Don't Let Him Know (25 page)

Rohit did not answer. Instead he spat into the palm of his own hand and reached behind Avinash, much to his shock. ‘No, not that, I don’t do that,’ Avinash said trying to push his hand away.

But Rohit just laughed and swatted Avinash’s hand away as if Avinash’s no was just coy protestation to be casually brushed aside.

‘No, no, I’m serious,’ said Avinash, now genuinely scared. ‘Not here.’

‘Why not, dear?’ breathed Rohit in his ear. ‘I want to. And I know you want it. No one can see.’

His tone was still cajoling but now there was a new hint of something steelier as well. He gripped Avinash tighter as Avinash struggled to get out of his embrace.

‘We don’t have anything,’ protested Avinash weakly. ‘You know, protection.’

‘I am clean,’ said Rohit trying to force his tongue into his mouth again.

Avinash tried to push Rohit away. ‘I think we should stop. I don’t want to do this,’ he said, reaching down to pull up his pants. That was a mistake. Even in the dim light he could see Rohit’s face change. The flirtatious smile disappeared. He grabbed him and whipped him around, holding Avinash close to him with one arm and locking the other around in his neck. Avinash made choking sounds as he struggled, trying to break away, but Rohit was too strong, holding him in place as he rubbed up against him, thrusting against him roughly.

‘You sister-fucking tease,’ snarled Rohit. ‘You won’t take me home and you won’t do anything here.’

‘Just let me go. I’m sorry,’ whimpered Avinash, gasping for breath, almost close to tears.

Rohit slapped him across the face. ‘Why did you come with me if you were not going to put out, you old fart? I paid good money to get into that bloody party. You think I have money to piss down the drain? I’m not going home just like that.’

‘Not that, not here,’ pleaded Avinash. ‘I’ll do anything else you like.’

Rohit looked at him contemptuously for a second, then put his hands on his shoulders and pushed him roughly to his knees. Avinash knelt in the dirt and opened his mouth, almost relieved. He felt Rohit’s penis, thrusting roughly, fill his mouth, making him choke. Rohit’s hands were on Avinash’s head pushing him forward and into his crotch, sweaty from the dancing and walking. Avinash gagged and felt tears stinging his eyes. Just let him come, he thought. And this will be over.

‘Careful with those teeth, fucker,’ said Rohit, cuffing him on the head. Avinash closed his eyes and sucked him desperately.

Eventually Rohit came with a grunt. As his body tensed Avinash tried to jerk his head away but Rohit’s hands were like iron clamps holding him in place until he was fully spent. When Rohit was done and had loosened his grasp, Avinash spat, wiped his mouth and stood up. His own trousers and underwear were still coiled around his feet. Rohit had already zipped up his jeans. He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and exhaled with satisfaction. Avinash stood there mutely, still stunned, unsure what to do. ‘Want one?’ Rohit’s tone was mocking as he held the cigarette packet out to him. Avinash shook his head.

‘Not a good enough brand for you, eh?’ sneered Rohit.

‘I have to go,’ Avinash mumbled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Cut the drama. That wasn’t so bad for you, now, was it? I know you wanted it,’ snorted Rohit. ‘Men like you just pretend they are so respectable and proper. In the end, they all want the same thing.’

Avinash said nothing as he pulled up his trousers.

Rohit looked at him expectantly. ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ said Avinash.

‘Don’t I get a little something? A tip?’ said Rohit. ‘Remember that drink that you offered me back at the party? How about giving me some money for drinks now?’

Avinash continued to stare at him. ‘I really don’t have any,’ he said.

‘Don’t fucking play games with me,’ said Rohit. ‘I saw your wallet.’ Avinash started backing away but Rohit grabbed him and said, ‘I know your type. You just want to come here, have some fun, go back to your air-conditioned apartments. All I am asking of you is some drink money and taxi fare.’

‘Just let me go. I have to go home,’ pleaded Avinash. ‘I’ll shout for help.’

‘Shout?’ laughed Rohit. ‘You? Shout? For whom? The police? What will you tell them? You came to this park in the middle of the night to enjoy the night air? Do you even know where you are? Who’s here to help you?’ Then he put his fingers in his mouth and let out a low whistle. Suddenly over the rustling bushes Avinash heard an answering whistle and then another.

‘These are my friends,’ said Rohit grabbing Avinash by the collar. ‘They can do anything they want with you. Rape you. Follow you home. Talk to your wife when she goes shopping tomorrow.’

Avinash could hear people in the darkness now, the sounds of leaves being crunched underfoot. He saw the flash of a cigarette lighting somewhere. The park, which had seemed deserted only fifteen minutes ago, was rustling with illicit, shadowy life.

Oh God, he prayed silently. If I get out of this, I’ll never do this again.

Rohit moved really close to him still holding on to his collar. ‘Just give me what you have and leave,’ he said, his breath a blast of paan masala. ‘I don’t have all night. This is my area. Don’t even think about trying anything funny.’

Fumbling with his wallet, Avinash took out all the notes he had and gave them to Rohit. Coins fell from his open wallet on to the grass but he didn’t bother to pick them up. ‘Just leave me some for my taxi fare,’ he begged, praying Rohit wouldn’t want his credit cards. But Rohit just stuffed the money into his jeans pocket without even looking at it and let go of Avinash’s collar. But before he let him go Rohit pulled out one of Avinash’s business cards from the wallet and, waving it in the air said, ‘Go on, then. Look, I am being kind, letting you go just like that. So don’t think about trying anything smart like going to the police. This was nothing. I could do a lot more damage to you if I really wanted to. You want me to show up at your office?’

He put the card carefully into his pocket. Avinash stared at him unsure as to whether he could actually leave.

‘What you waiting for?’ Rohit gave him a little push. ‘Go on, go home to your wife. Get lost, uncle.’ He spat out the last word like a slur.

As he ran, Avinash stumbled and fell. He felt his knee stinging with pain as it scraped against the gravel through his trousers. He picked himself up and ran blindly through the bushes, over the trampled dusty grass. He passed a children’s playground he hadn’t noticed before, the rusty swing and slide standing like abandoned relics from a different, more normal, world. He ran on, heading towards the sound of traffic and the main road. Now he could make out other shapes in the darkness, other people. But he just ran till he almost crashed into the wall along the edge of the park. He felt his way along the wall, stumbling in the darkness over stones and thorny bushes, searching desperately for the gap they had come through. It felt like for ever until he found it and he fell through it, collapsing weakly on the sidewalk gasping for breath, his heart still racing. Late-night trucks rumbled by, the blast of exhaust making him feel nauseous and relieved all at once. He picked himself up and hobbled away, half afraid that any minute Rohit would come out through the hole in the wall, grab him by the collar and drag him back inside.

As he walked home his knee throbbed with pain. He knew there would be a nasty bruise. It was late but the city was still humming – a low buzz of life that never quite receded. People were sleeping on the pavements. Men sat huddled together smoking. Dogs followed him for a couple of blocks, yapping, and then wandered off.

When he finally reached home and rang the doorbell, a sleepy Bhola opened the door and looked at him in horror.

‘Are you all right, babu? What happened?’ he cried.

‘Just a little . . . Nothing . . . nothing at all. Nothing serious, don’t worry.’ Avinash said. ‘Get me the Dettol from the bathroom. And where do we keep those bandages?’

On Monday as Avinash headed to work, he went by the Subramaniam Wedding Hall as usual. There was no trace at all of the weekend. In the daylight it was just another city corner bustling with life. Auto rickshaws clustered in front of the pharmacy, buzzing like green-and-yellow bumble bees. Housewives walked down the street from the market, their shopping bags stuffed with fruit and vegetables. A gaggle of schoolgirls in white and blue dresses, their hair neatly braided, clutched their bags and waited to cross the street. A man in a yellowing singlet and checked lungi, a lit beedi between his teeth, was putting up marigolds on a banner above the gate. He had already finished ‘ANILA WEDS’ in bright orange flowers – each marigold blotting out one more memory of the weekend in a burst of sunny normalcy.

It was amazing, he thought, that only the bruise on his knee remained to remind him it had really happened. He stroked it and winced. But there was a strange erotic reassurance in the pain, throbbing as it did with life. He thought of it as a stamp on a passport, the only reminder of journeys he might never dare make again.

As he walked into his office, he noticed the usual crowd of drivers hanging around the front steps, smoking and drinking tea. He nodded to them absently as he did every morning. They moved aside as usual to let him pass, nodding back and politely hiding their cigarettes behind their backs. But today as he passed he looked at them a little more carefully.

He noticed one of them had made no effort to hide his cigarette. Avinash looked closer. For an instant he thought it was Rohit. Avinash froze, his heart hammering wildly. He stared into the man’s eyes as if daring him to grab his briefcase and fling it in the air, laughing, as all his important papers, his very life, rained down like twirling confetti. But the man just stared at him for a few seconds before he slowly lowered his cigarette and said, ‘Good morning, sir.’ He smiled and Avinash could see his teeth were paan-stained but unchipped.

At the door, his heart still racing, Avinash glanced back to see if any of the other drivers had noticed anything. But they were all chatting among themselves as if he wasn’t even there. Only that man was still looking at him as he took a long drag from his cigarette. Avinash dropped his gaze but not before he saw him blow out a perfect ring of smoke that hung lazily in the warm morning air before disappearing without a trace.

XI

The Practical Thing to Do

She called as she always did in the foggy chill of a San Francisco morning before the grey early light had seeped into Amit’s dreams. She thought it was a criminal waste of money to talk to an answering machine when she was calling all the way from India. So Romola would painstakingly subtract the hours (with one hour to spare either way because she could never quite figure out which way Daylight Saving Time worked) and call Amit at what she hoped was six in the morning though he had told her many times he never woke up before 7.30.

It was December and it had been raining. The shrill ring of the telephone ruptured his early morning dream. Amit stumbled out of bed, disoriented and shivering, and looked around blindly for the receiver. He blearily picked it up from under a pile of dirty laundry and realized he was holding it upside down when he heard the faint tinny voice anxiously repeating his name over and over again.

‘Amit? Amit?’

‘Hello?’ he said cautiously into the mouthpiece.

As he heard the crackle of static and the familiar faraway voice, Amit felt his heart clench.

‘How are you?’ she said. ‘Were you asleep?’

The tightness in her voice gave it away. He knew it was bad news.

‘Are you awake?’ she said. ‘Is June home?’ June, the live-in girlfriend who was never acknowledged, not even when she answered the phone (‘Hello, is Amit there?’ never ‘Hello, June, how are you?’), suddenly had a role to play. This, Amit realized, with a sinking feeling, had to be serious.

‘Ma.’ Amit was suddenly alert. ‘What is it?’ On the rumpled pillow on the bed he saw June, her brown hair strewn across her face, looking at him questioningly as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

‘Is everything okay?’ she mouthed.

‘It’s your father,’ Romola’s voice was trembling. ‘A heart attack this morning. By the time the ambulance came it was all over.’

Amit just stared out of the window at the numb grey city where they were cleaning the streets. He could not remember what day it was. He could not remember if he had moved his car. He probably had not. It must have got a ticket by now. The hardwood floor was cold against the soles of his feet, still warm from the bed.

‘Are you there?’ said Romola anxiously. ‘Are you all right?’ Amit nodded mutely and realized he couldn’t make any sense of what his mother was saying any more. All her words were melding into each other like plastic in front of a heating vent. June had got out of bed and was holding his elbow as if to steady him. But Amit felt as if he was falling.

My father is dead. That makes me half an orphan. I should say something. I should do something. I should know what to do.

‘Are you going to be able to come?’ He realized Romola had not stopped talking. ‘I don’t know what to do. Should we wait for you to cremate him?’

‘Let me call work and the travel agent. Let me call you back,’ said Amit. June was holding his hand and he looked at her blankly.

The day passed in a blur. The travel agent got him a ticket but the flight was not till the next night. He got leave for three weeks from his office. They even sent over a tasteful arrangement of white calla lilies with a note that said ‘With sincere condolences. Our thoughts are with you.’ June took the day off and helped him pack. Amit was grateful, yet only dimly aware of it all.