Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [102]
"It happens very quickly, doesn't it?" she said.
"Were you expecting roses?"
She'd meant it as a compliment. She meant how quickly one changes identities. Half an hour ago, I was just trying to get a ride in your car. I was someone entirely different, and now I'll never be that person again. Mr. GG was lying on his bed, pulling off his shorts, and his long, tawny whatsit looked just short of menacing. He rolled the condom over it, just like a villager with a banana in a birth-control film. His arms were open. The springy, curly mat on his chest was waiting for her.
She stepped out of her remaining clothes. She remembered swimming instructions: just jump in, it will feel cold, and you'll think you're going to drown, but you'll get used to it. No shilly-shallying. She was about to learn what every other woman knew, what Tookie and Sonali-di knew, and Mr. GG certainly seemed a more accomplished teacher than Subodh Mitra. All caution flew out the window; the years of good counsel about virtue and modesty, flirting but playing hard to get. She'd never questioned her self-image as a modest, well-brought-up, small-town, middle-class probasi Bengali girl. In a place like Bangalore, where no one was rewarded for being good in quite that way, "good" took on a different meaning. She was grateful for Mr. GG's attention. He'd offered an easy way to pay back his favors and maybe even for Anjali to gain the upper hand.
Just as he said, it was over very quickly. She felt she shouldn't compliment him on the quickness. She shouldn't say a thing, but just smile. Somehow, in the twisting and turning, she'd ended up looking down on him, with his eyes closed. Whatever he'd done had stung a little, but at least the itching was gone.
After catching his breath, he said, "I'd call you a very cool customer, Miss Anjali Bose. Continually surprising, but still sweetly innocent."
She'd expected something like a grade for her efforts, a "best ever" or "a smart, fun girl" or at least "cool," but no matter: she'd passed the test, and Mr. GG had fallen back into drowsy silence. And she'd reduced that ropy, menacing, invincible whatsit to a floppy flap of skin under a sagging condom. After a few minutes he mumbled, "Expect some excitement later today. Maybe tonight."
"How much more excitement can a girl take, Mr. GG?"
He reached out for her hair and let it flow between his fingers. "You're a funny young lady, Miss Bose." After a few more minutes he got up and slipped on his boxer shorts and the same white shirt. Maybe all the men in white shirts she passed on the streets had been doing the same thing a few minutes earlier. Maybe the women too. He shuffled into the cooking alcove, put on the tea water, and punched two slices of bread into the toaster. She took it as her cue and got back into her underwear, then the salwar and kameez. He asked, his voice low and casual, "Miss Shiraz, was she your friend?"
"I'd like to think so."
"Ms. Shiraz's picture made the BBC website," he said.
"Husseina's a celebrity?"
"She wasn't named, but I recognized the face."
"A Bagehot Girl!" Anjali was thrilled. "One of us! Girish, you make Bangalore sound like the center of the world."
"All I'm saying is changes are imminent."
"Now you sound like Minnie Bagehot. 'Evil forces are gathering,' that's her new mantra."
"Well, I don't think I need to worry about you, Miss Bose. You're steps ahead of everyone. May I call you, now that you have your own phone?"
On the drive back, Mr. GG told her what he'd been reading on the BBC website when she interrupted him at Barista. A plot to blow up Heathrow had been disrupted. She had to ask, "What is a heath row?"
"An airport," he said. She knew some names, like Netaji Subhas Bose in Kolkata and Indira Gandhi in New Delhi, and there was Sahar in Mumbai, but she'd never been on an airplane or even in an airport.
"London," he said.