* * *
—
“Why don’t you come work for me?” he said.
She was in the bathroom trying to fix the kajal around her eyes.
“No. It’s not a good idea.”
She came back and lit a cigarette and lay on her belly with her legs in the air like she’d seen girls do in movies.
“Why not?”
“What would I do? Be your secretary?”
“Be anything you want.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“Why?” he ran his hand over her ass, slapped it lightly. “I already fucked you. It’s not like you have to worry about that.”
“Shut up.” She rolled over onto her back. “And what about when you stop wanting to fuck me?”
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
“Let’s keep it simple,” she said.
“You’ll come around.”
Her phone began ringing in her bag out in the living room.
She listened out, rolled her eyes. “Probably my mother.”
It was probably Dean.
“Aren’t you going to answer?”
“It can wait.”
It stopped.
He closed his eyes and she ran her fingers through his pubic hair, cradled his soft dick. “Bigger than I’d hoped for,” she smiled. He responded to her touch, or her words. “Ready to go again?”
* * *
—
“What happened earlier tonight?” she asked. They were drinking whisky. She was yawning. They had been napping.
“What do you mean?”
“Why were you so agitated?”
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling a long time.
Then suddenly he began to speak.
“One day when I was a little kid,” he said, “my father took me to Lala Ka Bazar. This is back when we lived in Meerut. I remember being in a rickshaw with him, pressed up against his body, I’d never been so close to him. We climbed off and we walked through the alleyways. He’d never taken me out like this before. He’d never taken me anywhere. I was so excited. So happy because all my life I’d been ignored. We reached a toy store, and the other customers were asked to leave. There we were, he, I, the shop owner. I was told by my father to pick out any toy I liked, as many as I wanted. “Go,” he said. So I did. I ran around. I spent a good long time searching and finally I settled on a few things—a red truck with flashing lights, a small, hard, yellow ball that bounced really well off the walls, and this toy gun that made different sounds when it fired. My father didn’t say anything to me, but he had them set aside and then we left. I was confused, but I daren’t ask why we hadn’t taken them. I decided they were being sent home for me. I waited and I waited. Days. Weeks. But they never came. I never forgot. I never stopped waiting.”
He paused, tangled up in his memories.
“Tonight,” he went, his voice growing cold, “Dinesh said to me, ‘Your father was like a father to me growing up. All the important moments in my life, he was there.’ He meant it as a compliment. He thought he was flattering me. Then he described one certain birthday, the first time he met his Bunty Uncle. He said he’d never forget the gifts. A gun, a truck, a yellow bouncing ball.”
“That’s awful. Did you tell him your story?”
“Are you mad? Why would I humiliate myself like that?”
“I don’t know.”
They lay in silence for some time.
“What about your mother?”
He breathed slowly. “What about her?”
“Didn’t she do something?”
He shook his head.
“She was dead by then.”
“When did she die?”
“When I was five.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sat up, climbed out of bed. “Don’t be. The bitch hung herself.”
Her phone began to ring.
She ignored it.
“You should get that,” he said.
“I don’t want to. It’s not important.”
It rang off and went silent. Ten seconds later it started ringing again.
“Get it,” he said, “or I throw it out the window.”
* * *
—
It was Dean. She stood naked with the phone, looking at the twinkling sulfury lights of Delhi. He asked her where she was, said he wanted to meet her for dinner at 4S. He said, “How can you resist the lure of chilli chicken and cold beer?” She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less right now. She calibrated her voice as if she were speaking to her mother. She told Dean she was having a drink with a friend, that she’d finish up and call back later. She was still reeling from Sunny’s words. The practiced callousness that could not hide his pain. She wanted to know more.