At my new home, Zoe was sitting cross-legged on a blue couch, chewing gum that smelled of spearmint. She reached up to kiss me hello. She had an unusually long neck, short dark hair that hugged a pretty, if rather angular, face. Her eyes were blue and friendly, her skin translucent. A strappy white T-shirt stopped just short of white drawstring pants, and around her right ankle were three gold chains of varying thickness.
Shazia reminded me that I had met Zoe during one of our recent nightlife outings, but we had visited so many places and met so many people that by this point all these white faces were a blur.
“Nice to see you again,” Zoe said, removing the gum from her mouth, folding it into a pink tissue and picking up a packet of cigarettes. She offered me one, but I politely shook my head. Shazia, meanwhile, reached out and pulled one out of the pack. I had seen Shazia do a lot of things in these past two weeks, but never smoke, so her ease with lighting up and inhaling took me by surprise.
“Zoe is from the States,” Shazia informed me. “But she’s been living here a long time. What, like fifteen years or something, right?” Shazia asked her friend.
“Give or take,” Zoe drawled, smoke circling out of her mouth. “Came here to study, married a Frenchman, but that was a disaster. Even so, I never left. This place is addictive, you know?” She was staring at me, looking for agreement, so I nodded.
“Your parents didn’t mind?” I asked her, finally speaking. “They were OK with you leaving to come here?”
“Hell, I was over eighteen, could do what I pleased,” Zoe replied, smirking. I felt ridiculed.
As Shazia and Zoe casually discussed the more recent details of their respective lives, their conversation alternating between French and English, I took advantage of their momentary distraction to look around. It was a cramped but comfortable living room, painted in varying shades of blue, cream, and white. On a far wall was a large framed print-swirls of orange on a bright yellow background-that was so vivid compared to the relatively calm colors of the rest of the room, I felt dizzy for a moment. A dining table was stacked with newspapers and unopened mail; a couple of armchairs, creased and crumpled, looked as if they had been happily occupied over the years. A blanket lay on the floor close to a small fireplace, and a stained coffee mug sat on another table. The phone was taken off its hook, and jazz music was playing softly from a radio. It was a deeply comforting environment, but even so, I felt awkward and out of place.
I had no idea what we were doing here.
“It would just be for a while,” Shazia said as I turned my attention back to them. “Until we figure something else out.”
“Shaz, anything for you,” Zoe said, smiling and putting out her cigarette, much to my relief. The smoke in the small room was beginning to cause my eyes to dry out. “She can sleep here; this couch folds out into a pretty decent bed.”
They spoke of me as if I wasn’t even there, and while I was used to that happening in Mahim, I had thought that Shazia would treat me differently.
“I need to use the restroom,” Zoe said, lifting her long, lean frame from the couch.
“What’s this?” I whispered to Shazia when we were alone. “You’re leaving me here?”
“I had to take you somewhere,” Shazia whispered back. “Look, Zoe is really nice. She’s a foreigner too, so she completely gets it. I figured you could stay here for a couple of weeks, help out around the house, maybe cook, in exchange for having a roof over your head. By then, I’m sure I’ll find you a job and then we’ll see where to put you.”
At that moment for the first time since the decision was made for me to stay on, I was truly beginning to regret it. Suddenly I felt untethered, unwanted-a burden to everyone. I had no home, no job, no money. In Mahim, Nana had given me an allowance every week, which I would spend on my regular visits to Book Nook, or drinking cold coffee with Nilu at our favorite neighborhood café. There, at least, I belonged to someone. Here, now, on this cool Paris night, my grandfather’s curses still searing my ears, all I wanted to do was go back home.