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She was standing at the shop display window admiring ethnic sandalwood carvings of elephants, cheetahs and dancing women when she saw a reflection in the glass. It hovered on the edge of memory but she did not turn around at once because she was afraid. The fear was not the kind one feels at the sight or sound of a thief or a ghost or anything ordinary. It was the fear (or the memory of one) of reliving a happy time long long ago in your life and seeing that yes, it really had existed and everything you’ve been doing after that to convince yourself that it was imagined is false. This fear lasts only a moment though, because one’s defenses are strong especially in the young and even as she stared at the short slim reflection with the bobbing head, the fear vanished and she turned around. It was him all right. He was still shorter than her by at least three inches and he was still very thin with narrow sloping shoulders and a slim waist that barely held his trousers up. His face was as handsome as it had been ten years ago but without broad shoulders to give it continuity it looked as if the head stood by itself.

This impression was heightened by the head’s constant bobbing when he spoke. When she had met him first as a junior in college, the boys and some girls had made fun of him and she had gathered her books and went over to the back of the classroom to sit next to him out of pity. Back then she had pitied many things: a stray dog with a broken leg, a kitten than the boys wanted to throw in the well, a woman with a bent back so her eyes were always looking at the ground, she had pitied many things. But by the end of the first semester she had seen nothing to pity in this boy. He was proud and got good grades and spoke well except for the bobbing of the head. He was loyal to her and they became inseparable. After the first year examinations were over he asked her to marry him and she said yes. The rest of the course was for her a happy blur of kissing in dark theaters, riding on wide uneven country roads in his old noisy car or drinking hot tea in the rain. After they graduated he had gone away to North India to study Radio Engineering and she had been proud of the important-sounding thing that he had gone to study and she had told all her friends about it. The little private clock of their lives had stopped there and she looked at him now waiting for the faint rusty ticking to begin.

He spoke first. ‘Is it really you Celia?’ his voice was deeper now and very low.
‘Of course it’s me! It’s been a long time, Sag.’ She said with forced cheer because the suddenness of seeing him after all these years made her want to sit down.
‘I can’t believe it.’ He said, his head bobbing a little on the slim neck.
‘Where did you appear from?’ She said. She shifted her heavy shopping bag from one had to the other. From the store behind, someone came out and more people went in, walking around them.

She moved away from the door to the window. ‘We’re in the shoppers’ way.’ She said.
‘Let me carry your bag.’ He said. ‘We’ll move over to the window.’
‘Thank you.’ She gave the bag to him. He carried it easily in a thin wiry arm and she thought of how much strength those arms had concealed. At the beginning of the second semester he had fought a tall boy with thick beefy muscles because the boy had called Celia names. After that he had beat a few more mainly because the other boys never expected him to be strong and he took them by surprise.

When he took the bag their fingers brushed but it was nothing more than the touch of cold plastic yet and when she looked at him she saw the indifference reflected on his face It had been too long ago and then too it had happened only once in a motel room on the outskirts of town and after it was over she had got off the bed and sat on the folding chair near the mirror and she had cried a bit and said ‘This room makes it bad.’
And he had said nothing, just nodded his oversized head and looked out of the window. But now all that was not even a memory, it was like the memory of a memory and very faded and old and so why should she feel anything at the touch of his skin? Maybe later if they sat down at a Café table and if they were stronger than all the years in-between and if what he was now was not too far away from what he had been then, it might be coaxed back. But only if there was time and if they had not killed too many selves between then and now. And even then it was always dangerous like calling forth spirits over a board.

He set the bags down on the side-walk near the display window. ‘Let’s go somewhere and talk.’ He said. He was smiling excitedly, now that the shock of seeing her had sunk in. She took in all the details of him. The gray trousers that flattered his waist and hid his knee bones, the starched white linen shirt, the bright red tie with the perfect knot, the shiny black leather shoes. His hair was still cropped very short but he had put gel and it did not stand out above the ears as it used to. His eyes were bright, never resting on anything for more than a fleeting moment as if they had too much to see and absorb and learn. He spoke very well making the best use of his deep voice and emphasizing the right syllables. Even with the bobbing head, he had gone a long way she thought.

Celia tried to fit this man into the image of him that she had squeezed every other man into.
‘Yes.’ She said finally. ‘Where shall we go?’
He bit his upper lip and drummed the fingers of one hand over the palm of the other. Then he snapped his fingers. ‘I’ve got it. What about Café Coffee Day?’
‘Where ever.’ She said. ‘I don’t know the new places.’
‘Why? Haven’t you been in town?’ He asked, beginning to walk.
She looked at him strangely. Somehow she assumed he would have known or at the least heard about it. ‘No, I’ve been away for eight years.’
The brightness went a little from his smile but he did not let it slip away altogether.
‘Where?’
‘In America.’ She said.
‘Why, I didn’t know!’ He exclaimed. The smile was back.
‘We lost touch.’ She said gently but he did not seem to need the gentleness.
‘I know.’ He shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘But what have you been doing in America?’
‘I got married and went with my husband.’ She said. Something passed through his eyes then, as when the headlights of a passing car makes a quivering shadow-shape on the bedroom wall at night. Then it was gone. ‘Where’s your husband now?’ He said. ‘I must meet him.’
‘I’m down on holiday alone.’ She said. ‘He’s working.’
‘Oh.’ He shook his head ‘Pity, we could all have gone out, caught up on old times.’ In the faded world of memories that she had kept new all this time, what he said made a false ringing tone. But here it fitted with the way he looked and spoke and she began to feel strangely anachronistic in her quiet responses and inadequate that she had not changed as much as he. She couldn’t bring herself to ask if he was married but he said with the same smiling expression ‘I’m married too, you’ll meet my wife soon.’ It would not have been polite to search his eyes after ten years of not seeing him but she did try to look into them as he said this. They looked back at her, empty of the past and only throwing back the shop window behind her and she looked away.
‘Let’s walk to the café.’ He said. ‘It’s only a short walk from here.’ He picked up her bag and started down the road and she followed him winding her way past the Christmas shoppers. He still walked fast with long strides and she had to trot to keep up. He slowed down then and smiled at her. ‘Sorry.’

‘You haven’t changed.’ She said and laughed. He did not pick up the invitation to reminisce. Instead he shrugged and took out a small silver cellular phone from his trouser pocket. ‘I’d better call my wife and tell her where we’ll be.’ He said. ‘She’s in one of those boutiques here and I wandered off down the road.’
‘Okay.’ Celia said but she wished the call would not go through so that she would not have to meet his wife. She was not curious at all and somewhere in the first few minutes of meeting him she knew they would not meet again. She slowed down to walk behind him as he punched a number then waited, then said ‘Anita, it’s me.’
Then, ‘Yes, I’m with a friend. Going to Café coffee Day. Come there.’
Silence, then ‘How long? Half an hour? Come sooner if you can. ‘Bye.’ He pressed a button, snapped the phone shut and put it in his pocket again. He turned to her. ‘My wife is an obsessive shopper.’ He rolled his eyes. Her hungry mind registered this new thing. He never rolled his eyes before. After the call he looked and sounded more new and the smile was stretched tighter across his cheeks.
‘All women are shoppers.’ She said trying for a light tone, and finding it, she said to sustain it ‘My husband says he never will go shopping with me.’

But at this mention of her husband something again passed through his eyes and he said nothing. They walked on past rows of shop windows with red and green lights embellishing the trinkets on display. In one window there was a revolving Santa Claus sitting on a wooden sleigh and a group of children were looking in and clapping their hands. Celia thought they would stop and laugh at the children and look in themselves but he kept walking.
‘So where do you live now?’ She asked running to catch up again.
‘Right here in Bangalore. In the heart of the city.’ He spread one arm around him in a wide sweeping gesture that indicated nothing but made him look important as he said it.
‘And what do you do?’ She asked.
‘I’m in real estate.’ He said.
‘That sounds impressive.’
‘No, it’s really a lot of hard work. Especially that I’ve set up my own business now, I’m not working for anyone.’
‘That’s good.’ She said ‘I hate to work for anyone myself.’
‘What do you do in America?’ He asked.
‘I work for a bank called Chevy Chase.’
‘I can’t imagine you working for a bank.’ He said. ‘You were not much with numbers if I remember right.’ The words were simple but they twisted her memories and made of them a trivial thing not worth remembering. ‘I know.’ She said. But when I first went there it was very difficult to get a job except in Banking and later I stuck with it.’ ‘What’s America like?’ He asked in the tone of someone making conversation while walking. ‘You won’t believe how many people have asked me that in the two months that I’ve been here.’ She said. ‘No really, I’m curious.’ He half turned to her and nodded.

She thought. ‘Everything is big and there are lots of machines to do all the work and no one walks on the streets much and you don’t see children playing in the evenings.’
‘Whoa!’ He said. ‘Do you like it then?’
‘No.’ After she said it she realized she had not been honest with anyone for a long time.

There was a pause then he said ‘Just a little more to walk.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m used to walking.’ She said. ‘Does your wife know where the place is?’
‘Oh yes, we come here often.’

Café Coffee Day came into sight and they climbed up the stairs to where it overlooked the busy street. He opened the glass doors for her and they went in and sat at one of the tables close to the door and against the wall so that when his wife came in she would be able to spot them. He sat across from her and put both his hands on the table.
‘So.’
‘So. Now you talk.’ She said. Without being aware of it she was imitating his brightness and tense excitement.
‘What will you have?’ He said. ‘Have a Café Latte. It’s very nice and cold. I bring my clients here sometimes and they love Café Latte.’
She looked at the menu the waiter had placed in front of her. ‘But it’s December. I thought I’d have something hot.’
‘You must have something cold when it’s cold outside.’ He said. ‘It gives you a nice feeling, you know. Because in between the sips of the Latte and in between the door opening and the cold air rushing in for a second, in between you are warm.’ She looked up surprised. It was the kind of nonsense he would have said long ago so she smiled and shrugged and told the waiter she would have a Café Latte. She closed the menu and pulled her chair closer to the table in unconscious anticipation of something. Sag was drumming his hands together and looking out the window as if he were embarrassed now at what he had just said. Then he looked at his wristwatch. It had a big round luminous dial and a thick leather strap. Four or five small steel buttons poked out of the sides of the dial. It hung heavy on his thin wrist.
‘What a watch.’ She said. She felt the lack of things to say more keenly inside this Café than she had when they had been walking down the street.
He looked down at the watch then held out his wrist. ‘It’s a beauty. One of my clients gave it to me last year for my birthday. It’s Swiss.’
‘You seem to have a lot of clients.’ She said.
‘Oh I have my good times and bad.’ He shrugged but it was not a real shrug and she felt he was doing it because it looked professional. ‘I’m trying to build up the business slowly.’ He said.
‘I wish you good luck.’
‘Thank you.’

Their coffees came in tall frosted glasses and he lifted his in a mock toast. ‘To old friendships.’ He said. She touched her glass to his and the glasses made a small clink and then moved away without the fingers touching. She took a small sip of the Latte. It was good and the cold trickled through and down her and she thought that what he had said about drinking something cold in cold weather was true. Christmas music began playing in the café. It was Silent Night, filling the warm air and draping its poignant notes around her and digging up unnamed yearnings in her and then hushing them with its music.

‘You should have written to me.’ He said suddenly, accusingly.
‘I did.’ She said automatically though it was as though he had thrown a small heavy stone in the lake of her memories. ‘I did write to you.’ She said again, picking up the broken conversation she had had in her mind a million times. ‘You never replied.’
‘I never got your letters.’ He said throwing up his hands. I failed the Radio Engineering course anyway.’
‘Oh’ She said as the ripples grew wider, disturbing everything and resettling it. ‘When I came back I called your mother once but she said you had moved.’ He said.
‘She told me.’ Celia said. ‘But she also said you didn’t call back.’
‘She was not very courteous.’ He looked up and shrugged. ‘She made me feel awkward.’
Celia frowned. ‘Of course she must have been courteous.’
‘No, she wasn’t.’ He said his head bobbing up and down.
‘You could have asked her for my new address.’ She said.

They were both quiet and she took a long sip of the Latte and carefully wiped her wet mouth on a tissue. The door opened in a rush of cold air and two girls came in, no more than sixteen or seventeen walked in, laughing and whispering and wiping rain off their faces. Sag waited till they had passed their table then he looked at his watch ‘Where is she?’ He said with a hint of irritation.

When he said this Celia knew that whatever they had shared would not work again, that it was like an antique clock to be polished and displayed and talked about but never to tell the time again.
‘Maybe she’s still shopping.’ she offered.
‘You women.’ He said laughing and leaning back against the chair. ‘Even my clients love shopping, the women.’
She smiled politely.

The waiter came along. ‘Anything else I can get for you Sir?’
He looked at her. ‘Would you like to have something else? Another Café Latte?’
‘No, I’m full.’ She said.
‘Have something.’
‘No Sag, thanks.’
‘Have a Thai tea. We have to wait for her anyway.’
Celia shook her head. ‘No, you have it. I’m really full.’

The thought came to her that if only Cafes would call tea tea and coffee simply coffee, Sag and she could go back to what they had been.
The waiter was standing, waiting. ‘I’ll have a cup of tea please.’ Sag said. ‘That will be all.’ After the waiter left he said to her ‘You mustn’t worry about the letter I didn’t get, it was so long ago.’ His eyes were bright with the Café lights and his smile unmoving on his bobbing head.
‘No, I don’t worry. Of course not.’ Celia said.
‘No really, you mustn’t.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Don’t blame yourself for me failing the course either. After one semester I knew it was not for me.’
‘I don’t blame myself.’ She said. She was irritated that he should try and comfort her when she thought it would be the other way around. She was irritated that he should assume she still felt the tug of him after all this time.
‘We’ll all meet next time your husband comes down and we’ll go out for drinks.’ He said.
‘Sure.’ She said.
‘My wife is a social animal.’ He leaned forward and whispered.
Celia smiled.
‘She won’t let me get a word in after she arrives.’ He continued, then when the waiter came with his tea he said to him ‘Waiter, do you have a wife?’ in the same bright voice and without a change in his expression. The waiter displayed crooked yellowish teeth in a smile and gave a small laugh ha,ha and said ‘No Sir.’
‘Don’t ever get one, man, they never let you talk and they shop till they drop dead.’ The waiter laughed a bit more, ha,ha,ha and shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Yes sir, no, I will not get one.’
Sag winked at Celia. ‘You see, that’s a wise waiter.’
Celia smiled.

The waiter left and Celia and Sag continued to smile, extending the joke until it became unbearable.

Then the door opened and a plumpish young woman with short curly hair entered. She wore a long black imitation-leather skirt from which drops of water rolled off and a red silk blouse. Her cheeks had red spots high up from the cold and she was breathing fast. Her small eyes embedded high up above the red spots on her cheeks darted all around the café, going first to the very back corners and then coming to the front to rest on the table where they sat. Her small fleshy lips were coated with red lipstick and made a soft limp ‘O’ of surprise.

Sag rose from his chair in a jerky but strangely lifeless movement like a boy caught playing or trying to play long after his bed-time and resigning himself to the consequences. ‘There she is.’ He said and went forward to take the woman’s many plastic shopping bags just like he had taken Celia’s. ‘Come, come Anita, I want you to meet a friend.’

The woman turned towards him. ‘There you are.’ She said breathlessly. ‘I’m late I know but the street is choked with Christmas shoppers, oh, who is this? A lovely girl. You naughty boy, you never told me about her. But you had so many friends, let me see, which one is this, Celia? Celia, Celia, you never told me about a Celia. You did you say, no you did not, you did not say anything about a Celia. See he’s always forgetting what he said (to Celia)’ then ‘Oh I’m so tired I’ll have a Café Latte.’ She drew up a chair next to her husband and fell into it and beside her Sag looked small.

‘So, did he recommend the Café Latte to you too? He’s crazy about Café Latte, recommends it to anyone and everyone, all his clients are fed up with it, they tell me. I knew he would leave me and go off somewhere today! He’s so impatient, always running from one place to another and looking at that watch of his. Oh he’s doing very well, we have our own real estate business.’ The wife said talking without a pause and looking not just at Celia but all around the Cafe.

‘Anita, let Celia speak please.’ Sag was saying and then the wife stopped abruptly, took a deep gulping breath and waited for Celia to say something but Celia looked from her to Sag and suddenly she saw what had been odd about him that she had refused to see from the time she had met him. His expression had never changed. Save for when she had turned around from the shop window and shocked him and then when she had mentioned her marriage. The eyes, empty but bright with the excitement of external things, the voice deep and with a quality of brightness and the smile always ready and fidgeting around his mouth as if he had taken up a challenge with himself to always keep it on, and then as they walked down the street and climbed the stairs to the café and as they sat down and ordered their drinks and when he spoke to the waiter, the same eyes, mouth and stretch of the cheeks. When he greeted his wife at the door it had not changed at all.

Seeing him now in the soft light of the café bulbs that the waiter had switched on for the night, she thought how like a well-crafted doll’s face it looked. At first the effect of the eyes, mouth and voice made him seem interesting and interested and the mouth when not smiling was pursed in such an air of intent listening like every young man’s mouth should be but then if you looked at the face for a while or engaged it in conversation, it never changed and you began to feel faintly insulted by its sameness and as though Hope, Fear, Joy, Shopping, Coffee, Christmas, Crowds and whatever else it may encounter were all the same to it. Celia, because she had known him long ago, felt keenly that he had lost much to buy this face. What’s more, his wife had exactly the same look on her face. She looked at the two of them and they looked so alike she could have sworn they were brother and sister had she not known Sag. ‘We must get together for drinks.’ The wife said to Celia, sounding very much like her husband.
‘That’s just what I was telling her.’ Sag said.
‘When shall we get together? Oh I so love to meet his friends, so that we can make fun of him together.’ She rubbed her plump hands together.
‘She’s going back to America soon.’ Sag said.
‘Oh! A non-resident Indian.’ She clapped her plump dimpled fingers lightly together several times. ‘We must meet, we’ll throw a little party for you in our apartment, call several friends.’ She slapped Sag on the shoulder. ‘What d’you say?’
‘Yes, let’s. Ask her first Anita.’ He said. He was laughing.
‘You don’t have to throw a party on my behalf.’ Celia said.
‘No, we want to, we want to, don’t we want to, Saggy?’ Anita said.
‘Yes of course we want to. Of course.’ Sag said. He did not look directly at Celia at all.
‘No, please don’t bother, I’m leaving next week anyway.’ Celia said.
‘Oh no. You must stay, you must cancel your ticket. I want to talk to you, you know the girl-girl stuff, without men.’ Anita said and rolled her eyes sideways at her husband. It was the same way he had rolled his eyes before, and looking at the woman, Celia saw with a mild surprise that Sag had become very like her.
‘Come on, Anita.’ He said and laughed again. ‘I mean, come on.’ He held up his hands, palms out at this last word ‘on’ as though to emphasize its meaning.

They all laughed even Celia who did not know what the joke was.
‘Please call me Ani. All my friends call me Ani.’ She put a hand on Celia’s and let it rest there, leaning slightly forward. ‘don’t listen to him and his jokes. I’ll call you up and we can go shopping again together.’ Celia smelt her faint sweet perfume and felt her warm breath hanging between their faces. The wife took out a small business card from her purse and Celia took it.
‘Call me.’ She said.

The waiter came with the bill in a folder and placed it in front of Sag. Anita stood up. ‘It’s raining, oh, and we don’t have the car today. Sag catches cold very easily. Come on let’s go.’ She turned to her husband then went ahead to the door.

Sag pushed his chair back and stood up very slowly. He took out a fifty rupee note, placed it inside the folder and without waiting for the change he said to Celia looking at her now. ‘Call me.’ And he put a small orange business card on the table. She picked it up. His quick softly spoken words hung in the air over the table with his wife’s words. He went out after then and Celia put the card in her purse without looking at it. She followed them out through the glass doors and down the steps. Rain fell brightly under the street lamps and made the puddles of water quiver constantly.

‘Can we drop you somewhere?’ Anita asked Celia.
‘No, I’m fine, I have to do some more Christmas shopping.’ Celia lied.
‘But it’s raining.’ Sag said.
‘Let her shop, we women shop in the rain too don’t we.’ Anita said and winked at Celia.
‘I have to go.’ Celia said. ‘It was nice to have met you both.’
‘It was great to have met you.’ Anita said. ‘Imagine, he never told me about a Celia. And here you are so young and lovely.’ She shook her head from side to side.
‘I thought I told you.’ Sag said in the same bright voice. Their two pairs of eyes, flashed under the street lamp at Celia with a remarkably identical expression. Then Sag put out his hand to her. ‘Wonderful to have met you after all these years.’
His handshake was firm and dry and warm from the café air. It was like a thousand other hands she had shaken and would shake in the future and his touch was the touch of a new acquaintance.
‘I know.’ She said.
‘Yes, it’s so nice to meet his old friends.’ Anita added.
‘It’s great, yes.’ Celia agreed to include her in the goodbye.
‘We must go now.’ Anita looked at her husband. ‘We really must.’
He removed his hand and picked up the shopping bags he had placed on the side-walk. ‘G‘bye Celia.
Keep in touch.’
‘I will.’
‘Call us, email us, write to us.’ Anita said. ‘We do want to see you before you leave.’
‘I will.’ Celia said.

Anita waved and started walking down the road looking for a cab. Sag followed with the bags. When he turned his back to Celia she could almost believe he had come out of the past. She saw his narrow shoulders, his bobbing head with the short cropped hair and his short legs stepping around the puddles of water. But no one comes from the past. He did not turn back nor did she expect him to. She watched as one would watch a badly-taken grainy picture of someone. Then they were out of sight and Celia walked up the road the other way to catch a cab.

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