Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [40]
"Way cool—did I hear the magic words 'new girl in town'?" a bearded, mustached man in Ray-Bans called out. Angie assessed and dismissed: too short and dark, too loud and outgoing, too much laughing and joking, the mustache too full and hairy, and the double strand of gold chains definitely unnecessary. Probably a local boy, she thought, trying to ingratiate himself with cooler, big-city types, pushing too hard. If he'd been in a Bollywood movie, he'd be the hero's comic sidekick, too itchy and impetuous, cracking too many jokes in a too-high-pitched voice, too eager to please, getting the turndown from every girl he meets. He slung his arm around a tubular girl with spiky hair in a very tight T-shirt from which she threatened to spill at any minute.
"Do you have a room yet?" Javaroomyet? "Say no, we can squeeze you in." He said his name was Mike and his English was easy and a little coarse. He introduced the others: Millie and Darren. The tubular girl was Suzie. Darren was a handsome boy in a T-shirt and jean jacket, more her type, Punjabi-tall and fair, with none of Mike's strained flash and swagger. Millie was the classic "tall, slim and wheat-complexioned" girl of the marriage ads, with highlighted hair, twirling her cigarette with practiced ease.
"Can't smoke in the residence. Can't smoke on the job. Gotta get my fix when I can," she said, lighting another.
"I'm Darren. This week, anyway." Darren sniggered. "I think I'm going to kill him off. I fancy myself a Brad."
"You're not cool enough for Brad, lover boy," said Suzie. "He broke up with Jen last year."
"He's a has-been," laughed one of the girls. "He's with Angelina now. She'll spit him out her backside!" The girl looked like a servant; you'd never think she knew a word of English, let alone loud, aggressive American English. She called herself Cindy.
"So let me lay it out for you," Cindy continued. "If you say you're Brad, they'll say where's Angelina? Then what'll you say? Quick, quick, Old Bitch'll be listening in, hears anguished attempt of expendable agent to extricate himself from the deep shit he's gotten himself into ... and you're out on your ass, wasting company time just 'cause you wanted to be Brad Pitt. Not cool, dude."
"I was Jen a few weeks ago," said Millie. "That's all I ever got. 'Where's Brad?' I said, 'Brad? Brad's so last week, man. Now what-say we cure your printer blues.'"
"Yeah, well, HP's a little loosey-goosey," said Darren.
"Motorola's a little uptight," said Mike.
"Mine'd shit bricks," said Cindy. "Play by the rules, that's all we ever get. You got a name—stick with it."
"Dudes, dudes, what is this, a bitch session? What'll our new friend think?" said Darren.
What could she think? She was numb with confusion. Brick-shitting was a new one on her. Shit, piss, fuck, asshole: so much to learn. And cool, cool, cool: everything cool or not cool, but never warm. These must be call-center agents, her competition and would-be colleagues. Her neck hurt from keeping up with the repartee. She felt the way she had on a family visit to Kolkata so many years before, recognizing the Bangla words but missing the meaning. She should know all this, it should all be second nature, this was the currency of her deliverance from Gauripur—but she truly didn't understand 90 percent of it. These people seemed better than she was, even though their vocabulary was minimal and they looked like servants or movie prostitutes, except maybe Darren, who was now pouting because he couldn't play Brad.
"Gotta keep it fresh," said Mike. "Russell Crowe's still good, but there's the bloody accent. Nicole's great. Bill and Hillary. George and Laura, but when you use those names, they might hang up