Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [24]
“Your no is not a personal disappointment,” he’d lectured, “because it is evidently not in my karma to see you outside this eatery. So, what to do? Overdose on Sominex like my roommate, Mukesh, who was having brilliant career in biochemistry? No! The concept of karma is that fate is very dynamic. Not too many peoples are understanding that part of it. True concept of karma is: when on a dead-end street, jump into alternate paths.”
I don’t think Ham had that Indian man’s concept of karma in mind when he sent his assistant for me. A woman was at the wheel of a blue Ford Escort. “I’m Sam,” she called out to where I was squatting on the sidewalk next to Pammy and her pup, Whammy. “Samantha. Ham’s assistant. He said you’d be expecting me.”
The woman’s face with its nose stud, tongue hoop and eyebrow rings didn’t seem out of place at the corner of Cole and Haight. I tested her as a matter of principle. “How do you know you want me and not her? Or her? Or him?” It was a warm morning. Folks I didn’t recognize from soup lines were staking out spots and propping up cardboard signs. GIVING FEELS GOOD, TRY IT! LOST MY TICKET HOME TO THE MOON, NEED HELP. Amateurs, transients. Trust fund derelicts. Dim prospects of futurity.
Samantha said, “The boss doesn’t forget faces. He described you to a tee. Shall we?”
On the way to ShoeString Studios’ offices in North Beach, in the middle of one of my harangues on the highhandedness of rich movie people who thought they could come into a neighborhood and treat us like dirt, she asked, “Wow! Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“Three-point-two, at least. You know what I was doing when the last one hit? Weighing a Bulgarian in a Berkeley weight-loss clinic for nudists, and the man jumped naked off the scales and raced right out into Shattuck, that’s a busy street!”
I hadn’t felt any tremor. Probably because I wasn’t tuned in to earthquake preparedness. I went back to haranguing.
Samantha didn’t enjoy the drive as much as I did. When she showed me into Ham’s office, I heard her whisper, “For your lunch, I recommend the Turns, boss.”
Ham Cohan wasn’t Asian according to Frankie’s formula, but he was a man with more needs than wants. I sized him up before I’d clocked fifteen minutes in his office. He needed to wheel and deal in human vanities, needed to do favors so he would be owed, needed to break down doors for friends so he’d be admired and to rescue waifs like me so he’d be adored. I figure a guy who makes himself that indispensable must collect in imaginative ways. He didn’t look it, but he could turn out to be more dangerous than Frankie.
At least Ham didn’t come on direct, forthright, as Frankie had, which was just as well. I was off men for the while, smelling smoke, seeing flames, when I thought of sex. I was attracted to Ham. I don’t deny it. It had to do with the game he played. Ham’s game was devotion. Devotion tending to the melodramatic.
He sat me on a chair under a framed The Father of His Country, Parts I, II, III poster triptych while he networked for me on the phone. “Hi, Simone, what’s up? Still desperate for a house sitter?… Does that mean what I think it means?… I think it means Padraic’s out of the picture, et cetera. Well, mazel tov, darling … I’ll ask around. Shouldn’t be impossible to find someone … I know, I know, you have psycho goldfish and nervous plants.”
“I need a job, Ham. I have a place.”
“Hi, Verna, how’s the commute going? If you decide to spend the whole month with Larry in Tucson, I might be able to find you just the right tenant … Keep in touch, ciao!”
Pappy used to be a chain-smoker. Ham had to be a chain-telephoner.
“Hi, Jess, I have a very special friend sitting in my office … No, just arrived in town … Yeah, exactly, I’m trying to talk her into helping you out at the agency. Here, I’ll put Devi on so you can work your charm on her … Just for a second, though, we’re running late as it is … Day-Vee, yes … I don’t think it’s an Indian name, Jess. She hasn’t mentioned anything about being named for any Indian village or mountain. You’re thinking