The Magnificent Ruins by Nayantara Roy

Author:Nayantara Roy [ROY, NAYANTARA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2024-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

SETH CAME BACK with me to my father’s apartment, neither of us questioning that he would. It felt natural, and even Ram Bhai nodded at us as we went upstairs. I switched on the lights and made Seth a cup of coffee.

Seth breathed in the liquid as he held the cup in both hands. “I’ve missed coffee. I realize now that Indians only drink tea. I just thought that was a Lila thing.”

“It’s most Indians. The South drinks a lot of really good coffee.”

“This is a beautiful apartment. Iva’s done a great job.”

I felt a pang slice through me. “It was always beautiful,” I said. “But, yeah, Iva’s really fixed it up. When I was growing up, you had to shower in six and a half minutes or the hot water would turn to ice.”

Seth looked at me. “You seem at home here. In this apartment, I mean.”

I laughed. “And not in the Lahiri house?”

“No. You’re at home there too. But it’s different. Less… easy. Here, you’re the Lila I know.” Seth had the transparency of a boy who had known love and simplicity as he grew up.

It was true, in the apartment, I could be the Lila I had adopted for adulthood. In the territory of the Lahiris, love and hate were intense, complex beasts that you had to nurture and ride and buckle under, feeling everything under the sun, packed together like sardines on the New York L train, never escaping, with the promise of inevitable pain or togetherness beckoning at every turn.

I knew the look in his eye. Our chemistry had never been any one thing when we were alone—business colleagues to friends to lovers in seconds—everything was easy, the opposite of the Lahiris and Adil and my mother and all that was hard and impossible to let go.

“Seth, what are you doing here?” I whispered, our bodies suddenly electric in their nearness.

“I told you,” he murmured into my neck, lifting me to my feet, his fingers in my hair, one palm on my buttock, securing me to him.

“Seth,” I murmured. Despite myself, I asked again. “What are you doing here?”

He was disoriented with desire, my palm still behind his neck, his body reacting to mine. He took in a breath, dragging his palm through my hair, his arm still holding us conjoined.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said. “You can call me a New Yorker or whatever, but it seemed crazy to me that you should want to go millions of miles away and do this crazy thing in a place you haven’t been to since you were a teenager.” He let go of me and took a step back. “I couldn’t just let you do it alone.”

After a pause, Seth sat down on the couch as I stood in the center of my father’s living room, an unfamiliar current between us. “I want more,” he said. “This is my grand gesture.” He held out his palms. “In Brooklyn, you would have sent me home.

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