pheasant glazed with gold leaf, a bird of molten gold.
This hours-long homage to the famous guest recalled to Alma the Shah of Iran’s great feast for select hundreds of the world’s celebrities and dignitaries. The magazine had shown luxurious tents where they slept, and the banquet like no other, and the long parade of waiters bearing peacocks on trays, their fantastic plumage adorning again their roasted bodies. She felt scorn for this guest who was mesmerized by the food set before him and who seemed unaware of time and how it steals away every morsel, like a cunning beggar.
Eventually, Singh gave in. It was at the very end of the meal, which had become a celebration of the lives of the two guests, with gifts from the sea, from earth’s black loam, from vine, from tree, from the perfumed air. He stood above them, gazing at the face of the gourmet, a face soothed by the many gifts but tantalizingly withholding gratitude, patches of lacy capillaries like a clown’s rouge on cheeks and nose; and gazing, in turn, at the woman’s lifted face and at her throat, that lovely channel down which all the bites had slipped, and at her body, languidly sloping under the weight of so much adoration. To Alma, glancing by, all the gifts seemed given to the woman in exchange for just the sight of her. Singh leaned toward them to catch their words of praise, but his face was mournful, as though he had come to confess the failure of his own attempts at a plenteous life.
At his nod, Alma brought out the woman’s fur coat from the employees’ closet where diners’ priceless coats were hung. The woman had come prepared for San Francisco’s cold, whipping fogs that often swept in on summer nights. It was customary, when diners were leaving, for Singh or Lila, or both, to signal Alma, if she were free, and she would come to help them put on their coats. The departing guests would stand with their backs to her, and if they were unfamiliar with the courtesy, their shoulders would stiffen; others would slip into their coats with affected ease as if their wraps were held up for them by someone invisible or by the world’s esteem. But this extravagant night roused her resistance to this act that humbled her, and her arms refused to hold up the woman’s coat. When Singh saw that she was in trouble, he took the coat from her and lifted it to the woman’s bare shoulders. The woman turned her head toward him, knowing—Alma was sure—how pristine a profile of beauty appears, like a very brief and partial view granted to mortals. So close was that profile, he seemed to tire instantly.
They were the last to leave. Alma watched them go as she went among her tables, blowing out the candles. On his way out, the gourmet was introduced to the three Indian gentlemen, the restaurant’s financial backers, all in dark suits. They stood up at their table, and, unsmiling, shook his hand, afraid perhaps that if they were to smile he might deceive them later. At the bar he was introduced to the restaurant’s publicist, Patricia, who had induced him to come, but when she stood up from her stool she began to sway. She had drunk too much, celebrating his presence, and from a distance she appeared to be swaying with religious awe. Then they were gone.
A jostling wave of relief rose up in their wake, doing away with everyone’s roles and with all glittering. The only light left was from the brass carriage lamps at the bar and the candles on the table where the three backers sat over their vegetarian delicacies. In this intimate dimness they gathered together for a little party.
Lila poured drinks and carried them to whoever wanted one, while Singh wandered among them, empty-handed, uncritical, uncommending, voiceless. Kamala unwound her green sari, pushed the elastic band of the long underskirt down below her belly, and began her dance. From the stereo rose her delirious music. She danced barefoot, her hands, her arms gliding desirously, her belly moving with many little leaps and undulations. Her husband, who often accompanied her home, came up the stairs and paused at the top, watching her, pleased and uncomfortable. The two waiters, now in their leather jackets, heads bare, feigned indifference. Marlie, a faux fur jacket over her sari, sat at the low cocktail table, restlessly peeling her nail polish, lifting her eyes only to see if her lover had arrived—a young doctor who would take her to his apartment. Alma, her costume again in the canvas bag, stood close to the stairs. When the dance was over she would leave, and no one would know that she had left and that she had left alone.
“Where is your friend tonight?”
There was so much that was intimidating about Kamala’s husband, a high school mathematics teacher—his precise words, his eyes demanding correct answers. He and Alma’s lover had often sat together at the bar, waiting to escort their women home. If he were able to understand the garbled language of loss, she might be able to say to him, I don’t know where he is, he’s with someone else but I don’t know who she is and I don’t know who he is anymore and I don’t know who I am anymore, either, if I ever knew.
“A sculpture class at the art school. They stay late,” she said.
The three thin women from the kitchen slipped by, passing close to her, their work done, cheap sweaters, old coats over their faded saris. They said good night to no one and were noticed by no one as they went down the stairs and into the night.
Then Singh, among the few who were gazing at the dancer, toppled to the floor, striking against his wife, who fell with him. At once the waiters lifted her, and Marlie ran to the alcove to turn off the music. The three financial backers bent over the man on the floor, and one, still clutching his large white napkin, shouted Singh’s name warningly, hoping to alarm him back to life and his responsibilities. When they stepped away, the waiters then knelt by him, softly calling to him, and one laid an ear to his chest and felt for a pulse at his wrist. Nothing. A napkin wet with ice water was passed from hand to hand and spread over his brow, a jigger of brandy was touched to his lips, and when it was seen that he was far, far beyond these clumsy persuasions, they stepped away from him.
He lay on his side, his turban tipped, his white jacket twisted. Someone had removed his shoes, thinking that would relax him. His trouser legs had slipped up, and narrow shins were exposed above his black silk socks. On some nights after the restaurant closed, he had worn his turban, his Nehru jacket, out into the nightlife, a short walk away, visiting the bars and the amateur strip show, a presence so startling and impressive that people made way for him.
Wailing, Lila roamed among the tables, flinging her arms out and crossing them against her breasts, over and over, a ritual of grief and disbelief. The publicist was sobbing, head down on a table. Alma, along with Marlie and Kamala, wept quietly in the kitchen. They had been fond of him, they had exchanged little jokes about him and he hadn’t known why they were laughing.
No one left until he had been taken away, and then they left together, down the steps carpeted in persimmon. The cold of early morning broke the group apart. They went off to their cars, Lila to be driven home in her car by one of the Indian backers, the other two to follow in their car. Alma watched her walk away, a very slender woman in a long pale coat, her sari stirring around her ankles, losing its color to distance.
Alma was driven home by the waiter who had served the famous gourmet. At the restaurant he seldom spoke. Now in the car he said, “Terrible, terrible. I think he was only forty.” The rest of the way he was silent.
When she entered the dark apartment she did not switch on a light, seeing well enough that her lover’s possessions were gone and the apartment empty despite her own things solidly there. She lay down in her clothes, calling on sleep to postpone her confrontation with her own unsolvable loss. An hour later or a minute later she was wide awake, already sitting up. It was not loss lifting her from sleep, it was gratefulness that her lover, no longer there, was taken from her only by the dream, only by that.
The Infinite Passion of Expectation
THE GIRL AND the elderly man descended the steep stairs
