Yes, My Accent Is Real (25 page)

Of course she can't make it
, I thought. Miss Indias don't just drop by and make house calls. But my cousin was persistent, and eventually he arranged for the two of us to meet at the opening of some bar.

What do you wear to meet a beauty queen? Well, I was going through a phase I'll call “Dumpster Hollywood,” which means torn
jeans that cost four hundred dollars, a jacket with a popped collar, an Ashton Kutcher trucker hat that said “Olé,” a plaid scarf, and striped gloves with the fingers cut off.

Remember the movie
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
, when you first see Jessica in that red dress? That was my reaction when I first saw Neha. She was in fact wearing a red dress. At five foot ten she stood six foot three in heels, towering over my five-foot-eight pile of Dumpster Hollywood trash. (She would have been perfect for Dziko, I thought. Two giants.) She looked so stunning that I immediately assumed she would be a fake person. A plastic figurine. No one so beautiful could also be cool, smart, interesting. This is what we do to people when we're intimidated: we make them out to be monsters so we're more comfortable with ourselves. We judge. We demonize them to brace ourselves for rejection.

I introduced myself and we exchanged hellos.

Oh my God she's tall
.

“Have a seat and I'll buy you a drink?” I suggested, thinking that if we were sitting down, I could level the playing field.

“Sure,” she said. “I just have to say a quick hello to some other people, but I'll be back.”

Sure she would.

I know that move. I've used it myself. The blow-off maneuver where you tell someone, “I'm just gonna run to the bathroom. I'll be right back,” and you never see that person again. Your only contact is stalking them through Facebook.

“Hey,” she said, smiling.

“Hey,” I smoothly replied. “Have a seat.” I rose ever so slightly, not wanting to expose my height again. I had found a corner table
outside on the balcony where it was quiet. She sat down and pulled a cigarette from her purse.

I had bought us a couple of glasses of champagne and she took a sip. Her lips were glowing in the candlelight.
^I

“So you're an actor?” she asked.

“I'm on a TV show called
The Big Bang Theory
.”

“I've never heard of it.”

Okay, so I can't play that card
.

Instead we talked about our childhoods, growing up in New Delhi, discovered some friends we had in common. Gradually, I think she could tell I was not a creep (despite the trucker hat) and she began to open up. We chatted and chatted, and chatted some more. And then we really talked. “This is my first night out in almost a year,” she said, looking away. At first I wasn't sure if her eyes were welling up with tears, or if the alcohol had begun to take hold. “I was engaged,” she continued, “and two weeks before the wedding he called it off.” She told me that the entire wedding had been planned. Tickets had been bought, venues had been selected, more than five hundred people had been invited, and then, just like that, it was all off. They were off. With her hands shaking ever so slightly, Neha pulled out another cigarette; I lifted the candle and lit it for her. “Cold feet,” she said, almost to herself.

I broke the silence by making a joke about feet. Something about how I don't like them, and how my feet are whiter than Snow White's bottom. Maybe that sounds crass, given the circumstances, but I was trying to make her smile.

She explained to me that when it happened, at first she was in shock,
and then she was hugely embarrassed, mainly for her family, and how all her relatives still flew in to see her, because they had booked their tickets already. It was exactly like a wedding gathering, just without the main event. She told me that she had embarked on a spiritual path to try to make sense of the circumstances; she had embraced Buddhism, and it had saved her.

There was something beautiful about the rawness of her emotion, as if she had been to the very depths of heartache and survived, stronger, wiser, and more determined to find true love. Oh man, I had known her for two hours and I was getting hooked.

Finally it was time to say good night. She leaned in. “Do you want my number?”

“Nah, it's cool,” I said. “I'll get it from someone else.”

“Wouldn't it just be easier to take it now?”

“I'm good, I'll just get it from my cousin,” I said, trying to be a baller. I was
really
trying to play it cool, but probably ended up looking like a dumbass jerk.

Thirty seconds after she left I called my cousin to get her number, and I immediately texted her to say I hope she made it home safe and that it was lovely chatting with her. As soon as I pressed
SEND
I kicked myself for seeming overeager; so much for being a baller.

Stupid stupid stupid—

She texted right back, saying she'd had a lovely night.

Later that night, my phone buzzed.

“I'm home safe. Thanks for being a gentleman.”

I didn't waste any time. In a few days I had to fly back to LA, and if I didn't do something, who knew when, or if, I'd see this goddess again? So the next morning I texted her and suggested we meet for
dinner. She accepted. Quickly I tapped into my network of friends and cousins to find the best place to impress her, and we settled on a glitzy restaurant in the Oberoi hotel. My brother made a call to book the private glass wine room. I mean, she's
Miss India.
I had to bring out the big guns, right? I had to flash the big boys, right? I had to pull out all the stops, right? I had to bring my A-game, right? I'll stop; you get the point.

Once again I mused for hours over my fashion choices for the night. It was time to unleash the most expensive piece of clothing I have ever owned. (I mean, I had to whip out the big kahonas, right?) I picked a black wool sweater from Alexander Wang that goes all the way down to my knees. It looked like a woman's cape.

I arrived early to the restaurant, standing inside this small glass room and wearing my lady's cape. I knew there'd be a 50 percent chance she would think she had made a huge mistake, and then another 40 percent chance that she would confuse me for a woman. And a 10 percent chance that she wouldn't show.

Neha doesn't walk—she glides. I suppose she gets this from years of modeling. She glided (glode?) into the restaurant wearing all black, hair straight and flowing, and a hint of glitter on her face. She was a vision.

“Nice sweater,” she said. I didn't know if she was being sincere or ironic.
^II

It was just a romantic dinner with Neha and me. Oh, and my brother, who wanted to meet her and invited himself into the glass room. Oh, and we had a fourth companion to our budding romance:
our waiter. As anyone who has ever eaten in a restaurant knows, typically, the waiter will swing by your table when needed, quickly refill your wine, and then leave you and your date in peace.

Not this guy. One “perk” of the private glass room is that he's
our private waiter
, which meant that he stood right next to us, always, his hands clasped behind his back like Ser Barristan, the Kingsguard from
Game of Thrones
. After some small chitchat my brother left us, but the Kingsguard remained, impassive, stoic, but inevitably hearing every word of our conversation.

When I told stories that made Neha laugh I peeked up at the Kingsguard, and when he didn't crack a smile I almost felt offended. I was speaking for two audiences—Neha and our waiter. He never did warm to me. She did.

It was a lovely date. Again we talked for hours. There was no licking of eyeballs; this just felt
real
, honest, right. Afterward we decided to have a nightcap at a bar full of middle-aged people dressed in tuxedos and gowns, dancing. I couldn't take my eyes off an elderly couple who slow-danced next to us, cheek to cheek. They looked so tender. So comfortable, so happy. I looked at that old couple and I thought,
Oh how lovely if that could be me and Neha one day.

I turned to her and asked, “Tomorrow, do you want to meet my family?”

Neha glided through the gate with a bouquet of flowers for my parents. They fell in love with her right away.

Neha is funny without
trying
to be funny. Some people tell stories at a party and work hard to make jokes. They're performing. In the past, I
had spent a lot of time with people in my industry—actors—and they usually tend to have a funny bone that's based on performance. It was refreshing to meet someone who didn't have that bone. Because there are two very different types of laughs:

1. The “Ha, that's clever” laugh.

2. The absolutely unconscious, laugh-out-loud, not-worried-what-you-sound-like laugh. That's the way I laughed when I met Neha. I genuinely found her funny, even when she wasn't making jokes. And to be honest, when she tries to make a joke she's terrible, which I find hilarious. One time at a lake we saw a couple of ducks fighting, and she said, “Look, the ducks are
beaking
each other up.” Terrible or genius?

After dinner my mom said, “Kunal, why don't you bring up the guitar and sing Neha some songs?”

That's my mom: the world's best wingman. I brought out the trusty guitar and played “The Blower's Daughter” from Damien Rice. “
Can't take my eyes off yooooouu.
” Neha was impressed. Cha-ching!

One tiny problem, of course: my life was in Los Angeles, her life was in India.

“Do you want to pursue this further?” I asked her, finding a quiet moment after dinner.

She did.

“If we want this to go further, you will have to come to see me in LA. I'm filming and won't be able to come to India again till the summer.”

Three weeks later she was on a flight to LA.

At the time, I was living in a loft in LA, and for whatever trendy reason, the entire thing was a massive open space divided only by curtains. So on the off-off chance that in the next two weeks Neha needed to, say, use the toilet, I'd have to go hang out on the other side of the loft to give her privacy. Would the curtains freak her out? And what if she had weird body odor that I somehow hadn't noticed? Or what if she had weird feet? I'm not proud to admit this, but weird feet are pretty close to a deal breaker for me. Also, I should clarify that almost all feet are weird feet. Feet are gross. I used to date this girl who always wore open-toed sandals, and her feet were so stanky that when we climbed into bed I would casually suggest that she take a shower. The sound of people wearing flip-flops drives me batty, too. It's this unholy combination of sweaty arches and plastic and sun—puddles of sweat that smack the plastic in unison.
Smack, smack, smack
. Flip-flops should be banned.

Neha's plane was about to land. And truthfully, I actually hadn't seen her feet. We had kissed in New Delhi but nothing more. What imperfection would freak me out, and what imperfection of mine (I have plenty) would freak
her
out? There were so many unknowns.