The Meagre Tarmac by Clark Blaise Read Free Book Online Page A

no, not necessary. Pramila brings a glass of orange juice on a silver tray, just like a dutiful daughter well-trained in an Indian convent school. When we’re seated she says, “PacBell was twenty years ago, how time flies.”
    â€œMy husband was working on that project,” I say. “Maybe you knew him?”
    â€œYes, indeed, Dr. Waldeker was my immediate superior. I went east after that, got married, took an MBA degree, jobs came, jobs went. Husbands came, husbands went, no children. Sort of typical for the times, I guess. I’m spending a few days reintroducing myself to old friends ... and new.”
    I tell her that I was in India at the outset of the project. The good old days of nanotech at PacBell, with Al-before-Mitzi. There was a third guy in the house my husband and Al rented, a Parsi fellow from Bombay, who drifted off.
    â€œI know,” she says. “Your husband talked about you, and — what was it — a son?”
    Six months ago, she says, she decided she had never been happier than when she was in the Bay Area, and decided to come back. She called Al, and immediately he hired her as cfo of the many Wong Enterprises. I say I’m sure my husband would love to see her again, but he is in India.
    â€œAl tells me Vivek’s thinking of going back,” she says.
    So it’s Vivek now, is it? I never use his good name myself.
    â€œHe’s exploring all options,” I say. Those are his words. This is a woman who knew my husband when I was still in India, waiting for the wave of his magic wand.
    â€œI just wanted to say hello,” she says. “Please let him know I’m back in the Bay Area.”
    Then she looks up at me and I see it all in front of me; she is twenty years younger, and could be quite attractive, even provocative. Less like a potato, and more like a carrot. I guess her to be maybe Jewish, and then I think of west-Asian types with their big dark eyes and heavy noses and puffy lips and of Mr. Wally and his brood of cousins and probably a wife who could look a lot like her.
    â€œIs there anything else I should say?”
    â€œHe knew me back then as Polly Baden, a post-doc from Berkeley. Then — he’ll get a kick out this — I was, fairly briefly, Polly Mehta, from Toronto. He was a wild Parsi guy, in case you’re wondering. Now I go by the name of Paula McNally, from New Jersey.” She looks down at her feet — she is wearing sandals, I notice, and her nails have been professionally trimmed and clear-polished — “who knows, maybe I’ll pick up a third. The number of graduate degrees in one’s life should at least balance the number of husbands.”
    She’s making a joke of it, but I can see through it. An enterprising girl like her, I’m sure she’ll succeed. She has been sent here today, as I ponder my sins and my fate, by an even larger fate. Something is watching overhead. Something knows everything we’ve done. Normally I am not a religious person, but sometimes the workings are inescapable.
    â€œI don’t think I’ve ever heard the words ‘wild Parsi guy’,” I say. “They seem the model of decorum.”
    â€œOh, they’re out there, believe me. And if they’re out there, I’d find them.” She fiddles around with the orange juice. Maybe she’s a wine-drinker, and it’s past noon but we don’t keep it around. Even my husband’s nightly beer is stored in the garage. “You asked me what to say. Well, there’s too much to say, and not enough. Just say hello from Polly, and if he asks anything more, say I’m in a very stable relationship and he’d be quite proud of — or maybe just surprised by — the way I’ve turned out. He got me fired from PacBell, by the way, did he ever tell you? He set my feet in an easterly direction. My only regret is there was never time for children. So just say