Don't Let Him Know (19 page)

Just as he was about to turn back he noticed halfway down the block someone walk into a bar. The door swung open and for a minute he heard a burst of noise and laughter and loud music. He’d never been to a bar, really, except when Satish had taken all the Indian students to the beer garden one Friday night. But they had had to all watch their wallets and it was cheaper to just buy a crate of beer from the supermarket and drink at home with chicken curry and rice.

What the hell, thought Amit walking over, it’s Christmas. The bar was called Bogey’s. As he was about to go in he felt something wet on his nose. He brushed it away and stared up. The weatherman had been right after all. It was snowing. He smiled and tentatively stuck out his tongue. His first Christmas in America and it was really going to be white. He watched a snowflake land on his black coat. For a few seconds it clung there, tremulous and white, and then it was gone.

Amit pushed open the door and the warmth enveloped him and sucked him in. The bar was cosy. In one corner a fire burned cheerily behind a grate, the wood spluttering, spitting orange sparks. Amit breathed deep – this was what he imagined Christmas smelled like. Black-and-white posters of stand-up comics Amit had never heard of lined the walls, some with a signature scrawled across them. In one corner a card said Have your fortune told with Cristina in Olde English script. A woman, presumably Cristina, sat on an overstuffed armchair underneath the sign, her horn-rimmed glasses catching the sparkle from the flames in the fireplace. Christmas decorations in red and green were draped from the ceiling and red stockings with the names of the bartenders – Jeff and Lynne and Victor – hung limply above the bar. A sign on the wall announced the specials – hot buttered rum and frozen drinks. Amit thought that was a strange combo.

As he stood at the bar studying the little bowls of peanuts, one of the bartenders walked over. ‘What’ll it be, hon?’ she said. Amit looked up and fell headlong into the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. This was no ordinary paintbox blue but the deep clear blue of an Indian sky after the first thunderstorm of the season had passed.

Lynne, it had to be Lynne, since she was obviously was not Jeff or Victor, smiled at him expectantly.

When Amit was young, he had the stupid notion that eyes and hair were somehow bound together. Blond people had blue eyes, redheads had green eyes and brunettes had brown eyes. And here stood this coffee-coloured woman with tight curly black hair looking at him out of the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. Even the silly Santa hat she wore could not hide how pretty she was.

‘Hi,’ she said extending a hand, ‘you must be new around here. I’m Lynne. Actually, Evelyn.’

‘Hi, Amit,’ he mumbled shaking her hand.

‘Aw-mit,’ she said slowly, ‘so what will it be, Aw-mit?’

‘A . . . a hot buttered rum,’ he said just reading the first special off the sign.

Lynne chuckled. ‘You
are
new around here, aren’t you? Where you from, Aw-mit?’

He nodded too tongue-tied to say anything more.

‘And you didn’t go home?’

‘It’s too far. My family is in India.’

When she handed him the drink, she said ‘Careful, it’s hot.’

‘How much is it?’ he mumbled pulling out his wallet.

‘Don’t worry about it. It’s on the house. Merry Christmas,’ she replied touching him on the shoulder. Amit felt his heart skip a beat.

All evening he sat on the barstool sipping buttered rum listening to the ebb and flow of chatter around him. A man with a ponytail sitting next to him struck up a conversation with him. But even as he talked Amit kept his eye on Lynne, watching her laugh and kiss the customers on the cheek. He found himself daydreaming about what it would feel like if she kissed him.

At one point, she handed him another drink and pushed a little plate of pretzels towards him. Then she leaned towards him and said, ‘What do you think of America?’

It was exactly the kind of question that confounded him. Seeing the perplexed frown on his face, she laughed and said, ‘Well, Binghamton isn’t exactly America. But you know I have this guy who comes here regularly. He’s from Saudi Arabia, I think, and he says he loves to come to a bar any time he likes and get a drink. He says he loves the freedom.’

‘Hmm,’ said Amit. ‘It’s different in India. We have bars there.’

‘I know you have bars in India,’ she chuckled. ‘I’m not that dumb an American.’

He flushed, embarrassed. She grinned at him, her eyes sparkling. ‘You’re cute when you blush like that,’ she said causing him to turn even redder.

By the time last call was announced, Amit was feeling quite lightheaded. He gathered up his coat and went out of the door, turning to see where she was. She was talking to another bartender and didn’t see him leave. He could have left right then but instead he just stood outside in the soft pile of fresh snow watching the last few cars crawl slowly through the icy streets.

If she wondered why he was standing outside in the snow after the bar closed she made no mention of it.

He had elaborate excuses ready to prove he was not waiting for her. But she didn’t ask. Instead she just pulled her coat tight around her and said, ‘You still here? Do you live near campus? Want to walk home with me?’

He must have been staring at her with a silly grin plastered across his face because she stopped and said, ‘Are you okay? How much have you had to drink?’

‘I don’t know, three, four. I lost count. I really came out to get something to eat but couldn’t find anything open.’

‘Oh my goodness, you haven’t had dinner,’ she said shocked. ‘And I’ve been plying you with alcohol. I feel bad.’

As they walked they talked about Christmas dinners. He told her in India they called it Bada Din or Big Day and he’d go to the Club with his parents and they’d eat ham and mini samosas with cilantro-and-tamarind chutney. She found that funny and said some of the turkey she’d eaten could do with a little chutney. As they walked through the snow they spoke about pecan pie and yams and vegetables he’d never heard of.

The night was hushed. The snow had covered all the cars parked on the street turning them into ghostly cartoon shapes, their sharp edges rounded and softened.

The streets were completely empty and the clouds had lifted. Everything was washed in a pale cold moonlight and the only sound was the soft crunch of their shoes on the snow and their voices rising and falling. He felt his breath still warm from buttered rum and the bar turning smoky in front of him. Listening to her talk about pies and roast turkey reminded him again how hungry he was. In the moonlight her blue eyes were now ink-stained. Royal Blue, he thought – the ink of his childhood.

Lynne walked confidently through the snow, her black leather coat swinging, a woollen scarf casually draped around her neck. Amit was less confident – he was new to snow and the alcohol made him unsteady. Every now and then she put her hand on his elbow to steady him and Amit smelled her perfume – it smelled of jasmine and reminded him of hot summer nights in Calcutta even as he could feel snowflakes slide off the overhanging branches of trees and land on his hair and eyelashes.

When she asked him if he wanted to come up and she’d heat up some leftovers, he felt a surge of nervous excitement. Was it finally happening to him? He’d only read about this in books. But there she was – her blue eyes bright and shining against the darkness of her skin, inviting him to his first American Christmas.

Evelyn’s apartment was small. A tiny Christmas tree stood in a corner, little red and green lights sparkling. Books and magazines were strewn everywhere. It turned out she studied International Relations and she said she wanted to work for the UN. Amit was embarrassed – he had thought she was just a bartender.

She checked her answering machine.

Someone named Margaret wanted to meet for breakfast.

Ann was wondering if she could get a ride on Saturday.

‘Would you like some tea as well?’ she said rummaging in her kitchen cabinet.

‘That would be lovely,’ Amit replied. Any excuse to stay a little longer.

‘Peppermint, chamomile or orange blossom?’

What Amit wanted was some good strong Indian tea boiled with lots of milk and sugar to clear the cigarette smoke and bad jukebox rhythms swirling in his head.

‘Peppermint,’ he said.

He stood there leafing through a book on the collapse of the Soviet Union while she fixed a plate of leftovers. He heard the microwave hum to life. Outside it was starting to snow again, tiny flakes drifting by the window as if one of his mother’s quilts had been ripped open. He wanted to hold the little Christmas tree in the corner out of the window and watch the white flakes settle on the dark green bristles.

‘You don’t have to be so serious, Mr Computer Engineer,’ she said with a smile, coming into the room.

‘How do you know I’m a computer engineer?’ he asked, surprised.

‘Aren’t all Indians?’ she said laughing. ‘How’s that for a stereotype?’ The microwave beeped and she went back into the kitchen. When she reappeared she had a plate in her hand with neat little piles of leftovers.

‘Not quite the traditional family Christmas dinner. It’s a store-bought ham with all the trimmings,’ she said with a smile. ‘But hey, Merry Christmas.’

Somewhere over the ham, they fell quiet. At some point, as he ate Brussels sprouts for the first time in his life, he looked up and saw her looking intently at him and blushed. When she handed him a piece of pecan pie with some melting vanilla ice cream, their fingers touched and Amit almost dropped the plate. His mind moved in furious circles trying to think up something witty to say – something witty with lots of room for backpedalling. Instead he followed her to the kitchen with his empty plate and stood there awkwardly next to her in front of the sink, unsure and unsteady, too nervous to move.

‘Thanks for everything,’ he finally said. ‘It was good.’

She touched his face and said, ‘You are sweet.’

All Amit could do was stare at the slope of her breasts and inhale the smell of jasmine, scarcely daring to breathe out in case the entire moment melted as surely as a snowflake on his tongue.

The tightness in his chest was nothing like what he felt when he and his schoolmates had pooled their money to buy their first second-hand
Hustler
magazine. Tentatively he touched her neck, all the time staring out of the window into the hushed white night.

Lynne didn’t pull away as he might have feared. She leaned back against him and let out a little sigh. Then she gently whispered, ‘I have a sort of boyfriend, you know. Back home, not here.’

Amit shrank away, stricken that he had committed some terrible blunder, crossed some invisible line on the old linoleum of the kitchen floor. But she put her hand on his shoulder and stopped him. When he looked at her, all he could see was the luminescence of her eyes reflecting the entire kitchen, no, the world itself. And then he felt the soft sheen of her lips on his own and her long shellacked nails stealthily stealing into his shirt, between the buttons, a razor-thin stripe of desire against his pounding heart.

‘Stay,’ she said. ‘It’s Christmas, we are far away from home.’

For a moment Amit wondered what would happen if his mother called that night. But then he looked at Lynne, the little silver cross nestled in her cleavage, and wordlessly allowed her to lead him to the bedroom.

Afterwards she stroked his hair and said, ‘Was it your first time?’

Amit flushed. ‘Was it that obvious?’

Lynne chuckled and said, ‘I was just testing out another stereotype.’

Amit lay there, his head nestled in Lynne’s arms, watching blurred images flickering on the TV. At that moment he trusted her deeply and implicitly. He was not worrying about grades, calls from Ma, suspicious looks from Satish.

‘Talk to me,’ she said.

‘About what?’

‘Anything. Tell me a secret.’

For a moment he wondered if he would tell her about the conversation with his mother that morning. But he didn’t know what to say. Instead he just said, ‘Once you know it was my first time, what bigger secret can I share?’

She smiled and then she turned to him and asked, ‘Now can I ask you something else?’

‘Sure.’

‘Why did you want to sleep with me?’

Amit wondered where to begin. He wanted to tell her that he had never found black women attractive. But that she was different. Special. Or he guessed he just hadn’t learned to look at them. Until he met her. And fell headfirst into her blue eyes. Amit wanted to ask her who in her family had blue eyes. Was she, perhaps, mixed?

‘Turn off the lamp,’ he said.

But before he could say anything more, she said, ‘Hang on, I need to go to the bathroom.’

Lynne went into the bathroom and turned on the light. Amit lay in bed admiring the long fluid curves of her back. He watched her brush her teeth. She wiped her face on the towel and turned back to the mirror. Very carefully she reached into her eyes and plucked out the lenses. First the left, then the right. Even from the bed Amit knew they were both blue. He watched her put each one carefully in its little round case. She squeezed a few drops of soaking solution into each container.