“I can’t believe you’re taking her side,” Tina said.
“There was a long line and you asked to sample oat milk,” Andrew said.
“It doesn’t sound like a real milk,” Tina had said.
Less than a week later they had broken up.
Another mosquito landed on Tina’s arm. She looked down at it, this terrifying tiny creature that was more dangerous to humans than any shark or roaring lion.
Could she pitch Pixl a documentary on children suffering from malaria or dengue? She could make the opening sequence like Jaws only it would be Bites.
A pre-winter haze hovered over the Colebrookes lawns. It looked romantic even though Tina knew it was pollution. But the thing with Delhi pollution was that it never felt sinister when you were in it for just a few days. Having constantly read about it in the news recently, she had put an anti-pollution mask in her suitcase but she knew she wasn’t going to use it. On the circular lawn, a man in a brown khaki uniform and a loosely tied turban on his head lazily raked the grass.
Memories usually made things seem smaller in reality but Colebrookes looked bigger than Tina remembered. Shefali’s family used to come here every day, and whenever Tina had visited India as a child, she used to love being invited to play tennis or feed the horses and then have masala cheese toast, slices of creamy Black Forest cake, and bottles of fizzy, sweet cream soda. It all felt so decadent, the way the butlers wore uniforms and called them Miss Tina and Miss Shefali even though they were nine years old. Shefali’s father’s side of the family had been members for generations. It was next to impossible to get in now, Shefali’s father always bragged.
“It’s not about the fees,” he said. “This isn’t one of those horrid new clubs where you can just pay your way in. You need to have history—ideally have a road in Delhi with your family name on the sign. These new-new clubs, they’re available to everyone and their mother and the staff act snooty and there’s no sense of hospitality. You know that new Saket Recreational Centre? An undercover journalist discovered that key parties were being organized there.”
“What are key parties?” Tina had asked. Nobody answered, and it had taken Tina half a decade to find out.
On the far side of the grass stood a row of cars—mostly white Ambassadors and some black, expensive-looking cars with tinted windows. Birds chirped high up in the neem trees and horns beeped faintly on the main road but, at 6 A.M., it was decidedly silent and peaceful. Except for the sudden thwack of pigeon poop landing on Tina’s chair millimeters from her arm. Tina looked down at the white splatter and considered moving chairs but then remembered she had just wiped mosquito blood on the other cushion. “Never mind,” she told herself. “This is the charm of India. Home.”
Her father always said that Indians believed a bird pooping on you to be a sign of good luck, Tina remembered. What a country of optimists.
Maybe Pixl would go for a documentary on global superstitions. No, that would blur very quickly into religion and somehow offend everyone.
Her peaceful contemplation ended when a dark blue Jaguar with tinted windows thumping music came speeding down the drive, churning up dust. It stopped in front of one of the cottages a few doors short of Tina’s. Two tall men stepped out, both wearing jeans and button-down shirts, one tucked, one half-tucked. One of the men held a cigarette, but that was all Tina could make out from where she sat. The dark Jaguar pulled ahead and came to a stop in front of Tina. The passenger-side window went down and Karan, the brother of the groom, stuck out his head with hair so perfectly gelled that a tornado wouldn’t budge it.
“Tina’s here,” Karan said.
From the driver’s side, cigarette in his mouth, Pavan, the groom, ducked down and said, “Welcome! Shefali said you were arriving last night. Settled in? We would stop and chat but I was supposed to be home about…” Pavan looked at his watch “…four hours ago, and Shefali keeps threatening to call off the wedding so we need to go.”
Tina had always liked Pavan, even though she was surprised at how quickly her cousin had decided to marry him.
* * *
—
“AT SOME POINT, YOU’VE just got to do it,” Shefali had said. “I’m not crossing thirty without a ring on my finger like some sad sack. I don’t want to get a cat.”
This was just over a year ago at the farmer’s market in Williamsburg. Shefali was holding a hibiscus iced tea in one hand and the huge diamond ring on her finger was catching the bright autumn sunlight perfectly.
“I know…you’re almost forty,” Shefali added. “But, I mean, it’s different for you.”
“Thirty-two, Shefali,” Tina said. “I’m turning thirty-three.”
Shefali stood looking at some sprigs of lavender.
“Sure,” she said, absentmindedly twirling the ring on her finger. “I need to get this tightened. It’ll be a disaster if I lose it. But I told Pavan exactly where to get it so I could just replace it pretty easily if I had to—not that my parents would be happy about that. You know how it is for old people—if you have to buy two rings, you better be able to show the world both rings or at least somehow let everyone know you bought a second ring that was just as expensive as the first one. But anyway, what I meant was that it’s different for you because you’ve chosen different things.”
She gestured vaguely around and Tina shook her head at the ease with which Shefali knew she could replace a forty-thousand-dollar ring.
“You want to live alone and be a New Yorker and make a point and you’re happy doing all that,” Shefali continued. “I wish I could be happy doing that but I want the boring stuff—I want to change my name and be married and have a home with vases that always have fresh peonies, you know? Pavan’s grandmother has a greenhouse full of exquisite flowers.”
She glanced at a slim black woman standing near them carrying a beautiful baby, face out in a BabyBjörn, his chubby arms reaching for everything.
“I want that,” Shefali whispered. “Look how beautiful she looks.”
Tina turned to look and the baby caught a fistful of her hair and tugged.
“Ow!”
The mother grabbed the baby’s hand and started slowly undoing his fingers while laughing and said, “Balthazar! No pulling hair. I’m so sorry.”
Tina just stood there waiting for the baby to release her and Shefali said, “Not a problem at all. We were just admiring you and your baby.”
The woman smiled at them and kissed the top of her baby’s head. She handed over eight dollars for a small brown sachet of dried lavender and walked away, two strands of Tina’s hair clasped tightly in Balthazar’s fist. Tina rubbed her scalp and inhaled a lavender sprig deeply. Wasn’t it meant to help you relax?