A Woman Like Her Read online

  “Your husband is all alone in his elevator.”

  “Not quite. He works closely with a colleague who takes the night shift. And he has me. I’ve agreed to all his crazy ideas, even the ones that made no sense, I’ve let him have all the freedom he needed, but I’ve always insisted that he sleep next to me.”

  “Did you really leave India to be together?”

  “I don’t know how it is today, but in my day, marriages were arranged, and young people had no say in the matter. But I was never the type to let others decide for me. Deepak was from a different caste, but we loved each other and we were determined to decide our own future. We didn’t realize that would mean leaving Mumbai before Deepak got himself killed by your grandfather or one of your uncles.”

  “My father would never have let something like that happen!”

  “He took the men’s side. I felt terribly betrayed. Of my three brothers, your father was the only one who understood me. He should have taken my side and stood up to our family’s backward, hypocritical ways, but he didn’t do it. But I shouldn’t speak about him to you this way, it’s not right.”

  It was very late. Sanji and Lali said good night, but sleep eluded both of them.

  At 12 5th Avenue, everyone had been asleep for some time, except Mrs. Collins, whose alarm clock had just gone off. The charming older woman who lived in the apartment on the sixth floor put on her dressing gown and went into the living room. She covered her parrot’s cage with a black silk scarf and entered the kitchen. She unbolted the service door and left it ajar. Next, she went into her bathroom, applied blush to her cheeks in front of the mirror, sprayed a little perfume on her neck, and slipped back into bed. She leafed through a magazine, waiting.

  The Day I Left the Hospital

  In the beginning, I used a wooden board, placing it between the bed and the seat of the wheelchair and sliding across it. Maggie taught me this trick. She’d seen it all before, and she had a way of explaining things that didn’t leave you any room to be afraid. She had promised me that if I built up my arms, one day I wouldn’t need the board anymore. All those years of running to develop legs of steel—now that they weren’t there anymore, I had to start from scratch with my arms and shoulders.

  One morning, Dr. Mulder told me there was no need to keep me in the hospital any longer. He seemed sad as he said this, and I wondered if maybe he wanted me to stay. Since I had a bit of a thing for him, and Maggie had slipped me one last painkiller, I suggested we run away together. He laughed and patted my shoulder and said he was proud of me. Then he asked me to get ready, since apparently there were people waiting for me outside. What people? I asked. You’ll see, he replied with a little smile that made me melt.

  I didn’t know what was going on, but at that moment, I had only one idea in my head: to preserve his face and his scent in my memory while I still could. Now there would be another before and after: before and after Dr. Mulder.

  With Dad pushing my wheelchair, I rolled down the hallway. The medical assistants, the nurses, the receptionists, and the residents were all there, cheering, clapping, and congratulating me. It was crazy, because I should have been the one applauding them, thanking them for showing me a kind of compassion I hadn’t known existed, and for giving me the strength to endure the pain. And there were more surprises to come. When I got down to the lobby, I was amazed.

  There were journalists, TV cameras, flashes going off everywhere, a police escort, and a hundred strangers from all over the city congratulating me. I started to cry, overwhelmed by all this attention, and the tears flowed again in the car when I realized they weren’t applauding because I’d almost reached the finish line—they were applauding because I’d survived.

  4

  After her audition, Chloe felt like spending some time on Madison Avenue. Maybe she’d find a dress or a cute top and make her mother happy, or, even better, make herself happy. She looked in the shop windows and browsed through a couple stores but decided not to buy anything. The air was filled with that spirit-lifting springtime scent, the sidewalk was clear, and her audition had gone well—she had every reason to be happy without wasting money. She rolled through Madison Square Park. From north to south, 5th Avenue gradually sloped down, so she could easily return home on her own.

  When she appeared under the awning, Deepak rushed out to open the door for her and escorted her to the elevator.

  “Your office or your apartment?” he asked, his hand on the handle.

  “Home, please.”

  The elevator ascended.

  “I got the job, Deepak. Taping starts next week,” Chloe told him at the second floor.

  “Congratulations. Is it a good job?” he asked at the third.

  “I love the book.”

  “Well, I should start reading it—or, actually, no, I’ll wait and listen to it,” he said at the fourth floor.

  “The man who was in the elevator earlier—is he a client of Mr. Groomlat’s?”

  “I don’t remember every visitor.”

  They passed the sixth floor in silence.

  “You remember, he received the package for the Clercs, and he got me a cab.”

  Deepak pretended to be deep in thought all the way to the eighth floor.

  “I didn’t really notice him. But he did seem courteous and helpful.”

  “I think he was Indian.”

  Ninth floor. Deepak stopped the elevator and opened the gate.

  “It’s my policy never to ask the people who get into my elevator questions, and certainly not about their ethnicity. That would be very inappropriate.”

  He said a quick goodbye to Chloe and returned to the lobby.

  Sam put the receiver back in the cradle apprehensively. His boss wanted to see him right away. Being summoned like this did not bode well. Sam tried to think of what he could have done wrong. But there was no time to reflect—Gerald, his employer’s secretary, was knocking on the glass divider and pointing theatrically at his watch. Sam grabbed a notepad and pencil and trudged down the hallway with leaden feet.

  Mr. Ward was on the phone. He didn’t ask Sam to have a seat. In fact, he turned his back to him, spinning his chair to face the bay window overlooking Washington Square Park. Sam heard him apologize profusely and promise that action would be taken. Mr. Ward hung up the phone and turned to face him.

  “There you are!” he shouted.

  Definitely not a good start, thought Sam.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “No,” said Sam, tapping his head.

  “I suggest you drop the jokes. You’re funny sometimes, but not today.”

  “What’s going on?” Sam asked timidly.

  “Who is this bum that you introduced to one of our most important investors this morning?”

  Sam pieced it together, thinking suddenly of Sanji’s dazed face and disheveled appearance when he’d shown up late to their meeting.

  “It’s a very promising project with significant growth potential.”

  “A dating site in India? What’s next? A strip club in Bangladesh?”

  “It’s not what you think,” mumbled Sam.

  “You’re right, it’s not what I think, it’s what our client thinks. ‘I’m one of the biggest investors in your firm, and I have always been convinced that we share certain values, and I don’t mean just financial values, but ethical values,’ blah, blah, blah. I’ll spare you the unpleasant details and just share his parting words with you: ‘I don’t want to see this clown again!’ This after a fifteen-minute conversation! I hope you understand my friend’s position.”

  “It’s extremely clear,” Sam said stoically.

  “So scrap the project!” ordered Mr. Ward, dismissing him with a finger pointed at the door.

  Sam left the office and bumped right into Gerald, who looked jubilant.

  “Someone just got in trouble,” he sneered.

  “Classy. If you spent a little more on yo
ur clothes, you might even look it.”

  “A true gentleman’s worth is on the inside,” Gerald snapped.

  “Well, yours is very deep down, my friend.”

  Gerald was fuming, but Sam didn’t care. He had put up with too much flak from his boss for too long. Every morning, he came to work full of energy and enthusiasm. By the end of the day, he was full of frustration and anger. He’d had enough. He recalled an Indian proverb that Sanji used to repeat when they were at Oxford: “It’s incredible how many straws can pile up on a camel’s back without breaking it.”

  “Was that really a proverb? Or did he just read it in a book somewhere?” Sam muttered as Gerald stared at him wondering what on earth he was talking about.

  Now the camel’s back was actually at the breaking point, and Sam decided he had nothing to lose but his pride. He abruptly pushed Gerald out of the way and burst back into Mr. Ward’s office.

  “Just one question: When your friend invests his money in a weapons dealer, or when, right after an election, he puts a lot of cash into a chemical company that’s known to be one of the biggest polluters on the planet, does he worry about the morality of his actions?”

  Sam plopped into the chair across from his stunned boss.

  “Are you familiar with yin and yang? The flipping of a coin to guess heads or tails? You’ll see where I’m going with this. Did you know that the two clowns who invented the cell phone in your hand started their research in a garage, scavenging defective parts from the trash cans at Lockheed? Were they garbagemen or geniuses? Let me tell you a few things about the person you called a bum—and some bums are very nice people, by the way. Sanji comes from a family that has more money than this investment firm is worth. Their house is like a palace. His father died when he was twelve. His uncles raised him. When he turned eighteen, they sent him to Oxford, and that’s where we met. When he returned to India, Sanji discovered two things. The first was in his father’s will. Because of his uncles’ scheming, he couldn’t touch his inheritance until he turned thirty. His inheritance is a hotel complex in the middle of Mumbai. The second thing Sanji discovered, or suddenly understood, was that his uncles had been cruel to him during his adolescence with one goal in mind: keeping him from managing the palace that they had taken over. And they were determined to extend their control over him into his adulthood. Basically, they tried to run his life as they saw fit. When he got back from Oxford, Sanji could have just kept quiet for a few more years and waited to get his hands on his fortune, but he told his uncles to get lost, and went his own way. You might be thinking that he was just flexing his muscles without any real consequences, but when you don’t have a penny to your name and you’re out on the street, and the street is in Mumbai, the consequences are very real. You weren’t exactly wrong when you called him a bum, because he spent many nights sleeping without a roof over his head. But my friend is a fighter. He found odd jobs, got a place to live, and never let go of his incredible thirst for knowledge. He’s curious about everything, and afraid of nothing. I think that’s what I admire most about him. When he was a bartender, he ran into an old friend from school. This friend had a crazy idea, Sanji developed it, and this idea turned into a business—a very successful business. So now the question is quite simple. How many guys like your big client walked right past that famous garage where two young hippie-looking guys were playing around with defective parts, and today regret that they didn’t stop? Sanji has his shares in the Mumbai Palace Hotel, and if he used them as security, he wouldn’t even need our services. But he doesn’t want to do anything to upset his uncles. If I’d gone through one-tenth of what they put him through, I would happily tell those uncles to go jump off a bridge. But not Sanji. Apparently, in India, respecting one’s elders is still important. I can’t help but think this code of honor is criminally masochistic. Actually, it kind of reminds me of my relationship with you for all these years. So now let’s put our cards on the table. Do you want to go into that garage or not? If the answer is no, then I’ll clean out my desk today.”

  Mr. Ward scrutinized Sam deliberately and curiously. Then he spun his chair toward the bay window, turning his back on his employee.

  “Bring me the project, I’ll take another look at it.”

  “There’s no need, that’s what you pay me for.”

  “You believe in this enough to stake your job on it? You know, if this ends badly, your career will be over, and not just here.”

  “And if it ends really well and is your gateway into the Indian market, I expect you’ll find some way to show your gratitude.”

  Mr. Ward turned his chair halfway around and squinted at Sam.

  “Get out of here before I change my mind.”

  Sam told Sanji he had had a promising conversation with his boss, without getting into specifics. When someone like Mr. Ward threw his support behind a project, it was worth celebrating.

  “Could you arrive on time for once, and dress normally?” begged Sam.

  “Ten minutes doesn’t really count as being late.”

  “Yesterday it was two hours!”

  “Okay, but that was for a good reason. I had to help a woman get to a very important appointment.”

  “Our appointment was important! Do I know this woman?”

  “No. I don’t either, actually.”

  Sam looked at him, stunned.

  “That just proves it, you’re a total lunatic!”

  “If you had seen her, you wouldn’t say that,” Sanji replied.

  “What’s she like?”

  Sanji left without answering.

  In front of the building where his uncle worked, he lifted his head toward the ninth-floor windows and hoped that Chloe had gotten the role. At Union Square, in the midst of a blaring symphony of car horns, he gave up looking for a cab and headed down into the subway.

  He got out in Spanish Harlem. Here, there were no stone apartment buildings, no awnings over the sidewalk, and certainly no doormen in uniform. Plain red-or white-brick buildings stood alongside large housing projects. The smells, the colors, the worn façades, the deep potholes, the trash littering the sidewalk, the many different languages being spoken, it was a brilliant scene reminiscent of the streets he knew as a youth.

  Back at the apartment, Sanji found Lali sitting on the sofa in the living room, slouched over her needlepoint and screwing up her face to try to keep her glasses from slipping down her nose, while Deepak was setting the table in the kitchen.

  “Will you be eating with us?” Deepak asked by way of greeting.

  “How about I take you out to dinner?”

  “But it’s not Thursday, last I checked,” Deepak replied.

  “What a nice idea,” Lali interjected. “Maybe we can try someplace new?” she added, shooting her husband a look.

  “I’d love to eat some typical American food,” Sanji suggested.

  Deepak sighed deeply and put the plates back in the sideboard. He grabbed his jacket from the coatrack and waited. Lali put down her needlepoint and winked at her nephew.

  “It’s three blocks from here,” Deepak announced as they set off down the street.

  At the intersection, Lali crossed the street as the light was just turning red. Deepak stayed back, grabbing his nephew by the collar.

  “Did everything go okay with Miss Chloe?”

  “I got her a cab. Why?”

  “No reason … It’s just that she was asking questions about you.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “How is that none of my business?”

  “My elevator is a confessional—everything that happens there is confidential.”

  The light turned green, and Deepak walked off as if nothing had happened. A bit later, he stopped before the colorful window of Camaradas.

  “In this neighborhood, the local cuisine is Puerto Rican,” he said as he pushed open the door.

  At 12 5th Avenue, Mr. Rivera put hi
s radio under the desk. He turned the dial to a hockey game and began reading a detective novel. The night was his.

  The Bronsteins had gotten home a while ago.

  On the eighth floor, the Williamses had ordered in: Chinese for Mr. Williams, who was working on a news story in his office, and Italian for Mrs. Williams, who was sketching in hers. Mr. Rivera couldn’t help but notice that their xenophobia didn’t prevent them from enjoying foreign cuisine.

  As the elevator passed the seventh floor, the sound of the Clercs’ TV could be heard. They turned up the volume whenever they made love.

  The Hayakawas had left the city in early spring to go to their house in Carmel, and would not be back until the fall.

  Mr. Morrison, the owner of the apartment on the fourth floor, was at the opera or the theater, like he was every night. Every night, he would also have dinner at Le Bilboquet and come home smashed around eleven.

  The Zeldoffs never went out, except to go to church. Mrs. Zeldoff was reading a book about the history of the Mormons out loud, and Mr. Zeldoff was listening in devout boredom.

  As for Mr. Groomlat, he had left his office ages ago. He didn’t usually run into the other occupants, except during the first half of April when he worked late into the night, his “peak season,” as he called it, and in December, when he was angling for a holiday bonus.

  At eleven, Mr. Rivera put down his detective novel, having developed a pretty good idea of who the guilty party was, and helped Mr. Morrison get home, which was no easy task, considering his inebriated state. He had to help him into his room, get him into bed, and take off his shoes.

  At midnight, Mr. Rivera bolted the door of the building, slipped his work phone into his pocket (this way the residents could reach him at any time), and went up the service stairs. He arrived breathless at the sixth floor, wiped his brow, and gently pushed open the service door, which was ajar.

  Mrs. Collins was waiting for him in the kitchen, a glass of Bordeaux in her hand.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I bet you didn’t have time for dinner.”

  “I grabbed a sandwich before leaving, but I wouldn’t say no to a glass of water,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “Those stairs will be the death of me.”