Nights Like This (27 page)

“I know.”

We were silent, the air filled with guilt and forgiveness and sadness all at the same time.

“Here's an idea,” I finally said, “What if we rent a wheelchair and take you to Central Park tomorrow?”

As soon as I made the suggestion I realized that maybe Central Park was a foolish idea. Would we stand in front of Vanessa and her photos and admire them together? What had I been thinking?

“I don't want to go out like this, Jess,” Anjali said, “My eyebrows aren't even done. And besides I don't like Central Park.”

I laughed so hard I almost fell off the bed.

“So what you're worried about is people seeing your eyebrows?”

She placed her hand on my chest and her head at my shoulder.

“Not just that. I just feel ugly and disgusting. I don't even know what you see when you look at me anymore.”

I kissed the bruise on her forehead.

“I see the same beautiful Anjali I have always known. With hairy eyebrows.”

I looked at her to see if she would laugh or smile. She didn't. I kissed her temple.

She didn't move.

“So why do you dislike Central Park?” I asked.

“It's too pretentious for me.”

I laughed a little.

“It is,” she said. “I like Washington Square. It's intimate and I feel safe and at home.”

“So if you should ever get lost, Anjali Chopra, I will find you at your fountain at Washington Square and I will take you home with me.”

“Promise.”

“I promise, jaan,” I said as I kissed her lips.

I don't think I had ever felt safer and if there was ever a time that I realized how much I loved Anjali, it was then. I learned that night how and why I clung to her. Anjali made me feel safer than anyone I knew, even Vanessa. Anjali promised me without ever telling me that all she offered me was unconditional. It may not have been fair to her but it was a decision that she made and I felt. There had never been a time that Anjali had held pushed me away regardless of what I had or had not done. It was easy to take advantage of such great love and I had. As I held her close to me and closed my eyes, I felt lucky to be there with her and for the first time since knowing her, believed in the possibility that she could be more than my situational partner.

 

 

 

True to her word, Anjali spoke to Abhay and he didn't come by anymore. I honored my word and stayed with her all the time. I never left her for anything and although I had thought I would feel stifled, I felt relaxed and comfortable. I helped her to the bathroom and made coffee for us in the mornings. I read the
The New York Times
as she watched reruns of
Law and Order
. Since Abhay was not interfering in our lives any longer and she could maneuver better with the crutches, we moved into the bedroom and stayed there most of the day.

I became accustomed to staying with Anjali. She could move enough to go to physical therapy four times a week and I accompanied her there and back in a taxicab. Once we had a Punjabi driver who wouldn't stop hitting on me. Anjali grabbed my collar and kissed me for what felt like eternity. He was quiet the rest of the ride and did not complain when she made me pay him exactly the fair minus any tip he may have gotten.

“Asshole,” she said.

I kissed her softly and grazed my lips across her face and her neck.

“Bet he had a hard on,” I said.

“That just was not necessary,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“Not what you said. You're probably right. Just the way he spoke to you.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said as I helped her up the curb.

There was a small clean coffee shop across the massive building where Anjali went for physical therapy. I spent all my afternoons there while I waited for her, before I went and helped her back into a taxicab and then home. I sat at the café every other day and ordered the same skim latte. I wanted to start to write and I looked at all the attempts that I had made but they did not satisfy me. I flipped through the journal every time I sat there, stopping at different places and allowing the words to marinate within me. I thought that maybe something would set off a train of thoughts that would allow me to create something that excited me. And although I found a lot of things that I liked the sound and meaning of, there was nothing that moved me to create.

I wondered where all my excitement had gone. I felt constipated with words and I yearned for some release. I wanted a catharsis of sorts. I wanted to rid myself of whatever it was that was rising within me but stuck inside me. But those days at the café nothing came to me that allowed me to set myself in motion.

After an hour and a half, I went and helped Anjali to a taxicab, stopped and ordered four hotdogs from the vendor around the corner and asked the driver to head towards the apartment. We ate hotdogs on the way home, making sure not to spill anything in the cab although it really wouldn't have affected the smells or cleanliness of the cab anyway. From those trips I learned that Anjali didn't like ketchup but liked mustard. She preferred her hotdogs with mustard and sauerkraut while I liked mine with sauerkraut and onions. It was a habit of hers that would stay with me and even now if ever I order two hotdogs, I have the urge to order two more according to Anjali's specifications.

When we returned to the apartment, we lay together in Anjali's bed and with muted acceptance, we made love slowly and gently. Those afternoons I felt as if I touched her heart and I knew that she touched mine. Those afternoons as I lay with her, exhausted and mellow from coming, I watched her and something inside me stirred for her. I was happy being next to her and although our life was only a comfort of sorts, it was safe and methodical and provided for me all that I thought I needed to say that I was in love.

It was one brisk day towards the middle of November that Anjali started walking again without crutches. I remember explicitly because she had wanted more than anything to walk before our anniversary on the 23rd. And she did. Her bruises had healed and her ribs were not as painful any longer. Her walking was the last step to her recovery and I was happy for her. She walked a little strangely without the crutches but at least she was able to walk without them. We celebrated that night by going to a lounge for drinks and it was the first time since her fall that Anjali had anything to drink. It was the first time we had gone out for any reason that wasn't medical.

“I want to have a party,” Anjali said as she sipped her appletini.

“Okay, we will.”

“I want to dance.”

“I don't know how well you can do that right now,” I said, “but we can do it next month.”

I sat back in my armchair, enjoying the shadowy aura of candlelight. Anjali looked as if she was glowing and I couldn't stop looking at her eyes. I wondered if this would be the start of Anjali and me. I wondered if we had already started. I wondered if this was the end to first dates and first times and I asked myself if I minded. I really didn't. I was comfortable here and comfort was what I had sought. That in itself ascertained for me that I was where I wanted to be.

“Let's have a party next Friday, Jess, on the 23rd itself. I'm going back to work on Monday so it'd be a great time.”

“Are you sure? You can't go crazy on that leg, the doctor told you that.”

“I know. I'm not going to do that. I just want to celebrate getting better. And I want to celebrate our anniversary. It's been a lonely time.”

She was right. It had been a lonely time. Anjali had fruit baskets and flowers from her staff and her patients and other doctors whom she knew. But they knew better than to stop by the apartment without an invitation. She was very private at work about her life. And she had asked most of our friends not to stop by because, as she said to me, she didn't want to be bothered. She had always been aloof from most people. That was probably why people gravitated towards her, because there was always something alluring about the mysterious. And she was definitely mysterious.

“Okay, we'll have it next Friday then,” I said.

Anjali seemed ecstatic. Her eyes twinkled and the green in them seemed to grow richer in color. She walked to my armchair and squeezed in next to me. For an instant I had a flashback of a karaoke lounge and Vanessa's scent and then it passed as quickly as it had come. I tried not to think of Vanessa and if my mind drifted with a scent or a memory I diverted my attention or gently guided myself back to my life. Vanessa hadn't been willing to love me with no restraint. She had come full of contradictions and conditions and limitations. Regardless of how I felt for her, regardless of the magic of her words or the tantalizing ways she had, she was not willing to offer me what Anjali had offered time and time again. There was no sense in thinking of someone who was caring for me while her commitments lay elsewhere.

“Where are your thoughts, baby?” Anjali said as she gently bit my ear and traced the ridge with her tongue.

I felt myself getting turned on, a gentle throbbing alerting me to the fact that I was enjoying her.

“I was just thinking of going home and having my way with you,” I said.

“Well bottoms up and let's go.”

“Let's do that.”

We drank the rest of our appletinis in a gulp and left. We took a cab home. With Anjali, a cab wasn't a luxury but a way of life. In the cab, she started pulling at my shirt and kissing my neck. I was taken aback because she was never the one to kiss me in public let alone seduce me in a big yellow taxi. I was almost lying on the seat as she kissed my neck and grabbed at my breasts. I kissed her back and undid her shirt. We were in the midst of this erotic foreplay when the driver stopped at a red light.

“So you don't like men?” he asked in all seriousness.

I think Anjali would have been offended beyond belief but the simplicity of his question and the thickness of his Punjabi accent made her burst into giggles. We sat up and laughed until we cried.

“Taxi-walla,” she said in all seriousness, “we were just hoping you could join us and show us what a man can do.”

He faced front again and pressed so hard on the accelerator that we were pushed back. We were quiet as he pulled up to the building. As he took the money that Anjali handed him, he gave her a business card.

“If you are interested, I am off duty at 2:00,” he said.

We left the cab laughing. We climbed the stairs laughing. We fell into bed and made love in giggles, the appletinis mellowing us, the cab driver driving us to even more laughter. When I fell asleep in her arms, I felt as if there were no other place in the world that I'd rather be.

 

 

The night of the party Anjali looked fabulous. She wore a silver low backed dress that ended just past her knees. Even with the removable cast she was mandated to wear, she didn't look silly in that dress. I thought she looked beautiful yet vulnerable, a perfect mix for the perfect girl.

That night, the apartment was full of people looking to have a good time and I was glad. It had been a long time since I had been in the company of anyone but Vanessa or Anjali and the atmosphere was refreshing. Although I generally loathed most of the people I saw, I wanted a diversion from my life and they sufficed to fill the spaces I had left empty, at least for a night. I wished Kat and Ish weren't away on a pre-honeymoon. I actually wished Ish were away and Kat wasn't because I missed having her to talk to, to gossip with. I was spending my time mixing drinks and trying to seem like I knew what went in what concoctions. I watched Anjali work the room, earning the admiration of everyone who saw her.

“Hey bartender, can I get a drink?”

I looked up and smiled at Mike, a fly by night friend who managed to be at all parties but never be seen otherwise.

“Yes, Mike. What do you want?”

He pushed his bangs from his eyes only to have them fall again.

“Vodka straight up.”

“That's nasty but you can have it.”

“I trust you with nothing else,” he said teasingly.

“Fuck you,” I said as I handed him the glass.

“How are you, Jess? Is everything okay between you and Anjali?” he asked.

I had a feeling that would be the question of the night as gossip travels fast and furiously.

“Yes, everything's great,” I said.

He winked at me.

“Getting laid is a good thing. I have to find more pretty boys to play with.”

“Of course,” I said as I started making a martini for someone whom I didn't recognize.

“A lot more people coming, Jess?” Mike asked, “Your place is packed.”

“I don't know,” I said.

His words echoed. “
Your place
” he had said. Was this my place? Our place? I had always thought of it as Anjali's place or “her apartment.” Either it had belonged to her or been neutral space but did I possess it as mine? Could I say that? Did I want to say that? Slowly, I felt the threads of our lives interconnecting. A part of me felt as if the threads had made a cozy blanket of security for me. And yet a part of me felt suffocated as if I were being smothered with a beautiful yet heavy tapestry. I poured myself a shot of tequila and guzzled it. I had another.

I kept pouring drinks, the conversations around me starting to blur into a wave of ebbs and tides. I decided I wanted some air and left the makeshift bar in the living room. I thought I would exit unnoticed but Anjali noticed me, as surrounded by admirers as she was.

“Jess, come here. Where are you going?”

“I'm just going down to have a smoke.”

“You stressed?”

Anjali knew that I didn't smoke, that if I smoked five cigarettes a year it was surprising. But she also knew that I only smoked at times when I was about to burst with the tension that was inside me.

“Overwhelmed,” I said.

Without thinking, I touched her cheek and kissed her softly.

“Don't be too long,” she said. “Or else I'm coming after you.”

“I won't.”

As I left the lobby to exit the building, I realized I had no cigarettes. It was just as well because all I really wanted was to breathe. I felt like I didn't know what was happening to me. I hadn't planned on having an anxiety attack at that moment but somehow, it had happened. No matter how I gulped, there was not enough air in the world to sustain me. No matter how I stretched, my chest was constricted into a huge knot, my muscles sore.

I almost ran through the front door and the doorman tipped his hat. I went outside and leaned against the building. I closed my eyes and breathed as deeply as I could to no avail. The night was cool. I opened my eyes. I couldn't focus on anything around me. Everything was becoming a big blur, all sounds a big din where conversations and traffic and even a faraway siren melded together. I tried to breathe some more. I heard voices I recognized and tried not to look in their direction. It didn't keep them from noticing me and walking over, these acquaintances I should have been excited to see but wasn't.

“Hey, Jess, why are you here all by yourself? What's up?”

“Hey, Alisha,” I said.

I took the Dunhill that she offered me, my fingers shaking. She lit the cigarette and, in the glow of the flame, the night looked tender.

I inhaled and exhaled slowly, wondering when my heart would stop beating as fast and as loudly as it was.

“So what's up with you guys?” Alisha asked.

I hated Alisha at that moment.

“What do you mean?” I said. “Up with who?”

“She's talking about you guys like you're a couple,” Nina chimed in.

I looked at Nina, her chubby cheeks overflowing as she smiled at me.

“What's wrong with that?” I asked. “We are a couple, if you didn't notice.”

“Interesting,” Nina said, drawing out the word as if it were supposed to be a long sigh.

“Fuck that, Jess, word on the street is, you couldn't stay faithful for a hot minute,” said Katrina.

“Thank you for your words of wisdom,” I said as I looked at the trio. I didn't know how to feel about what Katrina had just said. Embarrassed? Proud? Indifferent? Why was there any “word on the street” about me anyway? I never peered into other people's lives, their fuck ups, their successes. Why was I the center of attention for anyone? At the end of it all, I decided that I would be angry, feel violated, and carry a big fuck “fuck you” on my shoulder for the rest of the night.

I knew they were random strangers to me. These were people who managed to be on every guest list no matter whose or where. But beyond that, I never saw them. And yet they always somehow stayed abreast of gossip, of other people's lives. I resented this in them and resented even more that I had invited them. As I thought about “our” packed apartment, I started resenting everyone, wishing I had never agreed to a party. Contrary to my belief that their presence was refreshing, it was, in one word, annoying.

I wished they would all go away. I wished they would go back upstairs, get drunk and fuck each other. I wasn't in the mood to deal with anyone's attitudes or conjectures. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to think about what my life was, what I wanted it to be and what love had to do with all of it.

After I finished the cigarette, I stood there against the wall watching the cars go by.

“We're going in,” Alisha said.

“Okay,” I said.

I didn't move. It was moments like these that had earned me the reputation of being an anti-social bitch. I didn't really care but I tucked this night away for those occasions where I wondered why people thought I was unapproachable. I wanted to remember quickly and then forget that I was, indeed, if nothing else, difficult.

I closed my eyes for a few seconds and breathed. I was searching the air for a scent that soothed me but there was nothing.

“Jess?”

My heart stopped. I knew that voice. I had heard that voice from far away, close to my ear, in shouts, in whispers. I had known the sound of my name in sunlight on a park bench and in darkness as she hovered above me. But could it be? Really? If my chest had constricted with anxiety moments ago, it was constricting again but with something like excitement, pleasure, maybe anticipation, maybe all those things if that were possible.

I opened my eyes and there she was, magnificent as ever. There was my Vanessa.

“Hey,” I said very casually as if finding her in front of Anjali's building on a cool night was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Hey.”

She touched my hand with hers shyly as if she had never touched me, had never been my friend, my lover, my Vanessa. I pulled her hand so she fell into me and she finally hugged me. I held her to me. Questions and reasons and words of anger didn't touch me. I felt her heartbeat and I smelled her fragrance, fresh peaches on a cool night. She let me hold her. I stroked her hair and inhaled her scent, determined that for an entire lifetime, I would remember the essence of Vanessa as this faint smell of peaches.

“I missed you so much,” I said as I thought back to the fact that every day I had read that journal, thinking of Vanessa's words, what I believed to be the essence of who she was.

“Jess there's one thing…”

She pulled away and held my face in her palms. She made sure I was looking in her eyes before she said anything else. I waited. All I heard was her breathing as she looked into my eyes.

“I left him, Jess. I left him for you.”

I stared at her. Had she really? How? Had she told him about me? Had my name come up? Had she flown to Florida? Told him on the phone? What about her father? Had she told him as well?

I couldn't believe that life was what it was sometimes. She had left Danny for me? Vanessa had jeopardized everything for me? When I had told her to leave Danny, I had never thought that she would. But she had. And I was comfortable in a life with Anjali in midtown. And now I was fucked, any way I looked at it. What was I supposed to do? How could I reconcile two women in such different spaces? A feeling of dread spread through me where I, was sure, a feeling of happiness should have been. Confusion permeated my mind and I couldn't even think of what to say, let alone what I was to do.

“How?” I finally managed. “When?”

“After I talked to you. A few days after that actually.”

“What did you do?”

“I went down there. To Florida. And I ended it. Divorce papers and everything.”

“But how all of a sudden? I mean you told me it was complicated, rough, that your father would never be able to survive something like that.”

“Sometimes you realize that you are capable of anything that love asks of you. That's what you asked. And I love you. I've missed you like crazy.”

Vanessa's reason for turning her entire world upside down had been me? Did I have that much power?

“Love changes you,” she said softly, slowly. “I told you that. Loving you gave me the strength.”

There it was again, this word “love.” Were it an object, I would have held love in my hands and turned it over a million times trying to understand its curves and nuances. I would have put it in my mouth and tasted from it, shaken it and seen if it made a sound. Because as it stood now, I couldn't grasp what love looked like or sounded like or felt like. Both my lovers knew. And both of them, simultaneously, were offering it to me. Did they not realize that I was not capable of giving something I had no understanding of? Did they not realize they were wasting their time with someone whose heart was so reluctant to beat that it could perhaps touch the periphery of this thing called love but could never take it in let alone give it out?

“Vanessa,” I said because I felt I should say something. All that came to me was her name.

“So Jess, what do you think?”

I stood there looking in the bitter sweetness of her eyes and I didn't know what to think. I couldn't believe the timing of events in my life and I couldn't believe that there and then, I would have to make a decision. I couldn't take her upstairs and I couldn't leave with her. I didn't want to hurt her. And I realized how much I had missed her.

As I looked into her eyes, flashbacks of Philly rushed through me. I remembered the sound of bongos that a bearded old man was playing across from the Asian restaurant where we had had sushi and red wine. I remembered the smell of coffee as I read
The Catcher in the Rye
. I remembered Vanessa telling me she wrote love letters across my back. There was such vividness there in those thoughts. When I thought of my time with Anjali, the days blended together to form months and here I was. But then I thought of hotdogs and afternoon love making, of bathing her body with the scent of freesia, of staying up the night and giggling at nothing at all. These thoughts had a place also.

I was happy, wasn't I? I was comfortable and Anjali loved me. Would I hurt her again? Would I take a chance with Vanessa who, for all I knew, could abandon me at any time? If she had left Danny, what was to say she wasn't curious to fuck every hot woman in Manhattan? How could I know that? And I had promised myself to Anjali. I had given her my word that I would love her. Is love something we owe and can give or does it deliver us to the places we belong? And where was my place exactly? With Vanessa who made me feel alive and full of possibility? With Anjali who made me comfortable and loved me beyond doubt, beyond mistakes and beyond any logic or condition?

I tried to feel the answers. But feeling was something that was foreign to me. I had constructed a heart that was so guarded, so deep inside me that I myself couldn't touch it. Was I doomed to a life of random fucks? Of running from emotion, from anyone who reached out with this this thing called love? Was I afraid or was I incapable of offering anything of myself to anyone? Because right then, instead of a tug of war between Vanessa and Anjali, my soul wanted nothing more than to fly away from them both, to jam Tracy Chapman in my ears, find a fast car and drive over the horizon, lost to the two people that loved me the most.

“Vanessa, you look wonderful,” I said wondering what to say next, how to negotiate her presence into the evening of my anniversary with Anjali.

“You too, baby.”

In the silence that ensued, we stared at each other. I don't know what she saw but I started to imagine waking up in her walk up to eggs and bacon, to driving nails into a wall so I could hang photographs. I began to think of the little things that would be if I were to be with her. Waiting for her to come home from school after a day of teaching. Did she have an evening drink as Anjali had her martinis? I wondered if I would accompany her to Central Park to sell photos. It would be such a different life, one to which I was totally unaccustomed. But at the end of the day, I would lie next to Vanessa, my beating heart. Although Anjali was doing a fine job of making my heart beat as well.