Nights Like This (24 page)

 

 

I took the elevator up and walked quickly to the apartment. I stopped outside the door and breathed.
“Breathe in and out, Jess. One…two…”
I told myself. I took conscious breaths that allowed me to focus on air. I slid the key in place and turned. I walked in as if I were walking into someone else's life.

Anjali was lying on the couch, crutches resting against the coffee table. She had a slight bruise on her forehead and it made her look helpless. Across from her, there was a man in a white shirt and black slacks, his tie a mess of colors. As I walked in and shut the door, he stood up to greet me.

“Hello, you must be Anjali's roommate. I'm Dr. Gulati but you can call me Abhay.”

“Hello,” I said. “You make house calls?”

He laughed slightly and I watched his movements, trying to place him in Anjali's life.

“No, usually no. But Anjali and I did our residency together. She had just gotten out of medical school and I had just come here from abroad, so we studied together. We had lost touch and when I saw her at the hospital, I guess I found her again.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Abhay, this is Jasbir,” Anjali said as she held her hand out towards me. It made me uncomfortable that she had called me Jasbir, a name reserved for times when people were estranged to me either because I did not know them or because I had lost them. I walked to her and sat at the edge of the couch. The leather felt unstable under me.

“Anjali,” I said, careful to respect her in front of this stranger. The least I could do was call her by the name she loved instead of corrupting it by saying “hey baby” or “hey babe,” because I thought it my birthright despite my great transgression. I reached towards her hair to push it back from her face and she pulled away.

“Jasbir,” she said.

I looked in her eyes and the sadness I saw made me look away. I had seen Anjali sad. But to know that this was probably the saddest I had seen her and that I had made her feel that way was something that made me feel worse than I had ever felt. I did, after all, have a conscience, didn't I? It was becoming more and more difficult for me to tell.

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

“Can you get me some water, Jasbir?”

I tried to ignore the fact that she was calling me “Jasbir.” I also tried to wish away Dr. Gulati. He remained. So did Anjali's reserve.

“Sure, I'll get you some water,” I said.

I walked to the kitchen and heard Anjali talking to Dr. Abhay Gulati. Something about him bothered me although he seemed nice enough and I should have been grateful that he had been there in my absence taking care of the small things for her. But something about him did not sit right with me. I went back into the living room and found them laughing at some joke that I was sure would have been obscure to me. I sat by Anjali as she drank her water in small sips, her fingers leaving an imprint on the condensation that had settled on the glass.

I looked from her to him. I studied him as if his appearance could tell me more about what was inside him. His hair was gelled back, the imprints from the comb still fresh in ridges that were stiffened to dryness. Why men with receding hairlines combed their hair back, I had never understood. His eyes were light, darker than Anjali's but still green. His skin looked surprisingly soft, his complexion a rich hue of olive. As he smiled at his own jokes, I noticed the skin around his eyes had slight creases and his sideburns had a glint of silver buried within the black.

I studied his watch, a Mont Blanc, his clothes simple but tasteful except for the multi-colored tie. He wasn't fat but he wasn't thin either and there was definitely the swell of a beer gut under all his expensive clothing. His shoes were not shined and this bothered me immensely. I always believe that unpolished shoes revealed deceit. I felt that anyone who was genuinely dressing to please himself would never forget to polish his shoes. Anyone who was dressing to gain the admiration and trust of others wouldn't remember that his shoes were part of the ensemble. Dr. Abhay Gulati's shoes were worn and unpolished and had definitely been neglected.

“What do you think, Jasbir?” he asked.

For a moment, I didn't even realize that he was talking to me.

“I'm sorry?” I said.

“Well I was telling Anjali that I could arrange for a nurse to come and take care of her. She insists that it is not needed but it is no trouble.”

“I will take care of her, Dr. Gulati,” I said.

“Well it's a 24 hour thing, really. For the first four weeks it is crucial that she doesn't put any pressure on her ribs or on her foot.”

“I said I will take care of her, Abhay.”

The transition from his title to his name was easy. I didn't like him. I didn't like the way he spoke to me and I didn't like the way that he looked at Anjali.

“Very well, then, I am going to take off,” he said as he raised his hand and pretended to imitate a plane flying in the air.

“Bye, Abhay and thank you,” Anjali said.

I was too glad to walk him to the door and nod as he walked out. He stopped and turned to face me.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said and as soon as he turned around I closed the door.

I walked to Anjali and sat by her side. His cologne lingered in the heavy air that surrounded us. It was musky and dense.

“Anjali,” I said gently. “That's what you want me to call you, right?”

“I don't want you to call me anything, Jasbir. I don't want you to do anything or say anything. I just don't want it.”

“Anjali, please don't do this. I love you, jaan. Tell me what happened, who this clown is, what's going on.”

“This clown,” she said sternly, “is the person who was here and helped me through this. He is an old friend and I don't want you saying a damn thing about him because you weren't half the friend he was.”

“I'm sorry, baby,” I said. “If you'd called me, I would have come home. I could have done that, baby.”

“‘Jaan' and ‘baby' my fucking ass, Jess. What should I have done? Called you and said ‘Hey, if you get a minute between fucks, can you hook me up with a doctor because I'm hurt? You can't fix this. You can't fucking fix this.”

“I can, Anjali, I can. Give me a chance to try. I will take care of you. I will be here every day, all the time. And I will love you through this. I will love you because I do love you. I fucked up. I don't even know why this happened.”

“You want to know how this happened? You really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“I found out that you fucked me over, that some bitch picked you up from my apartment in a convertible and took you God knows where to fuck. I found out you had lied to me again but this time, you made a fool of me. I was drunk trying to cross a street, Jess, and I got hit by a fucking cab. That's what happened.”

I looked at her and expected her to cry. She didn't. I felt her gaze sear me with its intensity. I didn't know what to say to her. I didn't know what I could say.

“It wasn't like that. She just took me away to write. That's all it was about.”

Anjali laughed and then squirmed in pain.

“Jess, you're so full of shit! Took you to write? That's all it was about?”

“Yes, about finding my voice.”

“Because I wouldn't have offered? Because I wouldn't have done that for you? Fuck that. You lied to me, Jess. Flat out lied to run away with someone else. And I'm supposed to think that's all right because at the end of the day, it was about writing which, by the way, is the most bullshit thing you've said yet.”

“No. Yes.”

I hadn't been prepared for this. But as I thought about what she said, I realized she was right. Where were my words? What could I say to make it better?

Finally I said, “I love you. And this was my last fuck up, I promise. I love you and we are going to make this work. We will.”

Why I was saying what I was saying, I still don't know. I knew even less how I could ask Vanessa to be with me but then promise to be with Anjali. But I knew that I was desperate to take the sadness out of Anjali's eyes. I could not look at her be that hurt both physically and emotionally and know that I had done that to her. I had never seen her hurt because she had made it very easy to ignore. But this time, it was not so. This time, she wore her hurt everywhere and I saw it. It was in her eyes. It was across her forehead in the form of a bruise, purple and red and blue. It was in her voice as she spoke to me. I wanted my Anjali back. I wanted back the woman who would do anything to make me smile. To have her back, I would promise anything, even my devotion.

“You want to be with me?” She asked.

“I want to try with you.”

“Because I got hurt?”

“No, because I love you. I want always to come home to you.”

It wasn't a lie. I did always want Anjali to open the door for me at the end of my day. I didn't know how this fantasy could live in conjunction with my fantasies of waking up to Vanessa every morning. But somehow both these thoughts lived inside me side by side, peacefully, as if it were ever going to be possible.

“You want this to work, Jess? That's what you want? Then be here with me. Be here for me. And only me. And be mine. That's what I want. And that's the one thing you can't do, isn't it? Because in your mind, and maybe in your heart and God knows where else, all you can think about is her.”

“But Anjali…”

“No. No. This time, I call the shots. This time, I talk, you listen. Four fucking years it's been about you. Now, Jess, it's about me.”

I placed my hands in her hair and tried to kiss her mouth, but she turned. I kissed her forehead gently, where the bruise was.

“Please don't touch me. At least shower to get her scent off your skin.”

I got up slowly and went to the bathroom. I closed the door, knelt on the floor as if in prayer and cried. What was I doing? What was I going to do? What would it mean for Anjali to call the shots? And could I ever give her something now that I hadn't given her in the past? How could I do that? Devotion. I had promised her my devotion. But there was Vanessa also…

I felt my phone vibrate and I picked up.

“Hello?”

“Jess?”

“Vanessa?”

“Hey. I'm just making sure everything's okay.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I just thought I'd check and make sure.”

I didn't say anything.

“You there?”

“There is one thing, Vanessa…”

“What's up?”

I took a deep breath.

“I've been thinking,” I said. “And I don't want you to look me up until you break it off with Danny. I don't want to see you or talk to you until then. That's what I want.”

I said the words quickly so they could actually come out and not be stuck in my throat. In reality, I wanted to see Vanessa right then, to be near her, to touch her. I couldn't imagine my life without her. But I had to do what I did, say what I said. For Anjali's sake. And for my sanity.

“What? What the fuck? That's not how we ended things.”

“Well, that's how I'm ending them now. So that's that, right? You know where I live. Come get me.”

I hung up. If I had said any more, I wouldn't have been able to go through with what I had said. I thought about what I had just done. I had shut a door that I myself had opened, run from the very person I had run towards. I had betrayed her and also, I knew this to be true, I had betrayed myself as well. But what choice did I have? I couldn't leave Anjali with crutches leaning against the coffee table. And I wouldn't leave Anjali with sadness in her eyes, broken in every way imaginable. So really, what choice did I have?

I knew Vanessa couldn't break it off with Danny. I didn't want to tell her that I had agreed to be with Anjali because it wasn't really as simple as all that. My hopes were that after Anjali was better, she would realize we couldn't work out. Then I would go to Vanessa and talk to her. I would explain the situation to her. I would tell her I was ready to accept whatever her terms were because I loved her.

I wasn't exactly proud of my decision but I found it the best way to handle things. Anjali needed me and I would be there for her. But I had faith that we wouldn't work out and she would see that we were not compatible. And when she willingly said that, then I could go back to Vanessa and talk to her, letting her know that I had always loved her.

I washed my face and dried it gently. I hung the towel on the bar, making sure it was smoothed out and even with the other towel that hung there. I went back to the sofa and sat next to Anjali.

“Anjali, I will be here. I promise I will be yours. No questions. No doubts.”

I let her lie down and massaged her scalp for her. I lifted her shirt and looked at her torso, the right side swollen and bruised. I kissed her broken bones gently, through the stark white bandage, past the bruises. I wanted, at that moment, nothing more than to kiss her every hurt and to rub away her every pain. She closed her eyes and I got up and paced the room.

“So what restrictions do you have?” I asked

“Move as little as possible, Jess. And then only when I have to. At least for a while.”

“How long?”

“The ribs take about two months or so. They hurt.”

I kissed her forehead gently.

“What about your leg?”

“Two to three months.”

“Shit, I'm sorry,” I said, “But I promise I'm here and I will take care of you.”

“You know something, Jess? If I could get up and walk out on you right now, I would. But I fucking can't move. So here I am, your captive audience for the next few weeks.”

I noticed that not once had she asked me to leave. Not once had she reminded me that this was her space, her apartment and her life. She was willing to try but again. But this time I wouldn't hurt her. That was my promise to myself. For all that Anjali had done for me, I owed her these few months. Just as Vanessa had repaid Danny by letting him fuck her, I would repay Anjali by taking care of her faithfully with no distractions. Emotion didn't even enter into the equation. Or so I thought then.