Chapter 4
Chance
Danni’s been away for forty-five minutes. I’ve gone around the dining room at least three times studying faces and eavesdropping on conversations. How much longer does she need to resolve her intestinal “stuff?”
I’m starting to wonder if there’s a medical emergency. Danni might be lying face down in a bathroom exhausted, dehydrated with renal failure, but I can’t go peeking into all the ladies’ rooms. I’ll check each deck to see if she’s puking over a railing. If not, I’ll enlist help.
I wad up the drink coaster that I folded into an origami swan and leave a twenty-dollar tip, then I nod to the bass player and head out of the dining room.
Danni isn’t on the first or second decks. I finally find her at the railing on the third deck overlooking the paddlewheel. She doesn’t look pale, emaciated, or dehydrated. On the contrary, her cheeks are light pink, her skin is smooth and flawless, and her hair looks better than it did when we met. Maybe it’s the way the wind is parting her bangs and blowing her hair around, occasionally revealing her soft collarbones.
When we were on the dance floor, time seemed to stop, her breaths felt like my breaths, and her lips became the focus of my existence. That was...
Weird.
I slide up beside her and rest my forearms on the railing. “Feeling better?”
“Oh, hi. Yeah.”
We watch the boat’s paddlewheel churn through water, sharing awkward silence until Danni asks, “What would happen if someone fell?”
“Here?”
“Yeah. On the paddlewheel. Would they get chopped up?”
I squint at Danni’s cheek. Her eyes are fixed on that paddlewheel, imagining a body being sliced to shreds, I guess. “What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know. Intrusive thoughts. I sometimes imagine worst-case scenarios. My mom used to say it keeps me safe.”
“Kind of sounds like a nightmare in your own head.”
Danni grabs the top rail and leans back, supporting her weight with her tight grip. “You get used to it. I just squeeze my eyes shut and make myself think of something else.”
“Think about that bird.” I point to a seagull coasting on air currents next to the boat.
Danni watches the bird for a moment before pulling herself back to standing and squeezing her eyes shut. “Do you like Charleston?”
“I love it.”
“Me too.”
A brief silence follows. Danni opens her eyes. The seagull gives up its pursuit and veers off into calmer air.
“Good luck catching someone in your net,” Danni says. “In the future, I wouldn’t call your dates racist, though. Or stare at any hot blondes. Or come across all arrogant.”
I guess Danni doesn’t understand the difference between arrogant and self-assured. Another reason we don’t mesh. Also, who is she to question my scientific methods? My plan is outlined and tracked. I have data for my data. This is going to work. It just didn’t work tonight.
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” I say.
Danni levels her eyes at me, holds my stare beneath a heavily furrowed brow. “Do whatever it takes to what?”
I shrug. Danni and I didn’t hit it off. She doesn’t need to know my life story. She doesn’t deserve to know it. “You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What do you think the point of dating is?”
She rolls her eyes. “Nice. I was just offering some friendly advice.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Sure. Okay. You do you.”
“I will.”
“Well, it was nice not getting along with you.”
She shoves out her hand. I grab it and give it a firm shake.
“You want to go up top and watch the boat dock?” I ask.
“No. I’m calling it a night. This boat is big enough for us to retreat to our separate corners.”
“If that’s what you want.”
She glares at me.
A cranky woman is not the woman for me. I head up to the top deck by myself, grab a chair and pull it over to the starboard side. Streetlights, colorful signs, and stringed lights bathe the city in an inviting glow.
When we near the wharf, I peer down while the sailors hop onto land with their thick ropes and draw us to the dock. In a flurry of motion, they secure the gangway and prepare the boat for disembarkation. Moments later passengers stream off, couples hand in hand, children racing down the ramp to the admonitions of their parents.
I join the flow and descend the stairs, my eye out for Danni. I don’t know why. She ended our date. If she hadn’t, I would have, the two of us going our separate ways for good. Probably.
I can’t write her off yet. I need to rate our date and consider the numbers logically. I have a hunch they’re not good, but she might rank high enough for a callback.
When I’m back on land, I head to my car. I found a decent parking spot on a side street not far from the Carolina Excursion’s dock. Streetlights guide my way, and soon I’m headed to my apartment.
During the drive, my brain replays the moment on the dance floor when my body lit up like the Charleston skyline and a burst of heat nearly incinerated me from head to toe. That’s never happened before. I don’t know what to think. I guess I’ll just score our date and trust the numbers.
At my apartment, I hop out of my car and slam the door behind me. Another car door slams. I think nothing of it. I think nothing of the dark form crossing the parking lot, heading up the sidewalk. Until she turns.
Her expression is downright evil. I stop in my tracks.
“Are you stalking me?” Danni hisses.
“No.”
“Then why are you following me?”
“Why are you following me ?”
“ You’re walking behind me , genius.“ She sounds absolutely snake-like.
“My I.Q. is 135,” I answer.
“I didn’t ask.”
“What’s yours?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m going home.”
Danni squints at me and then looks at our apartment building. Her intelligence quotient must be pretty low if she hasn’t figured it out yet.
“You live here?” she asks with a scowl.
Bingo. “Apartment 242.”
Her shoulders rise as her muscles tense. I’m not happy about this either, but I’m not going to make a scene. I walk past her and climb the stairs. She runs up behind me like it’s a race and hits the landing first. She turns right. I turn left.
There’s a Post-it on my door. I peel it off and look over my shoulder as Danni ducks into her apartment. Apartment 240.
My mom says there’s no such thing as chance. According to her, the universe gets its way whether we like it or not. This, though. Me living across from her . It’s just a fluke. A blip in the universe. Nothing significant about it whatsoever.
I push through my front door and flip on my lights, head to the kitchen and set the Post-it on the island before grabbing a Coke. The caffeine won’t bother me. I’ll still be up for a bit.
Who’s leaving messages on my front door?
I slide onto the bar stool and grab the note. Anger burns in my belly the longer I read. My eyes pause on the last few sentences.
… please stop leaving your clothes on the railings to dry. This is America. We have dryers for that.
When I called her racist, I was just ribbing her, seeing if she could stand up to a little teasing. I didn’t think she was actually racist.
Wow. Just wow.
I wad up the note and toss it into the trash, gulp the rest of my Coke, grab another, and head into my living room where I settle into my gaming chair.
My apartment is basic, an adjoining living room and kitchen, a short hallway leading to my bedroom and a full bath. Nothing like my parents’ home in Bengaluru, which had polished stone floors, glossy counters, multiple bedrooms—more than our family of four needed—and an enclosed garden with an outdoor kitchen and fountain.
When I came to America, I stepped down, but I stepped into myself. For the first time in my life, I’m on my own, playing by my rules, leaving trash around when I please, making decisions without my mom insisting she knows what’s best for me.
The point: small and plain as it may be, my apartment is mine. As such, I furnished it to serve me, with an 85-inch Samsung flatscreen TV across from a leather couch, and a three-monitor gaming computer in the corner, LED lights everywhere, various controllers, three Bluetooth keyboards to suit my moods. A PlayStation and an Xbox at the ready. I’m hooked up.
Tonight took it out of me, though. I’m too tired to fire up Call of Duty. Plus, I need to rate my date with Danni. Maybe I should add a column called “Racist” and make it an automatic minus twenty.
The first time you meet eyes with your soulmate, you feel it. You know it. But it’s not just physical. There’s a mental component. Your brain instantly knows you found the one. How do I know this? Because my sister experienced both the first time she saw Erish. That’s proof enough for me.
Danni didn’t give me an instant zing and my brain didn’t say, “She’s the one.” Mostly because she dug right in with the attitude. Also because she has no sense of humor. I can’t spend the rest of my life with a woman who doesn’t know how to laugh.
I lean back in my chair, thread my fingers through my hair, stare at the ceiling, recall the moment with Danni when my body lit up like a fireball. What column should I file that under?
Maybe it deserves a new column.
I click on my LEDs bathing my room in a blue glow, tap my mouse, and pull up my spreadsheet titled JustInCase.xlsx. Just in case my IT contract runs out before I feel a zing. Just in case my sister was wrong and it takes two or three dates for me to hear, “She’s the one.”
Finding your soulmate isn’t an exact science, but the process can be quantified to speed things along. First, opposites do not attract. I don’t care what Hollywood movies say. Introverts and extroverts don’t belong together. And just like that, my dating pool shrinks by half. Hello introverts. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Next, split the introverts into age groups. I need someone in her mid-twenties, like me. See? The dating pool just became a dating puddle.
Next, consider Myers-Briggs, the personality test my contracting company made me take for my “professional development.” Judging does not go with Perceiving. Thinking does not go with Feeling. You get where I’m going here. When the puddle is reduced to a handful of INTJs, the odds of finding my soulmate are looking up.
Wandering around the city trying to find her would take too long. Me. One guy. With only two legs. On any given Saturday night, I can only comb through a few bars. I’m one guy limited by the laws of linear time and three-dimensional space. But the internet is a multiverse that allows me to be several places at once. All I have to do is create accounts on multiple dating apps and boom, I’m everywhere. My odds of finding my soulmate are now very, very good. That’s science in action.
Going on so many dates can get tricky. I need a way to track where I’ve been, where I’m going. Suddenly JustInCase.xslx seems less sketchy, more...practical.
No one sees this spreadsheet but me. No one. Ever .
Danni Grasso already has a row, but her columns are empty and waiting. Each attribute gets a number between one and ten.
Age: 10 ( We’re both twenty-five. That works. )
Appearance: 7 (Minus 3 points for the evil snake-face she made a few minutes ago.)
Personality: 6 (Some spunk is good. All spunk, no softness? Nope.)
Sense of Humor: 1 (Totally didn’t get my jokes.)
Vocation: 2 (Coming home in steel-toed boots and a hard hat? Nah.)
Grooming: 10 (No further comment.)
Smell: 10 (Not sure what it was? Lavender? Mixed with roses?)
Conversation Skills: 6 (Those back and forths were kinda fun if I’m being honest. Which I am. Because science.)
I take a moment to add my Danni-specific columns to the spreadsheet.
Racist: -20 (Self-explanatory.)
Physical Response: 10 (Credit where credit is due.)
That gives Danni 32 points, putting her below Tarin Bileski, the dental hygienist with a room-sized Squishmallow collection and four guinea pigs, and Darcy Highdorn, the part-time birthday party clown and self-proclaimed expert on twentieth-century serial killers. (That date was bad. So bad.)
Callbacks require 60 points or above. As I expected, Danni and I have seen the first and last of each other. Unless we run into each other in the parking lot or she smacks another rude Post-it note to my door.
My Zoom app pings. I take a look at the clock. Right on time.
I pull up the window and accept the call. Mom and Dad appear, ready for our customary Saturday night chat. Sunday morning for them.
Mom’s gaze is intense and alert. Dad looks like he woke up five minutes ago, his white cotton pajamas still wrinkled from sleep and tufts of his salt and pepper hair pointing in every direction.
Dad works hard at BTI Capital, the investment banking firm my grandfather founded in Bengaluru with two other partners. His workweeks are long, sometimes spilling into Saturday and Sunday. He probably stayed up late last night working for a client.
They’re sitting at the dining table, the glass sliding doors behind them giving a wide view of the garden and central fountain.
Mom leans forward and squints into the camera. “We can hardly see you, Adi.”
I flip on the desk lamp and angle it toward my face. “Better?”
“What’s wrong? You look gray.”
I click off my LEDs.
She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. “That’s better. Have you been eating fast food?” Mom’s a health nut. That’s how she and Dad met, at a raw foods retreat in northern California, where she’s from. “How is your digestion?” There’s a sharper edge to her voice tonight, like something is grinding at her psyche. I’m sure I’ll find out what it is.
“My stomach is fine,” I say.
“No, it isn’t. I can see it in your eyes. You’re constipated. Are you drinking water?”
I push my Coke Zero out of the frame. “Uh huh.”
Next to Mom, Dad looks half asleep, his hooded eyelids weighing around ten pounds each. With effort, he lifts his eyes and looks past the camera lens. “Drink your water, Adi.”
“I am.”
Mom scoots to the edge of her chair. “You’re eating too many trans fats. When you get home, I’m fixing you spirulina smoothies to detox your liver.”
“It was my LEDs, Mom.”
“You need to be here.”
“I like it here,” I say.
Dadi appears on the screen, bent over, peering at me. I hear the screech of her chair as she pulls it over the stone tiles. She sits between Mom and Dad forcing them to scoot to the sides.
“That is the problem,” Dadi says. She’s dressed in a silk navy saree with gold detailing. Her hair is tied in a bun with a few wispy hairs already coming loose in front. “Rishi, tell him that is the problem.”
“Why is it a problem?” I ask.
“Oh nothing,” Dadi replies. “Your father is just over here making sure you have a happy future. It’s no big deal whatsoever. You don’t need to worry about it.”
Dadi lives in the guest house behind my mom and dad’s. Since my family moved to India, she’s been active in my life, and my mom–to her credit–has always been respectful of Dadi’s traditions. Dadi wasn’t happy when I came over here. Not in the slightest. If it were up to her, I’d already be married and working for Dad.
I lean back in my chair. “I’m not worried about it,” I say lightheartedly, trying to diffuse the tension on Mom and Dadi’s faces.
“Well, you should be.” Dadi’s voice raises a few notches. “Navya’s parents have called it off. After all the gifts and the dinners and the kind exchanges.” She nudges Dad who lifts his head and blinks.
Navya and I went to school together. She’s a hard worker in the kitchen (so I’ve been told), she comes from money, and Dadi has determined she’s solid, healthy stock.
The only time Navya and I spoke was when our families gathered over her mother’s cooking, and even then, our conversations were sparse. Our parents did most of the talking. Did our families get along? Did we have similar interests? Were our child-rearing philosophies the same?
Dadi is convinced Navya is my perfect match. Privately, I told Dad I want a love match, and he agreed to give me a year to find one. That was eight months ago.
Not that arranged marriages don’t work. Statistically they do. But there’s no zing with Navya. She’s pretty and kind, but she isn’t my soulmate.
“What do you suppose we do, Jyotiraditya?” Dadi asks. “How are we going to win Navya and her family back?”
“There’s nothing I can do about it. You’re there. I’m here.”
“Exactly. That is the problem.” Dadi turns to my dad again. “Tell him that is the problem.”
Dad nods and flicks his hand.
“They think you’re being corrupted by America,” Mom says.
“Navya’s parents?”
“Navya also,” Dadi says.
“How am I being corrupted?”
Dadi leans forward. “I’ve heard about all the gun-toting, and the Hollywood movies, and the booty culture.” Exasperation causes her volume to rise further.
“Booty culture?”
“Booty calls, and Brazilian booty lifts, and Kim Kardassian bootylicious badonkadunk.”
“It’s badonka- donk .”
“Dink, donk, dunk. I don’t care. Look at me. I’m Kim Kardassian, my booty shake brings all the boys to the yard.”
“It’s Kar- dash -ian,“ I say. “And how do you know that song?”
“I know more than you think,” Dadi says, folding her arms.
“I’m not being corrupted, Dadi.”
“They do all kinds of things in the streets over there. Naked people walking around waving flags. Women pulling up their tops for beads. Men wearing lipstick and women shaving their heads.”
“You seem rather informed about a country you don’t like,” I point out.
“I never said I didn’t like America. I just think you belong here, Adi, with your family and a wife and a baby or two. Not three. Right, Rishi?”
“Definitely no more than two,” Dad says. He leans forward and points his forehead at the camera.
“She meant ,“ Mom corrects, “our son needs to be here .”
“Oh. Yes,” Dad says. “You will come home, study finance, and hire on at the company.”
“I work in IT.”
“For now,” he adds. “You know what we decided. You come home. We pay for you to study finance. IT is just for fun. For kicks. To travel the world. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Why are you rocking back and forth,” Mom asks. “Is your stomach cramping?”
I didn’t realize I was rocking. I stop and grab my can of Coke, but I don’t lift it to my lips. Fatigue drops onto my head like a bowling ball. “I’m just tired.”
“It’s only ten o’clock,” Dadi says, “Your appa was up until three o’clock last night making money for the family. Good thing he doesn’t eat French fries and Big Macs, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to work so hard.”
“Yeah. Good thing.”
“You go to sleep while we figure out how to convince Navya’s parents that you aren’t giving your love away for free to thousands of American women.”
“I’d never do that, Dadi.”
Dadi searches my face and then her expression softens. “I know. You’re a good boy, Adi. Don’t worry about Navya. We’ll figure it out.”
We chat for ten more minutes and then end the call. I take a final swig of Coke, push myself out of my chair, and toss the empty can in the trash on my way to the bathroom. After washing up for bed, I retreat to my bedroom and collapse onto the mattress.
The moving box in the corner looms large in my mind. I sit up and ponder it for a moment before stepping over and carefully opening the top. Wrapped inside are my mandir and murtis, the necessary components of my worship rituals.
A white shelf unit from Ikea sits next to my closet. I drag it into the living room and set it against the wall by my gaming desk, and then I cover it with the brightly colored runner Mom made from metallic fabric and thread.
The weight of the box challenges my tired muscles as I carry it from the bedroom to the living room. I set it on the couch and carefully remove the ornate, handcrafted mandir. The murtis—one of Krishna and one of Shiva—fit comfortably inside against the floral engraving. Diyas and incense complete the shrine.
Dadi would be satisfied.