Page 304 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

English - II

Notes Twinkle stared at him, placidly exhaling, the smoke emerging in two thin blue streams from her
nostrils. She rolled up the poster slowly, securing it with one of the elastic bands she always wore
around her wrist for tying back her thick, unruly hair, streaked here and there with henna. “I’m
going to put it in my study,” she informed him, “That way you don’t have to look at it,”
“What about the housewarming? They’ll want to see all the rooms. I’ve invited people from the
office.”
She rolled her eyes. Sanjeev noted that the symphony, now in its third movement, had reached a
crescendo, for it pulsed with the telltale dashing of cymbals.
“I’d put it behind the door,” she offered, “That way, when they peek in, they won’t see. Happy?”
He stood watching her as she left the room, with her poster and her cigarette; a few ashes had fallen
to the floor where she’d been standing. He bent down, pinched them between his fingers, and deposited
them in his cupped palm. The tender fourth movement, the adagietto, began. During breakfast Sanjeev
had read in the liner notes that Mahler had proposed to his wife by sending her the manuscript of
this portion of the score. Although there were elements of tragedy and struggle in the Fifth Symphony,
he had read, it was principally music of love and happiness.
He heard the toilet flush. “By the way,” Twinkle hollered, “if you want to impress people, I wouldn’t
play this music. It’s putting me to sleep.”
Sanjeev went to the bathroom to throw away the ashes. The cigarette butt still bobbed in the toilet
bowl, but the tank was refilling, so he had to wait a moment before he could flush it again. In the
mirror of the medicine cabinet he inspected his long eyelashes — like a girl’s, Twinkle liked to tease.
Though he was of average build, his cheeks had a plumpness to them; this, along with the eyelashes,
detracted, he feared, from what he hoped was a distinguished profile. He was of average height as
well, and had wished ever since he had stopped growing that he were just one inch taller. For this
reason it irritated him when Twinkle insisted on wearing high heels as she had done the other night
when they ate dinner in Manhattan. This was the first weekend after they’d moved into the house, by
then the mantel had already filled up considerably, and they bickered about it in the car on the way
down. But then Twinkle had drunk four glasses of whiskey in a nameless bar in Alphabet City, and
forgot all about it. She dragged him to a tiny bookshop on St. Mark’s Place, where she browsed for
nearly an hour and when they left she insisted that they dance a tango on the sidewalk in front of
strangers.
Afterward, she tottered on his arm, rising faintly over his line of vision, in a pair of suede three-inch
leopard-print pumps. In this manner they walked the endless blocks back to a parking garage on
Washington Square, for Sanjeev had heard far too many stories about the terrible things that happened
to cars to Manhattan. “But I do nothing all day except sit at my desk.” she fretted when they were
driving home, after he had mentioned that her shoes looked uncomfortable and suggested that perhaps
she should not wear them. “I can’t exactly wear heels when I’m typing.” Though he abandoned the
argument, he knew for a fact chat she didn’t spend all day at her desk: just that afternoon, when he
got back from a run, he found her inexplicably in bed, reading. When he asked why she was in bed
in the middle of the day she told him she was bored. He had wanted to say to her then, You could
unpack some boxes. You could sweep the attic. You could retouch the paint on the bathroom
windowsill, and after you do it you could warn me so that I don’t put my watch on it. They didn’t
bother her, these scattered, unsettled matters. She seemed content with whatever clothes she found
at the front of the closet, with whatever magazine was lying around, with whatever song was on the
radio — content yet curious. And now all of her curiosity centered around discovering the next
treasure.
A few days later when Sanjeev returned from the office, he found Twinkle on the telephone, smoking
and talking to one of her girlfriends in California even though it was before five o’clock and the long-
distance rates were at their peak. “Highly devout people,” she was saying, pausing every now and
then to exhale. “Each day is like a treasure hunt. I’m serious. This you won’t believe. The switch
plates in the bedrooms were decorated with scenes from the Bible. You know, Noah’s Ark and all
that. Three bedrooms, but one is my study. Sanjeev went to the hardware store right away and
replaced them, can you imagine, he replaced every single one.”

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