“I don’t know,” I say, and for a minute she looks frustrated, like I’m keeping it from her, but that’s not it, and I don’t want to keep things from her anymore. So I clarify. “I don’t know her name.”
Yael looks up, surprised, and not. “Whose name?”
“Lulu.”
“Isn’t that her name?”
So I tell my mother. About finding this girl, this strange and nameless girl, whom I showed nothing but who saw everything. I tell her how since losing her, I have felt bereft. And the relief at telling my mother this is almost as profound as the relief of finding Lulu was.
When I finish telling Yael the story about that day in Paris, I look at her. And I’m shocked all over again because she’s doing something I’ve only seen her do in the kitchen while cutting onions.
My mother is crying.
“Why are you crying?” I ask her, now crying again myself.
“Because it sounds just like how I met Bram,” she says, laughing on a sob.
Of course it does. I’ve thought about that every single day since I met Lulu. Wondered if that’s not why I’m stuck on her. Because the story is so much like Yael and Bram’s.
“Except for one thing,” I say.
“What’s that?” she asks, swiping at her eyes.
The most important detail. And you’d think I would’ve known better, having heard Bram’s story so many times.
“You give the girl your address.”
Thirty
APRIL
Mumbai
As Mukesh expected, the shoot goes over schedule by double, so for six days I have the pleasure of becoming Lars Von Gelder. And it is. A pleasure. A surprising one. On set, in costume, with Amisha and the other actors across from me, Lars Von Gelder’s cheesy Hindi lines cease to feel cheesy. They don’t even feel like another language. They roll off my tongue and I feel like I am him, the calculating operator who says one thing and wants another.
In between takes, I hang out in Amisha’s trailer, playing games of hearts with her and Billy. “We’re all impressed with your abilities,” Amisha tells me. “Even Faruk, though he’ll never say so.”
He doesn’t. Not exactly. But at the end of each day, he pats me on the back and says, “Not bad, Mr. Not Really.” And I feel proud.
But then it’s the last day and I know it’s over, because instead of saying “not bad,” Faruk says “good work,” and thanks me.
And that’s it. Next week, Amisha and the principles are packing for Abu Dhabi where they will shoot the final scenes of the film. And me? Yesterday I got a text from Tasha. She and Nash and Jules are in Goa. I’m invited to go with them. But I won’t.
I have a couple more weeks here. And I’m spending them with my mother.
My first night back at the Bombay Royale, I get in late. Chaudhary is snoring behind the desk, so I take the stairs up to the fifth floor rather than wake him. Yael has left the door propped open, but she’s also asleep when I get in. I’m both relieved and disappointed. We haven’t really spoken since that day at the clinic. I don’t quite know what to expect between us. Have things changed? Do we speak a common language now?
The next morning she shakes me awake.
“Hey,” I say, blinking my eyes.
“Hey,” she says back, almost shyly. “I wanted to know, before I leave for work, if you wanted to join me tonight for a Seder. It’s the first night of Passover.”
I almost think she’s joking. When I was growing up, we only celebrated the secular holidays. New Year’s. Queen’s Day. We never once had a Seder. I didn’t even know what they were until Saba started visiting and told me about all the holidays he celebrated, that Yael used to celebrate when she was a child.
“Since when do you go to Seders?” I ask. My question is hesitant, because the mere asking of it touches on the tender spot of her childhood.
“Two years now,” she answers. “There’s an American family that started a school near the clinic, and they wanted to have one last year and I was the only Jew they knew, so they begged me to come, because they said they’d feel funny having one without a Jew.”