Franqui, Leah - America for Beginners by Franqui Leah

Author:Franqui, Leah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

22

They soon settled into a rhythm, Jake and Bhim. The conditions and circumstances of their relationship weren’t easy for Jake, but Bhim couldn’t believe how easy it seemed. He marveled at how comfortable they were, while Jake bit his tongue. Their little heap of shared experiences was too small for him to lose even one of them, so if Bhim thought it was easy, it was easy. They saw each other every other weekend, but once Bhim finished his coursework he spent two weeks a month with Jake, and two on his own in Berkeley, working. Jake offered to come to Berkeley again, but Bhim refused. He told him he preferred the apartment in Los Angeles, but Jake wondered if that was just another way for Bhim to separate their lives.

Bhim was constantly marveling about Jake’s ability to keep a house, praising him for the simplest of tasks, like an easy weekday dinner or hanging a piece of art. Now that Bhim was practically living with him, Jake knew why. Bhim had no life skills, a fact he freely admitted with a cheerful shrug. He had never had to do anything for himself in Kolkata, he explained, and now he didn’t know how to. Sometimes Jake wasn’t sure if they were in a relationship or he was teaching Bhim how to be an adult. Sometimes he would come home to Bhim’s standing in front of something like a leaky faucet or a dead lightbulb, studying it like one of his snails. Then, when Jake would fix the problem, Bhim would praise him lavishly, declaring himself unable to live without Jake. And yet he did, up in Berkeley. It made no sense.

Several weeks into their new schedule, Bhim made a comment about Jake’s having many friends. Jake was surprised; he wasn’t very social and had a small circle. Most of the people he had known growing up in Los Angeles were elsewhere now. Everyone he had gone to college with back on the East Coast had stayed there. There were a few people from work he liked enough to actually see after office hours, and a few more friends from disastrous attempts at online dating that had birthed friendships, if not boyfriends. But his social circle when he met Bhim was small. If Bhim thought this was a lot, how many did Bhim himself have? Jake wondered.

Living in Los Angeles, Jake had always found it strange to be next to an ocean that he found never warm enough to swim in, given the icy currents of the North Pacific Gyre, which kept the water perpetually cold. When he told that to Bhim, Bhim admitted that this didn’t matter much to him, for he couldn’t swim at all. Jake had found this hilarious. It was inconceivable to him that Bhim did not know how to swim, not just because he was a marine biologist but because he didn’t know anyone at all who couldn’t swim. What would happen if he got into the water?

“My work is on the shore.

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