Nothing Like Love (16 page)

“Oh for fuck sakes. Never mind.” Faizal rolled the window up and peeled away, leaving Chalisa and her driver staring after them by the side of the road.

For a few moments nobody said a word. Faizal jerked the car left and right and pressed his foot heavier on the gas. The car slewed over muddy puddles. Twigs and vines slapped the windshield. The tires trembled over ruts in the road.

“Faizal … Faizal!” Minty grasped his shoulder with her pudgy hand.

“Blasted mangoes! What you want from me?”

“Slow down!”

Faizal sucked his teeth, but he pumped the brakes.

“Why you ain’t make we go back to the beach? Or ride with Chalisa?”

“Is one thing if I loss Sangita’s prayer mat—is another thing if I loss she daughter.” Faizal turned the radio on, signalling the end of the conversation.

Minty and Vimla snuggled against each other for warmth as the sweet voice of Indian superstar songstress Lata Mangeshkar filled the car. Vimla closed her eyes and curled her legs under her. She felt empty, like someone had scooped all the hope out of her soul. The more Lata sang of love, the more Vimla understood that it had slipped away.

C
handani looked over her shoulder at the mandir in the distance. It was only a minute glimmer of light now, but the devotional bhajans and rhythmic drumming seemed to dance up the dark road behind her, beckoning her back. She grew increasingly bitter with every step she took toward home, tightening her claw-like grip on Om’s arm. “Oh Lawd, what I do to deserve this sufferation in my life?”

Puncheon zigzagged in between the couple and fell flat on the ground, ripping Chandani’s fingernails from Om’s flesh. “Om, I dizzy, man. I real dizzy. Just leave me here and let me dead by the side of the road.” He lay on his belly with his arms splayed on either side of him, the side of his face pressed into the mud.

Om stared down at Puncheon, dazed, stroking the tiny orange-and-white head of his kitten with a fat thumb.

Chandani shook him. “Pick him up, Om!” Om blinked back at her. Chandani looked around for Rajesh and found him crouched in a sprawl of wild bushes, whimpering, a black kitten nestled in the crook of his arm. Sangita stood by his side, rubbing his back and warning him not to soil her sari.

Chandani grimaced. They were at least a fifteen-minute walk from home. She could go back to the mandir and ask for help, but what would she say? That her husband and his friends were high and stranded in the dark on Krishna Janamashtami? She knew neighbours would be eager to help and they would mean well, too, but tomorrow those very same neighbours would peddle Chandani’s misfortune to anyone willing to listen. She couldn’t have that.
Everyone
was willing to listen in Chance and Chandani had already endured a lifetime of embarrassment in the past weeks.

She thought of Vimla then, with her big bold eyes and the mischievous twist of her shapely lips. She used to plait Vimla’s long, unruly mane with such care, making a wish for her daughter every time she folded one black lock over the next; it was like weaving dreams into her hair. But by the end of each day, stray, rebellious curls always managed to fly free, and Chandani would sigh, soak Vimla’s hair in coconut oil and do it all over again before bed. This is what she remembered when Om brought Vimla home from the ravine that night and Vimla’s hair was loose and flowing wildly over her shoulders. The sight made Chandani feel like her daughter had unravelled every wish she’d ever made for her and flung it away for a boy. That’s what had hurt Chandani most—that it was all for a boy.

Sangita shimmied over, smelling of sweet sandalwood. “Raj
think a soucouyant go suck he blood.” She looked down at Puncheon and then up into Om’s black, glassy eyes. “What we go do?”

Chandani’s gaze swished over Sangita. She frowned at her sensual mouth and skintight sari blouse, wondering why of all the women in Chance she had to get tangled up in this predicament with Sangita Gopalsingh. “We have to walk.”

“Walk?” Sangita’s slanted eyes glowed like a cat’s. “Look at them, Chandani!” She gestured to Puncheon, who had rolled onto his side and pulled his knees up to his chest as he sang Trinidad’s national anthem. “Maybe I should get Faizal. He could pick we up in his car.”

Chandani narrowed her gaze at Sangita. She had seen Sangita and Faizal Mohammed interacting in the market; they bantered with a familiarity that was almost intimate. Chandani had always wondered whether there was more to their neighbourly friendship than Rajesh knew. “Sangita, you can’t walk home alone dressed like that.” She circled her index finger around Sangita’s exposed cleavage. “And you can’t leave me alone with these fools neither. We have to walk. All of we. Together. Now!”

Sangita pouted, and Chandani was unsure if the woman was insulted about her blouse or disappointed about Faizal. She didn’t care either way. “Get Rajesh. Let we go.”

Rajesh moaned and Sangita, Chandani and Om turned to look. He was staring at the mandir in the distance, shaking his head slowly, his eyes bulging from their sockets like twin moons as he backed away. Sangita touched his broad shoulder. He jumped, dropping his kitten, which bolted into the underbrush. He shielded his face with his hands.

Chandani stomped her foot, sending sludge splattering into Puncheon’s hair. “Lawd Father, give me strength not to kill this fool on Shri Krishna’s birthday.” She stalked up to Rajesh and wrenched his flesh in a painful pinch. “Cut this nonsense, you hear me?”

Rajesh whelped. “The soucouyant is coming for me.” He pointed a shaky finger at the lights of the mandir. “Look, she flying in the air like a fireball to suck my blood!”

Chandani rose on her tiptoes, grabbed Rajesh’s big square face in her hands and forced him to look down at her. “Rajesh, it ain’t have no vampire living in Chance, but it have me, and I worse!” she said through clenched teeth. “If you don’t haul your ass home, I go do worse to you than a shitting soucouyant!”

Rajesh winced, then he reached for Sangita’s hand and lumbered with leaden feet to stand beside Om, who still hadn’t moved.

Chandani sighed. “Good.” She placed her balled-up hands on her narrow waist and leaned over so she could shriek directly into Puncheon’s ear. “Stop singing!”

“Oh gosh, Chandani, leave me in peace, nuh? I don’t know why Om didn’t beat you when I tell him to.”

Chandani sucked her teeth and nudged him with her sandal. “Puncheon, you look like a half-dead manicou bounced down by a car. Get up! Let we go!”

Puncheon pinched his features together so that he really did resemble a wild opossum. Grumbling, he pulled himself up on all fours and teetered to his feet, bracing on Om’s solid shoulder for balance.

Chandani nodded, pleased, although it was impossible to
tell by the severe line of her mouth or the dark swoop of her angry eyebrows. “March!”

The men shuffled at an excruciatingly slow pace; Om concentrated hard to place one foot in front of the other; Rajesh trod with caution, constantly looking over his massive shoulder; and Puncheon staggered, griping with each step. Chandani and Sangita walked behind them in silence, making sure they didn’t wander into the middle of the road or the dark undergrowth. They trekked on like this for seven minutes, until Puncheon began to gag.

“Oh God, Puncheon, please don’t.” Sangita reached for her sari phaloo and held it over her nose and mouth, turning away and then looking, turning away and then looking.

Puncheon sank to his knees. “Oh gosh, I go dead. I go dead here tonight.”

Rajesh glanced around wildly. “Is the soucouyant,” he whispered.

Chandani glared at him. “Is not the soucouyant. Is the blasted marijuana all you stupidies drink!”

Om’s red, glazed eyes fixated on Chandani, but he couldn’t bring himself to articulate any of the thoughts streaming through his mind. He gave her a placid smile and nuzzled the head of his kitten. She scowled back at him.

Puncheon crawled away from the group and hung his head in the bushes, where dozens of mosquitoes could devour his face. He groaned and gagged again, his entire body convulsing.

“I fed up, Chandani. I going to fetch Faizal.” Sangita released Rajesh’s arm and whisked away before Chandani could protest, half walking and half running up the road with her glittering phaloo fluttering behind her.

I
t was eleven o’clock when Faizal arrived in Chance, more than enough time to rid himself of Minty and Vimla before their parents came home. “Praise Allah,” he muttered, thinking of the storm that had driven them from Maracas Bay. He glanced in the rear-view mirror at the girls; they were still nestled together like sleeping puppies. They looked innocent, cuddled up that way; hard to believe these girls had blackmailed him to take them to Maracas Bay in the first place. Faizal thought about his beloved Qur’an and prayer mat lying abandoned and sopped on the beach. He sighed tiredly, vowing to have nothing to do with Minty and Vimla once they returned his chain and he delivered them home.

“Eh! Allyuh wake up. We almost reach.”

The girls stirred, sleepy eyed, as Chance unfolded in the darkness before them. They squinted at the old homes, cloaked
in shadows and foliage, sheltered behind iron gates. The eyes of scrawny vagabond dogs glowed in the headlights as they watched Faizal’s car putter by on the otherwise deserted dirt road.

“I said wake up, not sit up. Allyuh want somebody to see you in the car?”

Vimla and Minty looked at each other and then shrank against their seats, stealing glances out the window in their excitement.

“Look at the mandir, Vimi. It packed. People overflowing onto the road!”

Faizal gripped the steering wheel. “Duck!”

The girls swooped down as they whizzed by the mandir.

“I think we did it, Vimla. We really did it!” Minty’s eyes shone.

Faizal smiled despite himself. “Allyuh ain’t do one blasted thing except play the fool at the beach and ride around in my car like the queen and duchess of Trinidad and Tobago.
I
did it. Thank me.”

“Thank you, Faizal,” the girls chorused.

“Now, give me back my damn chain and leave me the hell alone.”

Minty nodded and was about to slip the chain off from around her neck, when Faizal yelled, “Mangoes! Duck!”

Minty and Vimla dropped to the floor this time and lay as still as they could, their bodies overlapping like rag dolls.

Faizal motored up the rolling main road slowly. He blinked, shook his head, blinked again. Sangita was sailing toward the car, twenty feet away, holding the delicate pleats of her sari out of the mud as she came. The material wrapped around her
torso had slackened, revealing her skimpy bejewelled blouse and soft, flat belly, glowing luminous in his headlights. Faizal moaned. “Forgive me, Sangita.” He peeled off over the pitted road then lurched to a stop before his front gate. He scrambled from the car, unlocked the gate and pushed it open, so that it scraped and screeched against the asphalt of his front courtyard. He glided the car under the house.

Vimla and Minty were frantically untangling themselves in the back of the car, preparing to scurry out of the vehicle and bolt to Faizal’s garden. From there they would go their separate ways, creeping through trees, around chicken coups and cow pens, until they could slip into their respective homes.

“Allyuh stop moving.” Faizal’s voice betrayed his unease and the girls fell still again, their eyes wide in the blackness.

He heard the jingle of her anklets as she drew nearer. “Sangita coming. Don’t move and don’t talk until I tell—”

“Faizal? Fai-zal!” Her voice floated from the road.

Faizal licked his lips and ran his hands through his hair, mumbling a combination of curse and prayer before stepping from the car. “Good night, Sangita.” He put his hands in his pockets and strolled toward her as if a visit after midnight from Sangita dressed in a luscious sari was a commonplace occurrence.