A Girl Like That(48)
She flicked the last glowing butt out the window. “That’s good enough.”
I did a quick three-sixty of our surroundings. In the distance, a black speck that was a lone man watching the waves. The afternoon sun beat down on my car. It was a risk. The man could decide to turn around and walk this way anytime. A car could drive up behind us, could slow down to see what we were up to. But then I looked at Zarin’s face again and her lips parted slightly, almost as if she’d turned a little breathless.
I leaned in.
Her mouth was smoky and moist. Her hair smelled like sandalwood incense and shampoo. But when my hand crept up her ribs, she pushed away.
Her breath came out hard and fast, though we hadn’t kissed for more than a few seconds. There was a look in her eyes that could have been confusion or nerves. Or maybe it was her heart. Pumping like mine from the adrenaline rush of being in danger.
“It’s getting late.” She withdrew her nails from my wrist; there were little crescents now, right below the place where her abaya had brushed my skin. “That turkey’s beginning to stink up your car.”
*
Chem was where Bilal first told me about the “relaxant”—a vial of clear liquid that, in the right proportions, loosened your limbs and tied up your tongue, shutting down parts of the brain that didn’t need to be active. “Colorless, odorless, tasteless,” he said. “A few drops in water or a nice fruity drink. Drops, remember. And don’t go mixing it in alcohol either. You want the girl to experience paradise with you, not go there directly.”
Days after my date with Zarin, he brought the vial to me outside the classroom, slipping it into the back pocket of my pants while he passed me in the corridor before our lab session. It was the second time I’d bought it from him. “Don’t sit on it,” he said. “That’s about a thousand riyals in your pocket.”
Bilal had taken the money in advance. The price had spiked slightly since the Chowdhury girl. I never knew where he got his stuff from. Friends in high places, he always told me when I asked. Friends in high, high places.
“Thanks, man.” I kept my voice as low as he did. “See you at lunch.”
The corridor was empty, but we always talked like this as an extra precaution. As the bell for the third period rang, I opened the door to the lab and made my way to the desk at the very back of the room, next to a cabinet full of dusty beakers and old lab manuals. I glanced around quickly; apart from the lab assistant who was busy setting up things at the front of the room, as usual, I was the only one there. Thanks to the head boy prep the principal subjected me to every other week for some school event or another, second periods on those Mondays were always half free—or at least I never went back to them once my fifteen-minute session with Siddiqui ended.
I gently removed the vial from my pocket and transferred it to a secure little pouch in my backpack. About a minute later, the lab began filling up. Abdullah tossed his textbook and lab manual on our shared desk, rattling the empty test tubes in their stand.
“Hey,” he said in a cool voice.
“Hey,” I said.
Our conversation the weekend before had not gone very well, especially when he found out about me and Zarin. We hadn’t spoken since then, which was why I was surprised when he sat down next to me and asked: “Are you seeing her again?”
I looked at him carefully. “Yeah. This Thursday, in fact.”
He gave me a tight smile. “Good luck.”
I felt a slight twinge of guilt, but then pushed it away. We had an understanding about these things, I reminded myself. Abdullah knew that. I thought back to my kiss with Zarin last week. Her breathlessness. Those small, surprisingly strong fingers gripping my arms. That turkey’s beginning to stink up your car. The words had stayed in my head, teasing, tantalizing, taunting all night long, showing up when I least expected them to, like right now. My fingers tightened around the textbook for a split second, the knuckles pink and white. The way I wanted her skin to be when I was done with her. I edged my pack under the seat with the tip of my sneaker, careful so it did not touch any of the chair’s legs.
“Old Rawoof failed half of XII 2 with the viva questions first period,” Abdullah said after a minute. “We can’t expect anything less from Dawood Madam, she’s in high board-exam-prep mode. I think I’m losing my mind, man! And why does it smell like farts around here?”
The air in the chem lab didn’t smell any different from the usual: a combination of ink, sweat, and sulfur. But I knew what Abdullah was up to. Angry though he may have been with me initially, this was his way of giving me the green light, of saying that we were cool again and that he didn’t care what I did anymore, ex-girlfriend or not. I did not know what exactly had caused his change of heart. Maybe he was tired of our cold war. Or maybe he simply wanted to remain in the loop about what would happen next with Zarin and find out if I would succeed where he had failed. We were competitive in that way, Abdullah and I. Especially when it came to girls.
I smirked for a split second and then put on another face—the one that looked like I was seconds from throwing up. “Probably the essence of old Rawoof,” I said. “Beans and puke.”
And then Abdullah and I stuck our hands under our armpits and made farting sounds over and over until some of the other guys joined in, until the whole class forgot we had oral exams and started chanting, “Gas! Gas! Gas! Gas!”—ignoring the pathetic excuse for a lab assistant—until Dawood Madam entered the room and yelled at us to shut up.