Quarantine: Stories (17 page)

The Jasmines hated New York. They thought it was dirty and crowded and expensive. They wanted to move to L.A. Sanj said L.A. was superficial. The Jasmines said New York was overrated. They narrowed their eyes. “You’ll hate it here. You’ll see.”

S
ylvie asked, “Do you still have that huge screen, with the projection television and the sprawling sectional?”

Three days after running into her at the pharmacy, Sanj had called and invited her over to watch a movie. She said she would bring the video.

When she arrived at the house, she rang the doorbell at the front door instead of the side door, where anyone who knew the family would have rung, and where Sylvie herself would have rung back in high school. Back then, Sylvie didn’t even need to, she could just walk right in.

Sanj greeted her at the door, and, glimpsing the same dented Toyota Tercel, he remembered their good-bye in the driveway more than four years ago. Sanj invited Sylvie in.

The house’s foyer was designed to impress. The ceilings were almost thirty feet high, and there was a five-foot-tall bronze statue of Nataraja Shiva, dancing his dance of destruction and re-creation. Sanj’s parents had had it shipped from Chicago, along with other decorative items, including several large tapestries and an ornate indoor swing. They patterned their house after the fancy havelis in Bollywood films. The verandas in the back had floors of imported marble (as did the foyer) and ornate columns with gold-toned scrolls.

Bipin had been the first Indian to move to the small town. The job at the local hospital was the first one he’d been offered after his residency, and, eager to find a place where he could settle so he could bring his new bride from India, he’d taken it. Not long after, he decided to open his own oncology practice. When it was time for him to expand, he recruited an Indian. Then another. Other Indian doctors followed: family members, friends of friends. Word spread that there were opportunities in the area, and those who had nowhere else to go, who had Indian degrees and few options, began arriving. Most were doctors. Some were engineers, working in the chemical plants that dotted the river valley. Many of them lived with Bipin’s family for a time—two, three weeks, sometimes longer—until they could find their own places and send for their wives and, in some cases, children. Bipin’s family lived in a smaller house then, and the young men would sleep on a foldout in a room that doubled as Bipin’s study. Now, thirty years later, there were more than twenty-five families. They were some of the wealthiest residents in what was otherwise a poor stretch of Appalachia.

Not only was Bipin the first Indian in town, he was also the first to buy land in Mulberry Hills, the first to build a house, custom-designed with a basement large enough to accommodate most, if not all, of the Indian community. This was useful, since Diwali celebrations could no longer be held in the recreation hall of the Episcopal Church, not since a janitor had told the deacon about the statue of the elephant-headed god, the chanting and dancing and burning of incense. Other Indian families followed, building several houses in a row. At Diwali and Holi and Navratri and at the monthly dandiya parties, the guests could easily hop from one house to the next. The Indians referred to Mulberry Hills as Malabar Hill, after the tony Bombay neighborhood.

The circular driveway and the accompanying fountain were added a few years after the house itself. Bipin had bought them for his wife as a surprise for their twentieth anniversary. Meenakshi had gone alone for a short trip to India, and when she returned—only half awake after the long journey—the driveway she pulled into was this one. The driveway itself was fairly simple; it was the fountain that was the real gift. It was exquisite. What made it so extraordinary, aside from its sheer size, were the hand-crafted tiles encircling its base. Most had standard decorative motifs Bipin had selected from a showroom: curlicues or geometric patterns or sunflowers. But scattered among them were a few very special tiles Bipin had commissioned to document his and Meenakshi’s lives together—a tile with a mangalsutra exactly like the one Meenakshi had worn at their wedding; a tile depicting the Taj Mahal, where they had gone on their honeymoon; one with a baby’s crib and the birth date of their only child; one with a palm tree to represent the trip to Hawai’i they had taken on their second anniversary, staying at an expensive resort, long before they had yet made the kind of money to afford such a vacation or resort, telling themselves the trip was an act of faith, a message to the universe that this was the kind of life they expected and that they would settle for nothing less.

Three years later, when the driveway needed to be repaired (long before it should have), Bipin, unable to secure the contractor who had originally built it, hired a local man. After the work was done, the two men argued, the local man demanding much more money than his original quote. The man got angry, shouting, “You foreigners don’t know how hard it is. You all live in mansions. One day, come see where I live. Then you’ll understand.” Bipin ended up paying the man the extra money, though he continued to complain about it even years later.

Shortly after the driveway and fountain were built, Sanj’s grandfather, getting into the car one day, said, “Life is a circle. One way or another we return to the beginning.” The comment had irritated Sanj; it seemed to him both sentimental and false. In fact, it had become an inside joke between him and his parents. Bipin would imitate Sanj’s grandfather in an exaggerated Indian accent, stabbing the air with his finger, “Life is a circle,” and Sanj and his mother would laugh. Though now, standing in the grand foyer with Sylvie, Sanj wondered if his grandfather hadn’t had a point. After all, here Sanj was, four years after leaving, back where he started. But that was temporary. What Sanj hadn’t mentioned to his grandfather, when his grandfather first made the observation, was that the driveway, though circular, did have an entrance, and, importantly, an exit, and Sanj had every intention of using it.

T
he first thing Sanj noticed about Sylvie when she stepped into the foyer was that she was wearing sweatpants again. She looked out of place, her sneakers ratty against the marble floor. She’d brought Krzysztof Kieslowski’s
La Double Vie de Véronique
. Sanj had already seen it, but he didn’t mind seeing it again. A professor had screened it in a film class in college. In the movie, Irène Jacob plays a double role: a Polish singer and a young French woman. The women never meet, yet for a time their lives seem to parallel one another’s before eventually going off in different directions. Sanj remembered the professor having said something about the film being a moody exploration of identity, of free will versus destiny, but Sanj couldn’t remember exactly. He’d earned a “C” in the course.

Sanj liked the soundtrack. Sylvie liked the styling: the clothes, the hair, the makeup. She was enthralled by Irène Jacob. “Fuck Julia Roberts,” she said. “
This
is a star.” The comment sounded just like something Sylvie might have said four years ago, and for a moment Sanj felt like they were back in high school. But then he glanced over at her—her shapeless sweats, her greasy hair—and remembered neither of them was the same.

The basement had a wet bar, and after the movie, Sanj made margaritas, and the two sat on the sectional, talking, watching MTV on mute. Sylvie asked if he’d ever seen Anna Wintour.

“Of course. I’ve seen her several times in the halls and the lobby.”

“I heard she had a skylight installed in her office so she can wear sunglasses even while she’s at work.”

“I’ve never been in her office. But once, in the elevator, she told me she loved my watch. ‘It’s Lucite,’ I said. ‘I have it in three colors.’ ”

A few minutes later Sanj said, “I love working at
Vogue
, but it’s a little superficial.”

Sanj noticed Sylvie’s eyes welling up with tears. Her body crumpled, curling in on itself like a worm.

“Four years,” Sylvie said. “Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you stop by? I thought we were best friends.”

After a minute, she said, “These years have been really hard for me.”

“I know,” Sanj said.

“If you knew, you would have called.”

Sanj remembered a night during their senior year in high school. It was February, and they had driven to Cleveland to see a Nine Inch Nails concert. In honor of the show, they were clad head-to-toe in black. It was midnight by the time the concert was finished and they started driving home. They’d gone in Sylvie’s Tercel, and somehow they’d taken a wrong turn and ended up on a back road driving through farmland. Something Sanj said, he wasn’t sure what—was it about the concert? about Nietzsche, whom they were both reading, and whom they had been discussing on and off during their drive?—upset Sylvie so much, she stopped the car and stepped out into the cold night without her coat, slamming the car door behind her. Sanj waited several minutes, wondering what to do, before finally getting out himself. Sylvie’s back was turned to him. She was facing the field, her hands tightly gripping the fence. In the silence of the frigid night, Sanj could still hear the concert ringing in his ears. A cow was mooing somewhere in the distance. Sanj put his hand on Sylvie’s shoulder and said, “I’m sorry,” although he was unsure what he was apologizing for. He felt her shoulder beneath his hand soften and relax. They got back in the car and drove home without discussing it further.

Sanj tipped his margarita glass back, trying to get the last few sips. The ice cubes were cold against his lips. He set the glass down on the table and reached to put his hand on Sylvie’s shoulder, to tell her he was sorry, as he had that night on the side of the road. But as he reached, he saw Sylvie’s shoulder slightly, though perceptibly, pull away.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Sanj said. “Somehow. I promise.”

S
anj was lying to everyone about what he was doing in New York. He didn’t have an internship at
Vogue
. He didn’t have an internship anywhere, not anymore. When he first arrived, he’d worked at a trade publication which served the prescription drug industry, and which he’d seen advertised on a flyer in the journalism office at USC. But he didn’t last long.

In college, when Sanj had fantasized about his first job in New York, he’d pictured a spacious, light-filled office, with an open floor plan—no walls or cubicle barriers. He pictured himself wearing tight charcoal gray pants (wool, with a little bit of Lycra for stretch), a white shirt, and a skinny tie. He would share—with an equally stylish young woman, in a blue blouse, with short, ruffled sleeves—a large, antique table, and they would sit facing each other, gold-rimmed tea cups carefully positioned on coasters within easy reach. Occasionally, they’d look away from their work to exchange a clever comment about an art exhibit or a new dance club.

His real job, of course, was nothing like this. The office had drop ceilings and fluorescent lights. The job itself was tedious and uninspiring. Sanj was assigned to an editor and was responsible for sorting through his mail, screening his phone calls, and typing and sending his handwritten correspondence to freelance writers.

His boss had a ridiculous name—Jeep—made all the more ridiculous by how poorly it suited him. Far from rugged or virile, Jeep was stout and fey. “I had a Jeep,” Sanj said, the first day, “but I totaled it on the way back from Burning Man.” He thought Jeep would find this anecdote funny and that it would break the ice; instead, Jeep just shrugged.

Jeep had only been at the trade publication for six months. Before that, he’d been a senior culture editor at
Newsday
, but he’d been pushed out during a restructuring. For Jeep, the job at the trade magazine was a huge step down, something Sanj understood almost immediately. Jeep mentioned
Newsday
at least twenty times Sanj’s first day. In his previous position, Jeep had also had his own assistant. Here, he’d have to settle for an intern.

Among Sanj’s duties was fetching Jeep’s lunch—a different place every day—so Sanj, still trying to learn the lay of the neighborhood, often found himself lost. Jeep always paid Sanj after Sanj returned, not before. Sanj wondered if Jeep didn’t trust him with the money. One afternoon, during Sanj’s second week, Jeep sent him out for a turkey sandwich. When the man behind the counter asked if he wanted mustard, Sanj didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. Had Jeep said anything about mustard? To be safe, Sanj ordered two sandwiches—one with mustard, one without—deciding that he would allow Jeep to select the one he wanted and that Sanj would eat the other himself. Back at the office, after Jeep selected the sandwich without mustard, he forgot to pay Sanj, and Sanj couldn’t think of a polite way to ask. Later, sitting alone in the break room, Sanj couldn’t stop thinking about the money. His internship wasn’t even paid, and now he had to buy his boss’s lunches? On top of everything, the sandwich left a bad taste in his mouth. He hated mustard.

The next day, Jeep sent Sanj to a sushi restaurant on Twenty-eighth Street, again without any money. Sanj ordered the sashimi lunch his boss had requested. At the last minute, he amended the order—“To stay, not to go”—and, sitting on a stool at a long table facing the street, he ate the sashimi himself, savoring the delicate fish, relishing it even more knowing that Jeep would go hungry this afternoon. After finishing, instead of returning to the office, Sanj walked crosstown to Penn Station to catch a train back to Long Island. He never went back to work, never even called to explain his absence, and Jeep, to Sanj’s surprise, never called Sanj in Long Island to find out why he’d disappeared.