Homeland Elegies(57)
*
I’ve given you a picture of at least part of Asha’s birthday suit but no proper sense of what she looks like: an abundant head of dark brown hair with honey highlights to match the sparkling hazel of her wide-set eyes (which are her mother’s); an upturned snub nose that almost looks like it was broken once and never correctly reset; a short mouth with a pouting lower lip much fuller than the upper; and something wild and welcome about the way these all come together that lends a hardscrabble grace to her beauty. Like her face, her body brims with defiant life: she has her father’s build, athletic, almost stocky, a short torso with wide hips—like those fertility figurines excavated from the Indus Valley ruins at Harappa, not far from the plains that were her father’s ancestral home. The night I met her at the Harvard Club, in late November of 2014—where Riaz had sent me to mix and mingle at an oil industry event on the foundation’s behalf—she was wearing a form-fitting gingham dress, and her striking figure was very much on display. I noticed her immediately in that dreary bay of navy blazers; I noticed her and thought I noticed her notice me. I tarried, palavering with a Saudi executive whom Riaz and I had met in Dubai. Later, as she headed to the bar for a refill, I sidled up alongside her. She was getting a mojito; I asked for the same. She complimented me on my jacket—a Nehru in a calico print. I told her I loved her dress, and she smiled. There was, then, that inevitable lull when a mutual yearning for intimacy has clearly announced itself but when even the earliest rudiments of a shared language to enable it have yet to be found. She lingered in the pause, sipping. There’d been much chatter in the room that night about the price of oil, and so I leaped into the breach by asking where she thought it was headed next: “Oh, God. I have no idea,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. “What is it now?”
“I think it’s lower than people like. They seem pretty upset about it.”
“So you don’t know, either?”
“I was just trying to impress you.”
That seemed to bring a twinkle to her eye: “Now, why would you try to do that?”
“I think the question is why wouldn’t I?”
“Well…that’s very flattering. But you might want to slow down.”
“Seventy in a fifty-mile-an-hour zone?”
“More like eighty in a twenty-five.”
“Ouch. Okay. Got it.”
“Good,” she said. “’Cause I do think you’re cute.”
Across the room, I noticed a white-haired man staring at us. He was wearing a pin-striped suit somewhat too small for his portly frame, and his face was covered with the splotchy bloom of a hardy Scotch habit. “So what is it you do?” she asked.
“I’m a playwright,” I said.
“A playwright? I didn’t even know that was a thing.”
“It’s definitely a thing. It means I write plays.”
“I just meant I didn’t know someone could, you know…”
“Make a living at it?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Hard to believe, but true.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—”
“No, no. You’re right. It’s not really on the radar here. In this country, I mean. If you mention Broadway, people usually think you’re talking about musicals. Most of us actually make our living in television.”
“Is that what you do, too?”
“Last few years I’ve been lucky. Haven’t had to.”
She lifted her glass. “Here’s to continued good luck, then.” She touched her glass to mine, and the gesture appeared to stoke the ire of Ruddy Face, who was still glaring and making no attempt to hide it.
“That guy keeps looking over here—”
“That’s my boss,” she said, shooting him a short, inattentive smile.
“He doesn’t look too happy about something.”
“About the fact I’m talking to you, probably.”
“Me? Really? Why?”
“Why do you think?” she responded, with a weary look.
“He have a thing for you?”
“I mean…not really…but yeah. Inappropriately possessive. Constantly needing credit for not acting out. You know, the usual.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She shrugged. “Let me go do the rounds. There’s some people I’m supposed to connect with. Unfortunately, you’re not one of them—at least as far as he’s concerned.”
“Do your thing.”
But instead of leaving, she lingered: “Can you stick around? Maybe a drink when we’re done? I know a great place in Chinatown.”
“I’d love nothing more.”
And with that, she smiled and marched off, stopping—I assumed—to placate her boss before heading off into another room. He shot me a look once she was gone, then turned and walked off, too.
I meandered, mingling, took cigarette breaks, came back, circulated some more. It was two hours before she was done. By that point we’d both had more to drink than I think either of us realized. She took my hand as we stepped out onto 44th Street, her fingers electric in my grip. We found a cab on Fifth Avenue and ended up on a narrow side street in Chinatown in front of an unmarked door guarded by a bouncer in a bow tie. He recognized her and let us in. At a covered booth in back, we sat side by side—shoulders touching, arms grazing—and had more drinks. We talked about our families and our apartments. She told me about her shih tzu, Tucker, and how much she hated leaving home because she knew how much he missed her. I confessed the only pets I’d ever had were fish. At one point, she asked when my birthday was. I deflected; I’d never liked birthdays, I told her, even as a child. The day’s preordained centrality always struck me as coercive; at best, I sensed people were happy about a thing they knew they had, too; I felt them celebrating themselves. Seeming amused by what she would later describe to me as my “fetching pretension,” she didn’t relent. She wanted to know the date.