“Uh, I don’t know, I guess, ya, of course,” Prem said, remembering as the sentence went on that he might be staying with the man’s sister.
“Good, good. You are married?”
“No.”
“You want a wife, right?”
“Uh, of course, ya.”
“Find a blonde-hair American wife, man. I’m telling you, your life will be set. Green card, citizenship. Less yelling, probably.”
“Oh, okay, good idea. I’ll try,” Prem said, wanting to seem appreciative of the advice. “How do I do that?”
“Listen to me. First, buy lot of gold chains to wear.” He glanced at Prem in the mirror. “Ya, you need chains.”
Prem looked down at his clothing. “Uh, okay, gold chains. Then?”
“Then, get muscles. No American wife wants the skinny husband.” He inspected Prem through the mirror again and confirmed, “Ya, muscles.”
Prem crossed his arms, at once self-conscious and irritated. “Muscles, fine.”
“Next, you will not believe, but the American girls, they like the man to be funny.”
“Really?”
“Ya, man, I learned this on The Three is Company TV program,” the driver said. “Are you funny?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, good.”
“Now, most important thing: act like you have the big plans.”
For the past two years, everywhere he went, people had said he needed plans, work, ambition, a job. When he finally made a plan, it failed spectacularly. Twice. Now, on the other side of the world, away from his family, the cab driver was giving him the same lecture. “Plans? You know, really, I don’t have any plans right now,” he said.
Harbhajan stared at Prem in the mirror for what seemed like a little too much time for someone driving a car. “You can’t tell the girl, ‘I am thinking of maybe getting the job.’ She will laugh in your face. You have to say you are having a job in engineering or joining the medical school. Then you should do one of those things.”
Prem considered informing him that he was not actually interested in finding a wife but thought this news would not be well received. “What if I can’t make a life plan or build muscles?”
This was too much for the driver. “Just do everything you can! What is your name?”
“Prem.”
“Just do everything you can, Prem! And remember, find a blonde one.”
“Why?”
“They seem nice.”
Harbhajan’s insistence was as fervent as his beard was thick, and all Prem could do was agree. After the bridge, they turned onto a dismal sort of expressway and Prem fell back asleep. He was again awakened by the driver: “Chh, chh. Hey, man.”
Prem found they were stopped at a traffic light where, astoundingly, the cars waited in three quiet lanes. The light turned green and they moved forward in a systematic fashion up a long road with Drug Fair, Foodtown, and a “United Skates” sign on the left, which Prem concluded was a large-scale typographical error.
“This is Edison,” the driver said.
At another light at the top of a slight hill, an intersection with two gas stations and a house with a neon-lit “Minerva the Psychic Reader” sign, they turned left. Prem watched a shoe store pass by, then a bank, then a vast sort of parking lot with a big screen at one end, and wondered what he was doing in this place.
“There are lot of Italians in New Jersey,” Harbhajan said.
Prem wasn’t sure what kind of response this required. “I would like to meet them,” he said. They turned left and pulled into a parking lot in front of a plain-looking apartment complex. The two-story buildings were squat with faded, dull brown brick and ramshackle balconies with brown posts and white balusters, which created a mismatched, pieced-together effect, reminiscent of the village home in Sholay where Amitabh sat on a porch step in the evening and played a forlorn tune on a mouth organ. This was a livelier place, though, buzzing and bustling, with residents scurrying about and damp salwars hanging over balconies as from any ordinary Delhi flat. A circle of white-haired men in white kurtas sat in the grass and, upon seeing Harbhajan’s taxi pull up, greeted him by name.
With the small amount of money he had exchanged at the airport, Prem paid the fare and stepped out onto the rutted pavement where some Indian children were whacking tennis balls with a cricket bat. “Is this New Jersey or New Delhi?” he said.
“Precisely!” Harbhajan said and patted him on the back approvingly. He pulled the suitcase from the trunk and heaved it at Prem’s feet. “Come, let us find my sister and her giant husband.”
The hallway of King’s Court Estates Building 3 had a single bald light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Harbhajan opened the door to apartment 3D without knocking. “Just do not say anything about the post office in India,” he said before going in.
They seemed to have walked into a party in progress, to which only men had been invited or to which only men had shown up, Prem wasn’t sure. The men, all of them young, were sprawled on mattresses laid out around the floor, palming plates piled high with cauliflower and facing a television that competed with a radio spouting “Hawa Hawai” from the upcoming Mr. India on the kitchen side of the room. The only decoration was a three-tiered woven basket of onions hanging from the ceiling near a ledge stuffed with packages of toilet paper, napkins, tea bags, batteries, cans of tomato sauce and chickpeas, an economy-size laundry detergent jug, and an unopened box of Corning plates. Though overcrowded, the place was clean. Harbhajan and Prem removed their shoes at the door.
“Come in, come in!” A gargantuan man was standing at the stove with tongs, preparing a mass quantity of roti. “What have you brought us this time?”
Harbhajan pushed Prem forward, causing him to trip into the kitchen. “Ya,” he said, clearing his throat. “I am Prem.”
“Can you pay?” the giant said.
“Uh, ya, I can pay,” Prem said. He decided to omit specifics about his limited funds and recent history of disaster.
“Good! Welcome! Meet Amarleen. Amarleen!”
