1.
ON CHUTT’S BLOCK in Squirrel Hill — a “mature” neighborhood, the real estate agent had called it — twelve houses with generous yards huddled modestly under ancient oaks (“hence the squirrels,” she’d said). Each house had at least five bedrooms (“big families in those days”), remodeled kitchens, dark floors, built-in bookcases with beveled glass doors and mezuzot on the doorjambs. (“Culture and religion,” she said, “very big in Squirrel Hill”). Squirrel Hill was, or had been, Pittsburgh’s traditional Jewish neighborhood. According to Chutt’s counting, ten of his block’s twelve houses were now owned by recent South-or-East Asian immigrants, nearly all of them em-ployed in the higher reaches of Western Pennsylvania Hospital. His girlfriend, Becka Newman, was a Squirrel Hill girl. Her late father — before abandoning his family and joining a commune in California — had been a violinist in the Pittsburgh Symphony, under Steinberg. Her immigrant grandfather, Adam Newman the Cigar King — who’d taught her to smoke while sitting on his lap — had endowed a bench in the synagogue-community center across the street. Every Sabbath an aged congregation filled the parking lot and shuffled to the synagogue’s open door, carrying religious apparel in small purple pillows. Chutt would settle back in bed, reveling in the Saturday morning prospect of a little more sleep, a late morning visit to the farmer’s market, and a bistro lunch.
Becka, by night a waitress and bartender at Warhol Square, had discovered the ultimate niche profession. At the request of her new neighbors, she removed painted-over mezuzot. Asians didn’t want to slight any god, and so had hesitated to touch the odd little symbols without making a propitiating gesture, or snatch of a prayer, neither of which they knew. “It’s a little strange,” Dr. (Mrs.) Swaminathan had said. “Even with all my own gods around, I feel someone’s still watching us.” And so Becka would say a prayer, apply paint remover to the doorjambs, pry out the old ceramic or metal casings, then sand, fill and repaint or re-stain where the mezzuzah had been nailed. She turned her small fee over to the community centre’s smoking-cessation program.
Just as his romantic life seemed to be on track and a third plaque in three years confirmed his status as Pittsburgh’s leading “under- 35” banker, the weight of the world came crashing down on his frail and hairy shoulders, like the nightmare vultures of his childhood, circling the Towers of Silence in Bombay.
The news appeared one morning on an internal email: Mr. Milton Beloff has submitted his resignation, effective immediately. He will be missed for his long years of dedicated service.
Like hell, thought Chutt.
Happily, an outstanding replacement has been found within our ranks. The appointment of H. S. Mehta (current director A&M, Boston), as CEO of the expanded Pittsburgh-based Section Two financial services takes effect immediately.
The white Americans went to the man they called Chuck with simple questions. Medwick of Currency Exchange asked, “Mehta — that’s an Indian name, right? Like the music guy?” Yes, said Chutt, like Zubin Mehta. But he didn’t add, Mehtas can be Hindu, Parsi, Sikh or Muslim. It’s a slippery name. Zubin Mehta is Parsi, like me, but Medwick wouldn’t know the difference, or care.
“Great,” said Medwick. “Those guys are really smart. If anyone can move us along, it’s an Indian.”
Those guys? What about me? Chutt wondered. Despite a thousand years on the job, I’m still not quite Indian? Not quite anything. What message are they sending, those big-time, Section One directors strung along the east coast from Boston to Charlotte, importing this unknown H. S. Mehta from Mergers and Acquisitions in Boston when they had Cyrus Chutneywala, three-time Pittsburgh Man of the Year already in place? Something they know? Something about me is just a little unsavory?
On the flimsy authority of other managers, he was informed that Indians are conservative but flexible and as fast as cobras on a heating pad. Good family men and corporately loyal. They mind their business and are great at numbers. Under Beloff, bonuses had withered. With this Mehta guy, big bonuses are here again. This Mehta guy (“Meetah? Maytah?”), opined Commercial Mortgages McAfee, must be really good if they’re moving him up from a single branch in M&A all the way to CFO of Section Two with its sixty branches between Pittsburgh and Chicago and complete banking services in five states.
Chutt smiled, and held his tongue. He’d known many Indiaborn dolts with the reaction time of cobras on an ice floe. He knew them to be endlessly inquisitive about everyone’s business, a nosiness covered up by flowery greetings at birthday times. Who but an Indian would learn his employees’ birthdays? Why not ask instead: What does it mean, getting a new boss from Mergers and Acquisitions? What’s his slant? Do we want to work for an M&A bubblehead? I thought they were clearing those clowns out of the banking business. M&As damned near ruined the whole economy, and now we’re — what? — slip-sliding back into the mergers business?
The India-born managers had a different take. From Jerry Gupta in Commercial Loans: I like working with Indians. I just don’t like working for an Indian. That’s why I came to America. “H. S. Mehta?” wondered Tony Madhuvan of Currencies. “What’s the big secret? Harish? Harbins? Haris?” Javy Qureishi in Residential Loans said he could be one of ours, a Muslim. But the smart money, from Chutt on down, was on a Sikh. “H. Mehta” could be anything, but the “S” signaled a Singh somewhere in the name; hence a Sikh: beard and turban, big and hairy.
Becka, who could be counted on to clear the air of ambiguities charged, “That is so fucking Indian of you, Chutt. You wonder what community this Magic Mehta comes from? Like if he’s Muslim he’s going to fire all the Hindus? As if you even care — Parsis are loved. Parsis are always safe. And tell me this: why do you assume Magic Mehta is even a man? Did it say Mister Mehta?”
The possibility of a woman had never occurred to him. For all the years he’d been in America, he hadn’t made the most fundamental leap to American thinking. Thank God he had Becka to uproot his assumptions. She was a formidable woman. To please him, she had slowly divested herself of the full-metal jacket, removing the facial shrapnel, the nose, lip, tongue and unmentionable rings, the eyebrow clips and half-dozen ear-studs. The nicotine patch had done its work. Even now, without her decorative armor, he deferred to her suspicions.
“So, what kind of a she do you think she is, if she’s a she?”
“Who cares? Maybe even a Christian or something.”
And then he went up to the study to open his private email. There was the near-daily message from his mother in Bombay. He had told her about Becka. He’d reminded her that they’d sent him to a historically Jewish school, the Sassoon Trust in Bombay, remember? And that Jews and Parsis held analogous positions in their respective societies. Few in numbers, huge in consequence. Buying a house in Squirrel Hill with painted-over mezuzot on the doorjambs and inviting a Jewish girl to live with him was practically preordained. He’d sent that note two weeks ago. Now:
Dearest Chuttu: What do I know of this thing you call love? You love too easily and too often. I pay no mind to your living arrangements. In my day, you got married when your father found you the right girl or boy, and that’s the way our little community prospered down the centuries. Your father has worn out shoe-leather interviewing parents with suitable daughters from Baroda and Ahmedabad to Bombay and even down to Bangalore. He has studied hundreds of photographs till he says people will think he is dirty-minded. He has rejected every girl that is not up to your so-called standards of beauty and liberation.
I can now report that he has found a match. She comes from an outstanding family. Her father is Darius Batliwala, who endowed Dadaji Bottlewala Gardens in Bombay and is involved in many charities and trusts. Batliwala Ltd. still bottles water and soft drinks, so the family fortune remains intact. Her late mother was Nazreen Cowasjee, from a respectable family in Pune that endowed the Poona Pediatric Hospital. The girl has appeared in several movies and television shows in England and Canada. Her good name, not her screen name, is Pansy Batliwala, but if you look her up on Google, the name is Darya D’Aquino. She also has a Face Book page you should not be missing (follow this link). She was married briefly, under a year, to a Canadian but is divorced with no children.
She is not unblemished but you turn your nose up at such old-fashioned ideas anyway. She is twenty-five and she exceeds your standards. Her father says she is a clean-living girl and for you to ignore the kind of girls she’s forced to play. He says the film-makers see her as “dark and exotic” in Canada, but in India she’d be fair and European. She has only one blemish, the aforementioned marriage/divorce. She lives in Toronto, which I have checked with Mrs. Contractor at the travel agency is less than two hours away from Pittsburgh with no stops, but you must take your Green Card or proof of legal residence with you. Driver’s licence no longer sufficient. Her father is agreeable to an unchaperoned meeting between you.
“Our little community?” Guilt, guilt, guilt: Ma, why do you do this to me? You mean our little and shrinking community because my sister married a German and got divorced and I’ve never even involved myself with a Parsi girl and I’ve turned down every opportunity to marry one because they’ve been so ... plain, sometimes plain-looking but mostly plain-living, plain-thinking: goody-goody school-teachers, doctors and academics. “High in state bureaucracy with secure income.” Life with any of them would be one long self-sacrificing commitment to social progress.
And then, Baba, how could you, my sober, cost-accounting Parsi-doctor father, have discovered a woman like this Darya D’Aquino whose link he had already opened and whose pulsating sexuality now stared back at him? Why didn’t you suppress her picture? You know my weakness.
Darya, Darya, Darya. The Amu Darya is a river running through the deserts of central Asia, near the Parsi homelands. The Greek name was Oxus. Darya is a Persian word, a subtle signal to those of us in the know. A better name than Oxus, or Pansy.
It’s always the case with Chutt: he breaks away, he’s into the clear, dashing to the goal like Fast Willie Parker — forty, thirty, twenty, ten, five — and the whistle blows and the play is dead. A ten-yard penalty, upfield. The community and its obligations have reeled him back.
He locked the study door. Pages of Darya D’Aquino glossies, movie-stills, tv-promos and modeling shots. Links to dozens of “Where To Find Me.” She was everything his mother had promised, and more, even discounting the possibility of airbrushing.
Magical Mehta was even more than Becka had predicted. Harriet Samuels Mehta was in her early forties, with green eyes and short, blonded hair. On her first day she went to each department manager and discussed his employment history, like a well-prepped schoolteacher on parents’ night. To Chutt she said simply, “Mr. Chutney - wala, I’ll have a special proposal for you and your partner ... Miss Newman, is it?”
Is nothing private? He’d attended occasional bank social gatherings, always alone. None of his colleagues had met Becka. He liked to think no one could even imagine them together. Maybe he’d entered into a permanent relationship without even realizing it. His parents had talked to him about their own marriage: it was five years before I realized I loved him, said Ma. It was after you were born, said Baba. That’s the Indian ideal: marriage first, then love will usually follow. If not, there’s nothing you can do about it.
His parents had been in their early twenties; he was thirty-four. Maybe Becka was It, the end of his quest. Maybe she was his defining moment. But just as he was about to settle in for the long haul, thanks to his parents’ meddling, he’d glimpsed an alternate reality.
Every night he slinked into his study and hit the magic keys. “Hello, welcome to my home page.” No accent. “My name is Darya D’Aquino. People ask me where I was born ...” she smiles, with dimples ...”let’s just say a little while ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” Clips from a low-budget movie where she pole-danced and seduced the hero; more from a Canadian police drama where she gathered forensic evidence. With her hair down, she was sultry, or was it fiery? With her hair in a bun, with glasses, above a microscope, she was Doctor Miss Science. And Chutt asked himself, what am I doing? This is madness. This is a temptation I’m not disposed to accept.
“Now I’m shooting a feature called Planet-X, in French with a little English. If I tried to explain it, it would sound hopelessly complicated. Let’s say it’s a little bit science-fictiony, but I leave it to your imagination what exactly Planet X might be.”
On Ms. Mehta’s second day, she explained to the managers how she’d got her Indian name. Her great-grandfather, Col. Basil Mehta, Indian Army, was an Anglo-Indian who married a Scottish missionary. Their son, her grandfather, married Dolly Samuels, from a Poona Jewish family. She’s ninety-one and still tends her garden in Poona. Her father is a retired electronics engineer at the University of Illinois-Urbana. Her late mother was a German-American from Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“For those of you of Indian origin,” she said, “I should warn you that in my backpacking days I did a doctorate at the Delhi School of Economics, and I understand Hindi, Punjabi and Marathi. So if I were to define myself it would be a well-traveled, Indo-European, Judeo-Christian American.”
On their first confidential meeting, Harriet Mehta told him she had an offer for him. Did he know there were trusts written up by Parsis in the middle of the 19th century that are earning more income today than they did back then? “Those old Parsis had powerful algorithms.”
Chutt responded, “At Wharton I figured out an algorithm for assessing the future value of a stock or a commodity.” He didn’t mention a woman stole it from him. Or that he’d been involved with her. Or that she was, unknown to him, married.
“I know,” said Harriet. “I read it. And to be perfectly frank, I know about the troubles you had with ... what was her name, Ms. Pinto? Water under the bridge; frankly, I admire you for it. Look, I knew three months ago I’d be taking over Section Two. I spent those months reading files. I had some friends at Wharton and I asked them, is this guy for real? They said if you’d stayed in academic ecopotsy and pansy 133 nomics you were Nobel material. The algorithm for valuing stocks, the algorithm for pricing variables — I stayed with them till those sigmas and deltas got too much. So I told myself, we’re not looking over a job applicant here — we’ve already got this guy!”
“I felt smothered in the academic world,” he said.
“Let me put it to you this way. You’re too smart for Section Two.”
I know, I know.
“So what if I were to offer you something in EAT?”
His confusion must have shown.
“Estates and Trusts. Section Four, out in San Francisco. It’s small now, but it’s a work in progress.”
We have a Section Four? “What sort of something?” he asked.
“The whole thing,” she said. “We’re expanding to California. And we see EAT as a special niche.”
He tried to look knowledgeable.
“The first generation Indian immigrants in Silicon Valley aren’t getting any younger. They’ve made tons of money and they’ve invested it conservatively but they want to retire comfortably to India. They want servants and flat screens and gourmet restaurants and travel and maybe a country house and philanthropies. And they want to leave trust funds for their grandchildren. We think EAT is something we haven’t exploited.”
“I’m not a lawyer, Ms. Mehta. I’ve never done estates or trusts.”
“You can hire a lawyer. You can hire a dozen lawyers.”
“How many EATS do we manage in Pittsburgh?”
“Hardly any. Pittsburgh was the Silicon Valley of the 19th century — can you imagine running Carnegie and Westinghouse and Frick for starters? No, you’ll have to relocate out to the Bay,” she said. “It’s beautiful out there, believe me. We want someone of Indian origin, but it can’t look like some weird kind of affirmative action. That’s why I like you for the post. Your resume can stand up to anybody’s. And as the head of a major division with untapped potential, I can recommend a doubling of your salary, before bonus.”
Darya had written him, in answer to his inquiry:
What a pleasant surprise, Mr. Chutneywala. For better or worse, those pictures on my FaceBook page are new, and un-retouched. I know my father is probably as anxious as yours to get me ‘settled.’ I fear my father and I have radically opposed definitions of that word — perhaps you share that fear.
I am a traditional Indian girl, despite appearances. Since my divorce I have not been in any long-term relationship, although I must admit over the past three years I have been auditioning a number of possible suitors. I have not found what they call “a suitable boy.” I do not despair of finding the right man eventually — only maintaining a reasonably high standard of self-respect as I go through the search.
I will be in Toronto towards the end of the month shooting the English-language segments of the film. I am living in a small apartment on the lakeshore near Harbourfront (any taxi-driver will know the building). Looking forward to our little get-together, if you don’t mind sharing our time with a few dozen friends. Darya.
He’d never lied before, but to Becka he’d said, “Something really boring just came up, in Canada of all places. I’ll be back on Monday.” She didn’t ask for a phone number or the name of a hotel. Everything about Becka was compatible, and nothing except ancestry about Darya. He and Becka never went to movies, never even rented them. On television, they only watched the Steelers and Penguins.
He knew nothing of Darya D’Aquino’s world. The big names of her life were unfamiliar to him. She’d written him that “Sutherland” was in her new movie, “Planet-X”, playing an aged 60’s prophet, “a Carl Sagan figure,” but he’d never heard of Sutherland or Sagan. “Shatner” — whoever he was — makes a cameo as an outer space skeptic. Witty, no? She’d asked, and he guessed it must be. “Sound of Music” Chris Plummer plays her boss, an “Ottawa Mandarin”, whatever that was. Where had he been, these past ten years? No one he knew at Wharton or the bank had ever uttered those names, at least not to him. Nothing he’d ever read spoke of them. Was it too late to catch up? With her, he’d only be able to nod, or make a fool of himself.
And yet, in front of her pictures and reading her letters, he was powerless. What man could resist a force like Darya D’Aquino? And why hadn’t she burst his little bubble and written (as he feared, with each new posting), I’m sure you’re a nice man, but you’re very scrawny and funny-looking.
2.
Chutt’s thoughts on the flight to Canada: She’s Parsi. Beautiful, witty, talented, liberated, and Parsi. Just when I’d given up, they exist. I knew they had to be out there. She’s the reason I’ve been waiting. I can’t be blamed.
Toronto, this late March afternoon, was cold but sunny. Spring had already started in Pittsburgh, but salt-pitted old ice crunched underfoot as he exited the terminal and moved down the taxi rank. The drivers appeared Sikh, Caribbean, Chinese, Somali, and Bangla deshi — a variety he’d never experienced in Pittsburgh. Many of the passengers waiting in line were Indian or Chinese, with circulating clots of well-dressed Europeans. From what he’d seen inside the airport, including the customs official who’d stamped his passport and welcomed him to Canada, Toronto was a very large city devoid of white people. The only Canadians he’d heard of were Sidney Crosby, captain of the Penguins, and Mario Lemieux, the team president.
On the long ride from the airport, they passed through a Chinatown, then a second one, and through other ethnic neighborhoods without English signs. He could be any place in the world. He hadn’t spoken a word of his native Gujarati or his high school Marathi and Hindi in at least ten years, but something compelled him, in the neutral air of Toronto, to try some Hindi with his pinkturbaned, bristly-bearded, broad-shouldered Sikh driver. Chutt asked, “I’ve seen a lot of Chinese and Indians here. Any white people?” The driver squinted into the mirror. “Where did you learn an Indian language?” he asked, in Punjabi-accented Hindi. Then he bored deeply into the mirror. “Parsi fella?” he asked, and Chutt pointed to his good Parsi profile and the driver whooped a loud belly laugh. He circled one hand over his head, “Watch out for the buzzards, Brother,” he giggled, still circling his hand added, “in this place, not everybody looks Indian comes from India. Lots from Trinidad. Look like India, live like Africa. White people live way outside,” and he named places, probably suburbs. As the meter clicked past forty-five dollars, the lake, gray with islands in the distance, opened up between the apartment towers.
In the lobby, a Miss Marcia Wu at the concierge desk closed a thick textbook and asked him his business. “I’m here to see Miss D’Aquino,” he said.
“No one by that name here,” said Miss Wu. Thank god. He had the wrong address, and he had no way to find her! Fate had taken the meeting out of his hands. She wouldn’t be in the phone book. He didn’t have his computer. He could turn around and go home and apologize tomorrow.
“Is there another name?” she asked. It was a book on international trade.
“Maybe ... Batli ...”
“Five-oh-two,” she said, with a smile, then riffled through a thick reservation book. “Your name is ... Mr. Chutneywala?”
Outside the door of 502 he heard loud voices, male and female, tears and lamentations in a foreign language. Then in English, she: “You lie!” He: “You bitch,” then a slap.
And so, he waited. The voices died down to indistinguishable mumbles. A woman’s giggle, a man’s broad laughter.
After five minutes he rapped softly on the door. It opened widely, almost immediately, without embarrassment. “Mister Bankerman! Right on schedule!” The unmistakable, just-as-advertised but evenmore- so Darya D’Aquino. “Welcome to my humble guest apartment.” She took him in, up and down, all the details, like an advanced scanning machine, before smiling and shaking his hand.
It was a small apartment, sparsely furnished, on a high floor looking over the lake and a scattering of islands. She was as beautiful as her pictures, if slightly shorter than he’d imagined.
“Very nice place,” he said.
“You think? It isn’t mine. The studio rents it and furnishes it and I don’t even buy the groceries. You want a drink?”
He put up his hand. She stared at his fingers. “You do drink, don’t you?”
“A bit,” he said.
“You don’t mind if I do?”
“Wine?”
A man stood at a bank of windows, back to the door, looking out on the unbroken vista of the lake.
“Al, please be sociable,” she scolded. “It’s Mister Chutneywala, all the way from ... what was it?”
“Pittsburgh.” It sounded absurd, pitiful.
“Red or white?” she asked.
The man turned; the handsomest, the most beautiful man Chutt had ever seen. Indian, but a good size, and maybe Chutt’s age. If this is my rival, he thought, the bitch, the slap, there’s no contest. The resident suitor seemed to shift through a series of personas before settling on something suitable. Then, hand extended, he approached. “Mr. Chutneywala, I hope we didn’t upset you.” They shook hands. “Al Neeling,” he said. “Or Alok Nilingappa, as you prefer.”
“We were rehearsing tomorrow’s lines,” said Darya. “Big scene.”
But tomorrow’s Sunday; they shoot on Sunday? Sunday was going to be our day together. He had return tickets for Sunday night.
“It’s time to take my leave,” said Al. He seemed to wink, or was his face just naturally expressive? “Till tomorrow,” and the two actors kissed, most convincingly.
She ran her fingers through her hair. She pulled her tunic straight. He draped his overcoat over the back of the sofa then went to the window, looking out on the lake. This is a mistake, what am I doing here?
“This must be strange for you,” she called. “Come here.”
And so, of course, he did. She barely came up to his chin. “We have choices. Down here there are some upscale fast food places. There are some great restaurants up in the city proper, any kind of food you could possibly want. Or, we can stay in. The crew fills my fridge every morning, so there’s probably something to heat up.”
“Staying in is fine with me.”
“That’s good. Now we have to get over the awkwardness of first meetings. How do you propose we should do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“You could start by telling me about your girlfriend. I assume you’ve got a girlfriend. Let’s see, she’s obviously an American and probably not a banker. You met her in some public place. If we met, I’m sure we’d get along. She’s a little adventurous, right? Maybe even assertive. You like assertive women, don’t you?”
“I do,” he said. Prior to Becka, Chutt had had three girlfriends, one of them a gold-digging fraud. Becka, as a barmaid, had hit on him. She confessed that she was tired, looking for a good man and security. For years she’d gone through an average of three men a week, at least.
“Those delicate flowers, they’re not for you, are they? But, if I may ask, why have you come all this way from Pittsburgh? Why are you pursuing this little drama, or whatever it is?”
Isn’t it obvious? Why do you make me so uncomfortable?
But she was smiling. “Why not just come out with whatever it is you’re actually thinking?”
“I’m thinking too many things,” he said. “You’re right, there is a girlfriend. She’s much as you described her. She’s not a delicate flower.”
And I wish I were with her tonight.
“Of course.” She waved her hand, as though a crowd of paparazzi were standing by the sofa, “Hey, over here,” she pointed to herself, “boyfriends!”
“Like Mr. Neeling?”
“Alok? No, Al’s just a friend. He hasn’t told me much, but I think he walks ... on the other side of the street. We have a big nude scene tomorrow, or at least I do, with him. It’s easier with a guy who’s only halfway interested. They’re shooting it on Sunday to keep the set half-empty. That doesn’t bother you, does it?”
She had a way of challenging him with every sentence: confess! Confess to your passions, your jealousy, your two-timing. Maybe that’s how actors lived, everything in the open, the opposite of banking and business. “I saw your picture on the Internet, and you answered my letters and there was a tone to them, a personality behind them that made me laugh, and I couldn’t get you out of my mind. That’s why I’m here.”
“That’s very sweet. I’m moved, honestly. Now, here’s my solution to the nagging question of initial awkwardness. You start by putting your hands here, just above my ears. And you bring them down the back of my head, to my neck. Exactly. Then down to my shoulders, and then down the front to the top button, here. And then the second button. And you bend down, yes, you’re getting it, and I stretch upward to meet you. And there’s a bedroom just behind that door. And you’re not really that hungry, are you?”
Around ten o’clock they raided the refrigerator. He wore his underpants; she put on a bathrobe, but didn’t tie it. He still wasn’t hungry, but she found frozen lasagna for two in a takeout aluminum tray with a cardboard top. As he might have guessed, she was endearingly incompetent in the kitchen. They drank wine at the breakfast table while Chutt stared and the lasagna baked. They ate directly off the aluminum. Then came the truncated life-stories: her parents had sent her to Switzerland for high school. She’d learned French, and started acting in French, she married her Canadian and moved to Vancouver and started acting in both English- and French-language television, ironing out her various accents. And then learning a new one, Québec-French, for Planet-X.
Yes, she’d had affairs with many actors — names that should have raised his eyebrows — mostly for “group cohesion” she called it, but when necessary, for employment. “You know what they say: an actor’s face and her body are public property.” Bombay seemed a very long time ago, and very far away. She hadn’t visited home in nearly six years. “Well,” she said, “Pansy Batliwala’s come a long, long way.”
And what about Cyrus Chutneywala? He mentioned Squirrel Hill, his secondary school years in Bombay at Sassoon Trust, his Master’s degree from an IIT and his Wharton mba, his disgrace with Linda Pinto, the banishment to Pittsburgh and four years in the wilderness, then the arrival of Harriet Mehta and a job offer to California. What a pathetic resume. Cyrus Chutneywala was going around in circles.
“If it’s L.A. we might be in business,” she said. “Al loves it.”
“I’m afraid it’s nearer to Silicon Valley. San Francisco, maybe.”
“Vancouver South, we used to call it.”
And then there was the silence of an unfamiliar apartment in a new city, after sex with a stranger. There had been a rush to open up and tell everything, and then nothing was left. They had no small talk, nothing shared. He had the feeling that the next person to speak, and the next thing to be said would be, somehow, unanswerable.
“Are you ready for our little talk, Mr. Chutneywala?” And her face was suddenly older, not flirtatious. “Let me say, first of all, you’re very appealing, does your Becka tell you that enough? You’re so skinny — I like that! You’ve probably never spent thirty seconds pumping iron, have you? And nature didn’t cheat you. I think all the boys I’ve been with must be on steroids or something. They look like the David statue. A little too much like David. Hands too big, business too small.”
David who? he wanted to ask. What kind of business? All of his life he’d known skinny men, men like his father and uncles, skinny men but with round little bowling balls for tummies. It’s an Indian male thing. He hadn’t developed a potbelly yet, but he would. Maybe he’d jog, or take up tennis.
“But what I want to know is, where do you see yourself in five years? Running a bigger bank and making scads of money and still chasing pretty girls? Or retired from banking and running a B&B? Or maybe you’ll be back in India in a huge Bombay high-rise and married to a nice Parsi girl? Or what about Pittsburgh, married to your Becka? I’m not saying we can’t have a good time, it’s just that a lot of shadows are hanging over you. You feel guilty about being here with me. You feel guilty about Parsis — you think you should save the whole race, don’t you? Maybe you saw me as a way of answering the Parsi call and still having a good time. You’re ashamed of Pittsburgh, but you’re afraid of California. We can’t be a couple, with all those shadows. What do you say?”
He poured himself more wine. His mouth was dry, his lips numb. And still she stood before him with her bathrobe half-open. It is an image he will retain for a lifetime. How could any man answer charges from a beautiful woman standing nearly naked two feet away?
“You haven’t said where you see yourself in five years.”
“I know one thing. In five years I won’t be a cutie anymore. I might be a star, or I could be hosting a Vancouver talk show. If it’s going to happen for me, it’s going to happen in the next two years. And I’ll do what I have to do.”
With that, she seemed to wink and begin to move from the kitchen, across the living room. What could he do but follow?
3.
Darya and he were sitting in the atrium, waiting for the director. She was unrecognizable behind giant sunglasses, except as an unspecific celebrity who should be recognized. Across the atrium, Miss Wu was still at her station, eighteen straight hours after Chutt had first entered, if she hadn’t taken an overnight break.
“I want you to know,” she said, “if your father makes a marriageoffer to my father within the next three weeks, I will tell him to accept. We can have the lagan after we wrap the film, either in Bombay or here.”
A full Parsi lagan, like his parents’: he hadn’t thought of the staggering complications. He’d attended many Parsi weddings, including his sister’s with her German groom; four days of ceremonial bowing and scraping and still it hadn’t lasted. Priests, relatives, presents for everyone, religious vows, the proper clothes, inside a temple or in a rented baug. Pittsburgh probably didn’t have a Fire Temple. Toronto, from his superficial observation, probably did. All of his life he’d been terrified by Parsi rituals, especially anything associated with vultures tearing apart the bodies of recently departed.
“There must be a rental hall in Toronto,” he said.
“Plenty,” she said.
In other words: Three weeks from now, I, Cyrus Chutneywala, can be married to the most beautiful woman in the world. Could anything be less ambiguous? It left him with a cold feeling up his leg. In further words: I’m sitting in the greeting-area of a strange hotel/apartment complex in Toronto, waiting for the director and co-star of a movie I’m blocked from watching, where my wife-inwaiting will be screwed for public viewing by the handsomest man in the world.
“Why?” he asked.
The wide, dark glasses stared back.
He clarified, “Why a formal Parsi wedding?”
“Maybe because we’re Parsis?” she said. “I’ve already gone through the justice-of-the-peace thing. I’ve never unpacked my marriage sari. It sits there sadly in my trunk.”
“Why three weeks?”
“Because I really should go celibate till the wedding. Three weeks is about my limit.”
No long engagement? No chaperoned trips to Bombay to meet the relatives? Then he thought of the horror awaiting him in Pittsburgh: how to tell Becka, how to dodge the plates and cutlery. Chutt to himself: think it over. Isn’t she just a little too fine, a little too much, for you? Isn’t she candy, gold or flowers, a Mozart, a Picasso, to any man she meets? And aren’t you suddenly acting just a little smug and superior? See what the rest of the world thinks of me! They think I’m worthy of such a woman! Harriet Singh thinks I’m brilliant, worth a cool half-million before bonuses, or even negotiation. Becka thinks I’m secretly sexy.
Maybe I’m secretly ashamed of Becka. Maybe that’s why we don’t appear together. An unworthy thought crept up from the depths of his worst self: just wait till the boys at the bank get a load of her!
Followed by a second thought: would I have to move to Toronto or whatever, just to keep other men away?
Oh, the torture of it all! And to all those questions he could answer: three weeks. Where’s your algorithm for determining true value now?
At eight o’clock the company van arrived, and from it unpacked Al Neeling first, then a smallish, bearded man in a turtleneck sweater and leather jacket, a young woman and a vaguely familiar older man. Miss Wu ran to open the door. Darya stood and started walking towards them, leaving Chutt on the sofa. The group went through the rituals of sweeping hugs and loud air-kisses, even Miss Wu who seemed tangential to the whole operation.
Darya snapped her fingers, and motioned him to join her. “Every body, this is my friend Cyrus, visiting for the weekend.” Then she introduced them, “This is Jean-Luc Carrier, the director, and his assistant, Marie-Louise Tremblay, and of course you already know Al Neeling and no one in the world needs an introduction to Bill Shatner.”
He did, of course, but didn’t show it. “Bill!” he exclaimed.
“Potsy!” Shatner responded.
Potsy? He let it pass. “You’re the one playing the outer-space skeptic, aren’t you?” Chutt persisted.
“My life ... my acting life ... is one long monument ... to ... outer space skepticism. No exploration ... no space travel. Above all, no aliens.” Perhaps it was his stagy, comic delivery. Everyone laughed.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been keeping up with your life, sir,” said Chutt.
“No. Apparently, not, Potsy. Where did you say you’re from?”
“Pittsburgh.”
“Ah.”
It was a long, drawn-out “ah,” eloquent in its way, maybe a little pitying.
Darya had one last idea. “Cyrus is going back to Pittsburgh today. Potsy, really, Bill,” she giggled. “Let’s get one good picture of all of us together.”
Abdul the van-driver was waved inside from his cigarette-break to handle Darya’s little silver camera. And so the picture was arranged, back on the sofa: Darya and Al taking the middle, flanked by Bill and Marie-Louise, with Chutt and Miss Wu on the two arms and Jean-Luc Carrier, the director, standing behind them all, hands on the shoulders of his principle actors.
“Allons,” he said. “Very long, very important day. Very nice meeting you, Mr. Potsy.”
And then they were standing alone in the spacious atrium, Cyrus Chutneywala and Marcia Wu. “Do you need to change your reservation? I can call your carrier.”
Getting back to Pittsburgh early was a little frightening. Staying an extra hour in Toronto, alone, was positively repulsive. “Let me think about the reservation. What do Canadians mean when they call someone a Potsy?”
She giggled. “It’s not a Canadian thing. Potsy’s our little name for Darya’s boyfriends. Her real name’s Pansy, so anyone who goes with her automatically becomes a Potsy. You know, pots and pans.”
Just when he’d puffed himself up to a full head of anger and resentment, he was spewing off the walls and ceiling like a popped balloon. I can’t even do righteous indignation anymore.
Miss Wu was packing her briefcase. Two books filled it; she had to carry the third. International Trade. Ontario Medical Legislation. Capital Markets. “I’m getting a joint Law and MBA.” She flexed her arm. “It builds muscle.”
In the next few hours, before flying back, Chutt learned to appreciate dim sum on a Sunday morning in a Toronto Chinatown, as selected by Marcia Wu. She’d had a walk-on cameo in the movie, “can’t do a science fiction movie these days without a few Asian faces, right?” He learned that the CN Tower, once the “tallest freestanding structure in the world”, had been shrinking over the decade because of Guangzhou and Dubai, but from the observation deck one could still make out the vague beginnings of a place called Hamilton. The skyscrapers had food courts featuring at least a dozen cuisines. He saw where some of the white people lived, in miles upon miles of large and small brick houses and apartment houses stretching into the distance. The names of streets and suburbs reminded him of England. He learned from Miss Wu — Marcia, Marcie — that he had an appealing, almost boyish way about him, more like a classmate and not a professor and certainly not an established banker. She liked his naiveté, and his questions made her laugh. She said he made her feel like a slightly older, more sophisticated woman.