The O Henry Prize Stories 2005

“What about your tutor?”

Julia pretended to be horrified. “Zubin?”

“He's cute, right?”

“He's about a million years older than us.”

“How old?”

“Twenty-nine, I think.”

Anouk went into her dresser and rummaged around. “Just in case,” she said innocently, tossing Julia a little foil-wrapped packet.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go-you weren’t supposed to be the one who got the condom-but you weren’t supposed to go to high school in Bombay, to live alone with your father, or to lose your virginity to your SAT tutor. She wondered if she and Zubin would do it on the mattress in his room, or if he would press her up against the wall, like in 9 ?Weeks.

“You better call me, like, the second after,” Anouk instructed her.?

She almost told Anouk about the virginity dream, and then didn’t. She didn’t really want to hear her friend's interpretation.

It was unclear where she and Markus would’ve done it, since at that time boys weren’t allowed in her room. There were a lot of rules, particularly after her mother left. When she was out, around eleven, her father would message her mobile, something like: WHAT TIME, MISSY? or simply, ETA? If she didn’t send one right back, he would call. She would roll her eyes, at the cafe or the party or the club, and say to Markus, “My dad.”

“Well,” Markus would say. “You’re his daughter.”

When she came home, her father would be waiting on the couch with a book. He read the same books over and over, especially the ones by Russians. She would have to come in and give him a kiss, and if he smelled cigarettes he would ask to see her bag.

“You can’t look in my bag,” she would say, and her father would hold out his hand. “Everybody else smokes,” she told him. “I can’t help smelling like it.” She was always careful to give Markus her Dunhills before she went home.

“Don’t you trust me?” she said sometimes (especially when she was drunk).

Her father smiled. “No. I love you too much for that.”

It was pouring and the rain almost shrieked on Zubin's tin roof, which still hadn’t been repaired. They were working on reading comprehension; a test two years ago had used Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress.” Zubin preferred “The Garden,” but he’d had more success teaching “To His Coy Mistress” to his students; they told him it seemed “modern.” Many of his students seemed to think that sex was a relatively new invention.

“It's a persuasive poem,” Zubin said. “In a way, it has something in common with an essay.”

Julia narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, persuasive?”

“He wants to sleep with her.”

“And she doesn’t want to.”

“Right,” Zubin said.

“Is she a virgin?”

“You tell me.” Zubin remembered legions of teachers singsonging exactly those words. “Look at line twenty- eight.”

“That's disgusting.”

“Good,” he said. “You understand it. That's what the poet wanted-to shock her a little.”

“That's so manipulative!”

It was amazing, he thought, the way Americans all embraced that kind of psychobabble. Language is manipulative, he wanted to tell her.

“I think it might have been very convincing,” he said instead.

“Vegetable love?”

“It's strange, and that's what makes it vivid. The so-called metaphysical poets are known for this kind of conceit.”

“That they were conceited?”

“Conceit,” Zubin said. “Write this down.” He gave her the definition; he sounded conceited.

“The sun is like a flower that blooms for just one hour,” Julia said suddenly.

“That's the opposite,” Zubin said. “A comparison so common that it doesn’t mean anything-you see the difference?”

Julia nodded wearily. It was too hot in the room. Zubin got up and propped the window open with the wooden stop. Water sluiced off the dark, shiny leaves of the magnolia.

“What is that?”

“What?”

“That thing, about the sun.”

She kicked her foot petulantly against his desk. The hammering outside was like an echo, miraculously persisting in spite of the rain. “Ray Bradbury,” she said finally. “We read it in school.”

“I know that story,” Zubin said. “With the kids on Venus. It rains for seven years, and then the sun comes out and they lock the girl in the closet. Why do they lock her up?”

“Because she's from Earth. She's the only one who's seen it.”

“The sun.”

Julia nodded. “They’re all jealous.”

People thought she could go out all the time because she was American. She let them think it. One night she decided to stop bothering with the outside stairs; she was wearing new jeans that her mother had sent her; purple cowboy boots and a sparkly silver halter top that showed off her stomach. She had a shawl for outside, but she didn’t put it on right away. Her father was working in his study with the door cracked open.

The clock in the hall said ten twenty. Her boots made a loud noise on the tiles.

“Hi,” her father called.

“Hi.”

“Where are you going?”

“A party.”

“Where?”

“Juhu.” She stepped into his study. “On the beach.”

He put the book down and took off his glasses. “Do you find that many people are doing Ecstasy-when you go to these parties?”

“Dad.”

“I’m not being critical-I read an article about it in Time. My interest is purely anthropological.”

“Yes,” Julia said. “All the time. We’re all on Ecstasy from the moment we wake up in the morning.”

“That's what I thought.”

“I have to go.”

“I don’t want to keep you.” He smiled. “Well I do, but-” Her father was charming; it was like a reflex.

“See you in the morning,” she said.

The worst thing was that her father knew she knew. He might have thought Julia knew even before she actually did; that was when he started letting her do things like go out at ten thirty, and smoke on the staircase outside her bedroom. It was as if she’d entered into a kind of pact without knowing it; and by the time she found out why they were in Bombay for real, it was too late to change her mind.

It was Anouk who told her, one humid night when they were having their tennis lesson at Willingdon. The air was so hazy that Julia kept losing the ball in the sodium lights. They didn’t notice who’d come in and taken the last court next to the parking lot until the lesson was over. Then Anouk said: “Wow, look- Papa!” Bernie lobbed the ball and waved; as they walked toward the other court, Julia's father set up for an overhead and smashed the ball into the net. He raised his fist in mock anger, and grinned at them.

“Good lesson?”