One Good Friend Deserves Another (8 page)

Ah,
mi bonita
, you’ll never marry a man like me.

“No, he was no Tito,” Wendy agreed, slipping her hair behind one ear to expose a Tiffany knot earring. “And that’s just the thing, Marta. You never talked about Carlos like you talked about Tito. You talked about Carlos in the same way you talked about the three-foot regional basketball trophy you helped bring to Sacred Heart.”

Marta sputtered mid-sip.

“You asked for honesty.” Wendy reached for her, her eyes soft. “Even if he was a trophy, even if you didn’t really love Carlos, what he did was such a bastard move it would still break the strongest of hearts.”

No.
No.
Marta dismissed Wendy’s words. Wendy didn’t know what she was talking about. Wendy had Parker, after all. Faithful, friendly Parker, who Wendy had known since they were kids. Parker would never get caught with another woman because he wouldn’t dare—he’d be terrified Wendy would find out through their special telepathic twin language.

Marta shook herself.  It was a jealous thought—unworthy of her. Leave it to her old roommate to cut to the heart of the matter with a cold, sharp cleaver. Marta had been so fixated on making partner this year that she’d barely noticed that Carlos had avoided contact with her friends and her family. She thought he was being accommodating. She thought he was being sweetly patient. The truth was that he was using her for free rent and quick sex. She’d been using him too. Their relationship, on both sides, had been based on convenience. He was as much her fuck-bunny as she was his.

“I’m just going to remind you,” Wendy said, as she pulled the red stirrer out of her drink and made a little circle in the air, “that, just as you proved at Pete’s Place on Founder’s Day junior year, you still have the power to rise from this table, swish that lovely backside, and have half the men in this bar on their knees, remember?”

Marta doubted it. First of all, it’d be pretty hard to put on the confident act, when her ego was a quivering lump of jelly. But, more important, when she glanced toward the bar, to the eclectic collection of young couples, clusters of men just off from work, and a few hipsters from the neighborhood, what she noticed was that most of them were younger than she. Less the age of a thirty-seven-year-old partner in a law firm and more the age of Carlos’s lovely wife.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Just then, the tapas arrived, sparing her from further analysis. She slipped the unused pad of paper off the table, tucked it back into her briefcase, and felt grateful when the conversation shifted to another subject.

“All right, I have some news,” Dhara said, spearing a tiny battered and fried squid—a
chopito—
with a toothpick. “It should cheer you all up immensely.”

Kelly pulled away the shrimp she was about to pop in her mouth. “You’ve called off the wedding?”

“No,” Dhara said, drawing out the word, “but I am having coffee with Sudesh tomorrow. Just the two of us. No chaperones.”

With her index finger, Wendy painted an invisible line in the air. “One point for the American side.”

“Buy some stock in incense. Ever since I told my mother about the date, she’s burning it to Ganesh twenty-four/seven.”

“Hey,” Marta said darkly, “do you want some advice on the dangers of getting involved with a man you hardly know?”

“In India,” Dhara said gently, “the courtship starts
after
the wedding.”

Kelly blurted, “When it’s too late to do anything about it!”

“Here’s the difference. I actually
do
know quite a bit about Sudesh. About his family and his commitment to this marriage.” Dhara cast her gaze away from all of them. “But I’ve decided that all of you are right in one particular way. It can’t hurt for us to start the conversation a little early.”

“If you don’t like him,” Kelly asked, “will you stop the wedding?”

“Frankly, it’s more likely after our talk that
he’s
not going to like
me.
”

Dhara started to say something more, then stopped. Biting her lip, she toyed with a tip of a toothpick stuck in the tapas on the tiny plate before her. Looking at Dhara’s suddenly stricken face, Marta’s heart turned over. She reached out to touch Dhara’s arm, and with a sudden rattle of glasses and plates, Kelly and Wendy did the same.

What a jerk I am
. Here Dhara was, holding back boatloads of pain.
Real
pain. From a
real
relationship with Cole. Unlike herself, whining over some hot jerk who took advantage of her own ridiculous self-absorption.

“Hey, girl.” Marta gave Dhara’s sleeve a tug. “If it doesn’t work out, it’s you and me hitting the bar scene on Saturday nights, got it?”

“Unlikely.” Dhara’s shoulders rose and fell. “My mother will have me doing another Shiva fast, poring through online profiles of other prospects.”

“Mine is on her knees at every eight a.m. Mass praying to the Holy Mother, but that’s not going to keep me away from Nobu on a hot night.”

“Oh, but you can’t do that.” Kelly talked around a mouthful. “That breaks the rules.”

“She’s right, Marta.” Wendy tipped her martini at her. “You have to take a six-month hiatus after a serious relationship. It’s the only way to avoid a rebound. So no dating, no looking. Got it?”

Marta felt a prickle of unease. Her biological clock was ticking at a beat much faster than the Spanish guitar music thrumming through the restaurant. Carlos’s betrayal had been a serious setback to her Life Plan. She’d learned the hard way that any deviation was dangerous, any mistake could upend a lifetime of dreams. She did not realize how much she’d been counting on Carlos to be the one to complete the next step, until he walked out of her life.

Him and his thick black hair and his broad, strong shoulders and his fancy food processor.

The girls were watching her, chewing in silence, anticipating her response with expectant eyes. She felt a sharp pang of guilt. She didn’t want to do this on the sly. But she couldn’t let some dusty old dating rules—or Carlos’s betrayal—put a stop to the plan now hatching in her heart.

“Oh, what fun is that?” Marta gestured to one of the dishes. “Pass me that chorizo, will you? Looks like it’s the only real sausage I’ll be getting for a good long time.”

T
he first time Dhara slipped on a pair of jeans, she’d been a private high school student changing out of her uniform in the stall of a movie theater bathroom. The jeans had been a pair of cast-offs from a schoolmate—contraband—and Dhara had breathlessly accepted them. She remembered marveling at the way the thick seam lifted and separated her buttocks. She remembered feeling a terrible half-angry, half-shameful thrill in bucking her parents’ rules, along with a growing exhilaration that the prep-school boys at the nearby academy would now see what she’d been hiding under a shapeless plaid skirt.

Now, wearing a far-better fitting and more upscale pair of jeans, she felt some of the same sense of rebellion as she took the steps, two at a time, out of the subway stop at Houston Street, about to meet her fiancé on a date for the very first time.

She saw him before he saw her. He was leaning against the wall with one foot flat on the bricks behind him, so totally absorbed in his iPod that he was oblivious to the New York crowds passing by.

Sudesh was a good-looking man. Dhara had noticed that from the first. He had the sort of medium-roast complexion that held up well with age and a youthful leanness, probably due to the fact that his family raised him as a vegetarian. Her mother had eventually admitted that he was nearly forty. That explained the look in his eyes when he’d first met her—the patient but nervous gaze that, miraculously, remained above her neck rather than traveling with avidity over her ever-softening, thirty-seven-year-old figure.

She remembered being almost wearily grateful that he wasn’t steeped in cheap cologne like the first man her mother had suggested, or laden with gold jewelry and a porn-star mustache like the second.

“Hey, Sudesh.”

He glanced up. Behind the shade of her sunglasses, she watched his expression as he pulled out one earbud. She was suddenly, exquisitely, conscious of the slinkiness of her black tank top, the sleek fit of her jeans, and the careless way she’d clipped up her hair to get it off the back of her neck. Last time he’d seen her, she’d been swathed in an apricot sari.

He pushed away from the wall to greet her. She couldn’t quite tell if the flicker in his eyes was his gaze slipping, lightning-quick, over her figure, or just a moment of sudden recognition. His gaze was difficult to read behind the glasses that made him look both scholarly and a little bit owlish.

Funny, the two times she’d seen him before today, he hadn’t worn glasses.

“It’s good to see you, Dhara. But please, call me Desh.”

“Desh.”

“That’s what all my friends call me.” He searched the sidewalk behind her, his lips quirking into a smile. “What, no protective hordes?”

She let out her breath, not realizing until that moment she’d been holding it, nervous about his reaction to her appearance. “I shook them off in the subway. Though I wouldn’t put it past my mother to send a spy or two.”

“Ah, so you made the same mistake.”

“Pardon?”

“I told my family over dinner last night that I’d be meeting you today.”

“Oh, no.”

“I’d never noticed before how the smell of incense can ruin a really good vegetable curry.”

“Ah, yes,” she murmured. “Guilt is a terrible seasoning. My mother is wearing out her knees praying to Ganesh.”

“For my mother, every day, a havan to Lord Agni,” he said, “to rid the evil spirits.”

Dhara nodded in sympathy. Only an Indian mother could make her daughter feel guilty about having coffee in a public place with her own fiancé. First by dramatic and devout prayers, and second by a good hour and a half of strenuous and apparently logical arguments.

What for, Dhara? What good can come of it? You’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other after the wedding is done.

And now, face-to-face with that man, Dhara wasn’t entirely sure that her mother was wrong.

“Come on.” He picked up a sports bag and something clanked within. “This place has the best iced masala chai.”

She was surprised he remembered. She’d ordered one at the engagement party after the confrontation with Kelly, in the hope that the milky spiced tea would ease the twinge of a headache.

“After we order,” he said, opening the door for her to a blast of air-conditioning, “I have a proposition for you.”

Proposition.

Dhara gripped the strap of her purse as a whole fleet of possibilities rippled through her mind—a mélange of dark rooms, clean sheets, and sweaty skin. She dropped her gaze as she sidled by him, inadvertently brushing his arm as she entered the coffeehouse.

“Desh,” she said, opting to sound casually blasé as she stopped before the counter. “I’ve already said yes, remember?”

He coughed a little laugh—a nervous hiccup of a sound—as he came up beside her. “I mean a
small
proposition,” he corrected, as he pushed his glasses straight with his index finger. “I was just going to suggest that, after we get our drinks, we could go to that park over there.”

With nervous relief, she glanced out the window to the green space across the street. “And?”

“They’ve got bocce courts.”

“Bocce.”

“Yes.” He ordered a double-shot latte along with her iced chai. “I play it sometimes with a crowd of local guys. Have you ever played?”

“The closest I’ve ever gotten to sports is the StairMaster in the hospital gym, three times a week.”

“It’s simple. I’ll teach you.”

She paused, uncertain. A coffee date had a particular advantage. She could call an end to it whenever she wanted, just by rising and leaving. She’d even set up a plan. Marta was scheduled to call her at 6:05 p.m., pretending to be from the hospital, just in case Dhara needed an excuse to get away. The way Dhara figured it last night, while tossing sleepless in her bed, this date could go two ways. Desh could wave off her confession with an easy laugh…or he could break off the engagement, a seismic event whose reverberations would shudder all the way to Jackson Heights.

“Listen, Dhara,” he said. “Why don’t we pretend, just for a moment, that we’re simply two people on a blind date, and thousands of Indian ancestors—and maybe my mother—aren’t watching us right now.”

Dhara loosened her grip on the strap of her purse. “Tell me, how do we do that?”

“Like this.” Desh tucked the iPod in his pocket and thrust out his hand. “Hello, Dhara. I’m Desh Bohara. I’m a professor of philosophy at Hunter College.”

She took his hand. It was smooth, and his grip firm, and the unfamiliar feel of it sent a little tremor through her. “A pleasure to meet you, Desh. I’m Dhara Pitalia, a cardiologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital.”

“The pleasure is mine. See?” His teeth flashed. “That wasn’t so bad.”

“Actually,” she said, dropping his hand, “aren’t all blind dates awkward?”

“Absolutely. Which is why I figured,” he said, as steamers steamed and coffee grinders whirred, “that it would be a lot easier to talk while we played a game. Otherwise, it’ll be the classic blind date.” He tilted his head toward a table by the window. “You and me staring at each other across that rickety table, with nothing to distract us from the fact that in three months, we two strangers will be wed.”

Wed.

Her knees went wobbly. Drawing in a slow breath, she flattened her hand against the counter for support, then turned her attention to the cup the barista was shoving across the table. She hadn’t wanted to think about this—in fact, she’d trained her mind not to travel in that direction. It would be better if she
didn’t
notice the gentle swell of Desh’s biceps against the cotton of his shirt or the movement of his shoulders beneath the cloth. It was unnerving to be standing so close to a warm, breathing, vital man she hardly knew, and with whom, in less than three months, she’d be sharing a nuptial bed.

“Bocce,” she muttered, with a swift nod. “Bocce it is.”

Dhara followed Desh out of the coffee shop in a mutually awkward silence, clutching her drink as they strode through James J. Walker Park. She was grateful the day was warm but not oppressively humid. She welcomed the early-evening breeze that set the leaves rustling over their heads and went a little way toward cooling her skin. Maybe bocce was a good idea. Clearly, sitting across from him close enough to map the swoop of his cheekbone and the pronounced hollows underneath was not the best way for her to logically, and unemotionally, share her intimate secrets.

But then again, she was growing increasingly convinced that sharing her secrets might be the stupidest idea ever. For Desh continued to live up to her initial impression of him. He was a really nice guy.

As they approached a series of narrow courts, an older man sitting on a folding chair called out with familiarity. Desh waved and exchanged a few words with him as they passed by. Once on the empty court, Desh clanked his sports bag on the ground, crouched down, and unzipped it.

“Hey,” she said, “did you just speak to that man in Italian?”

“Badly.” Desh pulled out eight fist-size red and green balls and set them in lines. “I spent my junior year in Florence, but I learned all the Italian I know from him and his crazy Sicilian friends.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Is that why he’s laughing?”

“Not entirely.” He hid his face by peering deeper into the bag. “He’s teasing me about you.”

With sudden embarrassment, Dhara returned the grinning man’s wave, then turned away as Desh launched into an explanation of the game. He tossed a small white ball—called the jack—down the length of the court. With brisk efficiency, he explained that the point of the game was to get as many balls close to the jack as possible. Each ball ahead of his was worth one point. They would play to sixteen.

Sixteen. Didn’t seem so long. Maybe, just maybe, it was long enough for the inner traditional Dhara and the outer hypereducated Dhara to wrestle to some kind of hybrid Indian-American solution. She wouldn’t mind being unimpaled from this cultural fence.

“So,” she said, lobbing the first ball toward the jack, frantically searching for a neutral topic of conversation. “My parents mentioned that you were a professor, but they didn’t tell me you were a professor of philosophy.”

“It’s a dirty, dirty secret.” He stepped up and weighed the ball in his hand. “Like my aunt Chunni’s divorce, we don’t discuss it in public.”

“Let me guess: they wanted you to be an engineer.”

“They’d have settled for a chemist, or even an accountant.” He stepped forward, lobbing the ball in one smooth, effortless motion. “I told my father that the world needs only so many bridges.”

“I took a philosophy course once.” She didn’t mention that she’d done it only because she needed to fulfill some humanity requirement in a schedule full of hard sciences. “Problems of Philosophy, it was called. If it weren’t for Wendy, I’d have failed it altogether. So much talk, so much probing, and so few answers.”

“There are no answers.” He handed her a green ball, waving her to the head of the court. “Only questions. Three of them, if you go by classical Greek philosophy.”

“There have to be more questions than that.” Like
how did I get myself in this situation? Why the hell am I playing bocce? Does he really need to know the truth? And how can a man smell like both soap and saffron?

“Three questions,” he reiterated. “And they’re deceptively simple. What is there? What should we do? And how can we know? Essentially, it’s about the nature of being, the nature of ethics, and the nature of logic. And now,” he said with a laugh, “I sound like I’m starting a lecture.”

“Full confession.” She gave him an apologetic little shrug. “Philosophy gives me a headache.”

“Physics used to give me a headache. And I bet you aced it. There—you’re a little short,” he said, eyeing her throw. “Right now, what I’m studying has a lot to do with linguistics—what each language develops as their verb ‘to be’ says a lot about their philosophy.” He got into position to lob another ball. “And if I go into this any deeper, you’ll need a fresh chai.”

“Linguistics…That explains why you know Italian?”

“And Hindi and Urdu. I tried a little German. Frankly, I thought I was going to be a language major in college, but though I enjoy parsing out foreign grammar, I can’t get my tongue around the Italian
r
’s.” He handed her another ball after his fell too long. “Why did you become a cardiologist?”

The question vaulted Dhara right back to her youth when she visited her uncle the pediatrician. Unlike her siblings, who screamed whenever they passed through his door, Dhara had adored him and all the shining implements of his office—the stethoscope, the stainless-steel tools, the measurements cleanly marked on charts, and even—though she winced when she got them—the sharp efficiency of the vaccinations. Medical school had always been a certainty.

“My uncle Japa inspired me,” she mused. “But choosing to become a cardiologist, that was a process.”

“A difficult one, I imagine.”

“Not really. The heart is the body’s motor—the source of all power. While I was in school, I just became fascinated with it. It’s vital to all life, yet so fragile. It’s amazing how easily some crossed electrical signals can make it erratic, how human behavior like smoking, drinking, and diet can so thoroughly affect it in the long-term.” She lobbed her last ball, a little farther than the others. “Heart muscle cells are the only cells in the body that can’t regenerate.”