Queen of Dreams by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B

that next year would turn into the next, that she’d never go.) They both loved spicy food, preferably Asian. They’d drive his car (a battered Mustang at the time) up to Tilden Park and eat takeout with their fingers from bright cartons. They’d watch the sun set over Angel Island and feed each other pad thai noodles or Szechwan beef with extra red chilies. The stars would come up one by one; he would worry an old tune out of a guitar, a song she’d heard on her father’s record player. But in his hands it became something quite different. Listening, it was hard for her to breathe. She loved watching his face, intent, oblivious, as though she weren’t there. No, as though he weren’t there. It was the way she hoped her own face might be when she was painting.
    Or was it their differences, the opposed poles of their longings that fascinated them? He was a night spirit, with impulsive, uneven, boyish generosities. He loved the smoky camaraderie of clubs, though he didn’t smoke (not cigarettes, anyway). He’d have bought the whole world drinks if she didn’t stop him. He loved to be in crowds, jostled by strangers. Loved the desperate trust of raves. He understood how people needed to have a good time, and what they were prepared to do to get it. Understood the complexity of the enterprise. He scorned Valentine’s Day, then brought her flowers for no reason. Nothing trite like roses. Instead: bearded iris, anthuriums, snowdrops, even orchids, though he wasn’t rich, not by any means. He loved late-night jam sessions with the band he played in sometimes. He kept loaning his musician friends money. (They never returned it; he never expected them to.) Playing made him restless. I’m high from the music, he’d say. (Later, she’d wonder if that was all he was high from, and later still, she’d begin to get angry. But that was in the future, a lifetime away.) They went to a bar or an all-night café to talk, and even if she was bleary-eyed next day in class, or had a hangover and missed class altogether, even if sometimes her hand shook from all that unaccustomed caffeine when she painted, it was okay, it was fun, artists grew as they had new experiences, he was her new experience, and she was growing.
    After she’d passed from that life into a different time, something spackled and gray, like the inside of tunnels, she’d realize you couldn’t build a relationship on a new experience. Because one day it wasn’t new anymore, and what were you left with?
    In the classroom, months have passed, maybe years. Sonny leans toward her—they are studying Borges, or is it Bauhaus architecture? He wears a Pan-like beard now, and an earring. You loved me because of the dimple just below my lower lip, he says, speaking loud enough to make the professor raise her eyebrows. You loved me because I was the first one. You loved me because I was as risky as jumping off a speeding train. He takes off his earring and reaches for her hand—he’s going to slide it onto her finger, and it will become her engagement ring, her favorite piece of jewelry. (When he starts making big money he’ll buy her a diamond ring, but she’ll put it in the bank and continue wearing the thin hoop on her finger.) Things will speed up after this day, will blur like a film that’s being projected too rapidly. She’ll bring him to meet her parents—her mother, really, who was the one that counted—but no, that had happened already, hadn’t she already gathered him to her as though he were her long-lost firstborn? They’ll be married in a month, in a year they’ll move into the beautiful pink Victorian house in Oakland, bought for (literally) a song, under circumstances that she’ll begin to question—but not until it’s too late. Jona will be born. The American public will learn what a bhangra remix is, and it will electrify their souls. Sonny will make more money, and more. More than she can imagine at this moment. His name will snake its way