For Real(43)

We choose a girl elephant with spotted markings on her ears, and her handler gives us our next pink envelope. The instructions inside read:

In India, grooms traditionally ride decorated elephants to their wedding ceremonies. When you have correctly decorated your elephant’s face and painted its toenails, its handler will give you your next instructions.

I happily gather our paints and brushes and return to Troy. “This is so cool,” I say. “Don’t you think?”

He shrugs. “I guess.”

I decide to ignore him—I won’t let anything ruin my elephant bonding time. “Hi, beautiful girl,” I whisper to her, patting her trunk. She blinks at me slowly with one enormous, thickly lashed eye and flaps an ear in my direction. I decide to name her Aruba, but I don’t say that out loud. I can only imagine how Troy would react.

Will and Philadelphia show up just as I’m starting to apply paint to Aruba’s left cheek, and Philadelphia lets out a piercing squeal. “Oh my God, can you even believe how adorable they are?” she gushes, bounding up to the elephant beside ours. I try to catch Will’s gaze so we can share an eye roll, but he’s not paying any attention to me. He just takes the brush and paints Philadelphia offers and gets to work. Maybe he’s too focused on the elephants and didn’t even see me standing here.

I turn my back and try my best to ignore them, but they haven’t been working ten seconds before Will shouts, “Hey! No fair!” When I glance over, there’s a streak of blue paint dripping down his tan forearm.

Philadelphia widens her eyes in mock innocence and giggles. “Oopsie! Sorry, I guess I can’t tell the difference between you and the elephant. Your skin looks so similar.”

I search Will’s face, hoping to find annoyance there, but he just smiles mischievously, dips his brush in pink, and edges closer to her. “You naughty, naughty girl,” he says, and the warmth in his voice stabs me right in the gut. Then he lunges at Philadelphia, and she shrieks with laughter as he swipes a dripping pink line from her shoulder to her elbow.

I hate that he’s touching her on purpose, even with a brush. I hate that he actually seems to be having fun with her. For a second I consider ostentatiously flirting with Troy to show Will I don’t care, but there’s no way I could make that look believable. So I just grit my teeth and try to tune them out as best I can. Painting a live animal is harder than it looks, anyway, and I need to concentrate. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure Aruba looks annoyed, too.

Way before I’m finished, Troy abandons Aruba’s right cheek and moves around to start painting her trunk. “You’re not done already, are you?” I snap. “You have to actually paint inside the lines, you know. You can’t just slosh it on like you’re Jackson Pollock or something.” As if Troy would even know who that is.

“Yeah, I knew,” Troy says. He dips his brush in orange and starts painting.

Maybe he doesn’t understand what “inside the lines” means. I sigh and move around to Aruba’s other side, ready to point out what he’s done wrong. But Troy’s flowers look perfect, way better than mine. He’s even managed to do shading on a few of them. “Whoa,” I say. “You’re really good at this.”

He gives me a sarcastic half smile. “Imagine that. A stripper with actual skills.”

“No, I didn’t mean—I’m just really impressed that—”

“Whatever, Claire. Just keep working.”

We don’t speak again, except to say “pass the pink” or “here’s a clean brush.” When I finally finish my side, I start on Aruba’s feet—her nails are massive and crusty and kind of gross, but they look a little better once I’ve spruced them up with pink and green. Will and Philadelphia are now loudly trying to remember the lyrics to the “Pink Elephants on Parade” song from Dumbo, and when our handler forks over our next envelope, I’m not sorry to leave. I hate that their flirting has ruined the one and only chance I’ll probably ever get to touch an elephant.

“Those guys are freaking annoying,” Troy mutters as we move off to the side to open our next instructions, and for the first time, I actually agree with him about something.

Make your way by taxi to Shahwilayat Goat Farms. In some parts of India, it’s thought that any baby girl born with a tooth already protruding through her gums is possessed by a ghost. In order to exorcise that spirit, she must marry a goat in a special ceremony. In homage to that, you must search a herd of goats for the one that has a wedding ring tied around its hoof. Present your ring to the farmer to receive your next instructions.

Troy wrinkles his nose. “Uh, she has to marry a goat? Do you think she’s gotta do other stuff with it?”

Leave it to him to go there. “Ew, Troy! It’s obviously symbolic. I can’t believe you even thought of that.” I start heading toward the exit.

He jogs to catch up to me. “How is that not the first thing you thought of?”

“ ’Cause I actually have some respect for other cultures? ’Cause I’m not totally warped? ’Cause I think about other things besides sex?”

“Thinking about sex doesn’t make you warped. Everyone thinks about sex. Not thinking about it makes you a prude.”

“Not thinking about sex with goats makes me a prude?” A couple of women in saris look up from their conversation and stare at us, and my cheeks heat up. I pray they don’t understand English very well.