“You probably aren’t a Brahms person.”
She looked annoyed. “How do
“I don’t,” he said. “Sorry-are you?”
Julia pretended to examine his books. “I’m not very familiar with his work,” she said finally. “So I couldn’t really say.”
He felt like hugging her. He poured himself another sambuca instead. “I’m sorry there's nowhere to sit.”
“I’m sorry I’m all gross from tennis.” She sat down on his mattress, which was at least covered with a blanket.
“Do you always smoke after tennis?” he couldn’t help asking.
“It calms me down.”
“Still, you shouldn’t-”
“I’ve been having this dream,” she said. She stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed her ankles. “Actually it's kind of a nightmare.”
“Oh,” said Zubin. Students’ nightmares were certainly among the things that should be discussed in the living room.
“Have you ever been to New Hampshire?”
“What?”
“I’ve been having this dream that I’m in New Hampshire. There's a frozen pond where you can skate outside.”
“That must be nice.”
“I saw it in a movie,” she admitted. “But I think they have them- anyway. In the dream I’m not wearing skates. I’m walking out onto the pond, near the woods, and it's snowing. I’m walking on the ice but I’m not afraid- everything's really beautiful. And then I look down and there's this thing-this dark spot on the ice. There are some mushrooms growing, on the dark spot. I’m worried that someone skating will trip on them, so I bend down to pick them.”
Her head was bent now; she was peeling a bit of rubber from the sole of her sneaker.
“That's when I see the guy.”
“The guy.”
“The guy in the ice. He's alive, and even though he can’t move, he sees me. He's looking up and reaching out his arms and just his fingers are coming up-just the tips of them through the ice. Like white mushrooms.”
“Jesus,” Zubin said.
She misunderstood. “No-just a regular guy.”
“That's a bad dream.”
“Yeah, well,” she said proudly. “I thought maybe you could use it.”
“Sorry?”
“In the essay.”
Zubin poured himself another sambuca. “I don’t know if I can write the essay.”
“You have to.” Her expression changed instantly. “I have the money-I could give you a check now even.”
“It's not the money.”
“Because it's dishonest?” she said in a small voice.
“I-” But he couldn’t explain why he couldn’t manage to write even a college essay, even to himself. “I’m sorry.”
She looked as if she’d been about to say something else, and then changed her mind. “Okay,” she said dejectedly. “I’ll think of something.”
She looked around for her racket, which she’d propped up against the bookshelf. He didn’t want her to go yet.
“What kind of a guy is he?”
“Who?”
“The guy in the ice-is he your age?”
Julia shook her head. “He's old.”
Zubin sat down on the bed, at what he judged was a companionable distance. “Like a senior citizen?”
“No, but older than you.”
“Somewhere in that narrow window between me and senior citizenship.”
“You’re not old,” she said seriously.
“Thank you.” The sambuca was making him feel great. They could just sit here, and get drunk and do nothing, and it would be fun, and there would be no consequences; he could stop worrying for tonight, and give himself a little break.
He was having that comforting thought when her head dropped lightly to his shoulder.
“Oh.”
“Is this okay?”
“It's okay, but-”
“I get so tired.”
“Because of the nightmares.”
She paused for a second, as if she was surprised he’d been paying attention. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”
“You want to lie down a minute?”
She jerked her head up-nervous all of a sudden. He liked it better than the flirty stuff she’d been doing before.
“Or I could get someone to take you home.”
She lay down and shut her eyes. He put his glass down carefully on the floor next to the bed. Then he put his hand out; her hair was very soft. He stroked her head and moved her hair away from her face. He adjusted the glass beads she always wore, and ran his hand lightly down her arm. He felt that he was in a position where there was no choice but to lift her up and kiss her very gently on the mouth.
“Julia.”
She opened her eyes.
“I’m going to get someone to drive you home.”
She got up very quickly and smoothed her hair with her hand.
“Not that I wouldn’t like you to stay, but I think-”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’ll just get someone.” He yelled for the servant.
“I can get a taxi,” Julia said.
“I know you
In September she took the test. He woke up early that morning as if he were taking it, couldn’t concentrate, and went to Barista, where he sat trying to read the same
He didn’t see Julia while the scores were being processed. Without the bonus he hadn’t been able to give up his other clients, and the business was in one of its busy cycles; it seemed as if everyone in Bombay was dying to send their sixteen-year-old child halfway around the world to be educated. Each evening he thought he might hear her calling up from the street, but she never did, and he didn’t feel he could phone without some pretense.
One rainy Thursday he gave a group lesson in a small room on the first floor of the David Sassoon library. The library always reminded him of Oxford, with its cracked chalkboards and termite-riddled seminar tables, and today in particular the soft, steady rain made him feel as if he were somewhere else. They were doing triangles (isosceles, equilateral, scalene) when all of a sudden one of the students interrupted and said: “It stopped.”
Watery sun was gleaming through the lead-glass windows. When he had dismissed the class, Zubin went upstairs to the reading room. He found Bradbury in a tattered ledger book and filled out a form. He waited while
