THE GRANDFATHER arrives to pour water for them. He has the same bemused look that Matthew remembers. On nights when the restaurant was quiet, nearly empty, he seemed puzzled, as if pondering the mysterious behavior of his absent customers. Where might they be on this night if they are not in my restaurant? What can they be up to? What are they doing that is keeping them away from us? Are they eating somewhere else? Are they fasting today? Is this a day of family feasts, when everyone cooks and eats at home? On nights when the restaurant was full, and everyone was bustling around, trying to keep up with the orders, putting on their circus show, he seemed puzzled still. What brought all these people here? Why are they all in such a hurry to eat? What can they all be talking about? Is it possible that they were all at one gathering, and someone said, ‘Now our business is over here, and we must all go to Superior Indian Cookery’? How are we managing to cook and serve food for all these people? Why are we not throwing up our hands and telling everyone to go home and rest?
“What shall we order?” Matthew asks the grandfather. He glances at Liz, and she smiles, just a tiny smile, but a pleasant one. They had gotten into the habit of asking the grandfather this question after one evening when they realized they’d fallen into a rut — chicken tikka masala for Liz, always, and bhoti kabob for Matthew, always. That evening they asked the grandfather what they should order, and he told them. From then on they had asked him every time, and they had ordered what he suggested every time.
“Well,” says the grandfather, “I think you will like the chicken tikka masala for you and you” — nodding to Liz and Belinda — “and for you” — turning to Matthew — “bhoti kabob.”
Matthew stares at him for a moment without speaking, and then he turns to Liz, but she seems not to see anything remarkable in what the grandfather has said. Was I wrong about what we used to order, or has Liz just forgotten? “Fine,” Matthew says. “We always take your advice.”
THE NEWSPAPER CLIPPER has nearly finished eating, but he’s still muttering and clipping. Now he’s cutting something from a copy of Newsweek. Matthew pours more tequila.
“I wonder how many people have wondered who he is,” he says. “The Neat Graffitist, or the Culture Guerrilla, or whatever. You know what I mean? All of us who have read these things of his have something in common, and we don’t know it. It’s interesting. It’s interesting to think about the ways that people in a city can be bound together without their even being aware of it.” Liz and Belinda just nod. “Or, maybe not,” Matthew says. It is interesting, too, to think about the ways in which he and Belinda and Liz are bound together, by the past, now that certain experiences he had with Liz have been duplicated in ways that, it pleases Matthew to consider, neither Liz nor Belinda is aware of, and by the present, by this moment, the tequila, the noise in the room, their conversation, their conspiratorial huddle, and, possibly — oh, what a titillating thought — by some as-yet-undefined elements of their future.
[to be continued]
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🎧 491: The grandfather . . .