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Anjali didn’t capture any great lines—there were none. The performers enjoyed having the spotlight on them but didn’t deliver anything worth stealing—and then making into her own, of course. But Pearl had perked up a bit and laughed at some of the baudy poems. They left at the intermission.
To go home, they caught the Metro in the center of Belleville. A couple got on the train with them. The man sat on a pull-down seat, and the young woman, in short shorts that revealed the cheeks of her buttocks, straddled him front on, a leg to either side of him. They kissed passionately.
Anjali knew she shouldn’t stare, but all the way to the Chatelet stop, where she would switch trains, she couldn’t help stealing glances at them and thinking how she and Ravi would not be doing this—though in India one would never do this in front of people. There was no written law against it, but if public amorous behavior offended a policeman, he would arrest people, even married people, for so much as a peck on the cheek. She and Ravi would never do this in private, she amended her thought.
She realized she might never find a person to do this with. As the train shook her and rattled along, she thought, I may and I may not, and not knowing is one of the hardest feelings I’ve ever known.
