Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

So Abhay paced up and down, and I hugged myself and massaged my arms. Again Yama called out to me: ‘Listen, Sanjay, a bit of friendly advice. You’re too attached to what-actually-happened. I recognized too much of what you told. You should be really going crazy, you know, twist your material inside out. Have fun with it.’

I had my own reasons for being attached to what-actually-happened, but I was in pain and in no mood to start explaining myself to this overgrown green idiot who reminded me of the villains from some of the worst melodramas that (in a long-ago life) my father and uncle ever wrote. So I snarled at him, a monkey growl that startled two boys who were sidling in through the door. They looked like brothers, maybe nine and ten, and they both wore strange caps with the bills pulled back over their necks, and loose white shirts with lettering on them, one that said ‘Cowboys’ and the other ‘LA.’ They glanced at me and then scuttled over eagerly to Abhay.

’Abhay Bhaiya,’ the older one said. ‘Did you bring back a video camera?’

‘What?’ Abhay said.

‘Did you see any rock concerts?’ the younger one said.

‘What kind of car did you have?’

‘Did you buy a house?’

‘Does it have a swimming pool?’

‘Why did you come back?’

‘Where?’ Abhay said.

‘Here,’ they said, both together.

Abhay shrugged, a look of confusion on his face.

‘Were you happy there?’ the younger boy said.

‘What?’

‘Happy’

Abhay’s face was blank, as if it had been wiped clean of sorrow, or joy. Then Saira came in, saw the two boys, collared them and had the both of them out of the door in a moment.

The little one called decisively through the doorway, even as it closed: ‘You were happy there.’

Abhay looked after him. ‘Happy?’ he said.

Then he began to type.

ONE EVENING at the beginning of my senior year I was rewinding the second reel of Lawrence of Arabia when my friend Tom came into the projectionist’s booth playing with his dark glasses. He had a sort of nervous habit with his glasses.

“Come on, effendi,” he said. “Time to go to great oasis.”

I was the work-study projectionist and he managed the student film series. I had known him for three years, and we liked the same movies. He was talking about the Wednesday night party in the Alpha Gamma frat house, which we never missed.

“Lead on,” I said. “Lead on.”

So Tom and I came down the stairs into the basement room, which smelled of decade-old layers of beer and sometimes piss and always grass. We pushed through the brothers and got a beer and then found our favorite spot, where we could watch people pushing through the door.

“They’re here,” Tom said.

“Who?”

“Freshwomen alert. Here they come.”

I turned my head, and they were already past me.

“Go get one, bud,” Tom said.

“There’s only one way out of here,” I said. There had been a glimpse of a face half-turned toward me. So we waited and drank a couple more beers and talked about Lawrence. The one in the movie, I mean, not the real one. The music suddenly got louder, and it was Echo and the Bunny-men doing “The Cutter.”

Just as the song ended I saw them coming back.

“What should I try?” I said.

“Which one?” Tom said, leaning closer to me.

“In black. Red hair.”

“Angst, baby. Be crazy but cool.”

So when she was beside me, looking down and trying not to spill her beer, I leaned over and said, into her ear: “Elvis has not left the building.”

She laughed. We introduced ourselves: she was Amanda James, Scripps freshman from Houston, Texas. Tom and I laughed at that and teased her about being from Houston and the soft southern twang in her voice. Then Tom, maybe noticing something, maybe the way I was looking at her, disappeared discreetly, and Amanda and I stood there looking at each other silently.

“They met in Los Angeles,” she said, smiling.

“What?”

“They met in Los Angeles,” she said, “at a party while Echo and the Bunnymen throbbed in the background.”

“Feeling the cocaine rush through his brain,” I went on, “he wondered if he had seen her before. In New York at the Palladium or in L.A. at Parachute. Then he realized it didn’t matter.”

“And then she —” Amanda stopped suddenly, and then asked: “Where are you from?”

“India.”

“Oh.” After a long pause: “Are you a Brahmin?”

“No.”

“What are you?”

“Nothing.”

She looked away, and then another girl tapped her on the arm. They whispered to each other.

To me: “I have to go.”

“Why?”

“I’m here with the other girls on my floor,” she said, “and they want to leave.”

“You don’t have to go with them.”

“We’re going to hate each other soon anyway. I should be nice and loyal for a while.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.”

I pushed through the crowd, nodding at people, looking for Tom. I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Hey. Abhay.” Kate was blond, beautiful in a kind of distant sculptured manner. We had slept together during our sophomore year, and still did sometimes, although we didn’t need to be as drunk as we used to be and didn’t hold on to each other as hard as we used to. That night she was dressed in a white sweater and looked like she was out of some purposely muted black-and-white picture from a fashion magazine.

“Katie.”

She smiled. “How’re you doing, Abi?”

I shrugged and smiled, and she moved closer to me, and I had to get my beer out of the way and we put our arms around each other’s waist and we stood for a while. People pushed past us. Her hair was fresh, fine. I liked to touch it.

When I came up out of the frat room a bunch of the brothers were hauling a large plaster statue of somebody vaguely Oriental seated in the lotus position toward the staircase. I stopped and listened as they argued. Finally they left the statue at the top of the stairs and went down to get a beer. I went home to New Dorm, my feet scraping over the concrete, and let myself in.

I lay on my bed and peered at the pictures on the wall, darkened and indistinct in the silver light of the streetlight outside my window. Then I sat up and tried to unclench my jaw but couldn’t without having the muscles on my face flutter. I went out and down and back to the frat room. Echo and the Bunnymen were still doing “The Cutter.” Somebody really liked that song. I saw Kate talking to a girl I didn’t know, and I walked up behind her and laid my face on the back of her shoulder, rubbing my nose across the smooth furriness of her sweater. She reached back, without turning to look, and began to rub my neck. “Spare us the cutter,” said Echo and his Bunnymen.

When I woke up, my legs were under Kate’s. She twitched suddenly and made a small sound at the back of her throat. I pulled my legs from under her and touched her hair and felt a slight sting in my fingertips and she turned to me, still asleep. After a while I let go of her and got out of bed. As I put on my clothes I could see pictures of her on a closet door, Kate with her mother, Kate at high school with friends, Kate with her horse, Kate in Paris with a boyfriend, Kate with various red-faced white-haired people.

Outside, the sky was graying. I walked across the Scripps lawns toward Pomona. A black German shepherd with a blue bandanna around his neck ran up to me and I sat down and rubbed his face, enjoying the warm panting breath on my face. I ran my fingers through the thick hair on his stomach, and he squirmed and reached up and licked my face, pushing me over. We lay happily on the grass laughing at each other and I realized it had been a long time since I had touched an animal. I got up, and he followed me for a moment and then veered off, running easily through the water arcing up from the sprinklers.