“I’m not sure,” Senderovsky said. “I think it might be in storage down in the city.”
“Oh.” Vinod sighed. “Well, that makes sense. I’m just surprised you didn’t throw it out.”
“I would never throw out any Vinod Mehta memorabilia. I’ll try to think of where it might be. Now go, go wash up!”
* * *
—
Masha and Karen were both wearing masks at Masha’s request, one at the stove, the other at the farm sink. Vinod did not expect his first sighting of Karen to take in only half her face, but the deep mottled hazel of her eyes and the concentrated sharpness of her gleaming forehead could still do the trick. He let himself float in the happiness, especially as she yelled out “Vinod!” through the muffle of the mask. “Oh, God,” she said, “I want to hug you so bad.”
“The doctor won’t allow it,” Senderovsky mumbled, mostly to himself. He was still lost in thought about that Teva active sandals box, the blue rigid floppy disk with all of Vinod’s careful words.
“The bus ride was pretty safe,” he heard Vinod saying. “Everyone had their own row. There was one person sneezing in the back, but she said she had allergies.”
“We’re going to pamper the shit out of you,” Karen said.
“That’s right,” Masha said. “Vinod gets the best of everything while he’s here.”
“I’m super-duper fine,” Vinod said. “I’ll get through this like a champion. Fuss about me too much, and I might get cross.”
Karen was a visual person, not a great noticer of language. But she remembered now the great sonorous delights of Vinod’s verbiage and accent: Ahmedabad and Bombay filtered through Corona, Queens. The w as a v. The d as a double t. The poetic way he subbed “true” for “through.” “I’ll get true this like a champion.” “Champion,” not the American “champ,” by the way. Denied suburbia, he had spent his childhood among too many aunties and uncles all shouting in tandem about the price of milk and the price of silk. And even to this day, she noticed, his voice still cracked in places where the cement had never been put in and allowed to harden.
Senderovsky realized something. “What the hell is going on?” he said. “Ed and I should be doing all the cooking, the sardines and the vitello tonnato and the sausages and lamb steaks.”
“Ed must be tired after the ninety-minute ride from the city,” Karen said. “You know, the change in time zones.”
Vinod laughed. She was so brutal. Senderovsky smiled at his laughter. Masha commanded herself to feel good about the natural friendship between the three others in the kitchen. Karen had been so kind with Nat, and Vinod was always a darling. And, as her own therapist would bring up, her husband had chosen to spend his life with her. “I’ll go wake Master Kim,” Senderovsky said.
“Don’t bother, we’re almost done with the pasta,” Masha said. “And we have the jamón and olives as a starter. And cheese for dessert.”
“So when is our special guest getting here?” Karen asked.
“There’s a chance he might not be coming tonight,” Senderovsky announced.
The two bemasked women looked at each other from their respective stations. Few knew that Masha subscribed to the worst of the celebrity magazines and kept their tabs open on her computer, even during her online therapy sessions. This was something Senderovsky loved about her, found oddly sexual, even. All the fights they had had about bringing people up from the infected city had ended with Senderovsky flicking out his trump card from the bottom of the deck. “If the great thespian can come, why not others?”
There was a flutter of activity as Nat, still dressed in her Korean school outfit, but minus the tie, made a beeline through the kitchen, hollering about some “form-ah” of love, or so it sounded to Vinod, as she played an only child’s version of hide-and-go-seek with herself.
“Hi, Natasha!” Vinod shouted after her.
“She goes by Nat now,” Senderovsky said.
“Six feet from the guests, sweetheart!” Masha shouted after her. And in Russian, and in metrics: “Dva metra.”
“I’m going to set the table,” Vinod said.
“Gloves, please,” Masha said. She had owned a carton of them, even before the calamity happened. The men snapped on their gloves without comment and started ferrying boxes of recyclable cutlery to the great covered porch. “What’s it like to be reunited with the boys?” she asked Karen, who was stirring a prized batch of pasta nel sacco the Levin-Senderovskys had secured in Urbino during a rare family vacation abroad.