could have been confusion or nerves. Or maybe it was her heart. Pumping like mine from the adrenaline rush of being in danger.

  “It’s getting late.” She withdrew her nails from my wrist; there were little crescents now, right below the place where her abaya had brushed my skin. “That turkey’s beginning to stink up your car.”

  * * *

  Chem was where Bilal first told me about the “relaxant”—a vial of clear liquid that, in the right proportions, loosened your limbs and tied up your tongue, shutting down parts of the brain that didn’t need to be active. “Colorless, odorless, tasteless,” he said. “A few drops in water or a nice fruity drink. Drops, remember. And don’t go mixing it in alcohol either. You want the girl to experience paradise with you, not go there directly.”

  Days after my date with Zarin, he brought the vial to me outside the classroom, slipping it into the back pocket of my pants while he passed me in the corridor before our lab session. It was the second time I’d bought it from him. “Don’t sit on it,” he said. “That’s about a thousand riyals in your pocket.”

  Bilal had taken the money in advance. The price had spiked slightly since the Chowdhury girl. I never knew where he got his stuff from. Friends in high places, he always told me when I asked. Friends in high, high places.

  “Thanks, man.” I kept my voice as low as he did. “See you at lunch.”

  The corridor was empty, but we always talked like this as an extra precaution. As the bell for the third period rang, I opened the door to the lab and made my way to the desk at the very
back of the room, next to a cabinet full of dusty beakers and old lab manuals. I glanced around quickly; apart from the lab assistant who was busy setting up things at the front of the room, as usual, I was the only one there. Thanks to the head boy prep the principal subjected me to every other week for some school event or another, second periods on those Mondays were always half free—or at least I never went back to them once my fifteen-minute session with Siddiqui ended.

  I gently removed the vial from my pocket and transferred it to a secure little pouch in my backpack. About a minute later, the lab began filling up. Abdullah tossed his textbook and lab manual on our shared desk, rattling the empty test tubes in their stand.

  “Hey,” he said in a cool voice.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Our conversation the weekend before had not gone very well, especially when he found out about me and Zarin. We hadn’t spoken since then, which was why I was surprised when he sat down next to me and asked: “Are you seeing her again?”

  I looked at him carefully. “Yeah. This Thursday, in fact.”

  He gave me a tight smile. “Good luck.”

  I felt a slight twinge of guilt, but then pushed it away. We had an understanding about these things, I reminded myself. Abdullah knew that. I thought back to my kiss with Zarin last week. Her breathlessness. Those small, surprisingly strong fingers gripping my arms. That turkey’s beginning to stink up your car. The words had stayed in my head, teasing, tantalizing, taunting all night long, showing up when I least expected them to, like right now. My fingers tightened around the textbook for a split second, the knuckles pink and white. The way I wanted her skin to be when I was done with her. I edged my pack under the seat with the tip of my sneaker, careful so it did not touch any of the chair’s legs.

  “Old Rawoof failed half of XII 2 with the viva questions first period,” Abdullah said after a minute. “We can’t expect anything less from Dawood Madam, she’s in high board-exam-prep mode. I think I’m losing my mind, man! And why does it smell like farts around here?”

  The air in the chem lab didn’t smell any different from the usual: a combination of ink, sweat, and sulfur. But I knew what Abdullah was up to. Angry though he may have been with me initially, this was his way of giving me the green light, of saying that we were cool again and that he didn’t care what I did anymore, ex-girlfriend or not. I did not know what exactly had caused his change of heart. Maybe he was tired of our cold war. Or maybe he simply wanted to remain in the loop about what would happen next with Zarin and find out if I would succeed where he had failed. We were competitive in that way, Abdullah and I. Especially when it came to girls.

  I smirked for a split second and then put on another face—the one that looked like I was seconds from throwing up. “Probably the essence of old Rawoof,” I said. “Beans and puke.”

  And then Abdullah and I stuck our hands under our armpits and made farting sounds over and over until some of the other guys joined in, until the whole class forgot we had oral exams and started chanting, “Gas! Gas! Gas! Gas!”—ignoring the pathetic excuse for a lab assistant—until Dawood Madam entered the room and yelled at us to shut up.

  BLOOD

  Zarin

  “Zarin, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Porus said a couple of days after our fight at the deli. It was the sort of thing he usually did when we had a disagreement or a blowup—asking random questions or making small talk to ease the tension simmering between us.

  “Okay,” I said warily. “What did you want to know?”

  “I am wondering if you are—wait, no,” he began, suddenly switching to English. “I am wondering if there was something you’ve wanted desperately. Something you’ve waited for your whole life.”

  I could tell that he was still flustered. For some reason, Porus always started speaking in English around me when he was nervous, a quirk that, if I was being honest with myself, I found quite adorable.

  “Growing up and moving out of Masi’s house,” I said.

  “I know that. I am meaning … apart from that.”

  To be happy. The answer that came to my mind was simple. Raw. Too raw to relate to another person, let alone someone as attuned to my emotions as Porus.

  “What else is there to look forward to?” I replied.

  Which pretty much ended that conversation.

  Maybe I should have been kinder. Maybe I should have just told him he had onion breath and changed the entire topic of conversation to Tic Tacs and Juicy Fruit. But I’d just received an e-mail from Farhan Rizvi that morning and hadn’t been thinking too clearly.

  And it would have been a lie anyway. Porus’s breath wasn’t bad. I’d never found myself shrinking away from him for that particular reason, even though his uniform (and his car) did occasionally smell of meat and feta cheese. Porus wasn’t that bad looking for a guy. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his deep voice often making him sound older than he really was. I’d seen a few female customers staring at him in the deli from time to time, blushing when he smiled at them, though he seemed fairly oblivious to their interest. Even his shaggy eyebrows added to his appeal.

  The reality was that Porus was nice. Too nice for the likes of me. Porus may have claimed to like me more than any other girl he’d known, but if his mother asked him to stop dating me (which, considering the things Masi had told her about me, was extremely likely), he would, like the good Parsi boy that he was. This wouldn’t be unusual. I’d seen it happen several times in Mumbai, to other girls in Cama colony, and had sworn I wouldn’t be one of them.

  As for the kiss? Simple. It was an anomaly. A heat-of-the-moment thing. It didn’t matter how soft his lips had felt or how perfectly they had fit against mine, I told myself firmly. It would have been foolish to think otherwise.

  Abdullah once told me that Saudi society didn’t permit guys and girls to meet up alone because it was impossible for the relationship to remain platonic. “Think about it,” he’d said. “Our bodies are engineered for it. It’s like putting a key and a lock next to each other and not expecting someone to try and see how they fit.”

  At times like this I wished I had a girl for a friend instead of boys trying to jump my bones or Porus with his puppy-eyed devotion. Sometimes I even thought about my mother and wished she could be here to give me advice, even though thinking about her cramped up my insides. There were nights when I would see the flash of something silver in my dreams, shadows around me, long and thin like the legs of a stork, the feel of something warm and sticky trickling over my lips. Without even understanding why, I knew the dreams had to do with my mother. Not a knife, I would tell myself, whenever I woke up from these dreams, my clothes sticking to my back, my body twisted at that angle I’d always associated with nightmares. Maybe it was the flash of a stainless-steel plate from which she may have fed me as a small girl. And maybe the liquid wasn’t blood, but warm milk that I’d shut my mouth to. To this day, I could not and would not drink milk, despite Masi’s rages and beatings.

  The only other person I’d probably have asked any boy-related questions was Asfiya, the girl I used to sit with when I smoked on the water tank, even though we had never really talked much when we were up there. I’d overheard the teachers saying that Asfiya got engaged after graduation. Right at the age of seventeen to a guy she had seen once, over Skype. “Everything happens with technology these days, but that is the way arranged marriages still work,” Khan Madam had told our Physics teacher. “Marriage comes first. Love, if any, grows later and increases with time.”

  I wondered if the opposite was true for love marriages. If the love in those cases simply decreased instead of growing. Or was it marriage that created the problem, that made love lose its luster, the way it seemed to have for my aunt and uncle, who called each other darling or jaanu or sweetheart, but always with caution, sometimes even with a trace of venom?

  With Farhan Rizvi, however, things were different. For one: I wasn’t in love with him, even though he was the fir
st guy I’d ever had a real crush on. A guy whose kiss temporarily sent every other guy I’d known flying out of my head. Except for the very first time in his car, when I unwittingly compared the kiss to the one I’d shared with Porus. It had confused me so much that I pulled away from him after a few seconds. I didn’t know what was going on with me. I could have resolved everything by telling Porus: Yes, it’s Rizvi. He’s the one I was waiting for.

  But it would have been a lie. And Porus wouldn’t have understood anyway. “You don’t really know what you’re doing,” he told me in a rare fit of temper the day after I first went out with Rizvi. “You think you’re so smart. That you know everything. But you don’t, Zarin. You can’t always be in control. I’ve seen guys like your head boy Rizvi. I know what they’re like. They go out with different girls every week. He’ll use you and toss you out like everyone else.”

  “Have you ever considered that those stories may be rumors?” I asked angrily. “That they may have no basis in fact? Look, Porus, if you’re still angry about that kiss we had—”

  “I’m not talking about that.” He gave me a disgusted look. “I’m trying to tell you that there’s no smoke without fire. I did not like your ex-boyfriend, but at least that guy had some scruples. Farhan Rizvi has none.”

  “You don’t even know him!”

  “And you don’t know how he was watching you at the deli. He’s not a good guy. Mark my words on this.”

  How was he watching me? I would have asked if he hadn’t been so angry. Was it the way he had watched me at the fair all those years ago? Moments before head girl Durrani came waltzing in? The thought stirred me more than I would have liked to admit.

  “No way,” Rizvi said, when I told him about the incident at the fair. “I would have remembered you for sure.”

  It was a line, I knew. One he probably fed every other girl. I dealt with it by taking a drag of my cigarette and blowing smoke in his face. “That’ll teach you to forget me,” I said as he coughed.