Girl Most Likely To
Poonam Sharma
My thanks to…
My agent, Lorin Rees, for helping me
make the leap into fiction.
My editor, Kathryn Lye, who improves the story
without altering the point.
Red Dress Ink, for taking me on.
And my family—for their inspiration, humility,
and for being the sort of people who never give up,
nor fail to be grateful for it all.
For a guy named Michael, who knew me once,
and thought that I should write a novel.
“C
elibacy is rotting your brain.”
Cristina insisted through my cell phone, while the taxi jerked up Fifth Avenue. It might even have been true, but it was a hateful thing for a best friend to say.
At my age—and my father never missed an opportunity to remind me of my age with all the subtlety of a presidential ass-pat—my mother had managed a screaming child, a barking dog, a doting husband and a medical residency. And she did it from a three-bedroom Colonial in Great Neck, Long Island. By twenty-seven, left to my own devices, I had amassed a lucrative, yet uninspiring, seventy-hour Wall Street workweek, a telling but unintentional track record of shoving plant corpses down the trash chute while the neighbors slept, and a very large, very expensive and very empty bed. It was the latter fact that had me feeling particularly vulnerable. And of the many mistakes I made that Saturday evening, the first was expecting Cristina to understand.
“Just because I’ve decided to be rational and take control of my life, that doesn’t mean I’m crazy.” I pouted, checking my watch. Draped in my traditional powder-blue silk salwar kameez and matching satin Charles David heels, I was hurtling helplessly toward another lavish Indian wedding where my parents would be seated where the love of my life ought to be. After ten years of scouring every dormitory bar, party and young singles’ mixer, not to mention checking under every rock and in more than my fair share of countries around the world, I was in no mood for honesty. If bunions were my reward for a decade of running in four-inch heels, then cynicism was my logical response to the umpteenth fix-up with a prince whose castle would eventually make me break out in hives.
“But an arranged marriage? For you, Vina?” her voice climbed. It was laced with all the straight-postured self-righteousness of a New England housewife snatching home hair dye from the hands of a teenaged daughter. “I don’t think so.”
I sucked air through clenched teeth.
“See? This is why I wasn’t going to tell you about tonight. And it’s not an arranged marriage. It’s an arranged…
date,
and it just happens to be taking place at a wedding.”
Ever since I met Cristina, when we were the lone female interns in the J.P. Morgan investment banking department, she’d refused to cut me emotional slack. And that was what I respected most about her. Unfortunately, she also refused to accept that merely being ethnic (Cuban, and from Miami) didn’t mean she automatically grasped my situation. Convincing her that it was a good idea to be set up with the Punjabi lawyer courtesy of my parents required an appeal to the rational side of her brain. Fortunately, we were both investment bankers; I knew exactly how to put things into terms that she could grasp.
“Look,” I added, cradling my cell between ear and shoulder while aiming my compact at the pinky finger I used to catch errant eyeliner, “I have thirty months left until thirty. I know your mom had you when she was, like,
forty.
But you have to understand that Indian women don’t have Cuban women’s genes. Sure, our hips were made for childbearing, but that’s where the similarity ends. The fact is that I’m only fertile until, like, thirty-five. And anyway, to figure out ideal fertility age, you take the average age of menopause for women in your family, and subtract twenty years. That’s when your fertility takes a serious nosedive. For my mom, menopause was fifty, so that means that childbirth is supposed to be before thirty for me.”
“But…”
“Also…consider that it takes at least six months to fall in love with anyone and run the required background checks, another nine months to get engaged, and a year to plan the wedding. And my husband and I will need at least a year of being married without being pregnant—to screw like bunnies before gravity has its way with me. That’s thirty-nine months. So even if I meet Mr. Right tonight, I’m still cutting it close.”
“Where do you get this stuff?”
My logic impressed her.
“They re-air
The Oprah Winfrey Show
at two a.m.” I clicked my compact shut, and noticed that one of my heels was stuck in a glob of gum on the floor of the cab. “And you know that I haven’t been sleeping well these days.”
In an effort to spare the hem of my salwar kameez, I leaned onto one hip and lifted my shoe. Naturally, the pleather seat beneath me mimicked a fart. My eyes collided in the rearview mirror with those of the cabbie, who, until that point, had occasionally glanced at me with the standard balance of boredom and curiosity. Suddenly he sat up straighter, spearing me with a look of moral superiority—all this from a man who had never encountered a stick of deodorant. I stared out the window.
“What kind of a name is Prakash, anyway?” Cristina finally asked.
“Um, I don’t know…an Indian one?”
“Well, it’s just not the kind of name that I can imagine you screaming out in a fit of passion.”
“Life is not a fit of passion, Cristy.” I resented her for making me sound like my mother. “And I think the point is that I’m supposed to have learned that by now. Look at it this way. Meeting a guy through my parents means that the background check is out of the way. Up front, I know that he’s single, educated and family-oriented, with no criminal record or illegitimate children.”
“And what if he looks like a frog?”
“He will not look like a frog.”
“But, Vina, what if he does? What if he looks like a bloated, slimy frog…who got hit in the face with a frying pan…
twice?
”
“Then I guess I’ll have to comfort myself with the thought of his really long—”
“Vina, I’m being serious! Have you thought this through? How much are you willing to compromise? Meeting a guy through your parents is a lot more serious than meeting him by yourself. It can’t be casual. You’ve always told me that.”
“All I know is that there are men that you date, and men that you marry.” I reached into my wallet for a twenty as we turned east onto Forty-seventh Street.
“And never the twain shall meet?”
I paused. “Did you just say ‘twain’?”
“Sorry. I’m feeling silly. I have a date with the cowboy tonight. Maybe I’m subconsciously practicing country phrases to put him at ease.”
“All Midwesterners are not cowboys, Cristy.” I signaled the cabbie for eight dollars in change.
“Yes, but this one is. Seriously. He has the cowboy hat and everything. He even grew up on a ranch.”
“And what…he took a wrong turn at the Old Oak Tree and wound up in New York City?”
“Apparently. And he must have asked someone to point him toward the nearest watering hole, because I met him at Denial, a bar over on Grand Street.”
“That
is
silly.” I wrenched the crumpled dollar bills from the plastic, swiveling slot, and smoothed them into a pile. Then I folded them and slipped them into my purse.
“Come on! Why don’t you ditch the wedding, and meet up with us instead? I’ll have him bring a
fre-end,
” she practically sang, as if she were dangling a new doll before my eyes.
“As tempted as I am by the idea of playing Cowboys and Indians twenty years after recess is over, I think I’ll pass.”
“Oh, I get it. When you play with firemen it’s perfectly acceptable, but when I try to throw a little rodeo it’s
silly?
”
I fought off a mental image of The Village People performing “YMCA,” and feigned indignation at Cristina. “I thought we agreed never to speak of that again.”
She followed suit. “We agreed on no such thing.”
“I was young.” I checked my watch for the tenth time since Union Square. “It’s a part of my past.”
“It was last year.” She paused, probably for dramatic effect. “And I believe the exact line that you used on that guy was ‘If I promise to run home and start a fire, will you promise to come over later?’”
“You gave me that line.” I cracked a smile. “Good times, though.” And then we giggled together, like only two women who know that they will see each other from virginity to Viagra can.
“Vina, I just don’t want you settling for some guy who isn’t your ‘Prince.’” Cristina took a typically cheap shot at our friend Pamela, who wasn’t there to defend herself. “You’ve been way too preoccupied lately with your so-called future.”
“Oh, who are you kidding, Cristina? I’m an Indian chick from Strong Island. I was
born
preoccupied with my so-called future.”
“I’m not talking about your professional future. I’m talking about your personal future. It’s like you’re turning into, well, I hate to say it, but…Pam.”
“Now that’s mean,” I said. “First, you make me feel more pathetic than I already do by reminding me that I haven’t had sex in forever, and now you’re comparing me to her. And come to think of it, you wouldn’t give
her
any crap if
she
was being set up with a nice Jewish lawyer by
her
parents.”
“You know you don’t want to get me started on Pam.”
“Agreed.” I sighed as we slowed to a halt by the curb outside the Waldorf Astoria. A uniformed doorman sped over and reached toward the door handle. “In fact, I don’t want to get you started on anything at the moment because my chariot has pulled up to the ball. Passionate Princes are a fairy tale, Cristy, but a Practical Prince will suit me fine.”