Nights Like This (22 page)

“There is,” I said.

“And what's that?”

“She would never, ever hurt me.”

“Well fuck! That's fucking fantastic!”

Vanessa slammed the horn for no reason.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I asked.

“You defend her to my face and I'm the one who is hurting you by being with someone else?”

“I'm not going to lie about her. This Danny guy, he holds your marriage over your head. Anjali has never, ever hurt me. I won't take that away from her by lying about it.”

Vanessa turned to face me.

“Then why can't you love her? If she's so wonderful, and she must be because you haven't said a bad word about her, then why are you here instead of being with her?”

“Because I'm in love with you, damn it!”

I didn't want to talk in circles. I didn't want to discuss Anjali and me. I wanted to breathe. I wanted to be outside and breathe in the air, know that I was alive and that possibility still existed that I would find whatever and whomever it was that would calm my heart and soothe my searching soul. I stepped out of the car, slammed the door and stood against a pole a few feet away.

Vanessa finally came beside me.

“Let's just try to enjoy the day, okay? I can't do this,” she said.

“What are we doing, Vanessa? I just want to know what the fuck we're doing today.”

“Why are you so impatient? Just relax.”

She smiled at me. She could charm me out of death with that smile of hers. Her hair fell straight and obedient onto her back and her eyes seemed to be asking for my affection. We were back where we had been that first day in Philly, downtown somewhere with rows of flags beckoning us to foreign lands.

“Vanessa, what the fuck is this trip about anyway? All we fucking do is fuck and walk around this one little area in Philly.”

“You're not enjoying yourself?” Vanessa asked.

“I'm not saying that. I am. Not today, maybe but overall, it's fine.”

“I just wanted something different. If you want to go somewhere else, fuck we'll go somewhere else. You want to go to a bar, a club, a whorehouse, tell me what you want. As far as I know, you haven't made a fucking decision in all the time I've known you, so I say fuck it, I'll decide. I like this area. I could walk these streets and sit on these benches forever. It brings great comfort to me to be here. That's why I brought you here.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“No you're not. You're just upset because you thought you were the only one with a situational partner. It drives you crazy that I have a life outside you even if it's not a life that means anything to me.”

I closed my eyes and the sun was warm across my face. I reached upwards and then down trying to stretch every muscle that twitched when I heard within myself a rich voice reciting Vanessa's name every time he thrust himself inside her.

“You hungry, Jess?”

“No.”

I started to take steps away from the pole and Vanessa followed me. She stepped in front of me and turned around to face me. I wanted to place my head on her shoulder, hold her and cry for all the stupidity in our lives.

“So what do you want to do? You tell me.”

She moved a stray hair from my cheek and I stepped back as her fingers grazed my cheek.

“Do you want to be with me Vanessa? If you do, then be with just me. If you're telling me you can't do that then we'll just be fuck buddies or even just friends. Whatever the fuck you want. But either way, I want to go home. I don't want to be here anymore, walking the same fucking streets for no reason, living at an airport hotel.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

She moved close to me and traced my ear with her lips. I wished she would speak. I loved it when she whispered to me.

“Baby, if you want to go, we'll go. I'm sorry if you're upset about being here, about how things are. But give me some time, at least, to figure things out. We both have our situations, Jess. We have to figure them out.”

I didn't respond to her whispers. Truth was, I was turned on and I wanted her. I was envisioning her face when she came.

“I want some coffee,” I said.

“Which means you don't want to talk about this anymore?” she said.

“Let's just leave it the way it is, okay?”

“Sure.”

We walked to the Starbucks by the used bookstore where I had bought
The Catcher in the Rye
. As I ordered our Venti coffees, I felt Vanessa's hand stroking my ass. She soon moved her hand to my back and I felt her fingers circling. I closed my eyes. I enjoyed being with her and I had lied to her about my time in Philly. Truth was I was very comfortable with our senseless trip. I enjoyed walking the same streets with her whenever we did. I enjoyed the hotel, the overstuffed chair, the tarmac and gliding planes. I enjoyed being near her.

We took our coffees to a bench and sat, looking out at passing cars and pedestrians. I took a sip of my coffee, waiting for her to say something. I wasn't going to speak first. I was sure of that.

“When do you want to leave?” she asked.

“Tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

I don't know why I wanted to leave. What did I really have waiting for me back in New York? I looked at Vanessa and sipped my coffee.

“Jess, what are you really running back to anyway?”

“I don't know.”

“You came here to write, didn't you? Start something. Walk around. Walk around alone tomorrow anywhere you want. Then write. That's what you wanted to do, isn't it?”

“No, Vanessa, maybe underneath it all, I just wanted to fuck you. You were the one who wanted me to start writing again.”

“And you don't want to?”

“I do. I just don't know how.”

“Well you're good with the journal.”

“That's not writing.”

“Jess, art starts as scratch, as scribbles. It doesn't start as art.”

“So you think the journal's a start?”

“Most definitely, yes.”

“Then thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”

We sat in silence for a long time. Intermittently, we sipped our coffees and gazed out towards the road. I concentrated my thoughts on the leaves of a tree in front of us. I concentrated so hard on the leaves that I still remember the zigzag of veins across their surface. I remember the gloss and sheen of the green, the angular edges of each leaf.

“So it's easy for you like that?” she said finally, sipping slowly.

“Easy like what?”

“Your family is in India. You can do whatever the fuck you want.”

“It's not as easy as all that either. I don't talk to my parents but when I do, I feel like we don't really talk. When they talk about getting married, I evade the questions. When they ask what I'm up to, I talk about something I studied. And that's it. I feel alone after I talk to my parents. I don't like that.”

“So take a trip to India.”

“Someday, I will. Someday I will and I'll talk to them.”

I didn't want to tell Vanessa that my father was a functioning alcoholic who liked nothing better than half a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and a pack of 555 cigarettes. Whether I told him about my life or I didn't, he wouldn't remember the next day anyway. The only thing I could count on him for was to settle into his armchair as the sun set and break the metal rim on the neck of a whiskey bottle.

Not to say my father was a mean man. Actually, my father was a very kind man. He was not angry nor was he bitter. He had never been a bad person. I believe that my father just lived in a different world than the rest of us. I believe that all the years he had spent building an empire for himself so that we could live in exquisite luxury had made him a very private and desolate man. I never blamed nor resented my father for his evening whiskey. He had never been unkind to me or to anyone else and as far as I knew, he was a lot better than a lot of other fathers I had come to know in the course of my lifetime.

I sipped my coffee, now lukewarm and somehow sweeter. I knew that if I did ever return to India, I would want to talk to my mother. But my mother was part of the elite Kolkata-ites of our time. My mother had no time to distract herself from bridge parties and quiet luncheons at the club. She had been born into money and, as the only daughter of two very rich people, had inherited that money. My mother did not know that Scotch and cigarettes were banned during pregnancies. My mother was a cold woman, distant from me and from everyone else that she ever came across. I had imagined talking to her many times and every time I envisioned our conversation ending because, with a puff of talcum powder to dust her cool, freshly bathed skin, she would tell me she was in a rush and to please get the driver to get the car ready. Was that what I was going to travel to India for?

Truth was I was envious in a very strange way of people who had families to talk to about their lives. I listened to stories of accepting families and resentful families and disowning and reuniting and I was envious of it all. I tried to think I had a family in my parents but ever since I had left India when I was 17 to live with an old-fashioned cranky friend of the family's in Queens, I had never been back and they had never inquired as to why. Yes, my parents performed the perfunctory duty of asking, as I think all people in India with emigrates in their families are trained to do:
So when are you coming to India?
It sounds, at first, like a genuine question, but with time and experience, you learn that it is a banal expression akin to, ‘Hello, how are you?' It's a question that doesn't seriously expect nor desire an answer but it is one that requires asking.

I could not tell Vanessa all the thoughts that were passing through my mind. I could not expect her to understand that I would rather have someone to worry about the decisions I made than to be so isolated as to feel that I was floating in this world waiting to fall from the sky. I knew that I could not tell her what to do with Danny because it was a situation I would never have to face. I was with Anjali because I chose to be there. I could never admit that to anyone and it was uncomfortable that afternoon as I admitted it to myself.

“Tonight you want to go dancing? We could spend a night out and head back to the city tomorrow if you want.”

Vanessa's voice shook me awake.

“Sure.”

“What are you thinking of now?” she asked.

“My parents.”

“You miss them?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“So what's stopping you from going home?” she asked.

I looked at her as I spoke.

“It's a long story.”

“So start it now and it'll finish by the time the sun goes down.”

“Smart ass.”

“I try,” she said, “especially with you.”

“The thing is they sent me here to become a doctor, right? This was the sole purpose of my parents. And I try, Vanessa, I do. But I can't do it. I'm not in love with it and even if I became a doctor, I would be a terrible doctor because I don't love it.”

“But you love to write.”

“I used to. And I used to write all this great shit that won awards. But something wasn't right inside me. I felt…dishonest.”

“Why?”

“That's what I didn't know. Until I met Anja-…”

“You can say her name, Jess.”

“Well when I met her and we started talking, I gave her my best story to read. And she loved it.”

“But….”

“But she said something that changed my life. She said ‘It's a great story but where are you in this story?'”

“Which meant what?”

“I asked her that. And she simply said, ‘You want a great story? Write about us. Write stories about the women you love, about who you are. Give me a story about you. Whom you love. Because in reality, there are millions of boy meets girl stories, right? Who's going to write the girl meets girl story? If not you, then who?'”

“Shit,” Vanessa said. “She's got a point, princess.”

“Well yeah but…”

“But?”

“I already have to let my parents down about the doctor thing. Then I have to say, “Hey, so your only child is not looking for a man because guess what? She dates and loves and enjoys women. And she's going to write about it for the world to read.”

“So you stopped writing instead?”

“I went to a writing conference that summer. I tried to write something new but I couldn't put the words together. And then one day I'm on the porch drinking some wine and this famous author is beside me. He asks, ‘How's it going?' and I'm floored. And I guess I was drunk because I told him everything about med school and the writing and being Indian and gay all at the same time.”

“What did he say?”

“He looked at me and said simply, ‘Be brave. Go home. And write'.”

I looked at her as if to elicit a response.

She took my hand in hers and played with my cat's eye.

“So?” I said.

She locked her gaze with mine and wouldn't look away.

“Well?” I said.

“He said ‘Be brave. Go home. And write,' Jess. He didn't say stop writing altogether and let your life fall to pieces.”

“It's hard.”

“Until you go to India and come clean, it's hard. Once you do that, what have you got to lose?”

“But to publish my life for all the world.”

Vanessa laughed. Then she kissed me softly.

“What's so funny?”

“You're cute sometimes.”

“Why?”

“You just are.
All the world
. As if billions of people are waiting with baited breath to read your work. I mean, be realistic.”

Although she was right, I was embarrassed and a little hurt. Anjali always said I'd be a phenomenal writer, that everyone would be reading Banerjee. But Anjali was kind like that. She was always pro-Jess all the way.