Last-Minute Love (Year of the Chick series) (14 page)

Chapter Thirteen

I sto
od in my bedroom modeling a saree blouse, as my mother measured for adjustments. After my sister’s wedding in July which had included three straight days of Indian garb and butter-chicken-laden buffets, I’d had my fill of Indian parties for the next two years. Of course my personal needs were irrelevant when it came to family functions, and tonight was a relative’s engagement party. Though I still had no idea who that relative was.

I sighed as she tugged at the blouse
. “It’s fine!” I said.

My mother shook her head. “If it’s too tight your chest will look
big, then everyone will notice!”

Thank you very much, padded push-up bra.

Just then my phone started to vibrate from my dressing table.
Why did I leave it there?
The phone was mere inches away from my mother, which was never a good idea. I held my breath as the screen lit up and there it was: Erik’s face smiling warmly at my mother.
Oh god.
Not getting married and being a disappointment was one thing, but spending my time chatting with a forbidden white boy? No matter how much of a functioning grown-up I was, this would give my mother a heart attack.

To my surprise she kept her eyes squarely
focused on my chest. “Who is that?”

“Oh, ju
st a girl from work,” I lied. Finally the screen went black as the call was officially missed. Meanwhile I cursed myself for not assigning Erik an Indian girl’s name and photo as a cover.

My mother shook her
head a final time. “Just wear your hair down to cover this.” She waved at my boobs like they were a hideous curry stain, and finally left me alone.

I shut the door and immediately
started texting Erik, a huge smile spread across my face…

***

The banquet hall looked like a rainbow that had hurled out its intestines. Walls were draped in green and yellow satin, and every chair had garish light pink seat covers (
at least my sister’s wedding was a classy purple and white
). Then there were the two hundred women dressed in glittering garb to complete the multi-coloured paradise. To an outsider this gathering was on the scale of a massive wedding, but to someone in the know, this was a moderately-sized Indian engagement party…

***

I sat alone at the table, dressed in a pink and silver saree that was blinding to the eye. My matching bangles, medium-sized chandelier earrings (in accordance with the Indian girl earring code) and long waves of hair completed the look. I was bored as hell and fiddling with my phone, not wanting to bother Erik who was at a concert. He was still just a guy I talked to for addictive spans of time, and there’d been no “sexting” of any kind in our messages. Even still my conscience, if I listened to it, told me I was guilty of trespassing. My response was very typical of a person who navigates the dating jungle, where it’s hard enough to find someone you can even have a decent conversation with: I told my conscience to shut the hell up.

A moment later an army of Indians arrived at the table I’d been
saving, each of them carrying plates full of food. Tandoori fish, chicken tikka, aloo (or potato) tikka, vegetable pakoras, a spiced cold yogurt soup…and these were just the appetizers.

The
enthusiastic foodies included my father, my mother, my brother Sonny, my sister Neema and her husband Anil. My sister was wearing a green and black saree over her tall and thin frame. I was still crossing my fingers that marriage would make her fat, but at the three-month mark I had yet to see an expansion. Her husband Anil wasn’t a bad-looking dude when you actually saw him up-close, with his intense eyes and not-huge nose. Like most Indian dudes though, he was one of those guys who had hair here, there, and everywhere.
Like most Indian dudes though, he was one of those guys who had hair here, there, and everywhere.

As they all took their seats the devouring began.

Neema didn’t waste any time, talking at me loudly between mouthfuls. “Did you watch my purse while I was gone?”

I rolled my eyes. “Well I was right here, dumbass.”

She grabbed a pakora from a surplus plate of food (surplus plates of food were a must at these functions) and continued gorging.

Anil gestu
red to the plate. “Romi, you should eat before Sonny takes it all.” He chuckled to himself at his lame joke, and I applauded his attempt at breaking our sibling firewall.

But you’re still not one of us yet.

Just then, two plump old ladies in pastel sarees shuffled their way to our table. That was the thing about wearing a saree a.k.a. a piece of endless fabric expertly wrapped so it didn’t fall: you had to shuffle around like a penguin.

Along with the
old ladies’ fat rolls hanging out from their bare-skinned sides (old ladies for some reason always chose the bare-skinned way to pin a saree), their judging stares could be seen from a mile away.

“Ranjit!” they
both cried in unison. They quickly sandwiched my mother in a hug, as the rest of the table paid little attention to their appearance. Once settled into their seats, they didn’t waste a second before scowling at the stage, where the engaged couple sat on an opulent-looking love seat.

“He’s a doctor and he’s going to marry HER?”Plump lady number-one in the pastel blue clucked her tongue.

My mother snickered. “And she’s wearing red just for an engagement? This generation…” She shook her head disapprovingly.

“No style sen
se,” added the second plump lady in the pastel purple.

P
lump lady number-one turned around and pointed a finger at me accusingly. “When is THIS ONE getting married?”

“Fuck!” I whispered under my breath.

Plump lady number-two waved her hand as if to flag me down. “Do you know boys your age want a girl twenty-five or less? And you? Almost thirty? A-hay!” She shook her head in despair.

This insulting ageist co
mment was nothing new to me, but what I realized in that moment for the first time ever, was that Indian grown-ups always called unmarried adults “girl” and “boy.” As if that made any sense? When was the last time a thirty-year-old man was referred to as a boy outside of Indian culture? That didn’t mean there weren’t some man-boys out there in the sense of maturity deficiencies, but in Indian world the terms “boy” and “girl” were used exclusively for unmarried specimens. It was probably a way to keep believing unwed adults were virgins.

Whatever.

My private contemplation was inte
rrupted by my father’s glare, his response to this whole conversation. My sister meanwhile had been pointing and laughing at me.
Thanks.
My mother was doing the usual, which was smiling through gritted teeth, and planning to yell at me later.

I grabbed a pakora and stuffed it in
to my mouth.

More chewing less talking...

***

About an hour later, the dance floor was filled with a kaleidoscope of colour, as synchronized arms screwed invisible light bulbs in this classic Indian dance.

It was a sight to behold.

Meanwhile back at our table, my mother and the plump
old ladies were quietly gossiping, as I tried not to smile while reading Erik’s unexpected message. He was out watching an up-and-coming indie band play, and his description of the packed venue in the East Village was vivid. His enthusiasm dripped through his words and I could feel it too. It was great to hear about something he really enjoyed, as it helped me feel a little bit closer to this man...this man I could never have.

Godammit!

Suddenly a plump old lady gasped.

“Eh! Harpreet!” cried out plump old lady number-two.

A skinny twenty-something girl in a pearly pink vision of a saree glided over.

“Auntie-ji!’ exclaimed the girl. She hugged each
plump old lady one at a time, with the fakest of all smiles plastered across her face. When she looked at me her manufactured grin fizzled out. “Hey,” she said.

I nodded. “Hey.”

My mother and the ladies admired Harpreet’s youth and beauty through a series of “oohs” and approving head nods.

“See Romi?” said plump old lady number-one, pointing at the angelic wonder. “She’s only twenty-four.” S
till staring at me, she pinched Harpreet’s cheek and smiled. “She will find a nice boy!” She turned to Harpreet and seemed serious. “By next year, ya?”

Harpreet nodded
“yes” with particular innocence.

All I could do was pray for her to trip and fall into a plate of pakoras...

***

The table was full of my family again, who somehow had the capacity to eat a huge dinner. In
between mouthfuls, my mother peeked under the table and grimaced, then leaned towards my shoulder and frowned.

“My feet hurt,” she
whispered. “Go get my other shoes from the car.”

I sighed dramatically and slowly rose from my chair.

Without my coat, I shuffled through the foyer as penguin-like as ever. I pulled the brass handle of one of the big wooden double doors, and when it opened I was slapped with a blast of cold air.

Shit!

I pulled my saree a few inches above my feet so I could run, and quickly hauled ass to our minivan. On my way I heard some giggling and slowed down. It was hard to see in the darkness, but eventually I saw a chunk of pearl-coloured saree in the hand of a groping guy. When I looked closer I identified Harpreet, who was having a serious make-out session with a waiter from the banquet hall.

Behind
a dumpster.

Classy.

Suddenly Harpreet noticed me, but instead of freaking out from this potential blackmail scenario, she smiled. And then continued making out.

I shook my head as I continued my trek to the minivan.

Angelic virgin waiting for an arranged marriage? I don’t think so…

***

A few days after the engagement party of boredom and gluttony, I was scoping out the scene at work, to see if I could have a little “me time.” My man-heeled absentee boss was nowhere in sight, and all my work (and his work too) was caught up for the day.

I looked behind me.

Then to my sides.

Then behind me again.

Certain that no one was approaching, I quietly hummed to myself, with a blank Word document staring me in the face. I typed in some random words: “
Happiness. Free. Dreams. Forget. Fades. Darkness.
”

Hmm...

This was my first attempt at writing a song, and I really didn’t have a clue.

I closed my eyes and thought about my favourite songs. The ones I remembered usually told a detailed story, not just with words but emotion. It occurred to me then that I’d never written anything serious in my life. Instead I’d built a portfolio on
sarcasm and crazy one-liners. Erik really didn’t know what he was asking of me.

I cracked my knuckles and typed
in another word: “
Fart.
”

This is gonna be ugly...

***

In bed early the ne
xt night, with my parents a floor below watching their favourite Indian program (an Indian rip-off of the American show “Top Chef”), I lay under the covers in darkness. My face was lit by the screen of my phone, and it illuminated the grin on my face.

“So you’re ACTUALLY turning it into a song?” I said.

“Of course,” said Erik.

“But not out of pity, right? Because if my lyrics are pathetic you don’t have to make a song out of it.”
Even though I’d managed to leave the word “fart” out of my lyrics, I was very unsure about the final product.

“Romi, making a song is like making a cake. If the ingredients are all wrong---”

“You
’ll poison everybody at your kid’s birthday party?”

He laughed. “I was going to say it won’t taste good,
which means I wouldn’t make a song if the lyrics didn’t work. But yes, poisoned children would be a bad thing.”

“A
ll the mothers would freak out…”

“They would call their lawyers…” he added.

“You’d get sentenced to community service at minimum…”

“And thirty years in solitary at the max,” he concluded.

I laughed. “It’s strange talking to a brain as disturbed as mine.”

“So I am just a brain to you?”

I smiled. “A brain with nice dimples.”

“Romi
, I feel like I knew you in another life. I really do.”

I gasped. “Was it an Ancient Egyptian life?”