Veil Page 3

  He raised his diminutive cup. “My glass is half-full,” he said. “How about yours?”

  Zia stared at her coffee, wishing she could read the shimmer of light on its dark surface like a psychic could tea leaves. Galang was going to flip out when she told him about this.

  “For your sake, I hope your reservoirs are too,” she said.

  “Ahh,” said Tommy, pushing back a floppy lock of blond hair. “Now we get to it. Oil money too dirty for you? You do the Lord’s work, no ill-gotten alms accepted? That’s how this goes, right?”

  “Tommy,” Zia kept her voice as gentle as she could. “Why are you here, really?” She leaned forward. “And don’t try to sell me the same bollocks you did Jason.”

  He opened his mouth. Closed it. Shut his eyes for a moment during which Zia suddenly noticed the crow’s feet that had formed at their corners, the streaks of silver in the blond. The old Tommy hadn’t known how to rein himself in, hadn’t wanted to know.

  When he spoke his voice was rough. “Look, I just—” He stopped, started again. “This reunion. I know it’s silly, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’ve been thinking about us a lot. And that’s even sillier—laughable, even. But I— As the date got closer, I just couldn’t get it out of my head. I was such a total ass back then. To you. To everyone. And I just couldn’t bear the thought of sipping cocktails and pretending to be interested in all the bullshit catch-up. And I know we would never have a chance to really talk, that you wouldn’t want to anyway. So I just figured—”

  “That you’d lie to my boss to trick me into meeting you here?”

  “It wasn’t a lie,” he said. “Honestly, I’d love to support your work. And I have the resources to do so in a big way. I wasn’t kidding about being impressed. But I would never do it without your blessing. This conversation isn’t for me to vet you. It’s the reverse.”

  Zia thought of Himmat, what it would mean to him if they could increase their headcount. They could expand the test program in West Bengal, lower the threshold for loan forgiveness. Jason would be able to make his fundraising quota, at least until the whole dance started again next year. Zia would… Zia would be able to keep doing what she’d been doing—pretending to scratch an itch when she was really picking a scab.

  “You want to know the real reason I’m here,” said Tommy. “Well, I don’t know if I realized it until right now, but the reason I’m here is to apologize.” He stood, knocked on the tabletop. “My offer stands. Good to see you, León. Really. Have fun tonight.”

  “You too,” said Zia. “And… I’ll consider it.”

  There was that grin again.

  “All a man can ask,” he said, and was gone.

  Zia watched his retreating back, noticed how the crowd parted unconsciously to accommodate the supreme confidence of his gait, the precision with which he hewed to his own line.

  High school was a long time ago. Sometimes, people changed. She had.

  Hadn’t she?

  +

  5

  +

  “It’s a physical manifestation of the group chat,” said Li Jie.

  “I prefer to think of the group chat as a digital instantiation of us,” said Selai.

  “What’s the difference, really?” asked Daniela. “We contain multitudes.”

  It was hard to believe. Zia, Aafreen, Galang, Kodjo, Selai, Daniela, Vachan, and Li Jie all in the same place at the same time. The band was getting back together, and Zia silently thanked the gods of red tape that the obstinate BSF officer hadn’t made her miss this. Then she silently thanked Himmat for pushing her to actually go when she finally had the chance.

  “So this is what high school reunions are like,” said Kodjo, looking around at the campus from which they’d graduated a decade and a half ago. “Nicer venue than in the movies, but they nail the ambient level of social anxiety.”

  The reception was staged in the tiered garden in front of the school. A repurposed thirteenth century château, the fortress now struggled to keep its elite students in rather than invaders out. Torches burned in brackets along the exterior walls and braziers smoldered throughout the garden, illuminating guests and setting in flickering firelight. Servers prowled with trays of hors d’oeuvres. A live chamber orchestra soared through Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The drinks were appropriately strong, and Zia was sipping a rather excellent Old Fashioned.

  “Hard to believe we spent four years here,” she said.

  “Felt like a lifetime,” said Vachan.

  “Feels like a lifetime ago,” said Aafreen.

  “Sometimes, I wish I could go back in a time machine,” said Kodjo. “Then I remember how awful teenagers are to each other.” He grimaced. “And if Lucy is any indicator, it isn’t limited to teenagers.”

  “Want to talk about it?” asked Zia tentatively.

  Kodjo swallowed the rest of his gin and tonic. “She’s got a bulldog of a lawyer. They’re shooting for full custody, the house, everything.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” said Vachan.

  “But the boys,” said Kodjo, shaking his head. “I’m amazed at how calmly they’re dealing with it all, even if their classmates are at least as bad as ours were.”

  “Kids are more resilient than we give them credit for,” said Li Jie.

  “I mean, we survived, right?” said Aafreen, with a crooked grin that accentuated her almost painfully intense beauty.

  “There’s that.” Kodjo chuckled. “But let’s not get caught up in my divorce proceedings. I spend enough time thinking about that as it is. Daniela, I hear rumors the new label you’re shepherding is really taking off.”

  “Oh, nothing serious yet,” said Daniela.

  “If three Grammys in one year isn’t serious for an indie, what is?” said Li Jie.

  “Breakeven,” said Daniela. “You’re not truly independent until you’re profitable.”

  “Spoken like a real artist,” said Vachan.

  “Real artists hit the black,” said Daniela, the promptness of her response reminding Zia of the ever so brief period when Vachan and Daniela had dated.

  “Amen,” said Selai.

  “And they definitely wear leather jackets,” said Galang, tugging on Daniela’s sleeve with a wink. “Always patinated. Never distressed.”

  “That’s right,” said Daniela, with an infectious laugh. “The secret to making great art is to look good doing it.”

  These were Zia’s people. She felt an ease in their presence she hadn’t felt in years, but also something more, as if, while taking a breather from constructing her house of self, she’d noticed that said house had accrued enough moats and fortifications to rival this chateau.

  The conversation ebbed and flowed between reminiscence and personal updates, jokes and pathos. Li Jie was writing a new programming language that he hoped would be as groundbreaking as Lisp. Aafreen was in the midst of renegotiating half a dozen Maldivian emigration treaties. Vachan was slowly but surely taking over the family business, which involved bitter fights with his grandmother over his decision to increase wages for migrant laborers at the tea estates. At one point, Tommy strolled by talking animatedly to two of his old lacrosse teammates and nodded to Zia surreptitiously.

  This conversation isn’t for me to vet you. It’s the reverse. Zia was still trying to parse the surreal airport rendezvous. Per Kodjo’s point, teenagers were awful to each other. Was the fact that she wanted so badly to hate Tommy blinding her to the fact that he no longer deserved it? Zia knew how painful snap judgements could be to the person on the receiving end. If she declined his offer, was she avoiding an elephant trap or slapping away an olive branch? Was it even ethical for her to refuse, no matter the source of funds, given how many people they could use the money to help? But wasn’t that an argument for taking blood money? Where did you draw the line? These were precisely the sorts of questions she was getting tired of asking herself.

  Aafreen was talking, but Galang was gazing at Zia curiously. He’d
noticed the nod. She returned his look to implicitly promise a tête-à-tête. It was surprisingly easy to fall back into the telepathy routine they’d developed while jointly editing her mother’s book. Hard to believe they’d get to see each other in person again in less than two weeks when he’d promised to drop by Chhattisgarh en route to a new assignment. They’d have time to really talk then.

  Li Jie rattled the ice in his empty tumbler. “Seriously though,” he said. “If it weren’t for you all, I honestly don’t know if I would have made it through this joint.”

  They looked up at the ramparts, which the torchlight just barely kissed.

  “I feel you, brother,” said Vachan.

  “I wouldn’t have admitted it then, but I had never been more scared than the day we arrived,” said Zia, remembering the disorientation of leaving everything and everyone she knew behind. She’d held back tears until her parents were out of view, then found a bathroom stall to sob in. She’d imagined that she was the only one, that the confidence her new classmates projected was sincere. The truth was many of them were in far worse shape than she was. Nobody had their shit together, least of all those who seemed to. Life was one big exercise in making things up as you went along.

  “Second that,” said Kodjo.

  “Toast.” Selai raised her glass, catching Zia’s eye as she did so and managing a similar feat of telepathy, with a similar message: time to sneak off for a sidebar. Whatever it was she had up her sleeve, Zia was about to find out. “May the wind fill our sails, the stars guide our voyage, and the bottles of rum never run dry.”

  “I still can’t quite believe we’re all here,” said Aafreen.

  “And it’s not even a wedding,” said Daniela.

  “Or a funeral,” said Galang.

  “To friendship,” said Zia. “Until death do us part.”

  Memories swirled and glasses clinked.

  +

  6

  +

  Zia pulled her dress up and over her head in one smooth motion. Next to her, Selai did the same. Then off came the bras and underwear. No jewelry. Neither of them ever wore jewelry. They piled the clothes on top of their discarded flats and stared out into darkness.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” said Zia with a giddy laugh.

  “I can’t believe we waited so long,” said Selai.

  “Okay,” said Zia. If they waited any longer, she might chicken out. “Ready? One, two, three!”

  A split second of free fall, then Zia hit the water.

  It was so cold that it didn’t feel so at first. There was just the visceral shock of sudden submersion.

  They both came up spluttering.

  “My nipples could cut steel right now,” said Selai.

  “You’re not in Fiji anymore,” said Zia.

  “That’s for fucking sure.”

  “I’ve had exactly the wrong amount of liquor—enough to make me do this but not enough to keep me warm.”

  “Fucking glacier melt,” said Selai.

  “Hey, at least there are still glaciers to melt,” said Zia. “Now, let’s get this over with before we succumb.”

  Selai didn’t need to be told twice. She swam with the grace and power of an Olympic athlete. Kicking hard and gasping for breath, Zia followed in her wake.

  Breath.

  Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.

  Breath.

  Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.

  Breath.

  Stroke. Stroke—and then there was mud between her toes and algae-slick rock under her hands and they pulled themselves up onto the little island hidden among the reeds.

  “Remember when we’d swim out here to smoke joints?” asked Selai as they sat back on the grass.

  “You’d seal them in a plastic bag with a lighter and carry it between your teeth.”

  “And you’d unleash those truly epic philosophical rants.”

  “I had to do something,” said Zia. “Otherwise you’d melt my brain by taking us down another theoretical physics rabbit hole.”

  “Nothing is sweeter than the memory of a misspent youth.”

  “If you’re going to take up poetry, we really do need a joint.”

  Selai snorted and threw an arm around Zia’s shoulders, scooting over so their bare sides and legs pressed together to share warmth. Where skin touched, they could feel each other’s goosebumps recede.

  “How are you holding up, really?” asked Selai. “Not the cocktail party version. The DL.”

  The standard anecdotes came to mind, the ready answers that would move the conversation along at a steady clip. And they were all accurate, or at least they used to be. But somehow, here, Zia couldn’t bring herself to voice them. It was as if all their narrative substance, everything that made them not only factual but also true, had been shed along with her clothes.

  In a flash of terrifying clarity, Zia understood what it must be like for Natalia Lafourcade to play “Hasta la Raíz” at every stop on every tour, repeating a hit written so many years before because the audience wanted it so badly, wanted the way her singing it made them feel. Just because you outgrew your own work didn’t mean anyone else did. The better the work, the bigger the problem.

  Across the water and up the hill, the chateau was bathed in torchlight. A few strands of Vivaldi twined through the chorus of frog song. Time thickened—as if the right word spoken in the right way might transport them across millennia.

  “The DL”—Zia sighed—“is struggle city.”

  “Yikes,” said Selai, shaking her hand as if she’d burned it. “That bad, huh? I’ve taken a few excursions there myself. Nasty neighborhood.”

  “I almost didn’t come,” said Zia. “To the reunion, I mean. I was planning to, but then this asshole border guard swoops in and seizes our latest seed shipment. I had to go get it released.”

  “Did you eat his soul, or merely rip his throat out?”

  “Just made threats I didn’t want to have to make good on,” said Zia. “And luckily for him and me, he didn’t force the issue. But afterward, I felt… nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” said Zia. “Just tired. Tired of corrupt officials and prissy donors. Tired of systems just broken enough to keep chugging, regardless of who they hurt, as long as the people who benefit from the status quo oil the gears once in a while. Tired of breathing topsoil. And my deputy—Himmat—he saw it in me.”

  “Smart kid,” said Selai. “Promote him.”

  “You know what? I should,” said Zia.

  Selai hugged Zia’s shoulder and rocked from side to side. “So, where do you go from here?”

  Zia tore her eyes away from the glimmering fortress. She looked up to the constellations, brilliant without city glow to dull them, shining down through the thin alpine atmosphere, their light having traveled for aeons across the depths of space to gleam off the ring of snowcapped peaks that surrounded this remote valley. Interstice’s satellites were somewhere up there, falling, forever falling, around the planet whose denizens they stitched together into a single vast tribe.

  “Fuck if I know,” said Zia. “But enough about me. You’ve kept me in suspense long enough. What’s this new project you’re so keen on?”

  “It’s…” Selai paused, uncharacteristically shy. “It’s a bit of a weird one.”

  Zia rolled her eyes theatrically. “After surviving this place, you earned a doctorate in physics from MIT. You identified the perpetrators of the Great Parmigiano-Reggiano Heist fourteen years after the crime took place. You built up so many millions of followers for your Gummy Bear World Tour stream that Haribo had no choice but to sponsor you. You swim like a goddamned otter. What does weird even mean to you, sweetheart?”

  Selai laughed. “It’s like you’re my agent, but I’m the only person you’re selling me to.”

  “If I’m your agent, do I get to order you to stop beating around the bush before mine freezes off?”

  “Okay, okay,” said Selai. She took a deep bre
ath. “It starts, as all truly great stories do, on a dark and stormy night—better yet, it’s about why we can’t seem to make sense of how nights get all dark and stormy in the first place.”

  +

  7

  +

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Zia León couldn’t repress a laugh as she opened the cardboard box to reveal a frozen deep-dish pizza wrapped in tin foil. It couldn’t be more out of place in the only cafe in the rural Chhattisgarhi village she called home—which itself couldn’t have been more different than the Swiss mountain hamlet in which she and Galang had last seen each other at the reunion ten days ago. “How did you get this on the plane? It must weigh twelve pounds.”

  “Cut it in half, packed each half with icepacks in a thermal lining, and stuffed it all into my checked luggage,” said Galang with an extravagant eye-roll. “Duh.”

  A lump rose in Zia’s throat. After months of muthia with a brief intermission of reunion finger food, pizza was a mythical creature from a parallel dimension, half-nostalgia and half-carbohydrates. Galang had even brought the box so it could be presented in its authentic packaging. “I would never—”

  “I know you wouldn’t, you silly bitch,” said Galang as he took a prim sip from his cup of steaming chai. “Which is precisely why I brought it. I stopped in Oakland for a meeting on the way down here and I remembered the unadulterated joy on your face when I came out to visit you in college and you introduced me to this place. Manna from the gods, you said. Yes, exactly that look, but with less of the I’m about to break down and cry. For heaven’s sake, Zia, pull yourself together.”

  Zia’s snort squeezed out a tear and Galang reached over to wipe it away with the pad of his thumb. People relied on her, which made it hard to let go. Rocks don’t cry, except, apparently, when a dear friend shows up bearing gifts from a past life.

  “I hope your clothes don’t smell like pizza,” said Zia. “If you meet any cute boys on this trip, what will you tell them?”