Neon Noon

by Tanuj Solanki

  Soon our moods lightened and we shared the same jokes that we had cracked at our previous meeting, which according to me is a sign of deepening friendship. Once again, T never really laughed, just smiled.

  When we finished a quarter of rum, he stopped me from ordering a repeat. He said, let me take you somewhere else today. Where? Somewhere close, to a friend’s place. We can walk there.

  We went to a building not very far from Janata Bar and very close to T’s flat. We climbed the four floors we needed to and rang the bell to an apartment, whose heavy door could not quite hide the hilarity that came from behind it. The door was opened by a guy with bloodshot eyes who smiled a drooly, otiose smile—and who took great pains to introduce himself, but whose name I cannot now place conclusively between Sridhar and Sriram.

  Inside the living room, there were ten or so people and half of them were girls. The flat was as spacious as T’s. All the girls were prettier than me. In fact, all of them were almost grotesquely pretty, with lipstick and nail polish and rouged cheeks. It took me a while to adjust.

  The room was inordinately hot for some reason, and it felt as if we were inside a warm beer bottle, tipsily coagulating. There was an air conditioner, but it wasn’t functioning. The ceiling fan seemed to be complaining about the number of people it had to serve. There was a couch facing a TV that hung on the opposite wall, and two people sat on it playing a videogame while the rest talked or drank or strummed a guitar or passed a joint. T and I took a drag each, and T decided that the stuff was too strong. I liked him for doing that, for deciding for me.

  The atmosphere in that living room was like a sluggish carnival, and just like in a carnival, it wasn’t certain that everyone knew everyone else. T knew all the guys present, and sometimes they’d call each other by nicknames. The girls, however, were almost summarily unknown. Just who had invited them remained unclear. They had names like Preity and Sonu and Shazia which—compared to the guy’s names like Sriram/Shridhar, Mohit, Ameya—seemed a bit insincere. No one knew me either, and with this thought I settled back into my chair and looked at the toil of the ceiling fan. Perhaps the drag hit me now, for I thought that all the women here were whores. Was I a whore? I looked at T, and he was smiling this wrinkle-producing smile of his, a smile that I only now realized I’d classified as wrinkle-producing.

  Suddenly it was our turn to sit on the couch. T placed a controller in my hand and explained to me the maneuvers of the game we were to play. It was called FIFA and it was about simulation football. He told me what I would need to do to score. I told him that I’d never played a videogame in my life and that making me play would be a waste of time. At this, the other participants in the room, the men, got excited and told me that all of them had one fine day played the game for the first time and gradually became better at it and the same would be true for me too. The first thing to do was to choose a team to play with. A guy stepped in and gave us the idea that Spain, the football team Spain, was the strongest team in FIFA and that, because I was weak, I should play with Spain. Another guy came in and suggested that T should play with India, for India was a weak team, and India was India, and T was a good player. The game began. Some of the guys laughed, though I didn’t get the joke. I looked at the screen and the chaos on the screen—miniature electronic illusions flitting like flies—and I couldn’t make out what was happening and what buttons I needed to press. I pressed all the buttons that I could at all times and I’m not sure if anything happened. T asked me to calm down. Every now and then he would say wow or shit and I wouldn’t understand what it was supposed to mean. And then he scored against me. India went up 1:0 against Spain. Then he scored again, and then once more. Each time he scored, he would exult for a microsecond and then give that crow-feet smile of his, a smile that he thought he generated only for himself, though I was always noticing. The other guys would laugh and high-five; apparently everyone found India scoring against Spain comical, and I had mixed feelings about how they were reacting. Soon it was half-time, and players from my side looked to the turf and walked back into the dressing room dejectedly, their faces showing an electronic emotion they shared with me to a lesser degree. The computer commentator said something horrible about Spain’s performance. A joint was being passed around and, unthinkingly, I took another drag. T looked at me but said nothing. Instead he poured himself a shot of whiskey from a nearby bottle and took a large gulp. The next half began, and for some reason, I resolved to play better. I narrowed my eyes and made sense of the colourful figures trotting about on the screen. I figured where the ball was. I pressed the buttons one by one and figured out what they did. T kept saying wow and shit intermittently. I played as if the reason for my existence were to keep the ball and pass it to someone who was Spain. The guys around us were not laughing as much now, or if they were, it was about something else and not the game. I passed the ball around and T’s players kept chasing the ball, and this routine was almost turning banal when, all of a sudden, something extraordinary happened: one of my players closed in on the goal and actually put the ball into it. The net shook in an exaggerated fashion. I don’t know what got into me just then, because I jumped from the couch and hopped up and down and kept shrieking—wow, wow, wow—while T looked at me and gave me a wrinkly smile and topped up another shot of the whiskey. Everyone around us looked at me with wide eyes. Although I settled back into the couch, my heart was still beating wildly as I thought I had achieved something big, something that would at once announce my arrival as a potent person into this milieu, or perhaps even into the world. But as soon as I thought about it again it made me sad—an incalculable sadness—and I was on the verge of tears, as if my whole life till then had been a random walk into nothingness, as if this was all there was left for me to achieve, a stupid outcome in a stupid videogame, and I put the controller down and pulled T to me and said, let’s go.

  We left the place hurriedly and walked toward T’s apartment. While climbing the stairs, I asked him why he had taken me to his friend’s place. He couldn’t answer for a while, and his silence told me that he was thinking about the question, which meant that the question was somehow important to him, even though I don’t think I meant it that way. He spoke while turning the key to his apartment. He said he took me there because he didn’t want to bring me here.

  Inside his apartment, the door to the other room was open, but before I could peer in, he shut it. We settled in the living room and he brought two glasses of wine. I asked him why he didn’t want to bring me to his place. He said that if he had brought me to his place, which he had done now, he would have asked me if I had liked the chapter that he had read to me the last time.

  I guess I was relieved. I told him that I’d loved that chapter. Didn’t you see how speechless I was after it, I said. But that was it, I didn’t say more, though I knew that there was something else to be said. There is always something more to say after someone shows you their writing. The (n+1)th comment has weight, I thought. But I remained silent. In fact, I was scared I would say something stupid. And although I could see some discomfort on his face, T didn’t push me to talk any further. In that long silence, during which I tried to act as if the glass I was sipping from was not the first glass of wine I had ever had, I also decided that I will fuck him that night no matter what.

  I’ve never seen anyone score in their first game, he said. Maybe that was because you were playing with Spain and I was playing with India.

  Maybe, I said.

  Do you want me to read you another chapter, T asked.

  I would love for you to, but tonight I’ve something else on my mind, I said.

  What?

  Your novel is going to be great, I said.

  Really?

  Yes, it is going to be great, I said. And we will have enough time to read all your chapters.

  So what is on your mind tonight, he asked.

  Fucking you, I said.

  Hearing this, T coughed loudly and disbelievingly. He c
oughed so much that I thought the wine from his glass would spill and make a bloody wound on the tiles. He coughed and coughed, as if he were being choked to death. And it was somewhere during this coughing that we ended up coming close to each other. Then, when his coughing subsided, we kissed. We fondled each other, pressed into each other. He lifted me up and took me to the bedroom, the bedroom right in front of the entrance, the bedroom that was not the other room. We were going to begin at last, I thought.

  Then suddenly I remembered. I might be bleeding a bit, I gave the disclaimer.

  What do you mean, he asked.

  I mean I had the last day of my period yesterday, I said.

  I don’t care, he said.

  Yeah?

  Yes, I’m sure, Europeans do it during their periods, he said.

  I found it weird that he would justify it like that. What did Europeans have to do with it? It changed something in me, something crucial. It was as if we had teleported to another planet, a planet in which I was closer to my real wants.

  What is in the other room? I asked.

  What?

  What is in the other room? I repeated.

  Why do you ask me this? he asked.

  I want us to do it in the other room.

  Why?

  I knew I had put the moment in jeopardy. But I couldn’t stop. I want to do it in the other room, I said.

  But why? Why do you insist on going to that room?

  I don’t know, I said, why are you so secretive about it?

  I’m not secretive about it, it’s just privacy, he replied.

  And is what we are going to do a public thing, I asked.

  Pfft, he exhaled.

  Pfft, I exhaled in mimicry.

  I don’t understand, he said.

  I don’t understand either, I said. What do you have in that room? A graveyard?

  He didn’t answer. I tried to kiss him again. He let me, but it was not like before. Please, I said. I still didn’t know why I was insistent.

  Please, he answered, circumflexing his eyebrows.

  We stopped. We stopped and there was an eternity between us. Or a truth hung in an aleatory setup. An unsurpassable truth, unknowable and invisible, but very present. I realized that it was the planet of this truth that I had taken us to. I straightened my clothes, hating myself. T didn’t move an inch. He was looking down at the floor, staring into a void that had nothing to do with the floor. Was there a tear in his eye? I couldn’t say. I gathered my belongings and made to leave. I stumbled on something. I was too drunk.

  You can sleep here, T said.

  NO, I shouted, and then I lost my footing and fell.

  I don’t know what happened or did not happen immediately after that. When I woke up, I found myself on the bed alone, a sheet draped over me. Some hours had passed; perhaps it was again four in the morning. Eternal fucking recurrence, I thought.

  I was dehydrated and went to the kitchen and drank some water, and then I pushed the door to the other room. It was not locked! I went inside. T was sleeping on a large bed, opposite which was a huge shelf with books. Classic fiction, contemporary literary fiction, some poetry. Big fat dictionaries. English, Hindi, French. A lot of stuff in Hindi. Beside the shelf, there was a large wall-hanging with grooves for photos. Dozens of photos. Photos of a beautiful woman, a white woman, photos of T with this woman, this woman who was definitely his lover. T and this woman on the top of a mountain, T and this woman in a desert, T and this woman beside pine trees, T and this woman on a bed, almost naked …

  I looked around. It looked like a room that had been set by a woman and upset by a man. I opened the two cupboards. One had T’s crumpled clothes, all a sorry mess. The other cupboard was clean and empty. I sensed that it had been recently vacated. I thought of the word European. I thought of the word graveyard. His woman had left him. Just then I heard a rustle from behind me. I turned. It was T, awake, sitting on his bed with his knees in his hands. I tried to mumble something. He lunged at me from the bed, and I shrieked. He held my head in his hands, pressing my cheeks with the heel of his palms, as if to kiss me. I struggled out of his grip, my fear giving me strength. I rushed out of the room, went to the other one to pick up my stuff, and left the house. I climbed down the stairs, looking up frantically to see if T had followed me. On the street, it took me a long ten minutes to find an auto. Once inside, I felt the road being swallowed once again by the auto. I sighed, looked. This time there was a break of light in the sky, this time there were grey clouds in the sky, and this time everything was not black but grey. I thought that the auto was going straight to heaven, that I was dead and the auto was going straight to heaven, and then, emerging from a strange place that had somehow been accessed, a poem formed in me and I memorized it, and when I reached home I wrote the poem down on my computer. I realized that this would be a poem so dear to me that I would never show it to anyone else. Then I broke all that could connect me to T online, forever. For the next few minutes I read my poem to myself, again and again, till I fell asleep. In that light sleep I dreamt of a FIFA match, of two electronic teams playing against each other. But one of the teams was stationary. Perhaps this team was not interested, or perhaps it was only a collection of shadows. The other team was performing all its movements again and again. It was difficult to say if I was controlling things; and it was difficult to say if there was any winning or losing.

  ~~~~

  Hi S,

  It is tough to be objective about this story, but I’m really interested to know the poem you mention at the end, which, I believe, is the kind of readerly curiosity that should register as writerly success. I think you’ve done well here.

  I did change my house. Thanks for asking; I appreciate your concern.

  About traveling: well, she has asked me to spend some time with her in Interlaken. As a friend. I’d be lying if I said I’m not thinking about it.

  I’m taking the liberty of sending you a couple of my own pieces. Maybe we can continue talking this way, sharing our writing with each other, updating each other with the mess of our fictions and realities, our memories and fantasies. That is the mess that we are, right?

  I think ‘The Other Room’ is a good title for your story.

  Best,

  T

  P.S. Her name is Anne-Marie, and I loved her in a way that Love isn’t used to anymore. That night I’d been dreaming about her, and when I woke up I thought you were her. Of what happened, that is the bit I’m sure of.

  P.P.S. The girls in Sriram’s apartment were not call girls. They were from his neighbouring flat.

  ~~~~

  Flashback to a Sunday Morning

  They who love each other live in a two-bedroom flat in Pali Naka, Bandra, paying considerable rent. She is French and he is Indian.

  Like every other piece of furniture in their second-floor flat, the table in the living room belongs to the landlord. Its circular glass top is four feet in diameter. The centre of this top is placed on a thick wooden cylinder which goes down and splits into three baroque legs that touch the floor like closed fists. The tabletop is covered with a circular tablecloth, which is whitened here and there with a faint haze of flour; a few purple spots can also be seen on it. This is all spillage from breakfast.

  For breakfast they ate:

  • Two out of the four pomegranates they purchased last evening from Pali Naka market and which were peeled shoddily by him in the morning with the help of a short blunt made-in-Italy knife. The seeds of one fruit were redder than the other, and he let her have most of these. The burst and squeeze of these seeds is the source of the purple spots.

  • Three slices each of the rye bread she purchased last weekend from Le Pain Quotidien, a French chain that has recently opened a bakery in Colaba, and which she froze immediately after coming home. The crust of the bread comes covered with white flour which sheds itself on the tablecloth whenever they eat slices of it.

  • Some homemade butter from milk bought every da
y from a nearby milk vendor, who has been running this business for a long time in Bandra and charges a hefty premium for purity. She is not very good at keeping watch over boiling milk though, and has spilt it many times. They never fight about spilt milk.

  • Conserves—apricot, papaya-ginger and gooseberry—which they bought from FabIndia at Pali Hill two weeks back. This morning, he used a different spread on each slice, while she stuck to the gooseberry. On the tablecloth there is a little smudge of orange, most likely an errant from the gooseberry conserve.

  They have no use for the extra bedroom; they have never slept there or made love there in the two years they have been in this flat. Her father used the room when he visited them a couple of months ago. He had come from Vannes in Brittany, her hometown, and although he had expressed concern regarding the loud honking on the streets of Bandra, he was seemingly content with their apartment and its comforts. The previous summer, they had let the extra bedroom to an acquaintance, a senior from their business school (their love story had started in a well-known institute of management in western India), for three months. The man, working in the same consulting company as her, but at a higher position involving more business travel, hardly ever stayed in the flat, but paid his half of the rent in cash. This made them happy. But this man never paid the electricity bill despite having used the air conditioner for the entire duration of his short stays in the flat. This made them unhappy, though not in equal measure. He didn’t want to ask the man for the electricity money because it wasn’t much. She wanted the man to pay. In the end, she managed to make the man pay.

  They are seated at the table opposite each other. She is wearing an all-black Nike running gear, without the shoes though, and looking intently into the screen of her large Lenovo laptop. She is wearing sports gear because everything else she usually dons at home is currently inside the washing machine. The machine, tucked in a little corner of the kitchen, is creating a sinusoidal hum that reaches them intermittently, at each of its crests, mixed with a little shudder that is created when the oscillating body strikes against the wall behind it.