Monday arrived.
Cadell paced.
Emily stayed upstairs with a nanny until it was time to go. He had taken Em to the park that morning to play on the swings for a little while, but she had gotten tired quickly, even more quickly than normal, it seemed.
It was probably nothing. Cadell obsessed over inconsequential changes, worrying himself into crazy circles until he had to play poker or else he might get into the car and drive somewhere.
Cadell practiced scales while waiting for the clock to tell him that he should drive over to Andy’s parents’ house. His shoulder was beginning to shiver, a premonition of the cramping that turned to fiery nerve pain. Only an hour or two of practice caused problems these days, probably the result of that whirlwind, brutal European tour last month.
Even though his shoulder was beginning to knife him, he still played his scales.
Scales up. Scales down. Two and three octaves. Major and minor and flatted sevenths. Two scales and an arpeggio. The guitar equivalent of fingered octaves and double stops. Everything he could think of.
The clock had only moved an hour.
And he had three more hours until he should collect Em and leave.
The nanny came down and told him that Emily was napping.
Good.
Maybe she wouldn’t be cranky during the dinner with Andy’s parents that night. The last thing that he needed while he was trying to make a good impression was a spoiled two-year-old screaming that she wanted vanilla pudding for supper.
Maybe he should take a couple of vanilla pudding cups with them, just in case. It wasn’t a bad idea to throw one in a lunch box with some blue ice and leave it in the car.
They would think that he spoiled her too much, giving her vanilla pudding for supper just because she wanted it. They would think that he was permissive and liberal, and he probably was. That would leave a rotten first impression.
Not that he knew how to make a good impression. He would probably fuck it up somehow.
Cadell paced. He hunted down obscure songs on his phone and played them along with the MP3.
Finally, when he was scrolling through his contact list for no reason whatsoever, the name Uday Chowdhury rolled into view and stopped in the middle.
Uday had been one of the Indian guys who had gotten married while at Juilliard, and Cadell had attended the three-day affair.
Cadell was, at heart, a recluse and an introvert, but he knew when he needed advice. He tapped the screen and told Uday everything he could think of, starting with, “So, there’s this woman that I met, an Indian chick—”
“So this is why the big rock star calls me after a year of radio silence,” Uday said, his soft Southern drawl dripping with diphthongs, why-uh, “because you need advice,” ad-vi-ice, “about Indian girls. Here’s my advice: stay away from them unless you want to gain twenty pounds.”
“I like her.”
“Worse.”
“I mean, I like her a lot.”
“Aren’t you banging tons of chicks on tour? Go ahead, tell me, please. This third cellist in the Dallas Symphony is just dying to hear about your rock and roll exploits.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Please tell me it is and make up the details if you have to.”
“A different city every night. A runner to the cars after the concert to beat the traffic jam in the parking lot. A tour bus ride with a bunch of stinking men to the next town. Maybe an hour in a hotel bar to meet someone and furtive groping for a few minutes, assuming that the bus ride didn’t take too long and all the bars aren’t closed, and then she walks out the door and makes sure that you didn’t get her cell phone number because women in hotel bars are traveling, too, and they sure as hell don’t want you to call them at home.”
“What about groupies?”
“Don’t ask about groupies. Killer Valentine has a strict no-groupies policy after we flipped the stage over one time. You do not want to know. After the woman leaves, few hours of sleep until sound check. And you’re supposed to be creative and come up with brilliant new songs in the middle of all that chaos while you’re sleep-deprived and hungover.” Or worse.
“Yeah. Right. Sucks to be you. Did you know that our new conductor is insisting on being called Maestro? It’s like he’s a seventeenth-century egomaniac instead of a modern one.”
“Anyway, I need advice about this woman.”
“Run. Hide. Change your cell phone number.”
“Seriously, Uday.”
And then Cadell spilled it. All of it.
Well, most of it.
“She’s Indian?”
“Yeah.” Cadell told him Andy’s name.
“She’s South Indian? And it sounds like she’s a Brahmin, maybe an Ayer. Oh my God, man. Does she wear thick glasses and a nine-yard sari to work?”
“No. She’s a doctor. She wears scrubs at the hospital.”
“A d-d-doctor?” Uday stuttered.
“A surgeon. Pediatric hepatic surgery. She does liver transplants on kids.”
“How did you meet her?”
“—Fundraiser.”
For half an hour, Cadell told Uday about Andy’s intelligence, her flashing eyes, her gentleness, her drive, and that she refused to officially date him but had stayed over the night before.
“She slept with you?” Uday asked.
“Not that way. Not ‘all the way.’ Just some stuff. And actual sleeping.”
“Oh-kaaaay, and you met this woman at a fundraiser, and somehow got her to spend all this time with you?”
“—Yes.”
“All right, you can stick to that story if you want to. You don’t need a new body part, do you?”
“No,” Cadell said. “I don’t need anything.” He glanced at the door to the hallway, but Emily wouldn’t wake up for another hour, at least.
“Okay, whatever.”
Then Cadell admitted what the real problem was. “And she’s marrying someone else. Her parents arranged for her to marry some guy that she’s only met twice.”
“My parents asked me that when I was nineteen, and I shut that the fuck down.”
“So that’s not normal?” Relief flooded him, and he sat down on a chair in the kitchen.
“About half the marriages in India are arranged. Here? I don’t even know. Just the thought gives me the butt-clenchers.”
“But it happens.”
“I guess. I don’t know anyone who actually would go through with it. Maybe girls, I guess. Girls are more traditional. And South Indians are really traditional. They’re much more conservative than we are.”
“And you are—” Cadell prompted.
“Bengali. My parents are from the eastern part of India. We went to conservatory together, man. How do you not know this?”
Cadell ignored the goad. “But she’s marrying some guy. The guy had to agree to it, too.”
“I don’t know. I don’t expect you to be able to explain all the weird things that white people do. We could start with those nutcases who used to hang out in front of Juilliard and scream about the end of the world.”
Cadell told him about the hospital’s Medicare fraud, the mass exodus of physicians and fellows, and his bargain to save Andy’s job. “She would have moved to Iowa or California.”
“So you funded her fellowship so that you could see her again?”
“Yeah.” There was more truth than lie in that one. He had wanted her to continue taking care of Emily, for sure. He probably would have done it even without being so damn attracted to her.
Not attraction.
In love.
He might as well start saying it to himself.
He said to Uday, “And since she’s marrying someone else, soon, in two weeks, she sure as hell hasn’t told her family about me.”
“Well, of course not. And she won’t. This is hopeless, Cadell. She’s going to marry this other guy and break your heart.”
“But she invited me over to have supper with her family tonight.”
“What!”
Cadell had never heard Uday scream before. “Yeah. Tonight. At their house.”
“Is her mother cooking for you?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Oh, my man. I don’t know whether to tell you to run or to come to Jersey to knock you out and drag you away.”
“But it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Is anyone else going to be there? Is it a party?”
“No. Just me.” Emily didn’t count, here.
“That she invited you home to meet her parents? Cad, you cad, it means everything.”
“She said that her family wants to meet the guy who saved her fellowship.”
“But if she invited you, if she’s going through with it, that means something. If it didn’t, she would have just kept putting it off to her family, ‘maybe next month,’ and she wouldn’t have ever told you about it. She’s testing you.”
Cadell didn’t like being tested. “So what do I have to do to pass the test?”
“First of all, you just became a vegetarian, and you don’t drink alcohol.”
Cadell almost hung up on him. “You’re killing me, Uday.”
“No, the pickle will kill you. Those South Indians will pickle anything, and it’s always blazing hot. Let me call my sister on the other line for a minute. She lives ten minutes away from you.” Muttering, for a few moments. “She’ll be at your house in about fifteen minutes.”
“She’s coming here? And you did that so fast?”
“Yes. She’s going to go through your closet and make sure that you’re presentable.”
“Did your sister have an arranged marriage?”
Uday laughed so long that Cadell thought he had lost him.
Finally, Uday said, “She married a black woman from Queens that she met at college. Our parents were a bit overwrought at first, but now they’re lobbying for twice the customary number of grandchildren. Oh, Lord. Shoma, in an arranged marriage. I can’t even.”
He laughed some more. Cadell had the impression that Uday was leaning over and wiping his eyes.
At least Cadell’s predicament was amusing to somebody. He waited, tapping his foot, until Uday got ahold of himself.
“Okay,” Uday said, still panting from laughing so hard, “Okay, here’s what you’re going to do tonight.”