Imaginary Men (12 page)

“You are disarmingly honest. I neglected to ask whether you're vegetarian.”

“Uh, it's okay. There are plenty of vegetarian options on the menu. Are you vegetarian?”

“No, but I don't eat veal either.”

“Oh, good, then. So. Uh.”

“How about the heirloom tomato feast?”

“‘A colorful sampler.'” I can't help grinning, and then I notice he's grinning too, which makes his face suddenly more open and friendly and twice as handsome.

“As you may notice”—he lowers his voice and leans toward me—“there's an entirely separate vegetarian tasting menu.” He pulls the smaller menu from the bigger one and hands it to me. “Open it. You'll see the heirloom tomato
symphony
. ”

“How do you suppose that differs from the tomato
feast?
”

“The symphony has tomato violins?” He grins, and I smile. A silver-haired couple at the next table frowns at us. The man looks a bit like my father. I imagine Baba lying in bed with psychological pains, then push the picture from my mind. I won't feel guilty tonight.

“Trio of petite peas soup,” I read. “Better not order that one.”

“You might get only a trio of peas.” He chuckles.

“Japanese eggplant stuffed with Sardinian couscous.”

“What makes Sardinian couscous different from Milan couscous, or La Maddalena couscous or Sicilian couscous?” Raja asks in a serious tone, and then laughs.

“Oh, this is the entire vegetarian five-course meal. You have to order everything. I'll be a beluga whale by the time we roll out of here.”

“I'll be a killer whale.” He chuckles again. Suddenly I imagine Raja and me at Milton's Diner near my apartment.
We'll munch on homemade French fries and drink organic strawberry milkshakes.

We're still chuckling when the waiter comes. We straighten our faces, and Raja orders. The silver-haired woman at the next table casts me another tight look, then lifts a fork to her mouth, closes her lips daintily around a square of cheese, and chews. Her husband gulps his wine and stares off somewhere to the left of her ear, his eyes glazed.

I realize, then, that she reminds me of myself when I sat across from Dr. Dilip Dutta. Bored, trying to make the evening work. I wasn't wearing a red lacy teddy that night. Now I'm wearing one under the power suit. I'm like a Russian matryoshka doll. If you remove the outer nested dolls, you'll eventually reach the sexy inner doll.

I wonder if Raja senses the inner doll, satin caressing its skin. I wonder if this is the time to tell him about Kali. No, I'll wait. I'm Cinderella at the ball, and I don't want to disturb the mood.

Our appetizer comes, a plate of colorful aromatic tomatoes. As we eat, Raja manages to extract my most intimate childhood stories. I talk about school, about excelling in English and classical piano, especially Bach's Inventions. I tell him about my privacy phase at age seven, when I had to make sure everyone knew I was in the bathroom, so they wouldn't come in, and I always locked the door.

“Then once, after we'd gone hiking, I sat on the toilet and
found a tick on my thigh. I ran outside with my pants down, yelling for my father.”

“You were a bold contradiction even then.”

I'll take that as flattery. A smile touches my lips. “Baba was talking to the neighbors. He pulled the tick off my leg. What about you? Where did you grow up? Did you have ticks?”

“I've always lived in Kolkata, although my family is originally from Assam. No ticks in the city, but we have mosquitoes, the occasional snake, dogs, cats, house geckos—”

“There was a gecko in my room, the night of Durga's wedding.” I run a finger around the rim of my wineglass. “Creepy—”

“They're harmless.” He signals the waiter for more water. I wonder if Raja is harmless, too, whether he only looks dangerous. “I grew up with geckos. My parents kept their main flat in Kolkata. We spent holidays in our cottage in Santini-ketan and in Puri, by the sea.”

“You have many homes.”

“Only three.”

“Sounds like a dream. We spent summers camping up through the redwood forest, or flying to Oahu so our parents could play tennis.”

“You and your sisters didn't play?” He says the word
play
as though it means many things. He leans forward, and I catch another whiff of his spicy aftershave.

“Durga did. She was always athletic. All she could think about was running, jumping, and hitting things with racquets. Kali hoarded piles of
Seventeen
and
Cosmopolitan
magazines and carried a makeup bag as big as a suitcase.”

“And you?”

“I swam. You can be alone in the water, if you swim out far enough—”

“Why do you swim out far, Lina? Trying to catch a rip-tide?” He lowers his voice, and for a moment, I feel as though he knows me too well. When did I start swimming out far? After Nathu died?

“The sea's comforting,” I say.

“Sometimes I want to do the same, float with the currents.”

“Then you're like me. Most people stay near the shoreline.”

“In some respects, you stay near the shore too, Lina Ray.” He pours me another glass of wine. “You play it safe. You're not engaged, I assume?”

He's asking me directly, and I can't answer. My vocal cords shrivel. I croak, but no words come out.
I made up a fiancé who's a little like you
. “No husband,” I say. That's not a lie, is it?

“Why? Afraid you'll find the right man?”

I'm playing with my earring again. “I'm a career woman. I work, see friends, practice yoga, go to movies, hike, and I read
a lot. I don't have time for a husband.” Wait—I'm supposed to ask the questions. “What about you? What are your hobbies?” Oh, please. What a boring question.

“I'm a big reader too. Mainly Bengali authors, but also some Western writers. I have eclectic tastes.”

“Eclectic, as in, you read
USA Today
as well as
Penthouse
, or—”

“I absorb all genres.” He opens his hands, palms forward.

“What about your brother Dev? A big reader?” There I go, asking boring questions again.

“He prefers teaching cricket to American girls.”

“So he's a lady's man.” A strike against Dev.

“How can he help it if the girls flock to him?”

“Do I detect a note of jealousy?”

“Between brothers? Never.” He grins. On him, a grin is multifaceted, like colors through a prism. My insides buzz with warmth.

“So it was just you and your brother growing up?” I ask.

“Our parents and various aunts, uncles, cousins—”

“Of course. You're never alone in India, right?”

“I'm accustomed to having family around all the time. America is a vast land of opportunity, to be sure, but it's also a great land of loneliness.”

“Do you think I'm lonely?” I scoop couscous onto my plate.

“There's a forlorn air about you. A shadow.”

The air thickens in my throat. If he could only see my shadow, my imaginary man. “I have family here. I'm not lonely. But we all live in different parts of the country.”

“Connected only by plane, nah? In India, we're usually close to each other, although I also have relatives in Mumbai and Chennai. I should never like to grow old in America.”

I nearly choke on a mouthful of couscous. So Raja Prasad will never move to America. Not that I want him to. “Why not?”

“Is it true you throw your parents into rest homes?” His left eyebrow rises all by itself. How does it do that? How does he stare as if his eyes harbor tiny X-ray machines to photograph my soul?

“We don't exactly
throw
them. And they're called retirement communities, not rest homes. It's hard to find time for family here. People are so busy with their careers, their frenetic daily lives—” I stare at the rippling reflection in my wineglass. I'm one of those frenetic people. Would I throw Ma and Baba into a retirement home? I would never do such a thing, and they wouldn't let their children make decisions for them. “Many people
want
to move into retirement communities. They make new friends their own age, play shuffleboard, go to movies together—”

“It seems unnatural. We never dream of abandoning family to such places. My parents—they were a love marriage. They fell for each other at the Samode Palace in Rajasthan,
one of the most intimate places in India. They grew more deeply in love over time, and they planned to grow old together. Now that my father has died, my mother would never dream of leaving the home she shared with him in Kolkata. I live there too, when I'm not traveling.”

A dollop of couscous falls off my fork and plops on the plate. Raja lives with his mother? “In America, grown men who live with their mothers are often considered peculiar.”

He stops, his wineglass suspended halfway to his mouth. “Do you consider me peculiar?”

“Not at all.” Sexy, strange, fascinating, not what I expected. But not peculiar. “But I can't imagine living with my Baba and Ma.” Baba would offer daily career advice. He could run his own “Ask Baba” column in the newspaper. “Anyway, they've made their own plans. They're saving for retirement. They're not relying on their daughters to take care of them.”

“I suppose this is wise, nah?” Raja downs his wine. “You must take care of yourself in this country.”

“We don't have servants or drivers, if that's what you mean. Some affluent families hire nannies for their children.”

“I had an ayah, the equivalent of a nanny. She still lives with us, cooks and cleans. She and my mother are like sisters.”

Like sisters, huh? My insides frown while my mouth sticks in a polite smile. “Your ayah is still a servant.”

“You have a point. But such arrangements make all our lives easier.”

“We didn't have servants. I started making my own bed when I was two.”

“So you've always been an independent female.”

Why does independence feel like loneliness right now? When I leave for work each morning, my apartment freezes in time. When I return home in the evening, nothing has changed. My teacup still sits on the countertop next to a bowl of soggy Lucky Charms.

Sometimes I wish a house elf lived under my bed. She could pop out while I'm away and rearrange the furniture, cook, clean, and open my mail, so the apartment will look lived-in when I come home. I wasn't lonely when I had boyfriends or roommates, but their habits often annoyed me. I hid in my room for the comfort of solitude. Now I imagine Raja sharing my space, reading my newspaper, using my towels, drinking my tea.

I shove the images under my napkin. “In India, I might come home to a swept room, folded laundry, servants flitting about the house, relatives yelling,” I say in a rush. “I'm drawn to my homeland, and yet I can't live among all those people.”

His face closes, his emotions retreating into darkness. “Americans tend to find India—overwhelming.”

“I'd like to find a happy medium.”

“You've been back to India often?” Raja asks.

“Just a few times. Do you come to America often?”

“On business. For the first eighteen years of my life, I never traveled beyond India.”

He acts as though I'm interviewing him for a job. For what position? Business partner, friend, lover?

“Where did you go to school?” I ask. At an upscale institute for royalty, I presume.

“When I was quite young, my parents sent me off to boarding school in Darjeeling, in the Himalayas. Huge stone building, like a castle, gothic.” He gestures in a sweeping motion with his arms. “A bit like the school in
Harry Potter
. Boys came from all over the world, from the families of Tibetan gold smugglers, from America's blue blood. I found my place among them. My brother stayed back in Kolkata. Our mother couldn't bear to be without both her sons. I learned to accept living away from home, for a time.”

I picture him as a strapping young man in a woolen school uniform. He probably trekked through blizzards, rappelled from ice cliffs. He must've been an accomplished mountain climber, braving the storms of Mount Everest. His girlfriends were probably princesses and daughters of rich international jet-setters.

“So now, how long will you be here?” I ask.

“Just a few weeks. This is my last stop before returning home. I've been trying to bring my mother over for a visit. She wants to see where Dev goes to university. She's been to
the East Coast. This time, we've hit a snag with her visa. New security regulations. I'm working on it.”

I regard Raja in a new way. The loyal son. If I were a mother, I'd love to have a son like him. I wonder, have I done all I can to support my parents? I touch the gold brooch pinned to my shirt. I've been wearing it on all my dates. I can't let Ma down.

“Will you have time to show your mother around?” I ask. “I mean, with your work and all?”

“Actually, I'm fund-raising for my charitable projects. I run two orphanages outside Kolkata.”

“You what?” I plunk down my glass, splashing merlot on the white linen tablecloth. The blushing stain spreads.

Raja reaches over to dab at the spill with his napkin. “We give girls a chance at an education, a life of independence. Unfortunately, many Indian families still value boys more than girls.”

My mind stretches to absorb this new information. Kali mentioned that his family financed orphanages, but I never dreamed that Raja was so personally involved in the charitable work. Raja Prasad, Mr. Playboy of the Far Pavilions, helping orphaned girls achieve independence? My fingers itch to touch his sleeve, make sure he's real.

I glance down at my plate. The time has passed so quickly. We've already had dessert, and I barely noticed. I'm Cinderella dancing with the prince.