“So your mom can call me when she gets here,” Lucky said.
“Your joke is not possible,” Mohan said.
Prem pushed open the unlocked door, and immediately they found themselves in the midst of a very large pile of shoes. They added theirs to the heap and made their way into the apartment where, even above the roar of the packed-in crowd, the grating voice of Kailash Mistry attempting to sing a ghazal rose from one corner. As at every party Prem had attended at King’s Court, bedsheets were spread across the floor; along one wall was a designated area for the elderly, whose longevity was rewarded with folding lawn chairs. Prem’s roommates melded into the raucous crowd that included a bevy of women who had recently rejected him, huddled together somewhat nefariously, to Prem’s mind. He squeezed past a flock of children and an uncle demonstrating bowling techniques with a fictional cricket ball. Tun-Tun was reliably drunk again and the customary buffet with its customary tinfoil trays had already been picked clean. Every window in 12D had been thrown open, yet the air in the apartment was laden with egg curry and heavy perfume, mingling with the distant strain of music issuing from a crackling cassette.
“Prem, really.” Beena was forcing herself through a slim gap between two men’s backs. “I have been waiting for you since two hours.”
“Sorry, you see, in the bathroom—” Prem began.
“No time for that.” She licked her hand and slapped down Prem’s hair, which she maintained was too fluffy and feathery for someone who was not a 1970s movie hero. “I have inquired few places,” she said in a conspiratorial voice. “Leena Engineer is coming tonight.”
Prem ran his fingers through his hair, restoring it to its previous fluffiness. It was unclear how Beena knew about this latest development in his life. “What Leena?” he said. He scanned the room, pretending nonchalance while at the same time searching for her face in the crowd. “I don’t care if any Leena is coming, or any Reena, Tina, Meena, or Veena.”
“Yes, yes, they all will be here soon too,” she said, batting away his hand.
Prem gave up defending his hair. Digging his hands into his back pockets, he slumped over slightly. “I have no chance with her anyway.”
“Stop talking nonsense or I will hit you with my rolling pin,” Beena said. She seemed always to be threatening him with her rolling pin, even when it was in a drawer four buildings away. She licked her hand again, this time using it to rub at one of Prem’s sideburns as though trying to shorten its length. “Just stand straight and try not to look lazy.”
Prem unslouched himself. “So, how long has this been going on?” he asked, gesturing with his chin in the direction of the unmelodic Mistry uncle struggling to carry a tune.
“From the start, Prem, from the start.” She extracted two small tinfoil triangles from her purse and slipped one to Prem. With no paanwallas on the corner of everywhere as they were in India, Beena had, of late, assumed the role herself.
Not wanting to risk leaving any unattractive flecks of betel leaf on his teeth, Prem resisted the lure of the refreshing carcinogenic digestive and tucked his paan in his pocket for the time being. Beena, whose teeth bore the terrible brown-orange stain of a veteran chewer, unwrapped hers, stuffed it in her mouth, and chomped.
“Really, did he have too much booze? Or maybe someone should give him more booze. Does he really think he can sing? He is ruining my party, just ruining.” Prem recognized the flamboyant lamentation of Tony, the more dramatic of the Guptas. A nice guy, a little theatrical, but always generous with giving him a lift to Exxon on cold days, he pressed himself uncomfortably close to Prem. “Look, Prem, Beena Auntie, people are leaving.”
Prem looked around and saw no one leaving.
“Please, stay. Have a dessert,” Tony urged.
“We are not going anywhere,” Prem said.
“Excellent!” Tony said. “It is settled then. But what about this singing, my God … ”
A squirt of orange escaped from one corner of Beena’s mouth and dribbled down her chin. She raised an eyebrow at Prem and went in search of tutti-frutti.
Tony pressed in even closer to Prem. “Now, what about the girls, hmm? I hear you were going around with some Asha or Usha?”
Prem was not much in the mood to discuss this with Tony, not because he was still feeling the sting of rejection but because he had moved so far past it. He considered bringing the conversation back around to the unwelcome singing, which had in the past minute increased in intensity and dreadfulness, but concluded this would just upset Tony all over again.
“Sushila,” he said with reluctance.
Tony took this bit of information and ran with it straight into a five-minute discussion during which Prem said very little and shook his head a great deal.
“Girls these days,” Tony bemoaned.
Prem shook his head.
“Too, too Westernized,” Tony argued.
Prem nodded.
“The drinking, the gambling … ”
Prem shook his head, then nodded, though he wasn’t quite sure anymore what Tony was talking about. He was glad, though, to be in this low-participation conversation because it allowed him to search the room and monitor the door. There were rumblings of a dance party from a small contingency of ladies, while the cricket uncles had moved into the hallway amongst the shoes. The garbage overflowed with Styrofoam bowls, and a framed poster of a red Ferrari tilted precariously on the wall above the elderly. Everyone, it seemed to Prem, was throwing their head back and enjoying. Someone in a sari cried, “Ee-diot!” and then laughed with a man standing scandalously close to her. Gopal was cackling wildly at something Lucky had said while Beena was handing someone a paan and leaning in carefully to listen.
Then, as if he’d willed her there, Leena appeared.
This time he could see all of her. She was in a bright pink salwar kameez that bared half of her slightly downy arms, of which he was immediately enamored. She was met at the door by an onslaught of young ladies—the large majority of whom Prem had tried to date and who seemed woefully sideyesque now—and was instantly the life of the group, a spectacular firework among soggy teabags.
“Want to go out for a fag?” Tony said. He appeared to be the only man in the room not distracted by Leena’s arrival. Even the old ones were staring and Mistry Uncle paused midcroon. Prem knew Tony was waiting but allowed himself one more moment to look at her before she was engulfed by her friends and no longer in his sight.
“Outside? Ya, no,” Prem started, but just then the electricity in King’s Court went out and they were stuck in the dark.
The power company had been doing maintenance work, and this was the third outage that week. For this reason, and also because they were recent immigrants from India, there was no surprise or panic, just a collective “Uf!” that sounded of mild disappointment and inevitability. Tun-Tun and Tony sprang into action, lighting candles already positioned around the room. A few others groped their way back to their apartments, returning with assorted flashlights. Everyone else stayed put; it crossed nobody’s mind that the party was over and they should go home. What was the point of sitting in the dark alone when they could sit in the dark together?
Prem peered through the dark for Leena’s silhouette. As the candles and flashlights came on and joined the streetlamps and the neon sign of Quicker Liquor to imbue the room with a romantic glow, she came into focus across the room.
“Antakshari!” someone proposed. This was good news for Prem, who had grown up playing the parlor game in which two teams take turns singing verses of Hindi film songs beginning with the last consonant sound of the opposing team’s previous song. A favorite subcontinental family pastime, it was liable to break out on bus rides and train rides, campouts and blackouts. Prem was roused every time he found himself in the midst of it, savoring the volley of hits and the late-round reaching for obscure ballads. It was a game at which he obviously excelled given his prodigious knowledge of film songs, so when someone seconded the motion, he was pleased at the chance to put his best self forward for Leena to see. He dug his hands into his front pockets and scanned the area to determine who was on his team. It turned out he was seated right in the middle of the most logical partition of the crowd.
“We have Pumpwalla this side!”
“Don’t be crazy, yaar, Petrol is with us!”
“Look where the line is, yaar.”
“Man, who cares? This is not the Line of Control we are deciding here!”
