While she and Manoj are working, she asks him, “Does your papa handle all of the finances for the restaurant?”
He looks at her skeptically. “Why are you asking?”
“I was just curious. My work in India was accounting, and I wonder if he might need some help. Restaurants were my area of expertise.”
“I doubt it,” Manoj says, and turns back to pureeing the toor lentils for the dal.
Sophie drops it, but his expression confirms that the restaurant is in trouble. She will think about how to raise her offer to Naresh Uncle in a respectful manner. For right now, she is focused on the clock and getting to ten thirty so she can leave and still get to Bistro Laurent before eleven.
28
NITA
1999
Mathieu made eye contact with Nita while his face was buried between the woman’s legs. His expression was steely, registering no emotion whatsoever in seeing her standing there.
Stunned, Nita dropped the bottle of Bordeaux. It made a thud as the thick glass hit the wooden floor. Only then did the tattooed woman open her eyes and realize that another person had entered the room. She didn’t flinch, as if it were not her first time being caught in bed by another woman. She turned toward Mathieu to see how he was reacting, and he eventually rose to his knees, his flaccid penis now visible to both women. Nita knew that meant he had already satisfied himself in this woman and was giving her the “encore.” Nita hadn’t experienced the “encore” in a very long time because lately his sexual appetite had been focused wholly on himself. The woman propped herself up on her elbows, seemingly annoyed that they’d been interrupted before she’d finished.
Mathieu’s lips glistened, and he didn’t even attempt to wipe his mouth. “I thought you’d be home later.” He reached for the cigarette and lighter that were on top of the nightstand near the bed.
Nita clutched the doorframe, feeling faint.
Mathieu lit the cigarette and let it dangle from his lips. He pulled the woman to a sitting position.
“Je pense que tu devrais partir.” I think you should go.
The woman climbed out of the bed and pulled black leggings over her long skinny legs. She then threw an oversize sweater over her top. She hadn’t bothered to put on her bra or panties and shoved them into her bag. She then reached into a small pocket in her purse and pulled out a clear bag containing white pills. She handed them to Mathieu and actually kissed him before scurrying past Nita and letting herself out of the apartment. Nita wondered if the woman could taste herself on his lips.
The entire exchange from the time Nita opened the bedroom door until the woman left had probably been no more than three minutes, but Nita felt as if hours had passed. Her legs felt stuck to the floor as if they had been cemented there.
Mathieu tucked the plastic bag with the pills into the drawer of the nightstand and inhaled deeply from his cigarette, his cheeks sunken as he held the smoke in for a few seconds before slowly releasing it. He used a tissue to wipe himself and then wadded it up and tossed it onto the nightstand before pulling up his underwear and then climbing into a pair of jeans that he’d picked up from the floor.
He walked toward Nita, but she still could not move her limbs or utter a word. As he neared her, she saw that his eyes were bloodshot, and she knew he was fading off his high from whatever pill he had taken earlier that day. Kneeling before her, he picked up the wine bottle and eyed the label.
“This is a nice one,” he said while being careful not to drop the cigarette from his lips.
He moved past her into the kitchen, opened a drawer, and pulled out a corkscrew.
Nita finally found the strength to move and turned around to face him.
She could only eke out one word.
“Mathieu?”
The expression on her face conveyed everything else she couldn’t say at that moment.
He made eye contact with her for the second time that night, this time without having his face pressed between another woman’s legs. His eyes seemed to be asking what she was so upset about and suggesting she was overreacting.
Nita’s hands clenched into fists. She put aside the Indian instinct she had been raised with to not speak out and found her words.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” She stomped toward him, fists balled so tightly that her fingernails almost pierced half moons into her skin.
He placed the corkscrew on the counter.
“Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas chez toi?” he asked her. What’s wrong with you?
“Me? Me?!” Her body began to shake. “You just had your dick and tongue and whatever else inside of that—that—thing, and you are asking what’s wrong with me!?”
“Ma chérie, it is not what you think,” he said, adopting the sweet voice he had used with her when they first met. A voice she now identified as the act that it had been when she had first heard it.
Her eyes widened at the thought of him trying to explain away something she had literally witnessed minutes earlier. He came around the kitchen counter and moved toward her. She folded her arms across her chest, taking a step back.
“Ma chérie, she is the dealer I use,” he said, as if this served as a fine explanation.
Nita shrugged him off as he tried to caress her arm.
“What difference does that make?”
Mathieu tilted his head down, gazing at her through his long thick lashes. His best attempt at an innocent puppy look. “We have worked out an arrangement. This way I don’t need to pay her for our drugs, and everyone is happy.”
Nita felt the walls closing in on her. She brushed past him toward the front door to create more distance.
“Our drugs? Our drugs? When did I ever say I wanted any drugs? And when did you ever say that you were trading sex for pills?”
Mathieu shrugged. “Il n’y a pas assez d’argent. Je pensais que cela pourrait être un bon compromis.” There is not enough money. I thought this would be a good compromise.
“Compromise? Compromise? You are having sex with someone else! How can you do that?” Tears began to prick her eyes, but she did not want to give him the satisfaction.
“It does not mean anything. It was easier than having to find the money.”
“You thought those pills were so damned important that you should whore yourself out to have them?”
The sweet look on Mathieu’s face while he was trying to curry her favor vanished. In its place was the dark, emotionless expression she had seen when she first opened the bedroom door that night.
He narrowed his eyes and focused his gaze on her. “I’m not the only whore in this room.”
Nita’s eyes widened at his insult.
Mathieu took a small step closer to her. “Funny that someone who takes her clothes off and lets people paint her for money has such high morals.”
A tiny gasp escaped Nita’s lips, as if she had been slapped. Her mind started racing, and she felt like she could not breathe. She wanted to hurl an insult at him that would hurt him as much as he had hurt her, but she was still reeling from what he had said to her. Mostly because part of her agreed with him. She hated who she had become. She did think she had demeaned herself, but she didn’t know a way out. And she never forgot that he had led her down that path. If he hadn’t, might she have returned home to Rajiv and Sophie? Might she have spared herself all the shame she now felt whenever she saw her reflection in a mirror? She grabbed her coat and purse, still damp from the rain, and opened the door.