Anjali's Red Scarf Ch. 10

Having finished our game, I helped set the fire and then drifted to the kitchen to help Lucy with chopping carrots and celery sticks. The bell rang again a few minutes later: a redheaded woman, and behind her a lady in a headscarf. They stood on the doorstep, and from overheard snatches of conversation I gathered that they'd just dropped by to say a quick happy-birthday on their way to somewhere else. "...bad timing, sorry... no, quite okay... thanks for coming... very best wishes to you both."

Then Lucy came back and called to Jerry and Davie: "Hey, Pippa says if you want a lift over to their thing, they have room."

"Yeah, we probably should," said Jerry. "Sorry to bail on you so early, but we don't have a car."

"It's okay," Lucy said. She headed out with them and came back inside a few minutes later. She seemed a trifle distracted, and it was a little while before she spoke again. "I fucked up my scheduling. One of my exes is getting hand fasted next week so a lot of people are going to the hens' night. That was another of my exes and her partner, dropping by on their way to the bash. It might be a quiet evening here tonight."

"I don't mind quiet." I gave her a quick pat on the shoulder; it seemed like a supportive kind of thing to do. "All okay?"

"Oh yeah. It's been a few years and we're on good terms. And her girlfriend is lovely. Just bad timing. Oh well, guess it makes it easier to fit people in the tub."

"The... tub?"

"Yeah. Hot tub in the garden."

"Oh! I didn't realise, I haven't brought my togs."

"Shit, sorry, I didn't even think to mention it. I don't usually worry about a costume among friends, but... whatever you're comfortable with. My cousin's about your size, I can probably find something of hers to fit you."

In the end, my discomfort with the idea of borrowing a costume from somebody who wasn't present to give their permission won out over my discomfort with the idea of bathing nude. The vibe felt friendly enough, nobody else was bothering with clothes, and nobody was being creepy about it. So I ditched my clothes on a bench just out of splash range and climbed in.

There was only one thing I felt self-conscious about. Among friends, I don't much care who sees my tits or bush while I'm bathing. They're just body parts, most people have them in one variation or another. But my tattoo, now, that's personal, and I feel more exposed showing that than all the rest of me. Fortunately it's small enough that I could more or less cover it by positioning my arm over my chest, until I was able to sink down into the steaming hot water and take cover in the bubbles that were rumbling all around us.

Anjali followed my lead, undressing by the bench, and she was mostly out of her clothes when her phone rang. It was the tone she kept for her parents, and she answered it with the same exasperated attitude as before. Lots of "ha, ma" and "nahi, ma" while she explained that yes, she was at a party with me and friends, no she wasn't drinking and anyway Sarah was there, and so on and so on until she finally managed to end the call.

"That's it, you're going on silent," she said to the phone. "Eugh, I'm cold!" She stashed her things next to mine and climbed in next to me, moving cautiously on the tub's edge; without her glasses she was extremely short-sighted, and I extended my hand to help her down.

"Drinks, anybody?" asked Trev. He'd dragged an esky out to the side of the tub.

"What is there?" somebody asked.

"Corona... VB... soft lemonade... soft ginger beer... water, soju. Hey, Seungmin, is the soju to share?"

"Yeah," said Seungmin. "I'm not going to drink it all."

"What's soju?" asked Anjali.

"Korean drink," they replied. "Fruity. I brought, let me see, apple, peach, plum."

"That sounds nice," Anjali said. "Could I have plum, please?"

"No worries." Trev popped the lid off and passed her a bottle. She looked at the label and nodded.

"One-point-six standard drinks," she said to me. "That should be fine. Told Mama I wasn't drinking, didn't say I wasn't going to."

"Fair enough." I took a ginger beer. I'm not a big drinker, and past history left me feeling a little protective of Anjali where alcohol was involved. But this was a world away from rapey teenagers spiking drinks, and just for once I felt quite comfortable surrounded by mildly tipsy people.

Having made sure everybody was adequately beveraged, Trev joined us in the tub. Mrs. Kapadia probably wouldn't have approved of the eyeful of Trev's tackle that dangled in front of us before he sunk into the water like the rest of us. But then, she wasn't invited.

"Everybody, if you'd like to raise your bottles... happy birthday Lucy!" said Trev. "One, two, three! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Luuu-cy! Happy birthday to you!"

We all sang along, and chinked our bottles, and drank to Lucy's good health, and she toasted us in return. After that it dissolved into individual chit-chat, somewhat lubricated by the alcohol most people were consuming, and although I'd been staying off the booze I could feel the general ebullience rubbing off on me. Somebody put on music, a mix of Halestorm and The Pretty Reckless and that kind of thing, so we had to raise our voices a little to be heard.

I was in between Anjali and Seungmin, who turned out to know several of the same people I did. We were exchanging gossip, and perhaps shit-talking just a little, when it happened. One of those moments where a track ends just as everybody else momentarily stops talking, and one person continues speaking REALLY LOUD into what's suddenly become an attentive hush.

On this occasion, that person was me, and the words I happened to be saying were "...no thanks, I wouldn't do her with a rented dick."

The silence deepened, and everybody looked at me, and I began to turn bright red.

"Do you normally do people with a rented dick?" asked Anjali, who by then ought to have known very well that I didn't. Traitorous wench.

"No, but—" I caught myself one syllable too late.

"No, but?" said Lucy.

"It wasn't rented," I said, which obviously wasn't going to help me. "Just borrowed. And only the once. It was a bad idea."

Everybody wanted details, but my brain had finally caught up with my mouth. "I'm going to stop talking now!" I announced brightly, and although everybody made disappointed noises, I held my silence until they found other things to talk about and the buzz of conversation resumed.

Maybe fifteen minutes later, Trev's phone beeped. "That's eight o'clock, I guess we'd better be heading," he said. Jacinta stood alongside him, dangerously wobbly, and I heard a sudden shriek followed by unladylike swearing from the benches behind me. "Shorry!" she called out. "Saaa-rah, I knocked your shtuff over, don't worry, all under control."

"No worries," I told her. Several of the others were getting out too, all headed for the hen's night. When the exodus had tapered off there were only seven of us left: Lucy and me and Anjali, Jeff and Kay and Seungmin from the gaming group, and Eleanor, who was apparently an old uni classmate of Lucy's.

Somebody asked Anjali about her studies, and she did her usual enthusiastic info-dump about neutron stars and her PhD.

"So how far along are you?" asked Kay.

"Little bit of modelling still to do, but I've started writing up!" said Anjali. "Expecting to submit my thesis in about nine months."

"And what then?"

"Probably a postdoc. There's a group in Switzerland I'm interested in."

That was news to me. It shouldn't have been, really. I was aware she was getting towards the pointy end of her doctorate—she'd been more and more busy with seminars and advisor meetings and so forth—and I knew she ought to be thinking about what might come next, but she hadn't mentioned her plans post-PhD and I hadn't asked her. I guess I'd grown comfortable with the way things were between us, and I didn't really want to think about that being finite. Change is bad.

"Oh, you didn't say!" I said, as brightly as I could manage.

"Sorry, I've been meaning to ask you about it!" she said. "I probably need to start learning some German and I was going to ask for pointers."

"Hmm, well, I can help with Hochdeutsch. That'll get you by in academia, if they're not speaking English anyway. But Swiss German, now, that's a bit different. I'll see what I can find..."

"Are you German?" asked Seungmin.

"My father's father," I said. "Grandpa Weber was captured in North Africa, shipped out to Australia as a POW, met a local girl and ended up staying. But in school I used to tell people my parents came from Germany when I was four."

I had persisted in that story for some months, until that fateful parent-teacher night when Mrs. Hartwell had congratulated my parents on their excellent English, which must have been a confusing experience for all involved. They had made me apologise to her—but not, thank god, to the rest of the class, which would probably have destroyed me.

At the time, I'd never been able to explain to them why I did it. In hindsight, I think it was my way of dealing with the sense of foreignness that I wouldn't understand until many years later, the way I missed layers of meaning in my classmates' speech. For a little while, by trilling my 'r's and over-pronouncing my 'w's the way I'd heard my Opa do, I had a way of packaging my alienness that made sense to my classmates and to me. It might not have been true, in a strict sort of sense, but it was a metaphor that helped me make sense of things until I was obliged to give it up.

I tuned back into the conversation just in time to hear Lucy replying to something Eleanor had asked her: "...no, somebody I've been kind of interested in, but I don't think she's interested in me. I've thrown out a few not very subtle hints and she's ignored them so it's time to take that as a very polite rebuff and move on. I don't even know if she's seeing someone."

Perhaps I wasn't meant to hear that—Lucy was talking quite quietly to Eleanor, while the others chatted about career stuff around me—but she sounded disappointed, and I wanted to cheer her up, so I butted in. "Some people really don't get subtle, you know. Sometimes you just have to use your words or you don't know."

"Yeah, I thought I'd been pretty obvious with this one."

"I mean, laugh at me if you like," I said, "but back in undergrad I once failed to realise a girl was interested in me even when she was actually kissing me."

"Wait, how is that possible? Do you mean like a kiss on the cheek?" Kay asked.

"No, full on...smoochy stuff," I replied, although that didn't really do the lady justice. "I just assumed she was in a kissing mood and felt like kissing somebody, and I happened to be nearby. Didn't occur to me that she might have wanted to kiss me in particular."

"Seriously?" said Lucy.

"Yeah, and it can go the other way too—like, do you remember one night at trivia, you told me 'nice boots'? Funny thing is, that's a goth pickup line. The joke used to be 'nice boots, wanna fuck?' and then it just became 'nice boots' but everybody knew what it meant. So if I hadn't known better, I might have thought you were coming on to me and that would have been really awkward."

"Uh huh," said Lucy, and Eleanor said, "Lu, I hate to be a party pooper, but I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow. Would you mind terribly if I—"

"No, that's quite okay," said Lucy.

Kay, having been whispering in Jeff's ear, chimed in. "Jeff and I were going to head out shortly too. Seungmin, Anjali, do you need a lift anywhere?"

"Sure, yeah, that would be great," said Seungmin, and Anjali said "No, thank you, I'm good."

"You sure?" said Kay.

"Yes, thanks, I'm getting a ride back with Sarah later!" We'd made plans to share a cab.

"Okay," said Lucy, "well, let me see you out." Everybody else climbed out and dressed, and Lucy slipped her pinstripes back on and accompanied them, leaving just me and Anjali in the tub.

"Having fun?" asked Anjali.

"Yeah, but I hope Lucy is too. Seems like everybody's leaving early."

Anjali nodded. "That's why I thought it'd be nice if we two shtayed."

I noticed the slurring in her voice, and a thought occurred to me. "Hey, Anj, can I look at that bottle a moment?"

"Ab-absolutely! Have some if you like."

She'd been sipping at the soju for the last half-hour, and the bottle was almost empty. I held it up under the light and looked closely at the label. "Ah... that's not one-point-six standard drinks. It's sixteen percent alcohol. That's about, uh, four drinks."

"Oh! Oh dear!" She shook her head. "Well, I'd better... drink some water?"

"That would probably be a good idea... no, you stay, I'll get some." I sloshed my way over to the esky and fetched her a large bottle. "I think I'll turn into a prune if I get back in, gonna get dressed now. Also, want to check on Lucy, she's been gone a while."

Anjali followed me out, looking distinctly wobbly. "Careful," I said, "you're not allowed to fall over. I don't want to explain it to your parents." She giggled, and almost did take a tumble before I caught her. "Easy, I've got you."

Out of the hot tub, it hadn't gotten any warmer, and we dried ourselves as quickly as we could. Anjali's blouse was too light for the season, and I offered her my bomber jacket, but she turned it down. "Let's just get inside."

When we came in, our host was sitting in a chair near the front door, holding another Corona and looking at it as if deciding whether she wanted to open it.

"Hey Lucy. Everything okay?" I asked.

"Oh yeah. Just chatting with Eleanor, she's just left."

"I guess it's down to us to keep you entertained."

She gave me a half-hearted smile. "I'm sure we'll manage... Anjali, are you okay?" I looked back to see Anjali hugging herself.

"Just had a little too m-much," Anjali said. "And cold. Going to sit by the fire."

"Oh, I'm sorry! Just a moment, let me get you something, dear. No guest of mine is going to freeze." She hurried off to one of the bedrooms and returned with the fluffiest dressing gown I'd ever seen. "Try this."

It was vastly too big for Anjali, but then she wasn't going anywhere. So she sat on the lounge closest to the fire, hands and feet disappearing into a garment sized for a giant.

"Sorry, I hadn't realised quite how big that would be on you. I can find you a blanket..."

"No, it's fine!" Anjali laughed. "I feel like that girl in that movie, the one piloting the big robot." She looked down at the insignia on the breast pocket. "Cunard?"

"Uncle Jeremy brought it back from a cruise. QE2, or maybe Queen Mary. One of those."

I sat down on the sofa, at the other end from Anjali, and Lucy pulled up a chair opposite us. The fire was burning steadily, and I was once again very pleasantly warm. I'd been paying close attention to Anjali, alert for any signs that I might need to take her home, but she seemed to be mellow and happy enough chatting. She'd been sounding pretty stressed lately, between her ongoing family tensions and a lot of late nights in the lab, and I didn't want to spoil her fun. Nor did I want to bring Lucy's party to an end at barely nine o'clock on a Saturday night.

"Oh shit!" Lucy exclaimed suddenly. "I forgot the cake! I was going to serve it up after we got out of the tub, but people were leaving and... I clean forgot. Well, shall we have some now?"

We made no objections, and she bustled away, returning in a couple of minutes with three plates. "I should have asked, I hope you like Black Forest cake?"

The dressing-gown creature next to me spluttered and hunched over, giggling uncontrollably. "You could... you could say that!"

Lucy was looking at me now, as I tried not to smirk too much myself. "It's an in-joke. Which we are not going to explain while Anjali's under the influence." Nor when she's sober, I silently added. "That would be lovely, thanks."

We ate our cake, rather more tidily than the last time Black Forest had been on the menu, and in the middle of our chit-chat Anjali asked abruptly, "Lucy, what was it like working overseas? What made you go?"

I'd heard small pieces of this story before, but not the whole, so I listened attentively while Lucy spoke.

"I started out in family law. Divorce and custody, AVOs, restraining orders. I always knew that was what I wanted to do, and then I got there, and...look, if I'm going to tell this story, on my birthday, I'm damn well going to have a brandy. Kirsch?"

I declined, as did Anjali, and I wondered just when I ought to remind Lucy that she was trying to cut down on her drinking. Next time, I told myself.

Having poured herself a glass, Lucy returned to her armchair. She looked towards the fire, not at us, as she spoke. "So sometimes the thing you always wanted isn't what you want. I wasn't very good at letting go of work at the end of the day, and there were a couple of...bad cases. I developed some, shall we say, unhealthy coping mechanisms." She tapped her glass. "Pippa, bless her soul, told me I was going to burn myself out if I kept going like I was, and she kept on badgering me until I listened. I felt like such a fucking sellout walking away from it."

She'd emptied her glass already, and was staring down at it contemplatively. I was trying to figure out how best to say "perhaps you've had enough?" when she put it down on the table next to her with a sharp clink, and rose to her feet (not entirely steadily), and swayed over to the sofa.

"I'd like a hug, please," she said, and Anjali and I scootched apart as she sat between us. I put an arm over Lucy's shoulder, and Anjali wrapped hers around Lucy's waist, and we squashed her between us until she was ready to continue.

"So, Pippa and some other people convinced me that I wasn't actually going to help anybody if I burned myself out. Long story short, decided to go into business law, but it can be hard to break in without experience. Uncle Jeremy knew some people and he wangled me a job with P-K's London office. I didn't want to leave Pippa behind, but I needed to be doing something and it was a great opportunity to get my break. But they wanted somebody to commit long-term, and Pippa wasn't in a position to move, so, well." I felt her leaning into me. "It wasn't a very happy breakup. We're on friendly terms now, but it took a while. And then I'd barely been over there a year when we got Brexited and things fell apart. They needed to cut back in the London office, last hired first fired, but I managed to get a spot back here with the Australian branch."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Anjali murmured. She was still hugging Lucy like one of those oversized teddy bears. "I didn't mean to bring you down."

"It's okay," Lucy said. "But I think now I get to ask you a question."

"That seems fair," said Anjali.

"Well, then. What is the deal between you two?"

"She pays me," said Anjali, just like that.

From the way Lucy jolted against me, that wasn't the answer she'd been expecting. "Say what?"

"We have a sugar baby arrangement. Once a fortnight I do nice things for Sarah, and she pays me for it. The rest of the time, the games and trivia, that's just as friends."

"No, really, what is the deal?" asked Lucy.

"Yeah, it's true," I said, embracing my doom.

Lucy sat back, turning her head to look at me, then back to Anjali. "Now you're both shitting me."

"I bloody am not," said Anjali, with an edge of genuine anger in her voice, and she pulled away from Lucy and stood up. "Sarah, where's your bag?"

"Over by the—wait, what are you doing?" But I'd already pointed, and she'd found it and had opened up my wallet.

"Two hundred dollars," she said, spreading out the notes so we could see them. Then she stashed them away in her own purse, and took out a familiar length of red silk.