The O Henry Prize Stories 2005

his chair and stood up. Before disappearing into his study, he nodded formally and said something-whether “Good night,” or “Good luck,” Zubin couldn’t tell.

Zubin was left with a servant, about his age, with big, southern features and stooped shoulders. The servant was wearing the brown uniform from another job: short pants and a shirt that was tight across his chest. He moved as if he’d been compensating for his height his whole life, as if he’d never had clothes that fit him.

“Do you work here every day?” Zubin asked in his schoolbook Marathi.

The young man looked up as if talking to Zubin was the last in a series of obstacles that lay between him and the end of his day.

“Nahin, ” he said. “Mangalwar ani guruwar.”

Zubin smiled-they both worked on Tuesdays and Thursdays. “Me too,” he said.

The servant didn’t understand. He stood holding the plates, waiting to see if Zubin was finished and scratching his left ankle with his right foot. His toes were round and splayed, with cracked nails and a glaucous coating of dry, white skin.

“Okay,” Zubin said. “Bas.”

Julia's room was, as he’d expected, empty. The lights were burning and the stereo was on (the disc had finished), but she’d left the window open; the bamboo shade sucked in and out. The mirror in the bathroom was steamed around the edges-she must’ve taken a shower before going out; there was the smell of some kind of fragrant soap and cigarettes.

He put the essay on the desk where she would see it. There were two Radiohead CDs, still in their plastic wrappers, and a detritus of pens and pencils, hairbands, fashion magazines-French Vogue, Femina and YM- gum wrappers, an OB tampon and a miniature brass abacus, with tiny ivory beads. There was also a diary with a pale blue paper cover.

The door to the hall was slightly open, but the house was absolutely quiet. It was not good to look at someone's journal, especially a teenage girl’s. But there were things that would be worse-jerking off in her room, for example. It was a beautiful notebook with a heavy cardboard cover that made a satisfying sound when he opened it on the desk.

“It's empty.”

He flipped the diary closed but it was too late. She was climbing in through the window, lifting the shade with her hand.

“That's where I smoke,” she said. “You should’ve checked.”

“I was just looking at the notebook,” Zubin said. “I wouldn’t have read what you’d written.”

“My hopes, dreams, fantasies. It would’ve been good for the essay.”

“I finished the essay.”

She stopped and stared at him. “You wrote it?”

He pointed to the neatly stacked pages, a paper island in the clutter of the desk. Julia examined them, as if she didn’t believe it.

“I thought you weren’t going to?”

“If you already wrote one-”

“No,” she said. “I tried but-” She gave him a beautiful smile. “Do you want to stay while I read it?”

Zubin glanced at the door.

“My dad's in his study.”

He pretended to look through her CDs, which were organized in a zip-pered binder, and snuck glances at her while she read. She sat down on her bed with her back against the wall, one foot underneath her. As she read she lifted her necklace and put it in her mouth, he thought unconsciously. She frowned at the page.

It was better if she didn’t like it, Zubin thought. He knew it was good, but having written it was wrong. There were all these other kids who’d done the applications themselves.

Julia laughed.

“What?” he said, but she just shook her head and kept going.

“I’m just going to use your loo,” Zubin said.

He used it almost blindly, without looking in the mirror. Her towel was hanging over the edge of the counter, but he dried his hands on his shirt. He was drunker than he’d thought. When he came out she had folded the three pages into a small square, as if she were getting ready to throw them away.

Julia shook her head. “You did it.”

“It's okay?”

Julia shook her head. “It's perfect-it's spooky. How do you even know about this stuff?”

“I was a teenager-not a girl teenager, but you know.”

She shook her head. “About being an American I mean? How do you know about that?”

She asked the same way she might ask who wrote The Fairie Queene or the meaning of the word “synecdoche.”

Because I am not any different, he wanted to tell her. He wanted to grab her shoulders: If we are what we want, I am the same as you.

But she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were like marbles he’d had as a child, striated brown and gold. They moved over the pages he’d written as if they were hers, as if she were about to tear one up and put it in her mouth.

“This part,” Julia said. “About forgetting where you are? D’you know, that happens to me? Sometimes coming home I almost say the wrong street-the one in Paris, or in Moscow when we used to have to say ‘Pushkinskaya.

Her skirt was all twisted around her legs.

“Keep it,” he said.

“I’ll write you a check.”

“It's a present,” Zubin told her.

“Really?”

He nodded. When she smiled she looked like a kid. “I wish I could do something for you.”

Zubin decided that it was time to leave.

Julia put on a CD-a female vocalist with a heavy bass line. “This is too sappy for daytime,” she said. Then she started to dance. She was not a good dancer. He watched her fluttering her hands in front of her face, stamping her feet, and knew, the same way he always knew these things, that he wasn’t going anywhere at all.

“You know what I hate?”

“What?”

“Boys who can’t kiss.”

“All right,” Zubin said. “You come here.”

Her bed smelled like the soap-lilac. It was amazing, the way girls smelled, and it was amazing to put his arm under her and take off each thin strap and push the dress down around her waist. She made him turn off the lamp but there was a street lamp outside; he touched her in the artificial light. She looked as if she were trying to remember something.

“Is everything okay?”

She nodded.

“Because we can stop.”

“Do you have something?”

It took him a second to figure out what she meant. “Oh,” he said. “No-that's good I guess.”

“I have one.”

“You do?”

She nodded.

“Still. That doesn’t mean we have to.”

“I want to.”

“Are you sure?”

“If you do.”

“If I do-yes.” He took a breath. “I want to.”