Daniel Alarcon - War by Candlelight - Stories

“She won’t, you know,” Reena said when he told her his plan. They were unpacking a bag full of sweaters that Mrs. Shah had brought, though the cold was still weeks away.

“She could.”

“Sure. She could . But she won’t.”

“I’ll bump into her,” David said. “I’ll help her carry her bags up the hill.”

Reena groaned.

“I’m playing,” David said.

“Well, don’t. Me living alone is a big deal to her. Everything is. You know she wanted me to move home. Anything more is too much,” Reena said. “She’d die .”

The last syllable hung there, and David believed none of it. “That’s not how people die,” he said. David held a stack of sweaters — ugly sweaters — in his hands, was poised to stash them away on a top shelf in the closet. Instead he tossed them on the bed. “No one dies ’cause their daughter’s got a boyfriend.”

She glared at him. “Don’t talk like that,” she said curtly. “You don’t know how people die.” Her old man had been out running, on a doctor’s suggestion that he get more exercise. He’d been ailing for years but, it seemed, had turned a corner. Then, heart attack.

Reena turned on a lamp. She squinted. They’d declared the dark their enemy, painted the walls a shade of red David called “the color of action.” Hundred-watt bulbs in three lamps. They gave the impression of a room on fire.

“I’m sorry…” David trailed off. “I feel like I’m sneaking around,” he said, turning on the stereo. The wired voice of a radio DJ filled the room.

“You are sneaking around. Jesus. We both are. My mother wants to marry me off to some dentist. My wedding was all they ever talked about. She’s checking the fucking Internet.” Reena picked up the sweaters and, on the tips of her toes, tossed them up on the top shelf. Her breasts bounced once as she jumped. Reena turned to face David, who’d taken a seat by the desk. “I lie to her every day. You think this is a cakewalk for me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“They’re— She’s not going to stop until I’m Mrs. Patel or Mrs. Singh or Mrs. Kumar. Mrs. Nice Indian Boy.”

“And?” he said.

Reena sighed. Her lips were pursed and tight. “You want me to tell her? Are you ready for that?” she asked. “You know what would happen?”

David stared at her black eyes. She was beautiful, too beautiful for him. Once, she hadn’t been so afraid. He turned away from her. “Whatever,” he muttered, grateful, suddenly, for all the diffuse meanings of that word.

“Do you know how fucked up it would be?”

“You’ve told me.”

“She’s alone now.” Reena stepped toward him. “I’m what she has.” She softened. “Don’t make this your problem,” she said. “Please. You don’t want it.”

David sighed. “It’s just fucked up.”

“It is. Of course it is.”

“Come here,” he said and made room for her on his lap. “Who likes fucked up?” David asked.

“No one,” Reena said.

They had been living in the city’s darkest studio apartment for two months when Reena awoke one morning, tired. She’d had the flu or something, and was taking too long to get over it. Weeks and weeks of fighting her own body, of OJ and vitamins and yoga in the mornings to work out the stiffness. She dragged herself to the shower, pulled on her clothes with cumbrous movements, and smiled feebly at David as she got ready for work. He sat up in bed and massaged her shoulders. A radio newscaster announced all the day’s tragedies. David didn’t have to be at the center until ten and, once there, rarely did any real work before eleven. Reena seemed beat, he thought, and he told her so. She confessed that she had felt even more tired the last couple of days. He rose and, before she left, promised he’d call her from work, when he got a free moment.

“Is there another kind at your fake-ass job?” Reena said, laughing.

The room was red and bright. The lamps were on. “I like my free moments. I like my fake-ass job,” he said, which was mostly true. David blew her a kiss. “Feel better,” he called out.

He didn’t think much of it at work. It was late October, and the center was dressed in the obligatory Halloween orange and black. David spent the morning sending e-mails. He answered a couple of phone calls about tutoring. A kid he knew from Stanley Isaacs Houses came in and asked to borrow some money. He and another counselor talked about how pathetic the Knicks would be that year. He watched a trashy Spanish talk show with a roomful of seniors. He ate lunch alone on the benches beneath the project shadows, blew smoke rings and watched the cars drive up Third Avenue.

It was a quarter to seven before he got home. Reena was already there. The apartment smelled awful. Reena looked awful. The bathroom door was open and the light was on. The room glowed a sickly yellow and orange hue. She sat up in bed when he came in. “Hey, babe,” Reena said in a tired voice.

“You all right? What’s going on?”

She wasn’t feeling well, she’d had to come home.

“You should’ve called me at the center,” David said.

“I thought you were going to call me.”

David winced.

“I just came home and fell asleep anyway,” Reena said, shrugging. “Well, slept and threw up a little. I ate some soup. That must be it.”

He made her tea, and Reena said she was feeling better, but all night she kept waking up and stumbling to the bathroom. She threw up four times. It was nearly daybreak when she and David admitted that they weren’t going to get any sleep. The pungent smell of vomit hung in the small apartment like a toxic cloud.

The cab ride to the emergency room reminded David of everything he hated about the city. A weak dawn sun cast no shadows. Dogs and people picked through piles of trash. Reena slumped into his lap, and he stroked her hair. She was feverish. It occurred to David that Reena might be pregnant. He felt his stomach sink. Her eyes were closed and they were still five blocks from the hospital. The idea of it spread until he could feel fear humming in the very tips of his fingers. He didn’t mention it to her.

In the waiting room, Reena called her mother on David’s cell phone. David held her hand as she spoke, could feel in her pulse the effort she was making to sound stronger than she was. Tik, she said, which was the only Hindi word he knew. It meant okay. The conversation was brief. Mrs. Shah was coming, of course.

For a moment, David allowed himself to consider the possibility that Reena was really ill. There they were together, hands clasped, in the waiting room of a public hospital. Her mother would come. He would be courteous. Responsible. Explain things— I am the boyfriend —and everything else: Reena’s last few weeks, how tired she seemed and stiff, and what he’d observed from watching her, being with her, and loving her, every day in the apartment they’d shared since August.

“I love you, babe,” David said.

Reena nodded.

“Should I leave?” he asked, hopefully.

She lay her head against his right shoulder instead. He put his arm around her and rubbed her temple with his thumb. He listened to the soft rhythm of her breathing.

“Not yet,” Reena said finally. “In a while.”

His hand stopped moving of its own accord. David felt a heat in his chest, a sensation so unpleasant he wondered for a moment if whatever Reena had was contagious. Mrs. Shah was on her way from Englewood, just across the George Washington Bridge. It would be twenty minutes more, maybe twenty-five. Another half hour before he was displaced, and until then he could rub her head and soothe her and then he would have to go. Or he could leave now. He felt icy and useless. He eased her head off his shoulder. “How do you feel?” he asked.