The film set is a faux cocktail lounge, with a grand piano right in the middle. The Indian stars circle the area around the bar, and then deeper into the set mill the fifty or so extras. The majority of them are Indians, but there are about fifteen or twenty Westerners. I go stand next to an Indian in a tux, but he narrows his eyes at me and scoots away.
“They’re such snobs!” a skinny, tan girl in a sparkly blue dress says, laughing. “They won’t talk to us.”
“It’s like reverse colonialism or something,” says a guy with dreadlocks tied back into a band. “Nash,” he says, sticking out a hand.
“Tasha,” says the girl.
“Willem.”
“Willem,” they repeat, dreamily. “You at the ashram?”
“No.”
“Oh. We didn’t think so. We’d have recognized you,” Tasha says. “You’re so tall. Like Jules.”
Nash nods his head. I do too. We all nod at this Jules’s height.
“What brings you to India?” I ask, slipping easily back into Postcard Language.
“We are refugees,” Tasha says. “From the fame-and-celebrity-obsessed materialistic world in the States. We are here to cleanse ourselves.”
“Here?” I gesture to the set.
Nash laughs. “Enlightenment ain’t free. It’s kind of expensive, actually. So we’re here trying to buy some more time. What about you, dude? Why brings you to Bollywoodland?”
“The fame, of course.”
They both laugh. Then Nash asks, “Wanna go get baked? They aren’t doing anything except making us wait.” He pulls out a fat joint. “I wait just as well stoned.”
I shrug. “Why not?”
We sneak off outside where half of the extras seem to be smoking cigarettes in the shade of the overhang. Nash lights up and takes a hit, passes it to Tasha, who takes a long, deep drag and passes it to me. The hash is strong and it’s been a while, so it hits me immediately. We pass the joint around a few more times.
“You’re really . . . tall, Willem,” Tasha says.
“Yes, I think you mentioned that.”
“We really have to introduce him to Jules,” Tasha drawls. “She’s tall. And Canadian.”
“Totally,” Nash says. “Righteous idea.”
The world’s gone a bit washed out, overbright and spinny. “Who’s Jules?” I ask.
“She’s a girl,” Nash answers. “Cute. Ginger hair. She’s at the ashram but she might come out in a day or two. She’s tall. Oh, Tasha already said that. Shit, here comes the assistant director dude. Hide the joint.”
Tasha pinches the joint between her fingers just as a birdlike man comes and looks at us. Even though Tasha is holding the joint, it’s me he focuses on. He takes out his phone and snaps a picture, and then disappears without saying a word.
“Oh. Shit,” Tasha says, giggling. “We got caught.”
“He got caught,” Nash says. “They only took his picture.” He sounds a bit insulted.
“If there’s hash, you always blame the Dutchman,” I say.
“Oh, right,” Nash says, nodding.
“I’m paranoid now,” Tasha says.
“Let’s get back. Save the rest of that for later,” Nash says.
With the hash buzzing around my head, the waiting on set goes slower, not faster. I spend a few minutes twirling a rupee coin across my hand but I keep dropping it. I turn on my phone to play some solitaire, but then, on a strange stoned whim, use my phone for its intended purpose. I make a call.
“Hello . . . this is Willem,” I say when she picks up.
“I know who this is.” I can hear fury in her voice. Even calling her gets me in trouble? “Where are you?” she asks.
“I’m on a film set. I’m acting in a Bollywood movie for the next few days.”
Silence. Yael never had much patience for “low” culture, outside of the cheesy Israeli pop music she couldn’t resist. She didn’t like movies or TV shows. She surely thinks all this is a waste of time.
“And when did you decide to do this?” she says at last. Her voice is flinty enough to spark a fire.
“Yesterday. This morning officially.”
“And when did you think to tell me?”
Maybe it’s the hash, but I actually laugh out loud. Because it’s just funny—in the way that absurd things are.
Yael doesn’t think so. “What’s so amusing?”
“What’s so amusing?” I ask. “You wanting to know my itinerary, that’s pretty amusing. When you haven’t given a thought to my whereabouts, my well-being for the last three years. When you brought me over to India and then a week later shipped me right back off again and didn’t bother to call once. You couldn’t even be bothered to come to the airport to pick me up. Oh, I know there was an emergency, something more important, but there always is, isn’t there? So why would you need to know that I was acting in a Bollywood movie?”
I stop. And it’s like the effects of the hash have worn off, taking my anger—or my bravery—with them.
“The reason I would need to know,” she says, her voice measured, infuriatingly so, “is so I would know not to come to the airport this time to pick you up.”
After she hangs up, I turn my phone over. I see the half dozen missed calls, the Where are you? texts.
Another missed connection. Story of my life these days.
Twenty-six
That night, we finish up at eight and pile into a rickety bus for an hour-long ride to a squat cement hotel where we’re put four to a room. I wind up with Nash and Tasha and Argin, another acolyte from their ashram. The three of them pass a joint around and tell repeating stories about reaching enlightenment. They offer the joint to me, but after the afternoon’s hash-fueled debacle with Yael, I don’t trust myself. Eventually, I fall asleep, but I’m woken up in the middle of the night to the enthusiastic squeaking of the bedframe. Nash and Tasha. Or maybe all three of them. It is extremely unpleasant—and it’s pathetic because I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.
The next day, on set, it’s more of the same. After I put on my suit, I see Prateek for half a second before he dashes off. “Must find more people,” he calls to me. “Three left yesterday. I need four today!” Neema evil-eyes me. The assistant director snaps another picture. They really are serious about the suit.