Nights Like This by Divya Sood Page B

let that influence what you say to me. Just tell me what you want to do.”
    I looked at her face in the shadows that were forming around her like ghosts. Her eyes were bittersweet chocolate and, in sunlight, they mellowed to a lighter brown, almost to the honey that they were the day I met her, a day of ample sun and then fading light. Her skin glowed with a tan I was sure she had carried her entire life. I looked at the length of her hair that fell straight and black and beautiful to the middle of her back. She was right. Anjali was much more attractive. But my squatting stranger was the woman I had thought of as I had come the night before.
    I remembered that Anjali had said we might do dinner. But she hadn’t called. I knew that she wouldn’t because despite her love, despite her faithfulness, she was with Ish and when Anjali was with Ish, time slipped through the cracks of her fingers like soft sand. The thought of it burned me. “You do your thing, I’ll do my thing…” hadn’t I said that?
    â€œIt’s not all about getting in your pants,” I said. “I like you.”
    â€œAnd how do you know me again?”
    â€œI don’t but I feel like I do. And like I should.”
    â€œIt’s easier,” she said, “sometimes just to keep to the basics.”
    â€œI want to know your name,” I finally said.
    â€œVanessa,” she said softly, “And you, princess?”
    â€œJess,” I said.
    â€œLet me get my things and then we’ll go.”
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    She shrugged off my question as if to dismiss it. I watched her collect her photos and put them into her backpack. She emptied the flowerpot of its ashes and placed that in her bag as well. She gently dipped the orange tips of the incense into the fountain. When there was no glow to them, she clutched them in her hand and slung her backpack over her shoulder.
    â€œLet’s go,” she said.
    I walked beside her not knowing where we were going. The evening was slow in coming and the sun shone brightest where it was about to sink into grass and trees. I thought of the evening and although my thoughts wanted to linger on impending darkness, I could think only of Vanessa, this girl beside me who, hours ago, had been my squatting stranger. I walked behind her slightly just so I could appreciate the way her hips swayed ever so gently and appreciate her soft curves.
    After we climbed the stairs and were walking along a ridge of grass, she tossed the half burnt incense sticks gently under a tree. Then she took my hand without explanation, without reason, and something inside me tumbled. I allowed myself to feel the skin on her palm, rough yet somehow a promise of gentleness. It reminded me for an instant of my mother’s hands, rough with wear, gentle with affection. I looked at Vanessa and waited for her to say something. But she did not. She only held my hand a little tighter.
    I closed my eyes for a few seconds. I held my breath and the warmth of her hand reached inside me and warmed my heart. A heart, I knew, that had become comfortable residing in cold places. I allowed my senses to tell me of the evening. I smelled the remnants of cut grass and somewhere the faint memory of cigarette smoke. It reminded me of the Tolly Club in Kolkata where I had played hide and seek in the lawn while my father had sat with mustachioed men, smoking 555’s and Dunhills. I heard birds chirping at each other and I imagined I was home, sipping a Thums Up now and then, the taste more pungent than my Diet Cokes. I would return someday, perhaps with Vanessa at my side. And then there was Anjali…. I opened my eyes again. I wondered what Anjali was doing at that precise moment. Was she out at a fancy bar with Ish or was she on the couch with her martini? Was Ish in our apartment, sitting on the couch with her? I could have abandoned the whole idea of Vanessa and returned home to sip