Lost and Wanted(55)

“I thought I didn’t want him to grow up, when he was little. But it’s more fun as they get older—harder, but also more fun.”

Charlie once told me that she didn’t like the way Neel looked at me when I was speaking. She had said it was like I was “an interesting thing in a museum.” I thought at the time that she misunderstood him, because I believed that that expression (which I could recall as soon as she put it into words) was evidence of his serious desire to understand me. I saw that look on his face now.

“Did Roxy tell you about later, at our place?”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“But maybe?” There was gray in the part of his hair.

“Maybe,” I said.

“I hope so.” He gave me another careful hug, and then released me. I went to find Terrence at the bar.

“We can skip the after-party,” I told him. “This is bad enough.”

    Terrence shrugged. “Up to you. For me it’s that or sitting in the guest room listening to my mother-in-law cry through the wall.”

I looked at him. Charlie’s mother crying was a startling thing to imagine. “Addie cries?”

“I put on headphones,” Terrence said. “But, yeah.”





4.


Neel and Roxy’s new apartment was across the river in Jamaica Plain, nothing like what I’d expected. It was a brand-new building (there was still a sign advertising luxury condos for sale) with a large, empty lobby, a doorman behind a shiny black desk. They were on the sixth floor, and the apartment itself was mostly empty, too, except for a black leather couch, a large flat-screen TV, a travertine dining table. Everything looked both plain and expensive, the light gray wooden floors, the blue enamel kitchen cabinets. The only constants from the Neel I’d known were the abundant books and the general scarcity of other possessions. There were large windows, through which you might be able to see the Arnold Arboretum during the day. Now the windows were dark, alternating with framed collages that combined vividly colored vintage Bollywood poster art with Chinese urban street scenes. The artist was from Singapore, Roxy told me. She was setting out dark blue porcelain bowls on the low table in front of the television: olives, almonds, candied ginger.

I excused myself to get a drink, which I planned not to consume. If I had another, I didn’t trust myself not to reveal how uncomfortable I felt in Neel and Roxy’s new home. I made my way across the room and took the empty seat beside Terrence, whose prohibition on controlled substances seemed, inexplicably, not to extend to weed. He was sharing a joint with Neel’s old friend Dan, a molecular chemist. I felt a surge of love for Dan, who was over six feet tall and becoming fat. He had wild hair and terrible posture, but his expression was the same one I remembered from when I’d known him well. When Neel and I were working together, we would often go out for a meal with Dan. Neel and I would make passionate arguments on one subject or another, and Dan would sit there eating: tolerant and slightly bemused. Dan had always placed less faith in talking than Neel, and had lower expectations about people and the world in general; he was funnier than Neel, and it was more relaxing to be around him.

    “Your friend is knowledgeable,” Dan said. “I’m telling him about the stuff we used to cook up in grad school.”

“I only remember you guys doing that the one time,” I said. “And nobody actually tried it, thank god.” I turned to Terrence. “More important would be his small molecule immunotherapeutics—cancer drugs.”

“That was also worthwhile,” Dan acknowledged. “But it’s been more thoroughly publicized.” He called to Neel across the room, patting the place next to him. “Come here, my little monkey,” he called, but there wasn’t really room for Neel on the couch. He came over anyway, and settled on the floor at the conjunction of two leather sectionals. He stretched out his legs and grinned at Dan:

“Dude, I’m not your monkey.”

Roxy made her way across the room and sat on the coffee table, facing Terrence. She shook her head at Neel.

“What are you doing down there?”

“I’m so comfy,” Neel said. He’d had a good smoke, I could see, and was ready to talk. He kept looking from me to Roxy, Roxy to me. I thought that for an apartment like this you needed money, and that the money would have had to have come from Roxy’s family. Neel wasn’t the kind of man who minded that; in fact, I thought he probably appreciated the irony that some people who’d stayed in India over the past generation could now support those who’d immigrated to America. Where he was sitting, he was so close to me that if he’d leaned just slightly in one direction, his shoulder would’ve been against my leg. I could have reached out and touched his hair.

By contrast, Roxy seemed perfectly sober. She was asking Terrence about surfing with what seemed like real interest. Could she really learn? Even if she was not at all athletic? Where could you go around here, or on the East Coast in general? What did he like about it?

Terrence had taken off his jacket and was leaning back into the couch. He began in his laconic way, intensified by the weed, to describe a point break he’d surfed with his brother in Peru—the longest left in the world. For the first time that evening he seemed to be having fun.

    “I’m going to tell you a secret,” Neel said suddenly, turning away from them.