Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [87]
Though he studied in silence for the remainder of the day, he felt fitful. Sitting in the kitchen that evening with a bricklike volume of Spenser, he was unable to concentrate on the lines, irritated by the footnotes, by how much there was left to learn. He wondered how many times Deirdre had tried to call him since he’d unplugged the phone. Had she given up? The calling seemed obsessive to him. He wondered whether she was the type to do something. To take a bottle of pills.
After dinner, he plugged the phone back into the jack. There were no further calls. And yet his mind continued to wander. Something told him that she’d try again. He’d made the mistake of telling her when Sang would be back. Perhaps Deirdre was waiting to speak to her directly. Perhaps Deirdre would tell Sang the same thing she’d told him, about loving Farouk. Before going to bed, he poured himself a glass of Dewar’s, a gift sent by his aunt in Buffalo. Then he dialed the number Deirdre had given him. She picked up right away, with a lilting hello.
“Deirdre, it’s Paul.”
“Paul,” she said, slowly.
“You called me last night. I’m Sang’s housemate.”
“Of course. Paul. You hung up on me, Paul.” She appeared to be drunk again, but in a sunnier mood.
“Listen, I’m sorry about that. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Deirdre sighed. “That’s sweet of you, Paul.”
“And to ask you to please stop calling me,” he said after a considerable pause.
“Why?” There was panic in her voice.
“Because I don’t know you,” he said.
“Would you like to know me, Paul?” she said. “I’m a very likable person.”
“I have to go,” he said firmly, hoping not to provoke her. “But maybe there’s someone else you could talk to? A friend?”
“Freddy’s my friend.”
The mention of Farouk, the use of the nickname, unsettled Paul as it had the night before. Yesterday, he’d surmised that Deirdre might be a student of Farouk’s at Harvard, practically a teenager, infatuated with an older man. He imagined her sitting at the back of a lecture hall, visiting him in his office, getting the wrong idea. Now a simple, reasonable question, which was at the same time a poisoned question, formed in Paul’s mind.
“So, how exactly do you know Farouk?” Paul asked lightly, as if they were chatting at a party.
He didn’t think she’d tell him, thought she might even hang up on him as he had on her, but they slipped easily into a conversation. It was Deirdre who did most of the talking. She told Paul that she was from Vancouver originally, and that she’d moved to Boston in her twenties, to study interior design. She’d met Farouk one Sunday afternoon, a year and a half ago, when she was walking out of a café in the South End. He had followed her halfway down the block, tapped her on the shoulder, looked her up and down with unconcealed desire. “You can’t imagine,” Deirdre said, remembering it. “You can’t imagine how something like that feels.” Nevertheless, he’d been gentlemanly. For their first date, they had gone to Walden Pond. Afterward, they bought corn and tomatoes, and grilled salmon in her backyard. Farouk loved her home, an old farmhouse on five acres. He asked her to draw up the plans for redoing his kitchen. On Labor Day, they had hiked Mount Sunapee together. She said other things Paul listened to, unsure of how much he should believe. For either they were true, and Farouk and Deirdre were having a full-blown affair, or Deirdre was simply inventing it all, the way lonely, drunk people sometimes invent things. At one point, he wandered into the hallway and opened Sang’s door, making sure the curtain was tied as he’d remembered it.
“What about you?” Deirdre asked suddenly.
“What about me?”
“Well, here I am going on and you haven’t said a thing. What are you like, Paul? Are you happy?”
He had sacrificed an hour to this woman. The edge of his ear ached from pressing the phone to it for so long. “This isn’t about me.” He swallowed, shutting the door to Sang