“I don’t know. Is that roasted yams?” Rukmini deflected, hanging up the jacket Puna had left on the couch in the front closet. She tolerated Puna’s untidiness because of her inventive culinary skills — which she employed as head chef at the trendy and conveniently close tapas bar Bar Raval — and her magnanimous leftovers.
“Fried plantains! But tell me about Neela,” Puna pressed, without leaving her domain.
“She was different from how she was at the panel. More tentative.”
“Like, cold?”
“No, like . . . afraid. I told her that I would like to be friends and you should have seen her face,” Rukmini walked into the kitchen and played Freeze!, imitating Neela’s blank expression.
“Aww.” Puna wiped her hands on her yellow chef coat, a tall daffodil in the wild kitchen. She kissed Rukmini’s cheek. “They’re almost ready, okay? Gimme ten.” Puna turned her attention back to the stove. “First hangouts are always awkward.”
“True.” Rukmini tried to ignore the cutting board sloped against the backsplash, dripping sticky juice onto the counter. Puna was used to having others clean up for her, but Rukmini would tackle the mess later, once her stomach was warm with sautéed sweetness.
Puna shook the pan, the plantains crackling. “Or maybe she really is afraid of you!”
“She should be! I’m a nightmare!”
She expected Puna to laugh, but she didn’t. Or maybe she did and Rukmini didn’t hear her as she ambled to her bedroom. After she landed on her bed, she flipped through the selfies that she and Neela had taken before they had left the café, swinging her calves and feet in the air.
“Do you like this one?” She had handed Neela her phone after selecting the photo she thought was most flattering to Neela, emphasizing her chiselled cheekbones. Neela had looked anywhere but at the camera in every shot. She assumed this was because Neela, like most people, didn’t like how she looked in photos. But Neela wasn’t like most people. If Neela’s discomfort wasn’t so obvious, Rukmini would have added, “God, you’re beautiful.”
“Any of them are fine.” Neela pushed open the café door, letting the wind smack around the Open sign, without turning back to look at the phone.
“Do you have a favourite filter?”
“Do you?” Remembering Neela’s crisp tone here, it occurred to her that maybe Neela didn’t want to be in a photo with her. Maybe Puna was right.
“I generally hashtag no filter because they seem to only make me look lighter than I am, and I’m already seen as not brown enough.”
“Yeah, photography is optimized for white skin.” Neela rolled up her sleeves, as if to offer her dark sepia skin to the sun in defiance.
“Really? I guess everything is, but I’m still always surprised.”
She posted their photo on Instagram, sans filter, tagging Neela, with the caption:
hung out with this legend today!!!!
She clicked on Neela’s handle and scanned her photos. Neela was in very few of them. Her grid was all plants, park settings and skyline sunsets, symmetrically composed. Rukmini then searched under Following. Neela followed ALOK, Heleena Tattoos, Nimisha Bhanot and other South Asian creatives — but not her. Why hadn’t Neela followed her back? Were these artists more skilled? Was their brownness more apparent because of how clearly it was a part of their work? Were their numbers more impressive? Or had Neela just not yet seen Rukmini’s account?
Flipping back to her own account, she reviewed her grid of mostly selfies, alone or with her friends, and photos of Puna’s cooking, trying to imagine what Neela would think. Basic? She chewed on the hangnail on her thumb. Had she blown it with Neela, making a poor first impression in real life and online?
She bounced back to Neela’s profile and clicked on Message beneath her profile photo (a pointy succulent planted in a cream conch) to send her a damage control DM:
so great to meet with you today! excited about our band xoxo
Then she tucked her phone under her pillow, grabbed the basket of dirty laundry in her closet and trekked to the basement. With every item she tossed into the washer’s gaping mouth, she dissected every sentence she could recall saying to Neela, analyzing the implications of her words and how they might have been misinterpreted.
Had she raved too much about Neela’s show or song, like the excess teal detergent drooling off the rim of its bottle in her grip? Had she come across like a starry-eyed fan? Had she embarrassed Neela? Or herself? She’d read interviews where celebrities talked about never knowing who to trust, who their real friends were. Did Neela think she wanted something from her? She regretted suggesting they form a band, even though she was sure it was a brilliant idea.
As she returned to her room, she mentally art-directed the photoshoot for their first album cover. Against a tiger orange background, their bodies, wrapped in brown fabric, would be entangled in a way to convey both tenderness and an impermeable bond. Sisters.
She interpreted the eighty-seven notifications on her phone — all likes and comments on their selfie — as confirmation that their band would be a success. As the likes continued to climb, she revisited her own selfies from the previous week to compare the numbers. None of them had as many likes as the new one with Neela. She tried to tell herself that the popularity of their photo was because it featured both of them — double the interest, double the likes. But as evening plunged into night, she became more certain that the likes were strictly for Neela.
Before she fell asleep, her thumb wavered over the photo.
Then she clicked Delete.
* * *
Neela didn’t expect to see Rukmini again.
When a first coffee date did happen in the city, it was rarely followed by a second. Instead, the coffee date functioned as urban social taste-testing. There was always a fresh, edgy artist emerging from the concrete every few months. Meeting with them was not only a way of raising one’s own profile, it was also restorative to discover that “new” artists weren’t actually as interesting or as talented as everyone had proclaimed — or as poised as they appeared on social media. After they would finish touting the umpteen projects they were toiling on — making video art about their pregnant hamster and writing a poetry book entitled Sufferin Street and launching a shareable underwear line for gay couples — their stamina and sheen would predicatably fade. Nothing destroyed mystery like hearing a supposedly groundbreaking artist confess familiar insecurities, or watching them chew on a ham sandwich and deciding when to mention the bit of kale wedged in their front teeth. Neela herself had been sampled and spat out many times, and although she knew that this behaviour “wasn’t personal” and that people were “very busy,” she restricted the number of coffee date requests she obliged and quit drinking coffee altogether.