Page 7 of All Our Evenings

“Tell me she isn’t.”

“What is the big deal, Arjun. It is as if you’ve never met a girl in your life.”

I said nothing else. I ate as fast as I could. I went back into my room.

Priya called after me, “Wear a button-down, but not the ones you wear to your office. Remember that green and black pinstriped one I gave you for your birthday? Wear that. With jeans. It makes you look less old.”

I stopped near the hall closet and slid the toolbox from its shelf. In my room, I shut the door. I went into the bathroom first, got the shaving kit out from under the sink, opened it to make sure it still had the good Gillette in it. Then using the tool kit I unscrewed the window grille as soundlessly as possible. My mother would make up a completely believable excuse; she’d say I had to leave earlier than usual. She was good at it; making excuses. She was even capable of convincing Ruhee to stay until late evening. I knew I could only safely return home at nightfall. It took some effort, but I managed to pry the window grille out of the casing. Dropped it into the garden below.

Walking down the street, I realized that I was still in my jogging clothes, but it didn’t matter, nobody at the Hospital cared what I wore. As long as I brought my wallet with me, the compounder would expect that. The shaving kit rattled as I walked. At the end of my street, before turning left for the bus depot, I stopped and gazed at the Red House on the dead-end street.

In all these years, I haven’t gone any closer. I looked at the rusting gate from here. Made out the caved-in roof of the outhouse, near the end of the property, beyond the woods. The cement stairs still did not have handrails, or even wooden posts for safety, just metal spikes jutting out at odd angles, just like the first time we went there.

The plan became that we’d sneak into the Red House at night, after dinner. Ruhee and Ganesh and me.

“We’d need a torchlight,” Ganesh had said.

He asked if I could bring it. I said I could. He asked if Ruhee could sneak out of home after dinner. Ruhee gave him a look, an intense, glowing expression, then said, “Yes.”

Back then, my window bars were screwed in so lightly that they rattled when it grew windy. That night we first went to the Red House, all I had to do was insert a coin into each of the four screws and turn. I’d lowered the frame into the garden outside much the same way. The night had been cool, the sky blue-black, the papaya tree in the yard smelled of sap, softly acidic, but sweet underneath. The Gurkha was coming up the street, tapping his big stick against the road now and then. I hid in the shadow of the papaya tree and waited for him to pass.

When I arrived outside the Red House, Ganesh was already there. He was sitting on the pavement opposite. I watched him touch his breast pocket in the manner of grown adults. He looked tense, expectant. He was wearing the jeans and the Nike shirt he’d worn the day I’d introduced him to Ruhee. I was wearing my pyjamas and the slippers I reserved to fetch the paper or the milk from the stoop.

“Why hasn’t she come yet?” he asked, when he saw me.

Another twenty minutes later he said, “I don’t think she’s coming.” He stood up, and his manner shifted, the stiffness he carried with him whenever Ruhee was around fell away. Perhaps it fell away from my manner as well.

“What shall we do?” I said, feeling both relieved and disappointed.

“Let’s still go in,” he replied.

We crossed the street. The gate was locked. There were large patches of rust on the gate, and climbing down the other side I scraped my ankle. It was too dark to see, but I could tell by the dampness on my pyjama cuff that my ankle was bleeding.

“Show me,” Ganesh said. He knelt down and lifted the cuff of my pyjama.

He raised my foot and balanced it on his knee. He drew close and pinched the skin close around the gash. He said it looked bad. “Do you want to go home?”

I looked down at him and said that it didn’t hurt. I pulled my foot away at the same time that he let go. He stood up.

We made our way to the staircase. Going up, I was careful not to look down, or be stabbed by the iron stakes.

Arriving on the top floor, it became obvious to me that it was a place Ganesh frequented. It wasn’t a first-time thrill like he’d let on.

Ganesh led me to the edge of the building, to a spot behind the overhead water tank where a section of the parapet wall was missing. He sat down and dangled his feet over the edge of the building.

Very carefully, I followed him. Edging closer to the roof, I copied him, lowering myself onto the ledge next to him, dangling my feet off the roof like him. I could see nothing but darkness below us. It felt tactile, the darkness, like something I could touch, brush my fingers through and sift like flour. In the distance, I could spot the highway lights, the occasional rushing noise of a sand lorry going by. I felt breathless, my heart was pounding. I couldn’t see well, but I could sense Ganesh sitting a few inches away from me. I was so scared I did not even turn to look at him.

After a minute or so passed, I began to relax. The solidity of the overhead tank behind me was reassuring. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could see Ganesh, his tightly curled hair, the distant highway lights reflected in his eyes. He touched that spot in his pocket again, from it he fished out a box of matches and a pack of cigarettes.

My father did not smoke, and I had never been in close proximity to cigarettes. Ganesh slit the top of the gold foil. “I took it from my parents’ room,” he said. The way he said took meant he stole. He lit the cigarette, puckered his lips, inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke out. He handed it to me as though a matter of course. When I didn’t take it, he turned to look at me. “Between these two fingers,” he said, grasping my index and middle finger firmly. I took the cigarette, shifted it between my fingers like he said, put it between my lips and inhaled. The first sensation I felt, was an intense, burning feeling at the back of my throat.

I coughed. Ganesh pulled the cigarette from my hands. “Like this,” he said, taking a puff and holding it in. “Watch me,” he said, letting the white smoke stream out of his lips gently. “Not too much.”

He handed it back to me. This time, I got better at not coughing. The tip of the cigarette grew damper with each turn we took. We passed it back and forth until only the yellow stub remained. I waited to see if Ganesh would bring out another. He didn’t. And I was too shy to ask.

“What does your father do?” he asked.

“Schoolteacher.”