She took up both of his cheeks with burning hands and kissed him on the mouth, kissed him with all of her bottled-up youth and her still-innocent soul, and he felt her knee against his groin. Vinod couldn’t stop kissing her, but he realized he was an employee of the mercurial Mr. Senderovsky and he had failed to fix the label maker. He pushed her away （had he really just done that?） and turned to his boss, who was shamelessly examining Karen’s chest. “Uka-uka,” Mr. Senderovsky said to Karen. “We had official North Korean delegation visit institute in Leningrad once. Oh, such women in kimono come.”
“Hanbok,” Karen corrected him.
“Sure, but I never try. Is probably tasty.”
“Mr. Senderovsky, it’s almost four-thirty,” Karen said. “Is it okay if Vin knocks off for the day?”
Mr. Senderovsky sighed to indicate he was in favor of young love. “Go, go,” he said. “I make reduction in pay.”
“Tell Sasha we’ll be at Florent,” Karen said.
“Gay restaurant? Only if they don’t convert you to their Greek ways.” He laughed, gold-capped teeth at the edges of his Soviet mouth.
They were walking out on the cobblestone streets of the Meatpacking District, sloshing through the pools of blood and tallow that made the neighborhood what it once was, a glorious slice of Americana trapped between a doomed highway and a storied townhouse district. But now the blood coated his sandals and her Converse differently, because now they were holding hands. Vinod remembered how Ed’s Japanese reality show revolved almost entirely on the moment two housemates reached over and clasped fingers over knuckles. If only her touch wasn’t warm to the point of burning; if only the humid city air would let him breathe as he surveyed the signs around him:
FULLY COOKED CORNED BOTTOM ROUNDS
RABBITS 1.89 LB.
WHOLE LAMBS 99c LB.
“Listen,” Karen said. “I lied about going to Florent. We’ll meet Sasha there later. Let’s go to your place and fuck.”
Vinod could not say anything. His throat was dry and his feet covered in the splooge of other animals. His other life, his parallel life, had been good, no matter what anybody said. Forty-eight years in, he had seen Berlin and Bologna and Bombay and, at the last minute, his beloved with her pants off. But this life was almost too much. Just the thought of this tough stern woman in the flower of youth grinding into him on one of the twin Murphy beds that constituted over 70 percent of his and Senderovsky’s apartment （there was also room for a hot pot, a torchère, a nine-inch television/VCR combo, and the mini-fridge in which they stored their garbage）。 They were approaching their ugly building. He was jangling his Mehta Computers Authorized Apple Dealers （they had not, in fact, been authorized） key chain. Vinod leaned over and whispered into her honey ear, “Karen. Listen. I had a thought. A couple of thoughts.”
“You always do, babe. You could use a little mouthwash when we get upstairs.”
“What if I had gone to New Haven? What if I had left you guys? Gotten my PhD? Published? Did a lot of national radio like Sasha? Developed a persona, funny or serious or somewhere in between.”
“Shh,” she said. “Don’t talk about these things. You’ll just tire your poor lungs out.”
“I’m so excited, I can’t breathe.”
“I want you pretty badly, too,” she said. But her eyes were sad and her dimples unfathomable.
“Suj said I could never catch up with you.”
“Suj? Is that your slutty cousin from Connecticut?”
“Just another voice in my head.”
“What do I always say?”
“I think too much. Born at the wrong time. I’ll never catch up, will I?”
“You’re about to put your hands on my breasts and we’ll fuck so slow you’ll forget how to talk.”
“Oh my God,” he said. Although did Karen ever really say things like that? Even to her tall H-1B visa Irishmen? The stuff about the mouthwash was spot-on, though. He fumbled with the outer door of the tenement, then made his way into the fake-marble lobby. The new elevator was waiting for him. He walked inside the stifling enclosure, horny and dazed. He turned around. She wasn’t there. The elevator’s lightbulb flickered and the temperature around him turned beige, dour, colonial. “Hold the door!” someone was shouting; it wasn’t her. He knew who it was. What if he didn’t hold the door? No, that would be impolite. He always had to hold the door; otherwise he wouldn’t be Vinod Mehta. The large man in the Mets T-shirt slid in with his fawn-like brown eyes and his sensual mouth. It was pointless to retreat, but Vinod did so anyway. His assailant’s sickly sweetness filled the elevator. It sighed and moved off its mooring. Once again, he had forgotten to check for the tube.