The Deluge, page 9
Ultimately, she agreed to delay the services a day.
Immediately after checking in to the Mirage Hotel and Casino with its shrill, discomfiting window glass, Peter joined me in the lobby, Boston Bruins hat cocked to the side, clopping along in unlaced Nike high-tops. He’d been in Las Vegas for a week, placing bets based on the Sports Almanac, and we went to the sportsbook where he put an additional $10,000 on the Oklahoma City Thunder to break the 2–2 tie with San Antonio and win the series in six games. When Peter received his ticket, I felt a cheap thrill, not because of the bet but because of the work it reminded me of. It was the reason I had not wanted to fly to Michigan that night. The years spent building this model and taking Peter through it step-by-step have been profoundly psychologically satisfying. There are certain activities we pursue to attain a state of concentration, and those states of concentration are often more deeply enjoyable than the activities we’re indoctrinated to view as enjoyable. I cherish this sensation by thinking of my lowest moment: crossing the Harvard Bridge, and the twilight sky had given the water a blue-purple shade. I wonder about this in relation to the Zoloft my father forced me to take after he came to Boston. That chemical crutch took care of some of the worst entropic musings, but I felt fuzzy, brain-dead, and could achieve neither a sense of sadness nor enjoyment. I was forced to see one of the mental health professionals the university makes available, and I admit the young woman gave me many useful ideas: I took up running, traversing Boston’s gray-water bay in warm weather and a treadmill’s running belt during the winter. She also suggested I try writing as a way to work out anxiety, and while at first I found this activity onanistic, I managed to find a format that suited me, and experiments in the alien landscapes of simile and metaphor ensued, difficult yet strangely engaging and diverting. Still, all of this felt ephemeral, and those haunted feelings I always associate with the color mauve remained nearby and perpetually accessible. It was only in the past three years, working with Peter, in the grip of a project I found so fascinating, that the dawn-colored sensation receded nearly beyond my horizon.
* * *
After placing the bet, Peter spent the rest of the day gambling. He kept insisting I join, and I kept repeating I had no interest. I was content to listen to his chatter and watch people try to shake and rattle the bias from their die. Casinos being foolproof moneymaking ventures, the best way to approach Las Vegas, I explained, would be to take all the money one is comfortable losing and place it on red or black at the roulette wheel where the odds are at least 46.7 percent. Then, win or lose, walk away. Peter did not see the fun in that, but it did lead to him switching from craps to roulette. Three of his friends from Las Vegas joined us, and they all became increasingly intoxicated as the afternoon wore on. They were extremely boorish, particularly “Jame-O,” a squashed, preppy Caucasian with a ring of fat embracing his torso and cheeks that recalled two pockets of berries. I have little to say about these men except to relate this incident.
Jame-O called me “Taj Mahal Badalandabad” after a character in a comedic film (I was familiar with this slur, as I’d heard it before), and Peter, hostile and inebriated, exploded at his friend:
“Bro. Learn some fucking manners. This guy here’s got more to offer in his fingernail than your entire sorry fucking existence.”
I’d long been accustomed to how people become subject to narratives outside their control. Throughout prep school, my peers had christened me all manner of nicknames with and without intended animosity, one of which (“Osama bin Spock”) gained particular currency. Since graduation in 2009, I’ve noticed their furious efforts to remove these “jokes” from social media, deleting comments from the deep recesses of various online forums making reference to me as the South Asian American math geek.
I accepted Jame-O’s effort at an apology, but Peter’s outburst left me disquieted. As they carried on gambling, I couldn’t help but wonder, had I been blind to how Peter actually viewed me? After all, here we were in a gambler’s mecca, so to speak, and was I not just his nifty multitool, an unwitting Dustin Hoffman card counter to his Tom Cruise? And were these transactional relationships not just the way of the hyper-capitalist-extractivist system? I thought of how I’d dismissed my MIT peers now performing various high-speed grifts for the boardrooms of financial empires in Manhattan. Embarrassment swelled that I’d come to think of Peter as my friend.
I left and went down to the street in search of sensations beyond the claustrophobic casino. Sweat ran a torrent down my back in the searing heat of the Vegas Strip. I saw a city of abstract fractal shapes, an artificial construct built only through a massive project of water diversion to create a mirage in inhospitable desert. A proper analogy for the discharging of consequences that people sought here. For all the hype constructed around the city, it is a plastic and uninspired place. Turn the temperature up a few more degrees, and I could picture the whole façade melting like a LEGO city in a microwave. I felt a great anti-magnetism, a desire to flee. Despite my best efforts, agitation turned to panic. Soon back in the hotel room, I sat in a corner running the cool back of the TV remote over my arm to still the particle accelerator speed of my mind.
* * *
Hours later, when I’d calmed down, I checked my phone. My mother had left yet another dissatisfied voice mail. Haniya promised me the delay had been helpful. Family we rarely saw had time to fly from Gujarat, and the imam had been away as well. The thought of going inside mosque for the first time in fifteen years, since my last outburst, weighed on me. My sister texted me: Hey I know Mummas at maximum anxiety right now. Stay chill and just get here when you can.
I did not reply to her. In high school, my sister had changed her speech, dress, opinions, gait, wore pro-choice buttons pinned to the end of her hijab, used strange slang, and performed complicated handshakes of greeting with her male Caucasian and African American friends. I learned not to take offense that she ignored me. She and my mother fought over her rebellious streak—she made trouble in the community over women’s equity issues and dated Caucasian men, but Haniya was still faithful. She bore the envious gifts of intelligence and agile charm, which is why she and she alone would eulogize our father. I had not been asked to speak.
The next morning, with five hours until my flight, Peter asked if I would accompany him to a pawn shop. He alluded that he’d had his fill of Jame-O and the others and asked if I wanted to accompany him on a quick but important errand. In the cab, he began probing me about the player efficiency rating, and I explained, for perhaps the third time, the dubiousness of the PER metric. Peter often reengages me in conversations we’ve already had because he needs to use safe angles to approach subjects that make him uncomfortable, as I believe he did here:
“Efficiency’s the game, right, Ash? That’s why the Warriors are a lock.”
“They’re a special case. There’s no comparable precedent for their achievements this season.”
“Lock.” Then Peter abruptly said to the driver: “A pawn shop on the Strip? Do we look like we’re in the church group from Tulsa? Take us off-Strip, my man.” He turned back to me.
I said: “I don’t believe in locks. However, the Warriors are the dominant team in offensive and defensive metrics. That’s how they won seventy-three contests. Over the course of seven games against an opponent like the Thunder or Cavaliers, the inferior team will tend to regress toward the mean.”
“Ah, like you said about roulette. Speaking of, that’s why I’m cashing this in.”
He removed from his pocket a small lavender box, which he opened to reveal an engagement ring with a cluster of diamonds mounted on a band of white gold.
“Bought this for Rachel, but… Guess I threw up a fat fucking brick.”
“You proposed? I wasn’t aware.”
“She said she had to think about it. Then thinking became driving back to Providence to stay with her parents. She called the other night to say it’s over.”
On the outskirts of the city now we passed a strip mall with only a dollar bargain store and cash-advance outlet still open. Beyond the mall were empty crabgrass lots and half-built domiciles flapping flags of forgotten plastic. I’d of course noticed Rachel’s absence in the past few weeks. I tried:
“You could save it for the woman you will eventually marry.”
Peter grinned, and in doing so looked quite handsome. “Whoa—what, am I trying to hex myself? I just want to get rid of it. Figured pawning it in Vegas would be a bad man’s move. As per your wisdom nugget, I’ll put all the money on black and walk away.”
The cabbie pulled over at a random intersection of a six-lane road called Eastern Avenue. Palm trees bisected the lanes of traffic while telephone poles and wire offered the only skyline along the flat expanse of desert sky. The pawn shop was set in the same building as a store called Sinaloa Video, still clinging to its business model in the age of streaming movies. Beyond it was a series of shoddy one-story houses with bars on many of the windows.
Peter’s bartering took place with an overweight man in a black Pantera T-shirt who wore socks under his sandals and heaved a breath with each movement. It was a quick transaction. Peter accepted just over $1,700 from him, mostly in rust-green twenties, and dropped the ring into his fist like he was tossing a coin to a vagrant. On the drive back through the authentic Las Vegas of shuttered stores, battered used cars, and a heat that had weight, I commented:
“That ring was likely worth more.”
“Less than half what I paid and much more than it was worth to me. I didn’t want to have it in my drawer another day. Who would’ve thought getting your heart broken—that actually sounds like how it feels. I dunno. She might not have been the person I thought.”
“What does that mean?”
After a long silence: “She came to me with this story from the Globe about how you took a swim in the Charles a few years back and some dude had to fish you out. I told her, So fucking what? But she didn’t want you around.”
My anxiety swelled, and I chose my next words carefully: “Peter, I’m sorry if I caused this. I would have gladly resigned if you’d just explained the situation to me.”
“What, are you fucking kidding me? She doesn’t get to decide who you are. So what if you had a death wish once? We all do—it’s in the Mad Men pilot! You’re a fucking brilliant, funny, stand-up fucking guy, and if she didn’t want to get to know you like I know you that’s her fucking problem.”
I was at a deep, cavernous loss for something to say. Luckily, Peter spared me:
“And like I said, maybe it showed another side of her I couldn’t see before. When I lived here I was a fucking psychopath, sleeping with a different girl every weekend. Then I met Rachel right when I got back to Boston and I was fucking humbled and ready to take a breath and be in fucking love, you know? It’s like they say: ‘Ruined love, when it is built anew, grows fairer than at first, more strong.’ ”
“Who says that?”
“Shakespeare, bro.”
“I wasn’t aware you read Shakespeare.”
“Oh, I don’t. BFQ, dude. That shit knows all.”
“BFQ?”
“Bartlett’s Familiar, bro. BartFam. ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener.’ That thing basically wrote the intro to every paper I ever had in college.”
“You’re a perspicacious man, Peter.”
He patted me absently on the knee: “Stick with me, kid. I’ll take you to the stars.”
* * *
On the flight home, I tried to avoid thinking of the two days of dressing, praying, smiling, and emoting that lay ahead. The scent of my childhood home, of meticulously groomed plants and flowers in every corner of every room, greeted me as powerfully as my mother’s worried kiss or my sister’s careful embrace or the eerie sensation of walking into a tomb of memories echoing with an absence. We ate dinner, Haniya and Mumma bickering over her biryani recipe. I stared over Haniya’s shoulder at the rows of old embossed books with gold-leaf lettering, all my parents’ confused texts on the Qur’an. As a child, I’d viewed them with fear because the teachings were as difficult for me to believe as the khutbahs of the imam. I refused to walk by the shelf or sit on the side of the table where I couldn’t keep an eye on them.
Haniya went on about college while my mother stole glances at the muted TV tuned to CNN, something she never would have allowed in our childhood. She watched with worry as the subject never wavered from failed casino owner Donald J. Trump, who it seemed would soon secure enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination. Hani attempted to explicate silver linings:
“He’s going to drag down every Republican on the ticket, Mumma. This is a blessing in disguise, trust me.”
“This is a cursed year. The hateful people are winning everywhere. What about Brexit?”
“That’s not going to happen either, Mumma.”
“When you see your aunties, they will tell you what’s happening in Gujarat. The violence against Muslims is so normal now, and this—this is the beginning of it here.” Mumma shook her head while stock footage of Trump ad-libbing at a political rally played on-screen. Talking heads debated the odds of his unconventional candidacy. Our mother continued: “This is real, Haniya, and when he wins—”
Haniya laughed loudly at our mother’s foolishness. “He’s not going to win! This idiot can’t tie his shoes! He’s probably incontinent. He probably has to wear a diaper onstage!”
My mother slapped Haniya’s hand, though she had lost control of Hani’s foul mouth in her teenage years. Haniya swung her head to me, the crass yellow of her hijab sliding back and a lock of blond-dyed hair spilling out over her forehead.
“Ashir, tell her about the statistical likelihood of this doofus winning.”
My mother continued to stare at the TV and the amateur politician that had so captured the public imagination.
“It’s of negligible probability, according to most polling. But I’m far from an expert.”
Later, when our mother went to bed, I sat in the living room watching game six of Oklahoma City–San Antonio. When Oklahoma City completed its upset, Peter texted me:
Birdman Tannen nails it. When we’re millionaires don’t change on me bro.
I texted back, in an effort to be teasing: Are you concerned that when you achieve what you’ve worked for so vigorously, you’ll find yourself feeling empty? What will you do if you conquer NBA gambling, Peter?
Peter replied: Easy-peasy, bro. We buy a basketball team.
That was when Haniya poked her head in.
“Hey, look what I found.”
She held aloft a bottle of Macallan twenty-year single malt scotch. I’d always known my father hid alcohol in the garage and that his surly moods grew worse if he spent too much time there, but I did not know that Haniya knew.
“Oh, I knew for years,” she said, pouring us each a glass, the incongruity of her bright yellow hijab and the swishing amber liquid notwithstanding. “A son who’s a professional gambler and a daughter who loves a stiff drink.” She clinked her glass against mine, winking at her revelation of what I thought was my secret. “We are bad haraming kids, Ash. Haram-alam-a-dingdong. I’d say Papa would roll over in his grave if he knew, but this probably isn’t the right night for that comment.”
I laughed, and Haniya couldn’t believe it: “Now I have to make it a double to celebrate.”
Before that night, I’d always felt like my sister was alien to me: religious but progressive, bold but closed off. The night before our father’s Janazah was the first time I felt close to her and finally understood what that phrase meant. I could admit to myself that it was good to be with her, that perhaps with the long ordeal of our father’s illness now behind us, a new phase of our relationship might emerge.
The next morning, my head aching from the dehydration of the scotch, my mother asked me to drive her to mosque to help with some final arrangements. I agreed, knowing this was her transparent method to have whatever conversation she wanted to have.
“So your work in Las Vegas. You find this a good use of your talents?”
“It’s lucrative, and it makes me happy.”
“You know what your schoolteacher once told me and your father? Do you remember Miss Addie? Fourth-grade Miss Addie.”
Miss Addie had been my third-grade teacher, but my mother quickly shooed away this point in the manner she had when she was very frustrated with me. My mother’s accent deepened with her intolerance:
“She tells us that she’s never seen someone so young so good with maths. She tells us that we are raising a genius.” Then she arrived at what she actually wanted to say: “You realize I worry. I don’t want you to do it again. It is never far from my thoughts. Or far from my fears.”
“You’ve only seen me for a day. What could you know about my relative state of mind? I’m doing well.”
“You make that impossible to know.”
The picturesque homes of Ann Arbor looked cheerful in the spring sun. I chose to focus on the cool green lawns rather than engage in what I viewed as a tired and unwinnable debate. She persisted:
“Your father was a good man who helped many, many people, Ashir. And some of those sick people that he helped years ago, they are coming for the Janazah. He was so generous. Give, give, give.”
Of course, the service would include hagiographic words from his friends, fellow doctors, and members of the community. But these were the memories of the bereaved—rose-colored and necessary to the circumstances. They couldn’t know of my father’s curt, dismissive treatment of my mother, how he’d freeze her out for days at a time, barely grunting replies, or that despite the dogma he adhered to, he hid liquor and Budweisers in the garage, from which we were all forbidden, and drank many nights after work and spent the mornings hungover, or that despite his assurances, he found me an impossible child, and it made him an exhausted and bitter parent. The dead don’t receive honest criticism. Everyone is too stunned for impartial assessments, though they shouldn’t be. Death is only the second law of thermodynamics—everything evolves to a state of maximum entropy. Everything decays. The ultimate regression to the mean. I find this principle almost too useful. The human mind is dead set on resisting regression to the mean. Even those who are secular reject it at all costs. From religion to basketball, the mind yearns to believe in the extraordinary, the mighty, and this explicates so much about our fears, insecurities, and delusions. Perhaps this knowledge made me speak too curtly:
