The Namesake (27 page)

***

They meet at a bar in the East Village, a place Moushumi had suggested when they'd spoken on the phone. It's a small, dark, silent space, a single square room with just three booths against one wall. She's there, sitting at the bar reading a paperback book, when he arrives, and when she looks up from its pages, though it is she who is waiting for him, he has the feeling that he is interrupting her. She has a slender face, pleasingly feline features, spare, straight brows. Her eyes are heavy-lidded and boldly lined on the top lids, in the manner of 1960s movie stars. Her hair is middle-parted, gathered into a chignon, and she wears stylishly narrow tortoiseshell glasses. A gray wool skirt and a thin blue sweater cling suggestively to her sides. Opaque black tights cover her calves. A collection of white shopping bags lie at the base of her stool. On the phone, he hadn't bothered to ask what she looked like, assuming he'd recognize her, but now he is no longer sure.

"Moushumi?" he says, approaching her.

"Hey there," she says, closing the cover of the book and kissing him casually on both sides of his face. The book has a plain ivory cover, a title written in French. Her British accent, one of the few things he clearly remembers about her, is gone; she sounds as American as he does, with the low, gravelly voice that had surprised him on the phone. She has ordered herself a martini with olives. Beside it is a blue packet of Dunhills.

"Nikhil," she says as he sits down on the stool beside her, and orders a single malt.

"Yes."

"As opposed to Gogol."

"Yes." It had annoyed him, when he'd called her, that she hadn't recognized him as Nikhil. This is the first time he's been out with a woman who'd once known him by that other name. On the phone, she'd sounded guarded, faintly suspicious, as he had. The conversation had been brief and thoroughly awkward. "I hope you don't mind my calling," he'd begun, after explaining to her that he'd changed his name. "Let me check my
book," she'd told him when he'd asked if she was free Sunday evening for a drink, and then he'd listened to her footsteps clicking across a bare wooden floor.

She studies him for a moment, playfully twisting her lips. "As I recall, given that you're a year older than me, I was taught by my parents to call you Gogol Dada."

He is aware of the bartender glancing at them briefly, assessing their potential. He can smell Moushumi's perfume, something slightly overpowering that makes him think of wet moss and prunes. The silence and the intimacy of the room disconcerts him. "Let's not dwell on that."

She laughs. "I'll drink to that," she says, lifting her glass.

"I never did, of course," she adds.

"Did what?"

"Call you Gogol Dada. I don't remember our ever talking, really."

He sips his drink. "Neither do I."

"So, I've never done this before," she says after a pause. She speaks matter-of-factly, but nevertheless she averts her gaze.

He knows what she is referring to. In spite of this he asks, "Done what?"

"Gone out on a blind date that's been engineered by my mom."

"Well, it's not a blind date, exactly," he says.

"No?"

"We already know each other, in a way."

She shrugs and gives a quick smile, as if she has yet to be convinced. Her teeth are crowded together, not entirely straight. "I guess. I guess we do."

Together they watch as the bartender puts a CD into the player mounted to the wall. Some jazz. He is thankful for the distraction.

"I was sorry to hear about your father," she says.

Though she sounds genuinely sympathetic, he wonders whether she even remembers his father. He is tempted to ask
her, but instead he nods. "Thanks," he says, all he can ever think to say.

"How is your mother getting along?"

"All right, I guess."

"Is she okay on her own?"

"Sonia's living with her now."

"Oh. That's good. That must be a relief to you." She reaches for the Dunhills, opening the box and peeling back the gold foil. After offering one to him, she reaches for the book of matches that lies in an ashtray on the bar and lights a cigarette for herself. "Do you guys still live in that same house I used to visit?" she asks.

"Yeah."

"I remember it."

"Do you?"

"I remember that the driveway was to the right of the house as you faced it. There was a flagstone path cut into the lawn."

The fact that she can recall these details so precisely is at once startling and endearing to him. "Wow. I'm impressed."

"I also remember watching lots of television in a room covered with really thick brownish gold carpeting."

He groans. "It still is."

She apologizes for not being at the funeral, she'd been in Paris at the time. It was where she'd lived after graduating from Brown, she explains. Now she is a candidate for a Ph.D. in French literature at NYU. She's been living in the city for almost two years. She's spent the past summer temping, working for two months in the business office of an expensive midtown hotel. Her job was to review and file all the exit surveys left by the guests, make copies, distribute them to the appropriate people. This simple task had taken up her day. She'd been amazed by the energy people put into the surveys. They complained about the pillows being too hard or too soft, or that there wasn't enough space around the sinks for their toilet
ries, or that the bedskirt had a loose thread. Most of the people didn't even pay for the rooms themselves. They were at conventions, everything expensed. One person had complained that an architectural print above the desk had a visible speck of dust under the glass.

The anecdote amuses him. "That might have been me," he speculates.

She laughs.

"Why did you leave Paris for New York?" he asks. "I'd think you'd rather study French literature in France."

"I moved here for love," she says. Her frankness surprises him. "Surely you know about my prenuptial disaster."

"Not really," he lies.

"Well, you ought to." She shakes her head. "Every other Bengali living on the East Coast does." She speaks of it lightly, but he detects a bitterness in her voice. "In fact, I'm pretty sure you and your family were invited to the wedding."

"When was the last time we saw each other?" he says, in an effort to change the subject.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was your high school graduation party."

His mind goes back to a brightly lit space in the basement of a church his parents and their friends sometimes rented for especially large parties. It was where Sunday school classes were normally held. In the hallways were felt hangings, mottoes about Jesus. He remembers the big, long folding tables that he'd helped his father to set up, chalkboards on the walls, Sonia standing up on a chair, writing "Congratulations."

"You were there?"

She nods. "It was right before we moved to New Jersey. You sat with your American friends from high school. A few of your teachers were there. You seemed a little embarrassed by it all."

He shakes his head. "I don't remember you there. Did I speak to you?"

"You ignored me thoroughly. But it doesn't matter." She smiles. "I'm sure I brought a book with me."

They have a second round of drinks. The bar is beginning to fill up, small groups occupying each of the booths, people sitting on either side of them. A large party enters, and now there are patrons standing behind them to order drinks. When he'd arrived, he'd been bothered by the lack of people, of sounds, feeling on display, but now the crowd bothers him even more.

"It's getting pretty crazy in here," he says.

"It's not usually like this on a Sunday. Should we leave?"

He considers. "Maybe."

They ask for the bill, step out together into the cool October evening. Glancing at his watch, he sees that not even an hour has passed.

"Where are you headed?" she asks in a way that makes him realize that she assumes the date is over.

He hadn't planned to take her to dinner. He had intended to go back to his apartment after the drink, and study, and order in some Chinese food. But now he finds himself saying that he is thinking of getting something to eat, did she want to join him?

"I'd like that," she says.

Neither can think of a place to go and so they decide to walk a bit. He offers to carry her shopping bags, and though they weigh nothing at all she allows him to, telling him she'd been to a sample sale in SoHo just before they'd met. They stop in front of a small place that looks as if it has just opened. They study the handwritten menu taped to the window, the review that was printed a few days ago in the
Times.
He is distracted by her reflection in the glass, a more severe version of herself, for some reason more stunning.

"Shall we try it?" he asks, stepping away and reaching for the door. Inside, the walls are painted red. They are surrounded by old posters advertising wine, and street signs and photographs of Paris arranged above the picture rails.

"This place must seem silly to you," he acknowledges, watching her gaze up at the walls.

She shakes her head. "It's pretty authentic, actually."

She asks for a glass of champagne and looks carefully at the wine list. He asks for another single malt, but is told that there is only beer and wine.

"Shall we have a bottle?" she says, handing him the list.

"You choose."

She orders a salad and the bouillabaisse and a bottle of Sancerre. He orders the cassoulet. She doesn't speak French to the waiter, who is French himself, but the way she pronounces the items on the menu makes it clear that she is fluent. It impresses him. Apart from Bengali, he has never bothered to master another language. The meal passes quickly. He speaks of his work, the projects he is involved in, his upcoming exam. They comment on each other's dishes, trading tastes on their bread plates. They order espresso and share a crème brûlée, their two teaspoons cracking the hard amber surface from either side.

She offers to pay her share when the bill comes, as she'd done in the bar, but this time he insists on treating. He walks her to her apartment, which is on a run-down but pretty residential block, close to the bar where they'd met. Her building has a crumbling stoop, a terra cotta-colored facade with a gaudy green cornice. She thanks him for the dinner, says she's had a great time. Again she kisses him on both cheeks, then begins to search for the keys in her purse.

"Don't forget these." He gives her the shopping bags, watches as she loops them over her wrist. Now that he is no longer carrying them he feels awkward, unsure of what to do with his hands. He is parched from the alcohol he has consumed. "So, should we make our parents happy and see each other again?"

She looks at him, studying his face intently. "Maybe." Her eyes stray to a passing car on the street, the headlights briefly shining on their bodies, but then her gaze returns to his face. She smiles at him, nodding. "Give me a call."

He watches as she ascends quickly up the stoop with her shopping bags, her heels suspended over the treads in a way that looks precarious. She turns briefly to wave at him and then she goes through a second glass door, not waiting to see him waving back. For a minute longer he stands there, watching as the door opens again and a tenant emerges to deposit something into one of the trash cans below the stoop. Gogol looks up at the building, wondering which of the apartments is hers, waiting to see if a light will turn on in one of the windows.

He had not expected to enjoy himself, to be attracted to her in the least. It strikes him that there is no term for what they once were to each other. Their parents were friends, not they. She is a family acquaintance but she is not family. Their contact until tonight has been artificial, imposed, something like his relationship to his cousins in India but lacking even the justification of blood ties. Until they'd met tonight, he had never seen her outside the context of her family, or she his. He decides that it is her very familiarity that makes him curious about her, and as he begins to walk west, to the subway, he wonders when he might see her again. When he reaches Broadway he changes his mind and hails a cab. The decision feels indulgent, as it is not particularly late, or cold, or raining, and he is in no great rush to be home. But he has the urge to be alone all of a sudden, to be thoroughly passive, to revisit the evening in solitude. The driver of the cab is a Bangladeshi; the name on the registration card pasted to the plexiglass behind the front seat says Mustafa Sayeed. He is talking in Bengali on his cell phone, complaining of traffic on the FDR, of difficult passengers, as they sail uptown, past the shuttered shops and restaurants on Eighth Avenue. If his parents were in the cab they would have struck up a conversation with the driver, asking what part of Bangladesh he was from, how long he'd been in this country, whether his wife and children lived here or there. Gogol sits silently, as if he were any other passenger, lost in his own thoughts, thinking of Moushumi. But as they near
his apartment, he leans toward the plexiglass and says to the driver, in Bengali, "It's that one, up on the right."

The driver turns around, surprised, smiling. "I didn't realize," he says.

"That's okay," Gogol says, reaching for his wallet. He tips the driver excessively and steps out of the car.

In the days that follow, he begins to remember things about Moushumi, images that come to him without warning while he is sitting at his desk at work, or during a meeting, or drifting off to sleep, or standing in the mornings under the shower. They are scenes he has carried within him, buried but intact, scenes he has never thought about or had reason to conjure up until now. He is grateful that his mind has retained these images of her, pleased with himself, as if he has just discovered an innate talent for a sport or a game he's never played. He remembers her mainly at the pujos he had attended every year, twice a year, with his family, where she would be dressed in a sari carefully pinned to the top of her shoulder. Sonia would have to do the same, but she would always take off her sari after an hour or two and put on her jeans, stuffing the sari into a plastic bag and telling Gogol or their father to put it away for her in the car. He does not remember Moushumi ever accompanying the other teenagers to the McDonald's that was across the street from the building in Watertown where the pujos often were, or eventually sitting in someone's car in the parking lot, listening to the radio and drinking beer from a can. He struggles but fails to recall her presence at Pemberton Road; still, he is secretly pleased that she has seen those rooms, tasted his mother's cooking, washed her hands in the bathroom, however long ago.