Dev Dreams, Volume One (11 page)

“Pretty good, right?” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

She asked him about his home and his life
there to get him engaged again and they spent most of the afternoon
together. As they wandered back towards the ashram grounds, Sumitra
asked, “What did your parents ask as a blessing?”

“What do you think? For me to be healed and
get up and walk, of course. Twelve years I've been in this chair
and they're still expecting a miracle. What did yours ask for?”

“Me to find a husband. Also a miracle.”

“I'm surprised you have trouble, you're a
very pretty girl,” he said, looking up at her and squinting against
the setting sun as he spoke.

“Aw, thanks, but looks aren't the trouble.
I'm not exactly docile.”

He laughed.

“I take it you've noticed that about me.”

When they arrived back, both sets of parents
were frantic with worry. Adi's mother looked at Sumitra like she
could turn the girl to dust with her eyes alone. Sumitra's parents
saw Adi and looked at each other in horror. They probably thought
he was contagious, or at least that his karma could be.

The next day Adi didn't come to darshan, but
Sumitra saw his parents there. She slipped out early and walked
back to the dorms. Everything around the building was empty and
quiet, all the people in the area were seeing the guru. There was
only one room on the ground floor and she knocked lightly on the
door.

“Yes?”

She pulled open the door and saw Adi in bed.
The ashram dorms came with only hard wooden frames and a small sack
of a mattress, but Adi was laying on several layers of blankets,
with more rolled up around him, holding him in the bed. He smiled
without reserve when he saw it was her.

“Hey,” she said, “Glad to see me?”

“Totally, I'm so bored.”

“More masala dosa?”

“Only if you can help me into my chair and
down the front stairs.”

Sumitra grinned. “No problem.” She pulled his
wheelchair closer to the bed, then leaned over Adi and got her arm
around his back. He put his over her neck and she thrilled at the
feel his fingers against her back. She pulled him into the chair.
Outside the room there were five steps down to the street and Adi
instructed Sumitra how to lower his chair down them.

“Isn't it kind of dangerous for you to be
alone in there? What if there was a fire?”

Adi stopped wheeling a moment to shrug. “I
have faith.”

“You do?” This time Sumitra stopped walking
and looked down at his deep, warm eyes.

“Sure. I'm at an ashram, aren't I?”

He was her age, he was an American, how could
he be religious? Her stomach tightened. Religious people were
judgmental. How could he be one of them?

“So am I, but I don't really know what I
believe. I thought you were here because your parents wanted
it.”

“No, I asked to take a pilgrimage.”

“Oh.” Sumitra couldn't hide her
disappointment. She crossed her arms in front of her and felt a
strange chill in the humid Indian air. “But I take it from what you
said yesterday that you're not asking the guru for a cure?”

“I don't really think that's how life works.
I think being in the presence of the guru gives you something that
you won't necessarily see in the physical world. I don't come here
to be healed, I come here to remind myself to be at peace...What's
wrong?”

“I'm sorry, I just thought you were like me.
I feel like I'm the only one in this entire town who isn't sure of
the guru.” She sat down on the ground next to a cow pie and circled
her legs with her arms, squinting up at Adi. “It must be nice to
have faith,” she said.

“Yeah, it is. You should try it.” He gave her
a half smile and she couldn't help smiling back a little.
“Seriously, though, what do you think is in the way of believing in
the guru?”

Sumitra shrugged. Really she knew what it
was, but she wasn't ready to tell Adi about her own pain. In dark
moments she was resentful of God, angry that he had made her the
way that she was. “What makes you believe in him?” she
countered.

“Makes life easier, I guess. It shares the
burden a little. Advaita posits that we are all God, so all of us
together share the responsibility of life. It's nice not to be
fighting through it alone.”

“I do feel alone,” Sumitra acknowledged.
“Sometimes I think I will let my parents arrange a marriage for me
just to fill my emptiness.”

“I think if you're going to do that, the guru
would make a better choice. He'll take more care of you than a
stranger-husband.”

“I wish I felt what you felt.”

Adi smiled. “Not many would say that.”

“They would if they knew you. Does it bother
you that people think it's your karma and your fault that you're
paralyzed?”

“No. They can think whatever they want to
think. The chair is my fate, but what I do with it, that creates my
future fate. I'm sure there's a reason I'm disabled. I don't know
what it is, but life goes on. Lucky for me, I'm not under any
pressure to get married,” he added with a teasing smile.

***

They spent most of the day together every day
after that as the time in their pilgrimages ticked down. Sometimes
she sat on the steps of the dorm and ate bhel puri while he sat in
front of her and they talked. Sometimes Adi did impersonations of
his overbearing mother and made Sumitra laugh and kick her feet
against the dirt in glee. Sumitra had so much fun with him that she
was starting to feel sad while they were laughing together, just
knowing that at some point she would have to tell Adi the truth,
that she was a freak, and this carefree time together would
end.

There would be the usual questions: do you
know why? When did it start? Do you like me or only my disability?
Do you have a need to be in control over someone else? The
questions that paralyzed men always asked her when they found
out.

One day left. The knowledge pounded against
Sumitra's ribcage all through darshan in the morning. She left
before the parents again and hurried back to Adi's room, as they
had been doing all week. Out on the street she fingered the goods
displayed on the stands and avoided looking at him. He was so darn
cute.

“What's up?” Adi said.

“Last day,” Sumitra said and sighed. “I never
thought I'd be sad to go back home.”

“Oh yeah? What will you miss about
India?”

Without hesitation she said, “You.”

Adi looked up at her. “Really?”

Sumitra sat down on the sidewalk curb and put
her hands on his knees. “Will you kiss me?”

“Here?” he sputtered, “On a rural street in
India? There would be a riot, we'd get lynched.”

“Guess we better pick this back up in
America, “she said, “Let me give you my number.”

“Not to sound all self-deprecating, but I
usually have to work a lot harder to get a girl to kiss me.”

Here was her moment. She had to tell him now.
She looked over his head, to the blue sky that looked exactly like
an American sky. “There's something you should know,” she said. “I
hate to have to tell you this, but I have this thing where I can
only be attracted to men with spinal cord injuries.”

“Oh,” he said after a moment, “That was not
what I was expecting to hear.”

“I'm sorry.”

When he didn't say anything, she said
quietly, “How does your spirituality account for something like
me?” She hated the vulnerability of the question. She could feel
her whole body peeled open in front of him, exposing herself to the
pain of rejection.

“We're all made in the image of God, that's
what I think.”

“Really?” She dared to raise her eyes to meet
his.

“We can't know what past actions have brought
us to our fate, we only have our present to create something new. I
wouldn't dwell on where it came from or why it is in you, just
decide to use it for a positive outcome.”

“What positive outcome could I create?”

“Love is always positive.”

“Love?”

“Just be open to it, you have the capacity to
love men who experience more rejection than acceptance. That's a
gift.”

A gift. Sumitra smiled. Devoteeism had never
sounded so lovely. “Do you think the guru arranged for us to
meet?”

“It's possible. He's like a conduit, bringing
elements together for a more fruitful future.” Adi gingerly took
hold of her hand between his thumb and the side of his forefinger.
“Trust the guru. Trust the universe. I'll see you in the
States.”

Knight in Shining Metal

(Also available as part of the short story
collection Paradox by Lee Nilsen
http://www.paradevo.net/preview.html
)

Ricky knew he was going to regret this. Why
had his mother instilled such rigorous chivalry in him when no one
actually liked it? He had been watching a pretty girl sitting at
the bar when two large men honed in on her. Both loomed and teased
her while she looked frightened.

“You should leave her alone,” Ricky said. He
had to shout over the pounding music. All three swiveled and stared
at him incredulously. One of the men started laughing. What else
could you expect when a man in a wheelchair tried to come to
someone's rescue? The girl, whose desperately unhappy face Ricky
had seen in profile moments before now looked at him with eyebrows
knit in confusion.

“What are you going to do about it?” The man
who wasn't laughing said.

The girl was watching. It was now or never.
Ricky pushed his rims hard and fast and slammed his wheelchair into
the man who spoke. Ricky wrapped his arms around the man's waist
and pulled them both to the ground.

Adrenaline coursed through his body and the
blood rushed in his ears so he heard nothing around him. He had his
body across the other man's and was successfully holding him down
while the man's friend pulled at Ricky like a persistent fly. Then
security was there, snatching Ricky out of the fray.

“Okay, what's going on? Who does this
wheelchair belong to?”

Mutely, the girl pointed at Ricky, suspended
between two bouncers. They dumped him unceremoniously onto the
chair and gave him a shove out the door hard enough to throw him
back out of it. He landed on the pavement with a grunt.

These days that's what trying to be a
gentleman got you. He grabbed his chair and hoisted himself back
up.

“That was hot.”

Ricky spun around to see a woman in the door
way. “Excuse me?” he said.

She gave him a small smile and lit a
cigarette. “That was nice, what you did for her.”

“Yeah, she obviously thought so.”

“Well you have a lot to learn about
women.”

“I do just fine, thank you.”

“Sure.” She laughed and tossed the rest of
the cigarette to the ground. She started to walk away toward the
street.

“What do you think I should have done?” Ricky
called after her.

She stopped and turned. He rolled forward to
where she stood. “Well,” she said, “It's sweet and all that you
want to defend her, but when a guy you've never met does that, it's
just creepy. Guys way over think this, you have to be simple and
not act like a deer in headlights. Like if you were going to hit on
me right now, what would you do?”

Ricky tried to think of a good pick-up line,
something he had tried in the past or something he read about
online.

“See?” she said, “You're already thinking too
much.”

This was the strangest conversation Ricky had
ever had, but this woman was so outrageous that he was too curious
to leave. She wasn't his usual type. He went for the girl-next-door
look: conservative, careful clothes, little makeup, plain hair. She
was tight jeans, shimmering top, dark eyes and masses of black
curls in every direction. There was incredible energy around her,
like electricity bouncing off her.

“What's your name?” he said.

“That's much better,” she said.

“No, I mean really, what's your name?”

“I'm Melissa.”

“I'm Ricky.”

“It's good to meet you.”

“Is this a regular routine for you? Giving
guys advice on picking girls up?”

Again the little smile. “No,” she said, “I
just like you.”

This time Ricky's smile matched her's. “So,
what does it take to pick you up?” he asked.

“You like to rescue girls, right? I'll tell
you what you can rescue me from. My sister is having a dinner party
and it's all couples except me. I need a date.”

“Okay. Is it at a restaurant or someone's
house?”

“Restaurant.”

“Cool. That'll make accessibility less of an
issue. Does it bother you?”

“What?”

“The wheelchair.”

“Is it supposed to?” She leaned back against
the brick wall of the bar and assessed him with sparkling eyes,
challenging him with her smirk.

“I think so.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh, I'm not disappointed.”

“Good.” She took a pen from her purse and
reached forward to grab his wrist. She turned his hand face down
and scribbled an address on it. “Tomorrow night. 7:00.” Then she
walked away, hips swinging. He watched her butt until she was out
of sight.

She was waiting for him outside the
restaurant the next night. He was wearing khakis and a button down
shirt, but Melissa wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a blood red
t-shirt. When they got inside Ricky was relieved to see that his
clothing choices fit the party better.

“There you are!” A woman at the table said,
standing up as they approached.

“This is my sister, Sylvia,” Melissa said.
“Sylvia, this is Ricky.”

“Welcome.” Sylvia gave him such a large smile
that it looked like her face might tear. He was introduced to the
others at the table, five clean-cut people in light colored
clothing, drinking white wine.

Ricky asked his companions polite questions
about what they did and where they were from and how their families
were, while Melissa looked bored and drank wine instead of talking.
Eventually, after the food came and everyone had loosened up, the
talk turned to books and philosophy. One friend said, “Ayn Rand and
her disgusting philosophy I could do without.”