A Girl Like That(46)
Her abaya, unbuttoned at the front, was nearly slipping off her shoulders. Underneath, she wore white salwar bottoms and a navy-blue kameez with a Qala Academy logo embroidered in white on the front hip pocket. The flat, starched white dupatta was pinned at her shoulders and draped in a V across her chest in the standard schoolgirl style, stopping short of covering the tips of her small, firm breasts.
The deli boy’s pale face reddened. “Now you listen to me…”
Pathetic. I didn’t even have to listen to the guy to figure out the impression he was making on the girl; in spite of his six-foot height and muscle, you could see that he wasn’t the one who wore the pants in this relationship, if there was one.
The girl’s fingers were pressed to the glass covering the cheese blocks. A narrow, untanned mark bounded her wrist, the imprint of a watch she hadn’t bothered to put on that morning. I stared at the creamy strip of skin, wondering if it was the same shade or even lighter in other areas untouched by sunlight.
“May I help you?” the deli boy asked me, his scowl at odds with his polite salesman tone.
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said without taking my eyes off the girl. She flashed a glance at me. Eyes dark and acidic. A face that, when I’d managed to get my eyes off her tight little body, looked strangely familiar.
Then it hit me. It was the girl from the bus. The pretty one I’d locked eyes with before my sister came rushing toward me with her silly debate trophy. A girl who had seemed terribly shy then, but did not seem so shy now.
I smiled.
She raised an eyebrow and turned back to the deli boy. “Hurry up,” she said. “You know she’ll kill me if I’m late.”
The boy gave her a tray of finely sliced turkey wrapped in plastic.
I was supposed to pick up something similar for Ammi—slices of roast beef with peppercorn, I think she’d said—but who cared about that now?
I stepped behind the girl, partly blocking her way as she turned to leave, and pulled out a pack of Marlboros from the pocket of my jeans. “Want a ride back home?”
She frowned slightly.
“You can’t ride with him!” the deli boy snapped. “You don’t even know him!”
Her gaze moved from the cigarettes in my hand to Abba’s silver Rolex on my wrist to the muscles on my upper arm.
“Good-bye, Porus.” She finally looked into my eyes. “I do know him.”
“Really? Who is he?”
She smiled at Porus and said, “Mr. MYOB.”
*
People called me a smooth talker ever since I was a boy. I could charm a smile out of the grouchiest old bag in the room if I put my mind to it; it was a trait I’d inherited from Abba, my mother said. My mother, who I’d always thought was clueless to my father’s screwing ways until the day I found her sitting alone in the living room, watching static on the TV.
“Where’s Abba?” I’d asked.
“Out,” Ammi said. “As always.”
“On business again?” I had hesitated before asking the question. I knew Abba’s business trips had been done with the week before. He should’ve been home now. Unless …
She’d let out a laugh. High and sharp. “Oh yes. Business.”
Abdullah, the only one who knew about the situation, shrugged. “It is what it is, man. I mean, my dad has two wives and he pretends that one of them doesn’t exist. At least your dad still comes to see your mom and spends time with you and your sister.”
And maybe Abdullah was right—to a point. While Abdullah’s mother had turned into a zombie after her husband’s second marriage, my mother carried on with life as always, never showing how it affected her, always sleeping with Abba in the same room, in the same bed where Abba had banged other women in the past.
Asma and I were the ones Ammi focused on, Asma more than me, thankfully, being a girl. I was her show pony, the handsome son she liked to bring out to her friends whenever they came over to our house. Sometimes it would be the aunty with the bulldog face. Sometimes the other aunty, who was shyer and prettier and easier to charm. When Ammi asked me to come out and say hi, I knew my real job was to smile the way Abba did, to say things like: “Hello there, Aunty. How are you? Looking as beautiful as ever.”
Then they would tell Ammi: “Oh yes, he looks so much like his father.” Or “Such a charming young man.”
The aunties’ daughters were a different story. Ammi’s friends’ daughters were untouchable, no matter how hot—as I had learned through experience, when I’d started e-mailing Bulldog Aunty’s hot daughter in Class X. The stupid girl told her mother about it and Bulldog Aunty wanted to get us engaged. It ended quickly enough though. Ammi dismissed the proposal by saying I was too young to be committed—“They’re children! It’s much too soon. Let them be friends and write to each other and—”
“Let them write to each other?” the aunty said, and for the first time I found her looking at me with an expression other than her usual such a good boy one. “What will people say about my daughter if they find out she’s been having friendships with boys? Girls from good families don’t do such things!”
“Her good little girl was probably the one who contacted Farhan in the first place!” Ammi said irritably after the aunty left. She patted me on the arm. “Forget about her, beta. Girls like that only want to entrap rich and handsome boys like you into marriage.”