The Other Side of Blue(11)

“The school doesn’t have one. I’m on a club team, though.”

I drape my arm across my forehead. A club team. I’m surprised he didn’t say it was his team.

“I’m joining our club team next year, too,” she tells him.

Kammi can play his game, but she’s nice when she does it. I grin to myself.

“How big’s your school?” he asks.

“Two hundred students. How about yours?”

Mayur pushes himself back into the water, lets his head go under. Obviously his school has fewer than two hundred students.

I laugh out loud this time. I don’t think Mayur hears a thing, with his ears full of water. But Kammi does. She smiles, seeming to know she’s bested Mayur at his own game. Whether the smile is supposed to include me, I don’t know.

Mayur retreats to the farthest corner of the pool.

Kammi takes her sunglasses off and places them on the wrought-iron table. She unknots the pareo and slides into the water in one smooth motion.

Using a graceful breaststroke, Kammi swims the length of the pool and back. Her moves make barely any splash. I watch Mayur watching her. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

Almost without slowing down, Kammi slips out of the water like a seal. As she’s drying off, Mrs. Bindas returns to the pool area.

Behind her, the houseboy is carrying a platter with a huge bowl piled high with something frozen, yellow and white with slivers of shaved coconut scattered on top. He nearly trips when he sees Kammi stretched out on the deck chair, damp, like a model spritzed with water on the cover of a fitness magazine, her hair still braided. She doesn’t even notice. She’s sitting up, adjusting the pareo, then her shoulder strap, barely breathing hard from the swim.

“Gelato,” Mrs. Bindas says. “Piña colada flavor. No alcohol, of course.” She titters again, in that high-pitched way, as if she is making another joke, and waves us over to the large wrought-iron glass-topped table in the shade.

The houseboy spoons gelato into bowls and passes the first to Kammi, of course. Her pink skin glows just the way the makeup ads promise.

“Mine—” Mayur starts to say as the houseboy finishes filling a second bowl, but his mother interrupts him.

“Guests always go first,” Mrs. Bindas says.

Mayur pouts, but he’s smart enough not to say anything that will embarrass him in front of his company. Even if he doesn’t treat us special unless his mother is around.

I am given the second bowl, though the houseboy barely glances at me as he slides it across the glass table in my direction. Last year, I was the only guest, served first. The house-boy scoops out a double amount for Mayur, who snatches it away almost before the serving spoon clears the edge of the bowl. He plops himself into the chair farthest from the table and slurps his ice cream. Either Mrs. Bindas doesn’t hear him or she doesn’t care.

“It’s delicious. Thank you.” Kammi is polite, so predictable. I wonder if she ever surprises herself.

“Thank you.” I don’t trust myself to say more. Mrs. Bindas hasn’t yet referred to last summer.

Mrs. Bindas folds her hands together as if she might clap. She’s pleased with her gift. And with the response from the American girls.

“The flowers are so beautiful here. What are those?” Kammi says, pointing to an area on the other side of the pool, undisturbed by the gardeners.

“Birds of paradise, you call them in English. Mrs. Walters, she told me that one year. She sat here in this very garden and drew so many of our plants. That’s bougainvillea over the wall.”

Mrs. Bindas is gracious when talking about my mother. If she remembers the last time I was here, a year ago, when Mayur landed in the pool in his dress shoes and suit, she doesn’t act like it. Mother made me come with her to thank Dr. Bindas in person for his assistance. The Bindases had just come from a family wedding. “My cousin, he knew about your father,” Mayur said to me. “What happened with the boat.” I heard the sea in my ears, felt waves crashing over me. I couldn’t breathe.

Mayur told me his cousin knew something about what happened with the boat. “How calm the sea was that day, how flat,” he said. The police found a bottle of champagne, unopened, set in water in an ice bucket. When the police lifted the bottle from the bucket, the wrinkled label peeled off. Almost like skin off a bone. Mayur said there was more, a mystery. “Who takes champagne on a boat alone?” he asked. “Maybe there were two dead bodies from the boat. Maybe there’s still a dead body out there. I know something, too.” That’s when I pushed Mayur, and he flailed backwards into the pool.