“What do you mean? Do you mean he will beat you? I will not let him, I will call everyone, Deepak, Gopal, everyone from Building 10, Tony, the police, also you should stay with Beena Joshi tonight—”
“No, no one is beating anyone,” Archana said. She paused reflectively for a moment, then renewed her sobbing. “But he will give me crooked looks every time I ever use a suitcase again!”
Because he couldn’t abide a woman’s tears and also because he wanted to get back to staring at Leena longingly from a distance, Prem made a split-second decision to cover the cost of the suitcase himself. What was a little cash thrown here and there? he thought. He could always take on some extra Exxon shifts. If his little bit of prosperity could bring peace to the Ambani household plus allow him to extricate himself from the situation, how could he not?
“But why?” Archana said. She appeared to be examining his face, as if to determine whether he was a god or an idiot.
After a protracted silence Prem said, “Just come back in the evening. Good?”
Archana Ambani left elated, and Prem returned to the party.
“Mr. Prem Kumar, your palm, please.” It was Leena, right there at the door, in front of him as if she’d been waiting, albeit with Lucky’s hand outstretched in hers, which she abruptly dropped when Prem entered.
“You didn’t finish my reading, but,” Lucky protested. “What does my heart line say?”
Leena took a quick glance at it. “Oh, nothing, it looks like you prefer company of animals over people. You maybe should get a dog.”
She turned to Prem then, who put out his hand. He was confused by this sudden attention, which, for lack of a better explanation, he attributed to his exceptional eye flirting. He could not have guessed that she had discreetly yet persistently asked his friends about him. Where did he come from? Was he going around with anyone? Why was he chosen to speak to the crying auntie in the hall? Nor could he have known that, despite some initial joking about his amazing way with middle-aged married women, his friends had said he was a decent fellow, a little quiet, a bit secretive, like we don’t really know anything about him but that’s okay, he is reliable, neat, and clean, with good habits, no tongue scraper, but still. The aunties like him because he listens and helps with the problems, makes them laugh, or they make him laugh, unclear who is laughing, and for no reason, they think he looks like Shashi Kapoor. The uncles do not mind because Prem is a mild kind of person, a bit sad, having no ambition, so when aunties are complaining to him about the neighbor’s too loud music, they think, Better him than me, no?
Prem didn’t know they’d said any of these things, nor that Leena had only heard “reliable, clean, listens, laughing, Shashi Kapoor,” then rubbed her chin and said, “Huh.” When he put out his hand for her and she stepped in closer and took it, he felt an overpowering desire to pull her in even closer, not to kiss her but to hold her there, their faces so close they could feel each other’s breath, as in every Hindi movie he’d ever loved. “So, what does it say? That I am going to meet a beautiful grocery store owner soon?” he said.
“Are you kidding? Him?” someone said.
“Yuck. What a line, man,” someone else said.
The woman of his dreams—who was taller than he’d realized and smelled even better than he’d imagined, like rosewater and Neem herbal toothpaste—rolled her eyes at the others then examined his palm closely, tracing one of its lines with her finger. “Let’s see, Mr. Kumar. Your head line is showing a clear downward slope, then some upticks later.”
“Naturally,” Prem said.
“This shows you are logical and do not waste time in worrying,” Leena said.
“Of course. Wait, really?”
“Then, if you look here at the fate line, oh, it starts very close to the life line, very close, almost touching.”
Prem was so overcome by the thrill of what was transpiring that he forgot to consider until that moment that Leena might actually discern from his palm things about his life that he did not want her to discern. He yanked his hand out of hers abruptly. “Tell me, what do you do with the vegetables in the store when they become old?”
Taken aback, Leena didn’t offer an immediate answer to the question of declining vegetables. She looked closely at his face as if trying to decipher him that way instead. “Where is your family?” she said.
“In Delhi,” Prem said.
“Are you close to them?”
“No, actually, I am quite far.”
She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes, continuing to inspect his visage. “You don’t want me to know something.”
Even as she accused him and investigated his face with suspicion, a deep crease appearing between her brows, she was, he felt, altogether beautiful. Though he could not address her statement in earnest, it also seemed to him a moment for a bit of truth. “I like you,” he said.
Leena cocked her head and blinked several times quickly. Her expression softened then to something resembling affection, but also rather too close to pity. “It’s just that … are you trying to hide that you work at the gas station and maybe that you have a modest background? Because others have told me about how girls rejected you because of this, and I think it is very unfair. If a woman wants a rich lifestyle, she should put the burden on herself, not on anyone else, and why did they go around with you in the first place?” She paused for a breathless second, appearing suddenly self-conscious. “I know, really, it is not my place to say, but I just wanted to tell you that.”
Shocked by her knowledge of his woeful dating history and in disbelief that someone like her could be embarrassed in front of someone like him, Prem opened his mouth, but no words came out. Meanwhile a crowd of assorted guests gathered in a loose circle began cheering at the young man supine on the floor. Other guests lost interest in their own conversations and joined the circle, which, it turned out, was spurring on Keshav Rathod from 3E as he shaved his unconscious friend’s left eyebrow.
Leena and Prem moved closer to the tumult to have a look, and Leena took the opportunity to change the subject. “So,” she sighed, “I have to go to the store soon to meet the cold-drinkwalla. But, you know, I don’t know, maybe I can tell him to come another day … ”
Prem stood incredulously as Leena continued this unexpected brand of wholesaler-related flirtation.
She turned to a nearby friend. “What do you think, should I go for my meeting?” she said, loudly enough for Prem to still hear. “There is so much of excitement going on here, but. I don’t feel like leaving.”
She glanced at him, then kept on. “Come on, yaar, help me, I can’t decide.”
Prem stepped around so he was squarely in front of her. “Listen,” he said. “I know what you are doing. Go to your meeting. You have worked hard for the success of your family’s store. I would never tell you to do anything that would endanger this.”
Years later, at an uncomfortably ostentatious wedding, Leena would remember Prem’s supportiveness and respect, his security in the face of female ambition, when a balding real-estate mogul would abruptly end their conversation when she noted the remarkable similarity in their career trajectories. “An overachiever,” he would say, suddenly regarding her as though she were a strange bug, then practically run to the bar.
“Go and come back,” Prem said. “The party will be here still when you return.”
“Will it really?” Leena dropped her apparently flimsy ruse and spoke plainly. “What time are Iqbal and Amarleen coming?”
“They are seeing Cats.”
“Okay, I will be back.”
While Leena was away, Prem found himself suddenly the object of seven different women’s attentions. The eyebrow had been thoroughly removed and the mob dispersed when Roopa from 15H cornered him near the bathroom and asked if he knew where the bathroom was.
“Oh, it’s just here,” Prem said, to which Roopa responded with a nod and settled into a spot beside him. Neeta and Aparna from 17G joined them, and quickly thereafter four others elbowed their way in.
“Why I never noticed your good sideburns?”
