Born Confused (25 page)

The counter ran to zero. It had been my last shot.

And then Jimmy (AKA These-Are-the-Breakswallah, so it appeared now) Singh whizzed out of the circle like a turbaned bullet and a deus-ex-machinic Gwyn was in, egged on by her new fan club and matched with his former dance partner. He was a tough act to follow, admittedly, but in the end she caught everyone completely off guard by breaking out into cartwheels, flipping repeatedly back and forth across the expanding circle. No one had any choice but to move out of the way.

The circle was growing wider to accommodate her and I was sliding out of its radius. I found myself being swept as if on a tide, barwards. In the distance, a shifting, scintillating Milky Way grew closer and closer until it coalesced to become the mirrored tank top containing Sabina at the other end of the bar, arms floating on the trebled air and rounding around Kavita’s waist in greeting, Kavita
who was just climbing over the counter, surfing a long note, to join her. Their hair mingled when they hugged. It was an embrace that excluded everyone, and I came back to myself, and somehow I’d gone into the sad part of the punch. It was hard to believe I’d been able to see the limits of this room when I first walked in; now it seemed there were none. What a trip simply crossing it had been: from insecurity, to hope, to fear, to curious jubilation, and now to a strange strain of melancholy. These seemed to be the ingredients of the fish tank drink, not so much arrack and water, sugar and citrus, spice.

Around midnight the grooves shifted and weighed me to the stool, the stout beat resonant, a slowed stethoscope listen to a robot’s secret heart, a sweet medicinal voice poured over it all but always floating above, never quite soothing the knots in the dark musical arrangement.

I was contemplating the foot of my barstool when a voice tunneled warm over ladder-rattle and into my ear, so close I could feel the breath the words were wrapped in.

—Is this seat taken?

I began to move out of the way, and when I looked up I was taken aback. It was Karsh, laying down a large cardboard box and pulling up the barstool beside me. I had a strange sense of relief when I saw him.

—Hi! I said a little too enthusiastically.

—Hi, you, he said, scooting onto the edge of the barstool. A bag crisscrossed his body, messenger style. It looked pretty heavy, but instead of taking it off, he ran his hands along the strap, shimmying it round till it rested against his back and the stool took up the weight. In the mottled light I could make out his red-sneakered feet resting one on each side of the box. They were the same sneaks he’d worn to our house.

—Yeah, I’m a little paranoid about my stuff, he confirmed.

—Guess that makes two of us, I smiled. Funny, I was sitting the same way with my knapsack, which I’d recovered from Sabina after my photographic wanderings.

—What’s
your
secret treasure? he asked, nodding at the sack.

—Oh nothing, I said.—Just clothes and, well, my camera.

—That doesn’t sound like nothing to me, he said.

I didn’t say anything.

—I saw you trying to take that picture of Zara. In fact, I saw you track Zara all through the room and outside. It was impressive—when you focus, you focus! Drink?

He pointed to my empty punch glass, and the water glass beside it.

—Or maybe not, he said.—It’s a good thing you’ve been hydrating all night or you’d be knocked out by now.

I nodded, speechless. Where had he been watching me from?

—It’s amazing, you with your camera, he said.—You get so into it, this look of concentration—I can picture you as a little kid, chewing an eraser, solving a problem. You even start imitating your subjects, standing like them, moving like them, even
talking
to them. Or yourself, I guess. And your flash—I’ve never seen anything like it: Did you realize it was going off
to the beat?
Were you doing that on purpose?

—Uh, no. I don’t know.

In the pause that followed he suddenly seemed embarrassed. But what did
he
have to be embarrassed about? I had no idea I imitated whatever I was shooting. Frock, I must have been doing the most cringeworthy things all that time.

—I, I talk to myself? I asked tentatively.

—Well, maybe not, he replied quickly.—Maybe it just looked that way.

—Oh, how blushable, I said.—I do talk in my head to my grandfather sometimes. But I didn’t know I actually say things out loud.

—Oh, I don’t know if you say things out loud. Maybe your lips just move, Karsh said by way of apology.—Why to your grandfather, if you don’t mind my asking?

—See, he, well. He’s the reason I even started taking pictures. I,
we couldn’t speak the same language and we sort of decided to talk this way, without words, for the most part. With, you know, images.

—That’s amazing, said Karsh softly.—To show each other your worlds?

There was something so genuinely interested in his expression that I felt brave and went on.

—Yeah, but then, it’s funny, the pictures began to describe emotions, too. Like, instead of saying
how are you, I’m fine,
we’d find images to do so. And often they seemed more accurate. You know, you can be in a red mood but full of blue, or you can be having a sunny day but still feel overcast.

I heard myself and felt shy.

—Oh, I don’t know. I guess you must think it sounds silly.

Karsh laughed.

—Dimple, don’t ever quit your day job to be a mind reader. That’s not at all what I was thinking. I was thinking that is beautiful, what you shared with your dada. You really miss him, don’t you?

The way he said dada instead of grandfather warmed me and I began to feel safe. I nodded, still staring down. His feet had loosened their grip on the box.

—But it must be like he’s there with you when you take those pictures, Karsh continued.—Looking back at you through the lens.

I started at his accuracy, and he mistook my trembling hand.

—Don’t be embarrassed, Dimple. You are completely present when you take these photos. You become real in a whole other way. You know everyone has their hook—the chord that makes the song, that detail that tells the big picture. And I think that’s yours. I was wondering at your house. And I could tell even then—the second the topic came up you got all shy and strange. Laid bare. I’d really like to see this side of you, if you’d let me. I mean, I’d really like to see your pictures sometime.

How did he know all this?

—How did you even—?

—Psychic, he said, laying a tip on the counter and handing me the glass. His balance was impressive; Sabina was filling them so far up the rim fizzed out. He had a beer in his own hand, and clinked me so gently with it not a dripple slid off the high surface of that risky lake.

As we drank, his eyes turned to the dance floor. In the club setting he looked the same but different—his skin had more gold tones in it, his eyes stoked two fires from the now slow-burning lights reflected in them.

His profile was actually quite majestic, leonine with the high forehead and long nose and the way he held his neck erect. His arm lay next to my own on the bar, not touching, but I could just feel the heat waver off his skin. I couldn’t believe he’d been watching me. Somewhere inside, and not even so deep down to escape me, I liked that.

I followed his line of vision. It ended in the one-woman discotheque that was Gwyn. She’d taken over again and was now leading a group of salivating spellbound boys in a sort of bhangrified version of, believe it or not, our emblematic school cheer for the football team; I could nearly hear the
Gimme an L!
It wasn’t quite matched up to the beat of the song playing—to her credit, it was no easy number to dance to, with all its chingly chunks and thudding footfalls and slightly dissonant drum machines—but the guys, who’d all seemed to be master dancers earlier in the evening, didn’t seem to mind. Mainly they were just hanging around behind her, ogling her backside as she shook imaginary pom-poms and glided across the drink-sticky floor. We both watched her wordlessly for a moment; well, I suppose I was watching him watch her, to be more accurate. Karsh was studying her so keenly, and it was shameful, but I wished Zara were here to show her up.

—That your friend? he said gesturing towards her with his beer bottle.

—Sure is.

—She’s something else, he said tipping the amber liquid back into his throat. I watched his Adam’s apple bob gently as he swallowed.—Quite a fan club she’s mustered up this evening. From the second she walked in.

—Yeah, well, that’s a typical night out with Gwyn.

—Is it? said Karsh, turning back to me.

So that explained why he’d been watching me—he’d been watching
her,
and I just happened to be caught up in her epic climate, like a bit of yesterday’s news blowing around the edge of today’s tempest. I was surprised to find myself a little disappointed.

—Don’t you want to dance?

Now I was on the spot. I certainly did not want to get jiggy out there with Gwyn. She had it going on. Me, my soles didn’t even reach the floor. And it felt like a long drop if I began falling.

—My feet hurt, I said.

—They didn’t seem to hurt when you had your camera out, he said, sounding slightly annoyed.—To tell the truth I was pretty surprised to see you here.

—Why is that?

—I don’t know. I guess you just seemed so resistant the other day.

—Well, weren’t you?

—Not really. The way I see it, what’s the worst that can happen? At best you could end up with a new friend.

I thought of Julian and how I never heard from him after the whole hurlathon. And Bobby’s belief that friendship was overrated.

—Don’t you mean at
least
you could end up with a friend?

—No, I mean at best. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe you don’t need another friend.

—I’m sorry, I said.—My mind was in another place that day.

—Or maybe on another person?

—Maybe a little, I admitted. The image of Julian’s shaggy face seemed discordant with this atmosphere, like a vestigial memory left over from a snapped synapse; contextless.—But not anymore.

—No? he said.—Look, I’m sorry. I should have thought to check in on your, your personal status first. It’s just, when my mom brought it up she was so excited, and now that my dad’s pretty much out of the picture it’s become even more important to me to meet the people who knew them when they were happy. It feels like another lifetime—I barely remember it myself.

—Out of the picture? I said.—I thought he was just wrapping up business in India.

—Losing
business in India, said Karsh.—It’s all in the euphemisms. My mom kicked him out; he’s a compulsive gambler, in short. It was the right thing to do, but I miss him. I miss him all the time.

His eyes shone too much and his mouth slung down.

—You know, it felt so wonderful hanging out with your dad the other day—I didn’t want to ever leave! It was like all the good stuff without the pain.

Something came over me. I nearly reached out and touched his hand there on the edge of the bar, but caught myself and ended up laying mine just beside his.

—Your parents are really great, Dimple. They’re really proud of you.

They were?

—Well, your mother is really proud of you, too, I said.—Not to mention my parents.

He laughed, looking down into his glass.

—She’s top, my mom. But I wonder sometimes if my dad
would be proud. I mean, he could argue that we’re gamblers, too, coming back to America without him and the things I’m choosing to put my time into.

—Honestly, Karsh, I think he’d be really proud of you, too, I said.—And if you want to borrow my dad in the meantime, feel free.

He smiled. His hand was nearly touching mine and I had a strange feeling. Electric, like a current was running from his skin to mine. The thin slit of distance between us was as tensely tangible as the moment between thunder and lightning. As music hidden in a piano bench.

—You know, I guess I just feel a lot of pressure sometimes to keep people happy, he said finally.

—Yeah, I know what you mean, I said.—I feel a lot of pressure sometimes, too, and I don’t even know what about. Sometimes I just lie in bed and panic.

Why was I telling him this? But it didn’t even feel that out of place; the entire undulating environment made untidy things possible. It was as if we were suspended in a reality where false lights allowed true things to be offered, loud music created an eye of a storm in which to be still, and part of me couldn’t believe all the madness I was speaking. But I felt I could with him, like you could with a brother or total stranger, like I only had five minutes or a lifetime to tell him, we were on a train hurtling headlong into blackness and he would get it and it would be what life was all about, like when you read a book that transfuses your blood, or hear a song that not only matches your mood but shapes it. Like when you see a photograph that is so spot-on and say:
Now this. This is it.

—Sometimes everything feels so huge.

—So nebulous, he said.—I know. But I’ve usually found making one decision can clear up all the clouds, the way one ray of sun can light a dark room. It’s funny, but it’s true.

We were leaning in close to hear, and it felt like we were in a cave and a storm was turreting just outside.

Then he told me a story and it was a beautiful story. He whispered tiny breezes into my ear, a current and an undertow. He told me about his last trip to India, staying in a very simple ashram in Pondicherry and rising at the moment before dawn to watch the fishermen going out to sea. And how it was all darkness and then darkness graded towards light, indiscernibly, nearly. How the fog and the sky and the waves were one and from the sky emerged a horizon and then from the horizon there were the slants of waves breaking and rising and then some of these ripples began to distinguish themselves and turn fleck by stroke into gaunt men on gaunter boats, pushing themselves out to the deep part with sticks longer than they were. And then how the sun bled into the water and began to rise, that burning ball of the world disco and the water was pink and the sky sangria and everything was on fire but not burning and how he felt like he was witnessing, in these few moments, the birth of the universe. And that you could do that everywhere, not just in the south of India alone in an ashram; you could pull a fisherman from the fog and blood from water and gold from stone and sound from silence. Anywhere.