We leave the Israelis at midnight. He has a weight behind his reddened eyes. He drives around in silence, we drive through the night and he drinks and he smokes and he drives, but he doesn’t talk to me and he won’t let me go home. I fall asleep in the car. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.
Then it’s light outside, men are clearing their throats, retired colonels are taking their morning walks. I’m sure they can see me, that they all know. We drive and we park and we climb upstairs to go home.
Once inside he goes straight to the computer, sits there in silence typing away, talking in a chat room, looking at porn, drinking the whole time, smoking joint after joint. He doesn’t look at me, still doesn’t talk. I stand in the middle of the living room waiting for him to speak, but he doesn’t speak. I go to bed and hug the pillow and try to sleep.
When I wake he’s sitting at my side with a bottle of whisky in his hand.
He looks at me tenderly and strokes my face. He says, You’re just like a stupid fucking college girl.
I pull the sheets around me and turn away. I tell him to leave me alone, ask him why he has to drink all the time. He only gets up and walks back outside.
I go out and he’s on his computer again.
What are you doing?
He doesn’t reply.
I go towards him and he puts his hand on the monitor switch. When I get close enough he switches it off so I can’t see what he’s been looking at.
He turns to face me and smiles.
I slap his face. I slap it again, I punch his arms and chest and pull at his hair. He watches me and just smirks. I tire, I’m suddenly exhausted, so I sit down on the sofa, and when I do he switches the monitor on again.
Enraged by this I storm over to him. I lift the monitor in my arms and threaten to throw it to the floor, the whole thing. I’ll do it, I say. Don’t try to stop me.
He looks at me and says that he won’t. So go ahead. Do it. Go on.
I say I will. I’ll do it right now.
Do it then. Go on.
I make a motion to throw it down but he doesn’t react.
There are tears in my eyes.
He says, I’m waiting. Do it.
I don’t do it. I can’t. Instead I put it down and get my bag and head to the door. When I’m out and halfway down the marble stairs he calls out to me from above. I look back up to see him standing at the apartment door, smiling at me strangely, wires trailing behind him, the monitor in his arms.
His smile wilts as he lifts and then hurls the monitor through the air. It smashes by my feet on the ground.
The NRI rejected me too, after all was said and done. No reason was given, his family only made their polite excuses to Aunty on the phone. She was troubled, defeated. She said then that it was over, she had tried her best, she had always done what was right, but enough was enough. Now it would be better if I graduated and found a job, and maybe with a job I could look for another place to live.
The first man I pick up is in the coffee shop of the Claridges hotel. I’ve given up our old places. Given up the apartment with those people inside. There’s nothing left of him but me. I want to go where we have no memory.
He’s German, sandy blond and blue-eyed, almost a stereotype, with a face that’s unmemorable and is saved only by his clothes, which give him a pardonable air of wealth. He must be in his late thirties — a powder-blue shirt and cream linen suit. He walks in and he’s waiting to collect a cake for someone’s birthday party, a niece maybe, or the daughter of a friend. Or maybe his own child. The cake is pink. While he’s waiting for it to be packed he’s starting to look around the room. I’ve been watching him from my table since he walked in, looking to be looked at. He sees me, makes eye contact for a moment, turns away. It’s not five seconds before he comes back again.
Because I’ve continued to look, he decides to come over to the table. He approaches casually, asks if he can sit down while he waits. He’s very polite. I tell him he can do as he likes. Now I see the tan line of his absent wedding ring.
Adjusting himself in his seat, he asks me where I’m from, and when I say I’m from Delhi he acts surprised. He says he’s never met a girl from Delhi like me, he thought I was a tourist. It’s hard to speak to girls here, he says. His cake is brought to the table but he makes no effort to leave. I sit and let him talk. He tells me he’s on a business trip, that he works as an analyst in corporate finance and he’s often in Delhi and Bombay, sometimes in Bangalore.
He spends an unnecessary half hour talking me into bed with him, trying to impress me with self-deprecating humour, with innocuous joking barbs followed by earnest praise. Are you here alone? Did you drive here today? I bet you’re a terrible driver, aren’t you? I bet you crash all the time. No, really, I’m sure you’re far better than me on these roads.
This kind of thing.
Delivered in a German monotone.
It’s all very dull, very by the book. He tells me I have beautiful eyes. Finally he asks if I’m a guest here. No, I reply, I was just sitting, having a coffee on my way to see a friend.
It excites him that I’m from the city. He thinks he has to make a special effort with me, he thinks he has to tread carefully, he has a rare chance, and a thing for brown skin. He tells me he has a room here in the hotel and he has to go out later for this function, but he’s enjoyed talking to me, maybe I’d like to have a drink with him beforehand? I keep him waiting a moment, then smile and say, Why not? Encouraged, but not without trepidation, he asks if I’d also maybe like to come to his room.
We walk through the lobby and along the corridor side by side in a guillotine silence. As soon as we’re inside he’s fumbling at me, holding his hands to my waist, pressing his thin lips into mine, pushing me against the door, moving me towards the bed. Detached, out of my body, I let him do all this without a word. I begin to remove my clothes, and lie down on the bed. I let him do it to me and his breath is vile. When he’s finished he climbs off without a word, goes into the bathroom. He’s still there when I put on my clothes and walk out the door.
The next day he disappeared. I turned up at his apartment to find the door locked and the locks changed and his phone switched off. There was an air of finality about it.
Still I banged on the door and rang the bell, waited for an hour, calling his number over and over. I sat outside in my car another two hours before giving up and driving home.
Every day that he’s gone I turn up at his apartment, for ten days I call his phone and it’s the same, the apartment is locked, the phone dead. There’s no one to speak to, nowhere to go. I feel completely alone. I drive past his place every morning before I go to college, in limbo, undone.
On the tenth day he calls me, casual as anything, saying he’s home, asking to know where I am, why aren’t I coming over? No explanation, nothing. No acknowledgement he’s been away, been unreachable. Come over, he says. I tell him I can’t, it’s too late. I ask where he’s been and he just murmurs. His voice has a strange, hollow edge.
When I turn up at his flat the next day there’s a Star of David hanging above the outer door, and inside a giant UV painting of Shiva on the wall. He has Ali with him now. Ali is the one who answers the door. Just like that. He appears, his new companion. Ali lets me in. He seems to know who I am.