“No one remembers any equal-vequal, we do not remember you were here even,” Iqbal said.
“Then who Prem is doing these things with?” Amarleen said to no one in particular.
Mostly, he was doing them alone. Without giving it much thought, one morning, he purchased a bottle of vodka from Quicker Liquor and a Gold Spot from Grocery Bazaar and hopped on his bike and headed for his office, the two bags swinging from the handlebars and clanging together. No one was there; there was no show in the works, nothing to plan or promote. He sat at his desk and opened the two bottles. First, he downed half of the orange soda. Next, he poured vodka into the soda bottle until the bottle was full again. Then he drank. Quickly, this became a sort of habit: he would wake up late, eat whatever Punjabi leftovers were in the fridge, buy a Gold Spot, and bike to his office. When, one day, he found he had run out of clean clothes, he pulled his Exxon jumpsuit out from the depths of his bag and put it on. It was wrinkled, but it felt so comfortable and somehow right that he began to wear it daily. He took frequent naps on the floor of his office, favoring a spot under the plant, which he attributed to a certain comfort he felt after years of sleeping beneath the onions. Every few days, Pankaj would appear and ask through the door if he needed any assistance, to which Prem would reply, “Not today.”
After a few weeks of this, he grew tired of the monotony of his own slothfulness and decided to shake up his routine by scheduling some dates for the evenings. The landscape of dating had changed significantly in recent years, and instead of clipping matrimonial ads from papers, he found himself scrolling on shaadi.com until he found a local face that caught his attention. As before, it wasn’t a pretty face or interesting profile that piqued his interest but rather a slight desperation that suggested they might have something in common. Now, however, instead of being charmed into a lifelong friendship, the women were horrified and fled the scene. Prem would show up to various locales on Oak Tree with his unkempt beard and suspicious bottle of orange soda and launch into a lamentation on the plight of star-crossed love, omitting names and details, sometimes vaguely mentioning the Mumbai mafia, crushing his dates’ matrimonial dreams in the process.
One evening at Dosa Palace, where he had arranged to meet a dental hygienist with a broken engagement, he found that his date was as drunk and lovelorn as he was. Bishakha Dey was a strikingly beautiful, youngish woman with a supermodel’s stature and unthinkably high cheekbones. Her hair, cut to her shoulders, bounced luxuriously as she walked, and the other customers froze mid-dosa as she glided past.
“Parking in this place is such a problem,” she said. She took a seat in front of Prem at a table by the window and assumed an unexpected hunched-over posture, her elbow on the table, her hand propping up her head. “I need coffee. You think they have coffee?”
Immediately, Prem knew he could talk to her. Over the course of an hour, they shared several onion rava masala dosas, and instead of coffee, they took swigs from his Gold Spot. She recounted the sad tale of her almost husband, who at the eleventh hour left her brokenhearted and had reportedly been seen around town with the short, prettyish daughter of a wealthy property developer. Prem in turn told selected pieces of his own story: falling in love, meeting the father, her rejecting him, him trying to get his life together, her being engaged to a doctor for several years now. He left out certain key facts, such as the fact of his hidden background and his impending demise at the hands of a T-Company hitman, but on the whole, he conveyed well his total anguish and despair.
“That is bullshit,” Bishakha said. “How could she just move on like that?”
“Well, you know, I didn’t really ask what she wanted to do after her father’s declaration. I guess I just decided things myself.”
“And you didn’t beg for her forgiveness?”
“No, you see, she went to Minnesota and there was the doctor … it is difficult to explain, it all happened very fast.”
“And now you are still living here trying to make one million and one dollars for no reason.”
“Not exactly—”
“I am not completely understanding the situation.”
“Maybe I am not explaining right.”
“It’s okay, I am with you. How could she move on with the other guy so quickly? Didn’t she remember the times you shared? The words of love, the glances, the caresses, the time under the bridge?”
“Under what bridge?”
“Never mind. If I were you, you know what I would tell her? I would tell her to give me answers.”
Prem gave this some thought when Bishakha went to the restroom. The thing was, after all these years, if he tried to speak with her, he knew the only thing she could say to him was that his chance had passed. The thought of this was too much for him. Instead, he studied the Presidents of the United States disposable paper placemat before him, then stared out the window. Across the street, Shah Rukh Khan stared benevolently down on passersby from a poster on a video-store window. A quick-serve restaurant’s grand-opening sign announced proudly that it offered “Indo-Pak-Bangla & Chinese all on one menu with strictly halal meat”; and next door, the Kathi Roll Specialists made dhoklas fresh daily. Paan, phone cards, and carrom boards were sold under one roof at Shivani’s Everything Market, while Divya Jewelers sparkled like the gold and diamonds it sold inside. Two men were entering the jewelry store, and one seemed vaguely familiar, though Prem could only see the back of his head.
“That’s him!” Bishakha had returned and was pointing out the window at the men entering the store.
“Are you sure? How do you know it is him?”
“He was my boyfriend for three years, of course I know.”
“Your fiancé was the doctor?”
“What doctor? He is an IT engineer.”
“The doctor is an IT engineer?”
“There is no doctor, are you feeling okay?”
He was feeling fine; it was Bishakha whose eyes were glassy and glazed over. He wondered if she had ingested something questionable in the bathroom. “Okay, we are talking about two different people,” Prem said.
Once they had sorted out that the first man was indeed Leena’s doctor fiancé and the other man was indeed Bishakha’s IT engineer—that in an improbable twist of fate, the two men were acquainted and going jewelry shopping together—Prem paid the bill and they darted across the street to investigate.
“Looks like they are looking at rings,” Bishakha whispered.
“No, no, we cannot be certain from this angle,” Prem whispered back.
“But rings are this side, necklace-earring sets are that side.”
“Maybe they are buying rings for their mothers.”
“Why would they buy rings for their mothers?”
“But Leena already has a ring, I think.”
“Engagement ring or wedding band? And why are we whispering when they are inside and we are outside?”
“Aaaaa!” Prem took a few steps back. “Did you see that guy?”
“Of course, is that not why we are here?”
“No, not those guys. The other guy, the gigantic one with dark sunglasses staring at us from inside.”
“No.”
“Oh. Never mind, then.”
