Those were possibly Radha’s least favorite words. She believed there was no better way than legal recourse to change anything that was worth changing. The fact that Aly was stretched to the limit must have been obvious on her face because Radha didn’t point out—as Aly knew she badly wanted to—that Aly had only gotten her job as a diversity hire. Which was a result of discrimination laws.
“Aly, sweetheart, it’s true that we all know why they gave you that job. But you’ve kept that job for ten years for a reason!”
They had reached the pier, and it was time to turn around before the crowded part of the beach invaded their peaceful walk. She couldn’t be late today. She had a date.
When Aly didn’t respond, Radha took a breath and switched topics. “How have the dates been going?” Radha’s face went from worried to gleeful in a fraction of a second. These days, getting Aly to hook up with someone was her second-favorite pastime, after pressing her to “sue the bigotry out of her employer.”
“The first guy was obviously only interested in finishing coffee and then making out in the restroom,” Aly said.
“I still can’t believe he straight-out asked you that.”
“I’m a pretty fit forty-seven-year-old. But seriously. I’m not having sex anywhere but on a bed.”
“So you considered having sex with this guy?”
“Yikes. No! I’m just saying. Even if he hadn’t made slurping noises while drinking his coffee, or had a pornstache, or hadn’t only looked at my breasts when we talked . . .”
“Or suggested sex on your first date.”
“In a bathroom stall! Even then. He was a no. But I met a guy on Tuesday who seemed like there were no terrible red flags.”
Radha rubbed her hands together in glee. “Yay, no terrible red flags! Sounds like kismet!”
They laughed and then Radha got serious again. “So, this might come to something, then? Even though you’re only doing it to show your ex that you’ve moved on. Well, whatever it takes.”
“This isn’t about Ashish. It’s about Cullie. How can I tell my child I don’t want to help her?” Even so, Aly couldn’t believe she’d let Cullie create an account for her on Twinge.
Aly groaned, because having Ashish watch had actually been mortifyingly satisfying.
“Aly, I love you with my whole heart. But seriously, you need to get out more, and you need to get the hell over that loser you married.”
“I thought you liked Ashish.”
“Everyone likes Ashish. Being likable is a genetic predisposition with the Desais. They are annoyingly likable. But, sister mine, he’s treated you like shit, and it’s all sorts of pathetic that you’re still hung up on him.”
Aly picked up her pace, the tips of her ears warming with anger. “How can you say that? I am not hung up on him. In fact, I’m so over him that by extension I’m pretty sure I’m over men. All of them. That’s how much I’m over him.” She crossed her arms, because they tended to start flailing when she got this angry.
Radha stared at Aly in that way one stared at a window after they’d scrubbed it clean enough that birds were cracking their skulls flying into it. “You just heard yourself, right?”
“I hate you.”
“You love me. If you’re looking for a date you’ve already written off, why don’t you go out with that syrupy doctor your mom’s been hounding you about. Word on the street is that he wanted to be a priest when he was young. It might be kinda hot in a Fleabag sort of way.”
Aly made a horrified sound, and Radha laughed. Tungsten. Who named their child that?
Ashish had called him Filament. Aly hated that she’d found that funny. But the man looked alarmingly like the human version of a filament inside a light bulb, wiry and strangely triangular. She hated that she laughed now. “First, that’s just creepy on too many levels. He’s like a cousin, given that Mummy and his mom have been friends since before we were born.”
“That’s not how cousins work. I mean, if Bharat and Cullie fell in love, that wouldn’t be weird at all.”
“Given that your son is gay, it would be.”
“You know what I mean. What’s the second point?”
Aly looked confused.
Radha made her signature impatient face. “You said first. That means you were going to say more before I interrupted you.”
“Yes. You’re ignoring the fact that Mummy wanted to set me up with Tungsten before I married Ashish. Now she’d never set me up with anyone because Ashish and I are still married in the eyes of Our Lord and therefore in her own eyes. Until death do us part, remember?”
Aly tried not to feel the rush of relief she now felt about her parents’ having moved back to Goa after retirement. When they’d first moved, she’d been angry. Why would you move to a new country, have children there, then abandon them? Aly knew they’d left after she was a grown adult, and really, she might have prayed for Mummy to move to the moon a few times, but there was still something self-centered about it. Mummy called it “taking care of themselves,” because God helped those who helped themselves and all that. Which was fair. It still rattled something inside Aly. Maybe if her parents had not moved back, Ashish would never have gotten it into his head to move back either.
The sky was starting to turn pink with the setting sun, and Aly reminded herself of the lightness of these past two years. After the initial shock of Ashish leaving had faded, the relief hit her. Not being in a state of struggle all the time was nice. Now that Ashish was back, that inexplicable struggle was the first thing that had returned.
It wasn’t something Aly could explain, not even to Radha, but somewhere along the winding road of marriage, Ashish had become synonymous with needing to prove and claim her identity. To continuously ask herself why she was okay with things she would never let her friends put up with.
“Trust me, I don’t need you or my parents to comb through your network of eligible men. All I’m doing here is testing an app for Cullie,” Aly said as they found their sandals again.
Radha nodded, accepting that without question. “Drink?” They often made their way to Hobnobs for a drink and some truffle chips after their walks.
“I wish,” Aly said forlornly. “But no time before the date.”
“Well, don’t sound so excited,” Radha deadpanned. “If you’re going to show Ashish up, at least show him up with some enthusiasm.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BINDU
The way she smelled was incomparable. When I told her that, she brought me the parijat flowers she wore in her hair. I wrote that into the script. Just like Bhanu, Poornima would be indistinguishable from the ethereal scent of parijat. And the audience would smell her across the screen.
From the journal of Oscar Seth
It had been years since Bindu had experienced trouble falling asleep. As a young girl, she’d burned with too much wildness—wild yearnings, wild imaginings, wild hope—to sleep. And when she did, her dreams were so vibrant they’d felt like flames consuming her, a fever. Adventure and romance had played on the screens of her closed lids like Technicolor projections.