Bombay Gin

They meet at a wedding in Jaipur. The bride's and groom's Western friends, flown in from a half-dozen different countries, are housed and entertained together, and she first sees him on a group tour of the Amber Fort. He is a teacher in Vietnam, and although a few years younger than her, he looks like he could be a liberal arts professor with his tweed and round glasses and comfortable self‑confidence. She pays him little attention at first, but he is the only one who chooses to go with her to bookstores when the others shop for cheap clothes and take photos, and he makes her laugh.

By the last night of the wedding, reminiscences of the bride and groom's wilder days and the emergence of running jokes have bonded the group together, and when they return from the walima, the final wedding event, they change out of their borrowed saris and sherwanis and hide out in one of the hotel rooms with bottles of tax-free vodka and gin. She isn't used to drinking liquor and spends much of the night on the marble floor of a bathroom, leaned over the toilet. The next morning, they gather for a good-bye lunch. She feels fine by then, but he has a hangover and has to shield his eyes from the bright daylight. Lack of sleep makes them light‑headed and giggly. He pokes fun at her for her inability to handle liquor, and she pokes fun at him for his hangover. The bride raises an eyebrow at her, but she chooses to ignore it.

They part ways at the airport but begin to write to each other. They move on from messaging apps to long emails where they share their opinions on Hemingway and talk about cigarettes and punctuation. She thinks about him too much. He asks her to visit him in Saigon; four months pass, and she does.

Her heart is pounding when the Uber stops in front of a small French colonial building. An old man climbs out of a hammock and walks towards her, and she knows he must be the doorman he has told her about.

"For Mister De Luca?" He pronounces each syllable with care.

She nods yes. He takes her luggage and motions for her to follow him. Two floors up, the old man stops in front of a door and knocks lightly.

He opens it right away. His feet are bare, and he's wearing shorts with his shirt tucked in, but he is just as handsome as she remembered.

"Hey," he says, looking at her steadily and smiling.

"Hey." She smiles back.

He looks away only to thank the doorman in Vietnamese, slipping him a bill. When the door closes, they stare at each other, not knowing what to say for an awkward moment. Then he bring out a bottle of Chardonnay, and they reminisce about the wedding and their common friend. He shows her the spare room, and she sleeps deeply and long, exhausted from the long flight. When she wakes, he has already gone to work.

She puts on her bikini and goes to the rooftop. Concrete apartment complexes tower over the small building. She sits down on a wooden bench and reads Graham Greene. Her iPhone signals it is overheating, and she places it in the only shade, in the corner underneath a potted palm tree. Sweat trickles down between her breasts. Whenever the heat becomes unbearable, she takes off her sunglasses and steps into the small, turquoise pool, sinking down until the water reaches her neck. Then she paces the rooftop until the sun has dried her enough not to leave water stains on the book. The sound of construction work on rooftops in the distance is muted, as if softened by the heat haze. It does not disturb her.

In the afternoons, he returns from work on his motor scooter, and she climbs on behind him. It terrifies her at first, but within ten minutes, it is her new favorite thing. He weaves between cars and navigates intersections where they are one of hundreds of scooters, swarming like bees around them. She rests her hands lightly on his waist for balance and leans in as close as she can without directly touching him, her chest almost brushing against his back. Even in the blazing sun, she imagines she can feel the body heat radiating from him. They stop at a red light, and she looks up at the frangipani and bougainvillea escaping over wrought-iron fences. He whistles a tune she cannot identify. The breeze when he accelerates feels like a caress. Her heart aches with joy and the knowledge it must end.

They eat at French restaurants and drink gin and tonic by the river. She watches him when she thinks he does not notice. His features are vaguely Italian. Sometimes, he looks innocent but unremarkable, as when she first saw him; other times, in another light or from another angle, he is strikingly, classically handsome. One night, she watches his profile as he smokes a cigarette, and it almost takes her breath away; she is sure no one could ever have looked so handsome smoking before. She looks at him in awe, dreading the moment when he will finish listening to the man across from him, when she will have to look away.

After they have made love for the first time, he falls asleep directly. She can never sleep with someone else in the bed, but she doesn't want to leave. She lays awake throughout the night, dozing off around 4:00 AM. She gets up when the sun rises, moving carefully as not to wake him. She steals a cigarette from the pack on his desk and goes up on the rooftop. The doorman and another elderly man with grey whiskers are smoking and drinking tea at the spot where she tans in the daytime. They gesture for her to sit with them. Jasmine flowers float in a bowl of water on the table. She smokes her stolen cigarette and listens to them talk. It is relaxing not to be expected to comprehend or participate. When she finishes her cigarette, the doorman smiles and offers her one of his own.

The last evening, they go to Le Méridien. In the dark of the evening, the heat seems more exotic. The hotel is huge and modern with an exterior of glass and metal. It should have seemed out of place, but the luxury makes it blend in seamlessly. They drink wine and eat fruit and cheese. She laughs at his flamboyant and accurate imitation of Donald Trump. They attempt to guess the life stories of the other guests at the bar and giggle as they poke fun at the 20-year-old in the tasteless dress, and the American who hasn't tucked in his shirt.

They leave the hotel and go to a side street where the tables and rickety chairs on the pavement are white plastic with dirt permanently ingrained. He chats with the waitress in Vietnamese. They drink watery beer served over ice. A middle-aged lady on a bicycle stops in front of them to yell something to another customer. She is wearing fuchsia lipstick and a plastic visor, and a tiny dog sits in the basket of her bicycle. "She's the local pot dealer," he tells her.

Slightly drunk, she leans her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. She recollects a friend once telling her that pretending to fall asleep on a man's shoulder was a cheap trick, and she starts giggling. When she won't tell him why, he wraps an arm around her waist and kisses her hair. They make love for the last time that evening. She stays in his bed, wide awake and listening to his soft snoring throughout the night.

He calls an Uber for her in the morning, and she cries all the way to the airport.

The emails cease. She tells herself it would be embarrassing to be heartbroken after so little, but she takes up smoking again and grows sick of her city. It is months before she stops thinking about him. When she finally forgets, she begins to obsess over a coworker and thinks she has fallen in love, then sleeps with a different coworker and decides she has not. She quits smoking, quits her job, and moves to France.

A year passes, then an email arrives. "Hey. I'm back in the US, but I'm thinking of a little jaunt to Europe soon. Feel up for playing tour guide for a couple of days?"

Without hesitation, she invites him to stay with her in Paris.

This time, there is no awkward silence after he arrives. They talk and drink, and she shows him the city, relaxed in the certitude he will love it. In the mornings, they eat viennoiseries in the Luxembourg Gardens, where Hemingway claimed to have caught pigeons when he had no money to buy food; they look at the pigeons and decide it was probably untrue. They go to see dead writers and eat where they used to eat. They make jokes at Rousseau's tomb. They stop at pavement cafés to drink espresso and wine, and he smokes pretentious cigarettes in black paper. They share the last one over wine one evening, then he buys a pack of Marlboros at a tabac, and they laugh together at his attempt to pronounce it as a Frenchman would.

They do not touch each other in the daytime, but they smile knowingly at each other over their wine glasses at a small party in Saint-Ouen. He falls in love with Paris as she did with Saigon and tells her he will learn French. She goes to the used bookstores in the Quartier Latin during lunch one day and buys a used copy of Émile. It takes her twenty minutes to think of two lines to write on the inside of the cover that are clever and affectionate, but not too affectionate.

They go together to Nice. They rent a flat that is bright and white. There are gauzy curtains in the windows fluttering in the wind, and the bed is huge and smells of lavender and bleach. They leave their luggage and take a blanket and some books. They get bread and cheese and a bottle of wine and go to sit at Coco Beach. She reads a tawdry romance she found at their flat, the pages bleached and warped from previous beach readers. She reads the most outrageous of the clichés out loud to him, and they laugh together. He reads Milan Kundera. When it starts to get dark, they pack up and go walking along Promenade des Anglais. They share a carafe of Fleurie over dinner, and she smokes two of his cigarettes.

They are laughing and tipsy when they return to the flat, and she leans on his arm for balance. While he is in the bathroom, she undresses and climbs into bed, smiling as she sinks into the mounds of clean white pillows. She hears the rustling of clothes and sound of a belt being undone in the next room. She waits. Finally, she gets up and goes out into the living room. He has made up the couch to sleep, the blanket they brought to the beach pulled up over him.

"What are you doing?" she asks without thinking.

He looks mildly surprised. "I just figured we could both use a good night's sleep."

"Oh. Well—if you change your mind, feel free to join me." She leaves the bedroom door ajar, but he never comes.

The next morning, they have breakfast at Promenade des Anglais, then go buy fruit, bread, and a bottle of rosé. They go back to Coco Beach. She finishes the tawdry romance and moves on to Paul Theroux's journey from Cairo to Cape Town. He continues reading Milan Kundera. The evening passes as the previous. They drink more Fleurie. Neither comments as they go to sleep in separate rooms.

The third day, as they drink their espresso and their rosé and their Fleurie, she finds herself wishing he would be gone already. The drinking and the eating bores her when it is no longer an interlude but the sole pleasure. Then she thinks of how little time is left till he will be gone, and wishes desperately that time would slow down. They smoke the last of his cigarettes that evening. On the way back to the flat, they get a final bottle of wine. She regrets it as they sit two feet apart on the couch, listening to old music and barely talking. The bottle seems interminable. She refills his glass insistently while gulping down her own as quickly as she can without getting sick.

When the wine is finished, she gets up from the couch and drops the bottle in the recycling unceremoniously. "I think I'm gonna head to bed."

"That's probably a good idea," he says.

They get ready in silence, and she closes the door behind her. She is intent on sleeping well and deeply, if only out of spite, and she succeeds.

In the morning, they shower, get dressed, and pack. When he suggests they write a thank-you note in the flat's guestbook before they leave, she loses her patience.

"Did you lose interest between Paris and Nice?" she asks.

"Lose interest in what?"

"In me," she says, exasperated. "Why won't you touch me?"

He laughs nervously and does not respond. There is a tense moment, then he turns the page in the guestbook and makes a joke about something someone has written; she doesn't really listen.

"Just write whatever so we can go get breakfast," she says.

Their train is leaving at noon. From Paris, he will continue to Amsterdam and she will walk home. They stop at a pavement cafe on the way, but the waiter shakes his head, telling them the kitchen isn't open yet. They walk on to the station and find a chain coffee shop playing instrumental Beatles songs. They get black coffee and croissants on a plastic tray. He sets the tray down on a low table by a couple of armchairs, then goes to look for a restroom.

She sits down and waits for him to return, sipping black coffee from a large paper cup. Ten minutes pass, and she tears off a tiny piece of her croissant to nibble on. Twenty minutes pass, and she has finished the croissant and most of her coffee and taken out Paul Theroux from her bag. Thirty minutes pass, and she sends him a message, then calls him. He does not pick up. There are still 20 minutes before the train leaves. She hesitates. If his phone is out of battery, perhaps she should remain where she is until he finds her. She waits another ten minutes, then picks up her bag and starts walking toward the platform, leaving his untouched coffee and croissant behind.

She does not expect to see him there, but she still feels panicked when she doesn't. At the loudspeaker announcement that two minutes remain until departure, she hesitates. She steps on board, then back onto the platform, then, with remembered anger, back on again. She thinks without much hope that perhaps he is already seated, but the seat next to hers is empty. The train departs.

Thirty minutes away from Nice, her phone vibrates against the plastic tray table. Startled, she picks it up. "I'm sorry. I couldn't bear to say goodbye," she reads.

Her hands trembling, she types the first thing that comes to mind. "I don't understand you." She hits send and regrets it immediately.

The response comes within minutes. "I don't understand myself."

She rolls her eyes and resists the urge to throw the phone against something. It was her fault for handing him that line, but what sort of man-child pretends not to understand himself?

After a few minutes, the phone vibrates again. "I am going to try and move to Europe," he writes. "Perhaps for a few months already this summer." Then, "Will you come see me?"

Disgusted, she opens her bag to throw in the phone, and sees the copy of Émile she never gave him. She takes it out and rips out the page she had written on. She crumples up the page and stuffs it into the seat pocket of the empty seat next to her. It satisfies her somewhat.

The train ride is interminable. She hears her phone vibrate a few more times but ignores it. She tries to read at one point, but soon puts the book away again. When the train finally pulls into Montparnasse, she takes her bags and shoves her way to the exit. At the metro, she stops in front of the gates, turns, and takes the escalator back up again. She walks. It is early evening, and people are drinking on the patio cafés. She stops underneath a red lozenge-shaped sign outlined in neon and goes in to buy a pack of Camel Blue and a lighter. She removes the plastic from the pack as she walks, then puts it in her pocket.

She stops when she reaches the Seine. She opens her bag and takes out Émile. She opens it and sees the jagged edge of the paper she ripped out. Before she can think, she has hurled the book into the river. Someone nearby yells at her. She ignores them and lights a cigarette. Émile bobs gently on the water. She wishes she could throw it in again. The cigarette tastes stale and ashy, but she lights another one. Then she throws the pack of cigarettes into the Seine as well and walks home.

She learned one thing: never to go on trips with anyone who does not love you.