Nights Like This (12 page)

“Thanks,” I said softly.

We ate a strange meal, me with my Singapore Mei Fun and she with her duck roasted to perfection, fried rice with no peas and wonton soup with an extra wonton. There was a difference in the things we chose. But as much as I wondered why Anjali went through the trouble she did with everything she did from her food to her clothes to her trips to Europe, I wondered if I never chose anything because I had become accustomed to ordering the same thing, walking the same paths to and from, never thinking about what it was that I might really desire or even like.

I had always thought of Anjali as fussy and difficult. But maybe she was just alive, infused with desire for certain things, a renunciation of others. Maybe it was she who knew when she wanted duck, when she ached for a taste of fish. Yes, she had her routines too like General Tso's and
Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna
when staying in for the night. But she had her moments at least where she wanted duck or decided to do something different. Maybe I grudged her her routines because it was I who was stale and boring. And because I had no desire to dare, day after day, I allowed myself to know Singapore Mei Fun if Chinese, Chicken Makhni if Indian, Pad Thai if Thai and so on and so on. Yes she had her martinis on the couch but at least she changed the flavors. I had no intention or as Vanessa had said, no “conviction” no matter where I was or what I did.

I decided then that maybe the trip would be a good idea; a place I didn't know so I would at least initially have to choose something that wasn't familiar to me. I hoped something would change. There should have been a voice over then that whispered to me, “Change is what you want? These ten days will change your life forever.”

But there was no voice and I did not know. If I could go back, would I still have gone? As terrible as it is to say, I think I would have because through it all, everything changed. And so I changed. And that was necessary.

After we finished eating, Anjali decided she wanted to take a buggy ride. Why she wanted to do this I didn't know. It must be that when you have lots of money, silly things seem more appealing because I couldn't imagine paying a man to walk a horse around in a circle while I waited to go nowhere. But she insisted and we took a cab that let us out near Central Park. She chose a buggy and climbed in. I reluctantly went in after her.

As I settled into the seat, she settled in next to me. The driver teased the horse with his whip and we were riding in circles for no damn reason. I smelled horse manure and allowed my thoughts to drift thousands of miles away to a childhood I did not like to remember, of nights filled with kerosene lamps and the smell of manure. Where we had lived, old ladies living in corner shanties made manure cakes and stuck them to empty cement walls. Later they would use them to light small stoves. I thought back to those nights filled with fear and uncertainty when the lights vanished for hours and the kerosene lamps threw gigantic shadows across the ground. It was there, I think, that I had learned to fear darkness, to cringe when summer set and a new season dawned upon the world. I had gotten lost in total darkness once for hours. I tried never to think of it and I had never told anyone about that night. But I remembered the feeling of being trapped in air with no air to breathe. I remembered not being able to see a thing and falling, scraping my knees. It was a night that turned me off to nights forever, even more so to darkness.

“Hey Jess?”

“Yeah?”

“When you're a big writer, you will write about us, won't you?”

“Sure, I'll write an entire book about us.”

She placed her head on my shoulder and as I closed my eyes, I felt the hot air sticking to my face. I smelled charcoal and perfume and manure and hot asphalt and grass all at once. I heard voices and horns and sputtering engines and the wheels of the horse carriage. When I opened my eyes, I was assaulted with lights: red lights and fluorescents and gleaming metal halide domes from within stores. Colors were vibrant and I focused on the bright yellow of a taxicab before I started to notice the darkness that had descended over the city. I started noticing not the cars but the night that was seeped into everything, into every space that was left open.

I pulled Anjali to me and when she looked at me, I focused on her face, her soft skin and thin, small features. I focused on her mouth, her lips so pink she looked like she was perpetually smearing them with lipstick that was too bright for her. I kissed her mouth softly and her presence calmed my heart, allowed me to lose myself in something other than darkness and nighttime.

Nights like those, I was intermittently grateful for her. As our carriage ride came to an end, she waited for me to reach the ground and then kissed me, full of happiness and hope.

“Was it that bad?” she asked.

I laughed.

“You knew I wasn't crazy about this?”

“I did. But I did it for you.”

“Why for me?”

“So at least once in your life, you could ride in a carriage and lose yourself to me.”

I didn't know what to say. So I said nothing.

“Jess, we're amazing together.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“So you think that maybe we're in a relationship?”

I looked past her and then at her, wondering how to make this tsunami of a question pass us by.

I saw the anticipation on her face. I leaned towards her. She held me away from her with her hand. It was a gentle push but enough to keep me at a distance. I saw her eyes fixed on my face, waiting for me to answer her in the affirmative. I had never seen Anjali so serious about receiving an answer from me about anything, let alone our situation and my admission that we were in what she called a relationship.

I looked at her eyes, dull with patience and her mistaken belief that we would share anything more than an apartment and convenient fucks. But then, I was wrong too because we shared much more than that. I just didn't see it.

“We are in a relationship,” I said. “Haven't we been?”

I wasn't lying when I said that. We were in a relationship however dysfunctional. And however much I loved the phrase “situational partners” to describe us, I could never tell her that or else she would break like an eggshell. And I didn't have what it took to put Humpty Anjali back together again. But I wasn't lying to her either, was I? The truth was, we lived together and ate together and fucked. So technically, we were in some semblance of domestic paradise, weren't we? And I was asking for money to run away with someone else. Who could ask for more? I tried not to think of the money just then.

“I didn't know if you saw it that way,” she said.

“I do. It's just that I wanted to leave possibility open if something were to come up.”

“Like what?”

“Anjali, I don't know where my life is going. And I don't want to say I'll be here forever or that I won't. I'm just asking you to take it one step after another. And we'll see where it goes. How do you know what you're going to do until you do it? I just don't want to put blinders on and pretend that things will always stay the same. That's for those fucking carriage horses, blinders and walking in circles.”

I watched her face to see what she would think. She seemed blank, as if she had no thoughts or had not heard what I said. But then, slowly, she smiled at me. I couldn't tell if she was genuinely satisfied or if she were appeasing me. My only hope was that she would let things be just the way they were. If she thought we had had a breakthrough in our situation, then I had more than what I had bargained for.

“That's fair,” she said, “I think that's very fair. Like you said about the ring, ‘It's not 'no.' It's not now.' I'll be honest; I was really upset for a while. But then I realized you might be right. Maybe now is not the right time. Maybe there are more people out there that we should both consider before making such a big commitment. I mean who knows? I might fall in love with someone else. I may be the one to leave one day, just like that.”

I think I stopped breathing. I couldn't imagine life without Anjali. I couldn't. And the more I thought about her with someone else, the less I could breathe. Then for no particular reason, my thoughts turned to Ish and I imagined Ish leaning close to Anjali's face, kissing her cheek. My stomach churned. I really thought I was going to be very sick.

“Would you?” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. “Would you leave me for someone else?”

She walked to me and placed a kiss upon my forehead.

“No, jaan,” she said softly.

“Anjali?”

“What?”

I touched her face gently.

“I'm here now,” she said.

“That you are,” I said as she smiled softly.

“It's late, Jess. I have to work early tomorrow. I have to get home.”

I took her hand and we walked to the corner to hail a cab. With Anjali, trains were a rarity and I remembered being on a train with her twice in all the years I had known her. Once it was because she was happily drunk on her birthday and didn't contest us getting on a train. The second time there had been a thunderstorm and she had not wanted to get her new leather jacket any more wet than she had to.

She was a cab hailer. She was all about comfort and ease. How someone that was used to the easier things in life could want to be in the difficult situation that we had chosen to be in, I could never understand. At those times, I had to believe that she genuinely loved me. Was there anything other than love that could make someone act stupidly time and time again?

We rode home sitting in the middle of the seat, together, as if we were holding onto one another through a difficult journey. As the cab started and stopped to accommodate city traffic, so did the slight wind sailing through the open windows. Somewhere in the distance, amid the sound of horns and screeching tires and conversations, I heard the smooth, sultry notes of jazz. I leaned back on the seat and closed my eyes, pretending that someone was playing a medley for us, comforting our confused minds and offering beauty to our tender souls.

 

 

 

I could not sleep that night. As Anjali slept, I paced the kitchen and living room. I picked up my phone and looked at the time. It was one half past one. Fuck it. I dialed.

“Hello?”

“Hey…Tiffany?”

“Jess? Why aren't you asleep? Are you okay?”

“I'm not okay. I need to talk to someone and I wanted to talk to you. And why are you awake?”

“I'm catching up on some work. I need a break anyway. So what's up with you?”

“Two things.”

“First?”

“First is, I lied to her to get money to go away with another woman.”

“Okay…Second?”

“She asked if we were in a relationship and I said I wanted an open relationship and no strings. She didn't get angry. She said…”

“Said what?”

I cleared my throat.

“She said she might be the one to pick up and leave one day. And it killed me inside.”

“How did it kill you if you just lied to her to go away with another woman?”

“That's just it. I love her. I do in my own weird way. But I love this woman too. I mean can you help falling in love?”

Silence.

She laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“Ask yourself. I mean not for nothing, didn't you tell me last we met that you would never forgive me for falling in love with someone else while being with you?”

I sighed.

“That's different.”

“No it's not.”

It was my turn to be silent. To think.

“How does it feel?” she asked.

“How does what feel?”

“Being in love with two people at the same time? It kills you doesn't it?”

“I'm not in love with two people.”

“Then what do you call it?”

I stopped pacing and stared at Poet's Walk in the Winter. I turned it over and stared at her hand written words.

“What do I do, Tiff?”

“I don't know, Jess. I would say ‘Let your heart lead you' or some bullshit like that but…”

“But?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me. What?”

“I made the wrong decision. I don't want you to do the same.”

I stared at my phone. I had waited four years to hear her say it and now that she had, instead of feeling victorious, I felt awful. I didn't want Tiff to hurt. Despite everything. Because at that moment, for an instant, I understood what her predicament must have been.

“You there?” she said.

“Yes.”

“That's my big secret.”

“Thank you for sharing it with me.”

“Jess?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm going to try to get some sleep. You do the same.”

“Sure thing,” I said.

“Sure thing. Those were our words.”

“I know.”

“If you ever bring up this conversation, I will deny it. “

“I know,” I said.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

I started pacing again, wondering what or who could take from me my confusion. There was one more number I wanted to dial. I did. It was temporarily disconnected.

Damn it, Kat.

I paced some more. Would I go with Vanessa in the morning? I knew I would. But then what about Anjali? I decided I needed a sign. I decided to pray. I went to our eclectic alter atop a bookshelf in the living room where Ganesh sat beside the Virgin Mary who was looking towards St. Anthony who stood tall beside a laughing Buddha. I took an incense stick from one of the boxes my mother had sent a while back. I lit it slowly. I stared at the flame and waved it into a glowing tip of orange. I placed the incense in the elephant holder we had so carefully selected in Chelsea at a mom and pop shop that no longer existed. I closed my eyes and joined my hands and asked for guidance. For hope. For love.

I don't know how long I stood there. I prayed. I breathed. I cried. I prayed. I breathed. I cried. And then, finally, amid all my confusion, I stopped thinking for the first time that night. I inhaled. And I recognized and I absorbed the sweet scent of the incense. I had expected Queen of the Night. Somehow, the scent that emanated was jasmine. There lay my answer. There lay my absolution, or so I believed or wanted to believe. I opened my eyes. I placed my hand to my head and then my heart. And then I walked to Anjali, lay next to her and held her tightly. After all, I wouldn't see her for ten days.