Objects in the Mirror Read online

  Objects In The Mirror

  By Nicolò Govoni

  Edited By Shayonnita Mallik

  All that is true might not have happened,

  All that has happened need not be true.

  For A.

  NIL

  Nil opens the bathroom door feeling like he’s got it, the crux of life, or at least that of his own. He’s always hated the lies but forever loved the liars.

  He enters the square room, closing the door behind but lingering on for a moment with his hand on the handle. The handle is cool and pleasant to the touch. He stands watching Mel and Ferang—as Mel rolls the joint and Ferang hums some unknown melody leaning against the sink, his back to the large mirror—thinking that these are, perhaps, the people he loves most in the world. Nil lets go of the handle. Inside, the bathroom smells like cinnamon and disinfectant capsules.

  “You have it?” Ferang asks even though he can clearly see the bottle of Belvedere in Nil’s hands. For a moment in front of Ferang’s mocking smile Nil feels short of words. He lifts the vodka bottle and shakes it, attempting a smile but pulling off only half of one, a rather awkward grimace.

  “Come on, birthday boy,” says Ferang, “Bring it in.”

  “It’s not his birthday,” goes Mel, looking up without actually raising her head from the all-important task at hand.

  “You bet it’s not.” Ferang reaches out to Nil, who hands him the bottle.

  “You ready?” asks Nil, his guts twisted.

  “Almost.” Mel licks the rolling paper, her tongue small and fast and deliciously pink.

  Ferang opens the bottle and gives Nil the first sip. Nil refuses but Ferang says it’s his day and that he owes it to himself, and so Nil closes his eyes shut and drinks up. The liquid burns the inside of his cheeks and gurgles down his throat, and he has to force himself not to frown, willing his own brain to like it, and oh he likes it indeed. This stuff is imported, after all.

  Taking the bottle back, Ferang has a long drink and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, his muscles swelling inside the pastel-yellow fabric of the kurta he’s wearing.

  “How much is this stuff for?”

  “Thirty grands,” Nil promptly answers. “I think,” he adds.

  “Dollars?”

  “Rupees.”

  “Wow, I could send the entire orphanage to school for years with that much.”

  “Right,” Mel cuts in, raising the joint before her eyes. “Lighter?”

  “I don’t smoke,” says Ferang, puffing out his chest.

  Nil touches the red pockets of his kurta realizing with a surge of disappointment that he’s forgotten his Dupont lighter in the hotel suite, and so Mel grunts and buries the joint in the palm of her hand and with her other hand she unbuttons the first mother-of-pearl button of her turquoise kurta and dips her fingers inside her bra.

  Nil, his heart hammering, looks away and feels sweat on the palms of his hands and quickly dries them on his clothes but stops when he realizes that the gesture betrays his restlessness and that he should straighten up and look in control, or at least chilled, but when he looks up, all he sees is Mel lighting the joint with a match—her thin lips wrapped around the filter, a lock of her ash-blonde hair crossing her face.

  “Is this what, Rupesh’s stuff?” goes Ferang, but nobody answers.

  Nil looks at Mel. She is enchanting.

  Realizing that Ferang is following his gaze, Nil turns his head and studies the bathroom with showy interest: the freshly-waxed obsidian tiles, the perfectly white cubicles, a vase of fake flowers, the mirror. But then Nil shifts his gaze on her again and he tries to avoid her eyes, staring at the embers throbbing and peeping at him through the smoke-filled air, but in vain. Behind them Mel’s eyes gaze back, two zircons shining from afar.

  Nil claps his hands hard to hide their trembling. A faint, upbeat tune filters in from outside through the closed bathroom door.

  Mel takes the bottle of Belvedere and drinks without swallowing. Instead, she takes another drag and swallows both, which makes her slender throat stretch and quiver but still she doesn’t cough—not even a little.

  The vase in the corner of the room is purple. And the plastic sunflowers coming out of it fill Nil with both joy and dismay. It all looks oh so very pretty, verging on perfection, but also fake, just like everything else around here.

  Nil reaches out for the joint well before she has breathed out the fumes and the tips of his fingers shake in midair under the cheerful gaze of Ferang, but Nil can’t do anything about it, not today, and when Mel looks at him without answering his unspoken request, he says, “Please,” and only then does she stretch out her hand and only then does her ethereal, clean, fair skin

  MEL

  touch his own.

  Mel looks at Nil making sure he’s aware of her gaze as she follows every single one of his movements with her eyes—his index and middle fingers closing in on the joint, the tightening of the nervous muscles of his arm as he bends it, the quivering of his parted lips as they stretch out in anticipation, his eyes as they focus on nothing but the fire as it inches closer to him and away from her.

  Mel takes another sip of that overpriced vodka, the liquid gliding along the walls of her throat like water. The bathroom smells faintly of urine, despite the attempts to conceal it.

  “So,” she says, “how’s the bride?”

  Nil’s eyes dart toward her and flee, landing on the vase of fake flowers on the corner shelf. His jaw clenches. He is quick to take another drag, a long one, his square glasses lit by the flame, his chest expanding as he inhales more smoke than his lungs can tolerate.

  Ferang doesn’t miss an opportunity to laugh a cruel laugh as Nil bends over, coughing. When his gaze falls on the large bathroom mirror, he turns away from it.

  “Easy, easy,” says Ferang, patting Nil on the back. Nil shrinks away from his touch, but when Ferang’s hand leaves him, Mel sees something similar to longing on Nil’s face.

  “Come on now, or you’ll get sick.” Ferang smiles, snapping the joint out of his fingers. “And you sure can’t afford it today!”

  Mel licks her lips, the lingering flavour of smoke reminding her of the smell of the mountains north of here.

  “I have an appointment with him in two days,” she says.

  “The hijra?” asks Nil, still hoarse from his coughing.

  “Gabriel,” corrects Ferang, his voice pregnant with smoke.

  Mel nods, studying Nil’s face to catch his reaction before speaking again. “This time he might give us something concrete to work with. We’re getting close.”

  “I’ve started writing the article,” Nil says, inching towards her. “It’s just a draft for now, to be honest, but it contains everything we know so far: the water, the—”

  “Guys,” interrupts Ferang, his boredom evident.

  “That’s not enough,” Mel shakes her head. “Right now we have nothing. Nothing that can be called journalism, at least. The Mafia is stronger than our Twitter accounts, guys, and we will need to get our hands dirty if we want to take him down. “

  “I—I know, I mean...” Nil meets her eyes, then looks down, at her breasts and then, embarrassed, looks at the mirror. “But I’m positive that with the Hijra on our side and our resources and our desire to—”

  “Guys,” Ferang cuts in again, “we shouldn’t talk about it here.”

  Nil nods glancing at the door, his face lit by an enthusiasm that makes his hands stop shaking. His skin is cocoa, rich, warm and powerfully mysterious. Mel has always loved it better than her own. From beyond the bathroom door, muffled sounds of a classical music orchestra sneak in.

  “So,” Ferang says, his trademark mock-friendly grin flashing, “ho
w’s Jiya?”

  The light leaves Nil’s face.

  “I don’t know,” he says. Then he adds, “It’s not kicking in.” He turns to Mel, but she simply stares back, and so he turns again and gazes at the joint in Ferang’s hands.

  “You should wait for your turn.” Ferang runs a hand in his short, disheveled looking hair, then extends the joint towards Mel. She looks at him for a second without accepting it.

  “Nil?” she offers.

  “Go ahead,” Nil says, feigning nonchalance. “Your turn is your turn.”

  “Sure?” she says, waving Ferang’s hand away.

  An uncertain smile on his lips, Nil nods, but his breath is troubled, and he has to close his eyes shut to regain calm.

  “Nil.” Mel’s voice echoes in the space between them.

  “Bhai,” goes Ferang, in a somewhat condescending manner, “What’s the deal? This is us, you can tell us anything.”

  Ferang pats Nil on the back. Nil opens his eyes.

  “I’m freaking out,” he whispers, looking down at the spotless floor.

  “Come on, bhai,” says Ferang, throwing his head back. “At least have some fun tonight.”

  “We always have fun,” says Mel.

  “Oh, yes,” Ferang replies, “we enjoy ourselves.” Then, handing the joint back to Mel, Ferang says, “Enough. I’ve had enough of this stuff.”

  Looking into his eyes, Mel nods, and he nods back, and she knows she can count on him, that he will do what she needs him to do, at least as long as he gets what he wants from this, and he hands her the joint, and her hand touches

  FERANG

  his.

  Ferang is massaging Nil’s back, making him feel that yes, he’s there, he’s always been by his side. They will make it, thanks to his help, of course, for he’s the mighty Ferang after all.

  “Don’t worry, Nil.” Ferang chuckles. “I mean, I wouldn’t swap places with you today but—” He pauses. “Just kidding, bhai, it’ll all be fine.”

  Nil pulls himself together. He smooths his kurta. “I know.”

  “Smoke some more.” Ferang hints to Mel with a nod of his head. “It’ll do you well.”

  Nil stares at the spot where Mel’s lips just touched the filter—exactly where his own will, too. He finishes the joint with one last, deep suck, and puts it out in the sink.

  Ferang smiles a beautiful smile and pats Nil on his back. Looking up, though, he sees a fourth figure in the mirror—but it’s only a moment. Then the Bear is gone.

  Mel tears what’s left of the joint. She frees the filter from the ash. The filter is streaked with gray and ocher; almost black in spots. Rolling it tight, she brings it to her nose. She presses it to her nostril, lights a match, sets fire to the end of the blackened filter and then she inhales. The bathroom is ripped with the harsh sound of her snorting.

  Silence falls. Mel removes the filter from her nose and rubs her nostril. She drops the match in the sink. A string of smoke rises, twisting around in the air. Mel sniffles. A blood vessel pops in her eye. Silence.

  “We should go back to that overpass.” Nil stutters in a funny way, his eyes on the ground as if searching for something lost on the marble paving.

  “Overpass?” Mel puts the matchbox back between her small tits.

  “The one—the one that... you don’t remember?”

  “Of course we do, old sport,” says Ferang. “The only problem is that we can’t really slip away right now, tonight, don’t you think?”

  “The overpass on the hills, the one out of town?” Mel speaks the way she always does; her words coated in seduction, always stressing for no real reason on the wrong word.

  “Yes,” says Nil. “We had fun, that time.”

  “We always have fun.”

  “Oh, we enjoy.”

  Silence.

  “Guys—” Nil says, clenching his fists, but then he stops.

  “We’ll go,” Mel says. “Promise.”

  Nil’s tendons run visibly through his neck, stretched out like iron wires. Ferang can’t help but rejoice: the restlessness of his friend makes him jolly.

  “I’ll have to make room in my schedule,” Ferang says, “and make sure to have someone replace me at work, but sure, why not?”

  Nil blinks. He keeps his eyes away from Mel, glancing at every object in the bathroom, his gaze shifting, avoiding her, managing to describe a neat circle around her. The vase in the corner looks to him like a metaphor for the Indian culture, economy and mindset—all at once.

  “Ready?” asks Mel, getting up and starting towards the door.

  Nil’s head bolts up: his eyes pools of apprehension. He even raises his brown hand to stop her. He doesn’t touch her, mind you, but the gesture is unusually assertive. Ferang utters no words. He smiles and then he tells himself that he should smile more often; because, let’s be real, it’s one great smile.

  Mel stares back at Nil with measured amazement. “What?” she asks.

  He frowns. “You don’t have it?”

  “Nil,” goes Ferang, barely concealing his smirk.

  “What?” Mel repeats.

  “The—”

  Ferang takes a step toward him. “Nil.”

  “What?” says she once more.

  “You know,” Nil answers. “Blow.”

  A beat.

  Ferang stares in amusement. Fun times.

  Unperturbed, Mel leans back on the sink counter. Slowly, her hand draws a curve along her chest, brushing up against her half-breed skin. Her hand is back inside her bra. Something creaks. Something is extracted from within. Something is gently placed by the sink.

  Nil is frozen. Ferang wonders if he’s even breathing. Mel opens the bag with expert fingers, fishing from her pocket a college ID and a tiny, circular mirror. On the mirror she pours a pile of powder and then she divides it into three strips of coke.

  “Nil, please,” goes Ferang, “don’t do it if you’re not sure.”

  Nil wavers. “I said I would.” His voice is husky now. “And, believe me, I don’t think I can get through today without some help.”

  Ferang nods, satisfied. He looks at Mel. Then, resting his hand on Nil’s shoulder—his white hand a contrast to the dark neck—Ferang pushes him

  NIL

  toward her.

  Nil looks at the three lines of cocaine as they sparkle unnaturally under the soft light of the bathroom. Between them, the small mirror reflects the ceiling, and Mel smells like peaches and Amouage Honor, which is worth one hundred and fifty thousand rupees—but above all like peaches, and Nil feels her gaze on him but he can’t return it, and so he lets the coke claim all his attention for itself, like a black hole gaping in the middle of the bathroom.

  Mel hands him a two thousand rupee note and, rolling it, Nil cannot help but think about the bacteria on it, which in all likelihood, he tells himself, will harm him more than the dope itself. Or maybe not. Standing still, he stares at it, an immaculate scar on the texture of reality.

  Mel takes the rolled up note back from him and slips it into her nostril and she bends and snorts and the sound she makes is sharp and clear and scraping, and it startles Nil, and he wonders what the hell he’s doing here, but when Mel raises her head again and her eyes are big and green and bright, the rest of the world fades—almost like it never existed.

  “Come on now,” Mel says, “everyone does it in the US.” She hands him the bill, putting her arm around his shoulders, running her hand in his hair and grabbing a handful of it. “A place only we know,” she whispers, and she bites his hair, crunching them between her perfect teeth.

  Nil takes the note and bends and snorts a line. His head snaps back and his eyes meet the mirror and the world is dramatically wider and perfectly at hand, and everything all around them turns to nothing—nothing at all.

  “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear,” he says.

  Silence sets in, and it’s a thing of beauty. It’s nothing like what he expected, and there is no tr
ace of expanded perception, or stars and stripes, or Rama himself conquering his soul, none of all that garbage people go on about. It’s not enough, he tells himself. Maybe it was the quantity, maybe he should do another line, but the circular mirror is already far away from him and Mel is offering it to Ferang, who refuses, smirking and saying, “I don’t do drugs.”

  Mel snorts the last line. Nil looks at her, he looks at her in the eye, because now he and she understand each other—they understand each other like never before in the two decades they spent playing together and learning from their parents how to be—

  “I’ve not masturbated in three years, six months and seventeen days,” he hears himself say, before he can stop.

  “Wow, thanks for the information, chutiya,” Ferang replies with simulated indignation.

  Mel cleans the mirror with her finger and runs it on her gums, and then she fixes her hair, but she does so without looking in the mirror, using instead her iPhone’s internal camera, and silence falls again and Nil doesn’t feel any different and this both reassures him and disappoints him deeply.

  Ferang claps his hands. “So, fellas, ready to exchange some secrets?”

  A beat.

  “Jeez, folks, chillout,” he says, chuckling. “You can very well keep your dark pasts to yourselves.”

  “Let’s break something,” goes Nil.

  “Let’s not,” says Mel. “The situation is already tensed enough as it is.”

  “That’s why we have to break something,” says Ferang.

  “Not here,” says Nil, changing his mind.

  Ferang looks at him in disbelief, a hint of amusement in the crease of his eyebrows. “Why?”

  Nil winces. “Because, no—no.”

  “No one will hear anything with this music,” says Ferang pointing to the purple vase with his chin.

  “The vase?” Nil asks.

  “Not the vase,” goes Mel.

  “There is nothing else. Only the vase.”

  Silence.

  “Time to go,” says Mel, touching Nil’s fingers, her stunningly fair skin contrasting with his brown one.