He placed the bike in the rack, slung the helmet over the handlebars, and put the clips in his back pocket. He shook out his trousers and smoothed back what remained of his hair. He walked towards the bar.
‘Hey, Lou,’ he said to the out-of-condition fifty-something bartender, ‘you seen Markie?’
‘Nope, not in yet,’ Lou said. He turned away from the counter and began polishing some glasses.
Vinod sat at the bar counter. ‘The usual, please, Lou.’
The bartender set a glass of the house brew in front of him. Vinod took a long swig, checked out the crowd, if you could call it that. A few folks were staring at the flat-screen TVs hung in a line on the wall, taking in the pre-game rituals. Not that the Blazers were having a good time of it. Some people said this might be the lowest point yet of the team. ‘Sheed had gone and Zebo was here but it didn’t seem to mean much. They weren’t making it to the playoffs. Rumour was that the team would be sold or even moved away.
Maybe that accounted for Lou’s down-turned look. Running a sports bar close to the Rose Garden Arena could not be a bag of laughs just now. Sportland, OR. A good name – if it was 1977. It hadn’t been that for twenty-eight years. He looked at the somewhat dusty shrine to that game in the glass case from across the bar: a Maurice Lucas signed T-shirt, a brass plaque with the signatures of Dr Jack Ramsay’s triumphant team, a basketball signed by Bill Walton, heck, even a photograph of his enormous custom-built bike with the Grateful Dead motif hand-painted on the head tube. In a good mood, Lou could be persuaded to tell the story of how Walton, who rode his bike down to the games, had had it stolen at the victory parade, then asked for it over the PA system, saying, ‘Guys, I need it to get home’, and got it back. Lou had been one of thousands who had stormed the streets like Dead Heads at a concert. Hard to picture him as a Blazer Maniac now.
‘Hey, Vin, hey, Lou,’ Markie said, slapping Vinod on the back. He flopped on the stool next to Vinod’s. Lou nodded without much interest. Markie looked at Vinod’s drink. ‘What’re you having? Yeah, give me the same, would you?’ he said to the bartender. ‘You got anything to eat? I’m starving.’ Lou set another froth-topped pint glass on the counter, then turned away, gestured to the waitress. Markie glanced back at Vinod, shaking his head at the bartender’s unyielding back as if to say ‘What’s up with him?’ He made a ‘no-idea’ face, took another swig, turned back towards the crowd.
The tater tots arrived, brought by Siobhan, waitress and Lou’s daughter. ‘Hey, Pam Anderson, how’s it going?’ Markie said to her, his eyes drawn automatically to her rack. She ignored him, slammed the plate on the counter, and stalked off. He shoved a tater tot in his mouth. ‘So, where are the others?’ he said, glancing around at the crowd.
Vinod shrugged. ‘I guess Jay’s folks are in town or something, so he won’t make it. I don’t know about Casey, didn’t see him at work.’
‘So it’s just the two of us, huh?’ Markie grabbed the food. They headed over with their glasses to a table that had a better view of the game. Markie stared at the television. ‘So, how’s Stephie?’ he said.
‘She’s fine, I guess,’ Vinod said.
Markie glanced at him and back at the television. ‘Like that, huh?’
‘Like that, nothing,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to think about it, okay? Let’s just watch the goddamn game.’
Markie threw up his hands. ‘Hey,’ he said after a while, ‘you wanna hike to Punch Bowl this weekend? The weather’s fantastic.’
‘I’ll let you know,’ Vinod said, staring at Telfair missing a field goal on television. ‘Would you believe that guy?’
‘Come on!’ Markie said, thumping the table. ‘Does he even look like an NBA point guard? Who’re they trying to fool? Disband this team, I say, sell ’em down the river…’
‘Poor little Derek Anderson has gone home with a toothache!’ Someone laughed at the next table. A gust of chuckles went around the bar. Lou looked up at the television nearest to him, shook his head, and disappeared inside somewhere.
Stephie. Just thinking of her filled Vinod with hunger and pain. What did she even see in him, ten years older, balding, Indian, when she could have any young fellow she chose? He turned back, looked at his own reflection in the shiny surface above the bar counter. Well, at least he didn’t look like one of the geeks his profession was home to. Markie, for instance. Who on earth had pioneered that T-shirt, Dockers and sneakers combo popularized by Americans of the type that he worked with, and favoured by his own fashion-challenged tribe? In the homeland, they added lurid pink combs that peeped out of back pockets for the full effect. Somewhere along the road, maybe in late grad school, he had graduated to chinos, loafers and long-sleeved T-shirts that looked vaguely like kurtas. Heck, Steph even thought he was elegant but Madhulika was always buying him scary silk shirts mail ordered from desi websites to wear to those god-awful Indian parties.
Madhulika. Why had he ever gone down that road? A moment of suicidal weakness right after grad school when Lisa had dumped him for a WASPy Manhattan corporate type, and then it was done as done could be. His parents had fixed it up. Smart Indian girl, grew up in Chennai, they said, she’ll suit you, how long are you going to wait? She’s already in the US, besides, finishing up just like you, so no visa problems. Lisa had broken his heart so thoroughly, he had succumbed to what appeared to be the charms of unthinking domesticity. Unthinking had been exactly right. Madhu was fine, a nice girl even, if what you wanted was a permanent adolescent in your life. She ought to have married a guy who liked Indian movie stars and Bollywood music, not that there was anything wrong with that. In return, she disliked his books and his music as un-Indian, probably thought he was pretentious. She stuck with Indian friends, not knowing why he hung out with the guys every once in a while. Stephie thought it cool that he had worked all year before he graduated so he could travel to Rome and Florence in the summer to check out how plump Botticelli’s nudes really were (her words).
Goddammit, he had to stop making these comparisons. They weren’t fair to anyone. Who was he kidding? What was fair in any of this? There was something faintly bathetic about a close-to-middle-age man feeling sorry for himself. Poor little rich Vin, with his two women. Not that he had ever thought of Madhulika as his woman, she had never been that. As for Stephie, she would never ever just be somebody’s woman, she was free in the way only a young American could be. But she had chosen him.
Markie was asking him something. ‘Punch Bowl? I’m not sure, Markie. I never know where I should be weekends. I know where I want to be. Plus, some friend of my wife’s is visiting, she expects me to hang around, I guess.’
‘No, man, let’s go, I said,’ Markie said, not much interested in his angst. ‘This game is hardly worth watching. Anyway, got an early start tomorrow.’