“What’d she say?” David asked.
“Nothing really.”
David checked at his watch. “In two hours?”
“Well…”
“Did she like the place?”
“She said it was dark.”
He nodded. It was dark. “Foggy,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ll go crazy in there.” With arching eyebrows, David signified crazy. Reena laughed.
The day they rented the apartment had been sunny and clear, a washed-out and white afternoon. It fooled them: the tiny space seemed, that morning, endearingly intimate and warm. They’d spent more than a week unpacking, cleaning, and painting; not once had it approached the bright golden light of that first day. “Indifferent to light,” was how Reena described the apartment. Outside, the quality of the sun changed: shadows glancing at various angles, transforming the city as the day grew older. But inside their space, the walls stayed a dull white and nothing glowed and nothing shone. A uniform blue evoked midwinter. It was, they decided, the city’s darkest nonbasement apartment.
Now David held his hands out. Reena pulled him up. “She didn’t even look in the closets. Or under the bed. You’re off the hook.” She bit her lip and tucked a loose strand of black hair behind her ear. “She did ask me if I was seeing anyone.”
“And? What’d you tell her?”
“That me and my hoodrat boyfriend make love every night on the fire escape.”
Reena touched his cheek, and David felt the muscles of his face contract into a smile. Over her shoulder, he could see the older men watching them.
“Underneath the stars. How romantic.”
“Without protection,” she whispered.
“Mongrel babies.”
“Half-breeds.
“The best kind,” he said. Her breath tickled his ear. He buried his head between her neck and shoulder, felt her tighten when he bit her earlobe. He kissed her neck until Reena laughed.
“She told me there are Web sites for Indians now,” Reena said. “Web sites? Can you imagine?”
“How primitive modern.” David frowned and pulled away. “She’s not giving up then.”
“Nope.”
He shook his head and realized he was expecting something. It had been two hours. He felt the need to be thanked. They were quiet for a moment. On the sidewalk, the breeze turned the newspaper’s crumpled pages.
“She brought us fruit,” Reena said finally.
“Ooohh.”
“Don’t be an ass.” She twirled a lock of black hair around her finger and then took his hand.
“Do you think she’ll come around much?”
“Probably not.” Reena kissed him. They crossed the street toward their apartment.
But she did come around, once the next week, and twice the week after that. David soon understood exactly what was in store. Reena lived in the apartment, he visited there. All the bills were in her name. David had bought a cell phone, since he was prohibited from answering the land line. It was the number Reena’s mother called. The first weeks of September, there was still little to be done at work, and so often he was home early, only to be displaced by Reena’s mother. He got to know the neighborhood during these periods of exile. He walked up to Riverside Park, where the Mexicans played volleyball beneath the leafy shade of the oak trees. He had coffee at La Floridita and pretended to play Lotto with those stubby yellow pencils. He window-shopped on 125th, looked disinterestedly at bright Timberland boots engineered like SUVs, and baby blue FUBU jogging suits selling for two bills. But always before he left, David waited for Mrs. Shah and tried to intercept her. He’d seen Reena’s mother three times now, walking slowly up the hill from the train station, bearing gifts: a grocery bag full of apples, a duffel packed with bath towels, and once, an electric juicer, brand-new and still in the box. Afterward, when he came home and Reena showed off what her mother had brought them, David warily pointed out that these gifts, no matter how thoughtful, were not for them. They were for her. In any case, he saw Mrs. Shah before Reena did, saw her struggling up the hill with heavy bags, arms clasped around a package, and he never offered to help, though this went against every impulse he had, everything he had ever been taught. Instead he walked by, smiling generously. His idea was to pass her each and every time she came until she noticed him.
“She won’t, you know,” Reena said when he told her his plan. They were unpacking a bag full of sweaters that Mrs. Shah had brought, though the cold was still weeks away.
“She could.”
“Sure. She could. But she won’t.”
“I’ll bump into her,” David said. “I’ll help her carry her bags up the hill.”
Reena groaned.
“I’m playing,” David said.
“Well, don’t. Me living alone is a big deal to her. Everything is. You know she wanted me to move home. Anything more is too much,” Reena said. “She’d die.”
The last syllable hung there, and David believed none of it. “That’s not how people die,” he said. David held a stack of sweaters — ugly sweaters — in his hands, was poised to stash them away on a top shelf in the closet. Instead he tossed them on the bed. “No one dies ’cause their daughter’s got a boyfriend.”
She glared at him. “Don’t talk like that,” she said curtly. “You don’t know how people die.” Her old man had been out running, on a doctor’s suggestion that he get more exercise. He’d been ailing for years but, it seemed, had turned a corner. Then, heart attack.
Reena turned on a lamp. She squinted. They’d declared the dark their enemy, painted the walls a shade of red David called “the color of action.” Hundred-watt bulbs in three lamps. They gave the impression of a room on fire.
“I’m sorry…” David trailed off. “I feel like I’m sneaking around,” he said, turning on the stereo. The wired voice of a radio DJ filled the room.
“You are sneaking around. Jesus. We both are. My mother wants to marry me off to some dentist. My wedding was all they ever talked about. She’s checking the fucking Internet.” Reena picked up the sweaters and, on the tips of her toes, tossed them up on the top shelf. Her breasts bounced once as she jumped. Reena turned to face David, who’d taken a seat by the desk. “I lie to her every day. You think this is a cakewalk for me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“They’re—She’s not going to stop until I’m Mrs. Patel or Mrs. Singh or Mrs. Kumar. Mrs. Nice Indian Boy.”
“And?” he said.
Reena sighed. Her lips were pursed and tight. “You want me to tell her? Are you ready for that?” she asked. “You know what would happen?”
David stared at her black eyes. She was beautiful, too beautiful for him. Once, she hadn’t been so afraid. He turned away from her. “Whatever,” he muttered, grateful, suddenly, for all the diffuse meanings of that word.
“Do you know how fucked up it would be?”
“You’ve told me.”
“She’s alone now.” Reena stepped toward him. “I’m what she has.” She softened. “Don’t make this your problem,” she said. “Please. You don’t want it.”
David sighed. “It’s just fucked up.”
“It is. Of course it is.”
“Come here,” he said and made room for her on his lap. “Who likes fucked up?” David asked.
“No one,” Reena said.
They had been living in the city’s darkest studio apartment for two months when Reena awoke one morning, tired. She’d had the flu or something, and was taking too long to get over it. Weeks and weeks of fighting her own body, of OJ and vitamins and yoga in the mornings to work out the stiffness. She dragged herself to the shower, pulled on her clothes with cumbrous movements, and smiled feebly at David as she got ready for work. He sat up in bed and massaged her shoulders. A radio newscaster announced all the day’s tragedies. David didn’t have to be at the center until ten and, once there, rarely did any real work before eleven. Reena seemed beat, he thought, and he told her so. She confessed that she had felt even more tired the last couple of days. He rose and, before she left, promised he’d call her from work, when he got a free moment.