All Eyes On Her. Poonam Sharma
when my father passed away just after my college graduation, the Raj that I had scarcely remembered had burst back on the scene and was determined to be there for me. It began with the obligatory condolence call, and evolved into a sort of transatlantic e-mail penpal-ship with little more than the hazy image of him, aged seventeen, remaining comfortably etched in my mind. Perhaps the lack of romantic expectation was why we became fast friends. We opened up to each other to the point that when his work as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company brought him back to Los Angeles some three years later, he knew I would be there to receive him at the airport.
I was there, but I wasn’t prepared for the vision that was waiting for me when I pulled up curbside to LAX. Besides a much-needed growth spurt and a new truly fantastic European sense of style, Raj had become the sort of man whose stance made it clear that he knew where he was headed. And the moment he saw me the smile that spread across his face was at once familiar and full of things I wanted to discover.
“Yes, and you are certainly not the proper little girl I remember,” he teased and raised a mischievous eyebrow at me from his massage table two months after we sped away from the airport.
Besides his confidence, his clothes, and the encyclopedia of little British sayings he sprinkled casually throughout our conversations, he had even developed something of an aristocratic accent in all his years overseas. It made me think of horseback riding across the countryside and scoundrels whose flirtatiousness almost compensated for their bad teeth. Looking back on it now, I can see that I didn’t stand a chance.
“You’re not a bit proper either.” I bit my lip, savoring a flashback involving room-service bananas flambé all over my breasts the night before. “I don’t remember playing any of the games we played last night at those family dinner parties.”
“If we had been playing any of those games at those parties back then,” he stated resolutely, “I never would have left for London in the first place.”
So proper yet so naughty. Like I said, I didn’t stand a chance.
“If we had known any of those games back then, our parents would have sent us both away to convents in India,” I mused.
“Agreed. But I’m being serious. Our families know each other. My God, Monica, our fathers used to play thaash together,” he said for emphasis, and then reached to connect us. “We have a lot of history behind us, and yet none of this feels even the least bit awkward to me.”
And I remember watching his fingers inch toward me. That strong, familiar hand lifting and intertwining with my own. Until then I wasn’t sure what I wanted from all of his attention. A friendship? A relationship? Something in between? It wasn’t that I felt nothing, exactly. It wasn’t fire but it wasn’t apathy; and more than familiar, it was comfort. At the very least I could feel how definitely he wanted me to be ready for everything he was saying.
And why shouldn’t I be? I had asked, looking into those earnest eyes. After all, I had known him my whole life. And the last time I had felt so close to anyone had been in college…so why shouldn’t I give in to this?
I squeezed his hand, but remained silent.
“I think we should tell our parents that we’ve been seeing each other,” he said hopefully. “I think they’ll be absolutely thrilled.”
And the thing was, I knew that he was right.
Pushing up my sunglasses and tilting the sun visor to better shield my eyes, I switched off the radio, calculated the time difference to London, grabbed my cell phone and dialed Raj.
No answer.
“Listen, honey, it’s me,” I began. “I, umm…I’m sorry. You have every right to be angry with me. But we need to talk about it. So call me. Today.”
So I’m not the touchy-feely type. I never said I was. Besides, men are supposed to respond better to facts they can use, right? And the fact was that I was ready to talk, so now it was up to him. But he was so thin-skinned sometimes. And the truth was that he was the one who had overreacted. Although I wasn’t going to hold a grudge over it. Because in comparison to the irrational behavior I witnessed every day from my celebrity clients, Raj and I were doing fine. He was just testing my commitment by making a mountain out of a tiny pile of salt. Dust, even. And being a management consultant to major international corporations, he was paid to identify proverbial landmines and sand-traps, even where there weren’t any. So he probably couldn’t help himself.
All right, and in some small part, it could also have been about the peanuts.
“Whatever you fancy, darling,” he had told me over the phone two weeks ago as we both converged toward my apartment in the evening. “Just remember to make sure there’s no peanuts on the pad thai. And I’ll get a bottle of that chardonnay you like. I think you’re running low.”
He was right, I thought, tossing my cell phone aside. And how very like him it was to notice that sort of detail. After picking up the takeout from our usual Thai restaurant in Santa Monica, I made my way home. Sipping on my Thai iced tea, I heaved the door open to find that he had beaten me home. The candles were lit and the table was set. The Maxwell CD reminded us of high school as it played in the background. And the Riedel stemware was dripping with condensation from the chilled chardonnay breathing inside. As usual, he had thought of everything.
He hefted the takeout from my arms, planted a kiss on me and zipped off to the kitchen. I dropped my briefcase, kicked off my shoes and slipped off my suit jacket. I thought about heading into my room to change clothes before we ate, but something about the image of a man in the kitchen never failed to do it for me. So I snuck up behind him, nuzzled into his neck and indulged in the urge to be playful while he was defenseless, since his hands were busy ladling out the food.
“Madam, as difficult as I know it may be in light of my raw animal magnetism, I’ll have to ask you to keep your hands to yourself,” he said, putting down a dish of chicken with basil in order to pry my fingers from his lower abdomen and pull them instead toward his mouth. “Because as of six weeks ago, I’m permanently off the market.”
Since, in his opinion, I had such elegant fingers, Raj always kissed them individually. And to keep it interesting—since he knew how much I detested PDA—he would also lick, nibble and occasionally violate my fingers until I squealed or recoiled in disgust and wiped them on my clothes to make a point. Of course, my protests only encouraged his behavior. Normally it was also his way of teasing me because he knew that I was insecure about my hands. As a child, I used to bite my nails. But on that particular evening, amidst all the nibbling and giggling, he stopped when he reached my ring finger.
“Where is it?” he asked abruptly.
“It’s right here, baby.” I stepped around to face him, motioning at the three-and-a-half carat princess-cut ring dangling from a chain around my neck.
“I thought we talked about this,” he murmured, then switched his focus to the business of the basil chicken.
“Umm…we did talk about it,” I said haltingly, following him to the table. I took a seat and folded my arms across my chest. “But we did not resolve it.”
“So until we resolve it, you’re not going to wear the ring,” he huffed and sat down. “God, Monica.”
“I am wearing it,” I protested, “around my neck.”
“Like a noose.” He folded his arms to mimic mine. “Once again, your commitment to this relationship is astounding.”
“Don’t be melodramatic.” I waved his comment away, knowing before the words were out that I’d made a major mistake.
Because it wasn’t the first time that I had accused him of that, and the hurt registered clearly on his face. Raj had proposed to me during a moonlit stroll along the San Diego waterfront during a weekend getaway. We were sharing an ice cream cone, which he was holding, when he almost tripped over a shoelace. He asked me to hold the cone while he knelt down to tie it,