No one was contesting Andrew Brown, political analyst, but editor was a whole different game. A field without goalposts.
‘Editor? He’s just reporting, no?’ Meena asked.
‘He has an entire political team, some 40–45 reporters all over the country, reporting to him. That’s for now, but there is talk of him taking over as executive editor.’
‘Andrew Brown.’ She said his name and shrugged. They were a couple for an evening, a lifetime ago.
I noticed the growing flush on Meena’s cheeks. Not even the dim lighting could hide it.
I coughed; it was engineered.
I shut my eyes and recalled those words that had come down a telephone line seven summers ago.
Meena had told me that Andrew had hit on her, among others, after he had moved to the United States.
‘Sorry, Myra, he has moved on,’ she had told me.
‘Hopefully, I will not run into him here,’ Meena was now saying between gulps.
‘Why?’ Chhaya asked.
While I had relayed almost everything Meena had told me about Andrew, I hadn’t told Chhaya about Andrew flirting with Meena. That was hard to admit, even to myself.
‘You know.’ She shrugged. ‘What’s there to say to him?’
Chhaya’s lips twisted. She had caught on.
For most of the evening, Meena flaunted an ascendency that was typical of the woman I thought I knew. She was always in charge. In the last few minutes, however, I sensed a discomfort, an awkwardness.
‘He’s not really a nice guy,’ she said.
A nine-year-old’s summation of her bench mate.
‘You were lucky to be rid of him at that point. See how nicely settled in your job you are.’
Hornswoggled by a carnival barker. ‘Am I?’ I asked.
‘Of course, you are,’ she said. ‘You are doing damn well. Look at you!’ She was almost shrieking.
‘Andrew is a user. Every time we met, he made me pick up the tab,’ she continued.
Meena had told me they had met for a couple of coffees. It came in random messages.I bumped into Andrew today. We had a quick coffee.She would refuse to dwell on it even if I brought it up the next time she called. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to protect me or if she was just being her selectively abstruse self.
‘Come on! It’s not much if he made you pay for a couple of coffees. He had just moved to the US, and he may not have been high on cash at the time,’ Chhaya said.
‘What coffee?’ Meena asked, her eyes sparking a fury I hadn’t seen in her before. ‘There were lunches and dinners almost every day for months and months.’
‘What?’ What was Meena talking about?
‘Yeah… You know how much he likes his drink; he didn’t hesitate to order that, too. And I was paying for everything.’
I was confused. Was the woman so drunk that she didn’t know what she was saying?
‘Are you drunk?’
‘Not at all. You don’t believe me? That I paid his bills? I even bought him an iPhone for his birthday. The same one with which he blocked me on WhatsApp…’
My head was reeling. I wanted to scream,What were you doing? Having all those lunches and dinners with my boyfriend?He wasn’t yet ex-boyfriend at the time, not in my head at least. I couldn’t spit the words out. They were sitting on my tongue, and my mouth was open.
