Title: "Remembering Your Divinity"
Author: monimala
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Rating/Classification: AC, Mac/Logan, Mac/OC, sexual situations, language, AU.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, just the really bizarre scenario.
Summary: 2950 words. She didn't come out feeling clean, or pure. Just wet. Written for the Anchors Away Smutathon at the VM Library LJ community.
Notes: There is an original character in the story, which may disqualify it from the challenge. And don't worry there is a brief glossary of this story's "furren" terms at the end.
The houseboat sways against the dock, moving with each swell of the river. She closes her eyes, inhaling the faintly acrid smells of the water and the smoke from the temple fires. Kerosene and coal and a few bloated fish. She can hear the chanting of one of the priests at the ghat. The old one, who only wears a threadbare loincloth, and has a voice that's sonorous and soothing like a deacon at the pulpit of a Baptist church.
The one time she tried to take his picture, he flinched, touched his bony fingers to his forehead and chest and fled to cleanse himself. Ananda, the younger priest, laughed and warned her with crisp, boarding school English, "Memsahib, you've made him unclean."
Par for the course, Ananda, she thinks now. She's been making men unclean for years. Why should it be different here, on the other side of the world?
She rolls onto her back, pushing the soft cotton sheet down below her waist, tracing the paisley patterns with her fingertips before transferring to skin. She thinks of Ananda in his pristine white kurtas and dhotis, of the men on the fishing boats who toil, shirtless, in the midday sun, of the statues at Khajuraho that are more beautiful and more obscene than anything a Hustler store could hope to offer.
By the time the old man is finishing off with an, "Om, shanti," so is she.
**
Mac moved to India in the middle of her junior year at Hearst. It wasn't until she'd been gone a month that anyone realized she'd actually dropped out. She sent Parker a postcard from Mumbai that said "I'm sorry," and e-mailed Veronica her first photo essay from Lucknow. When she finally got to the Ganges, she walked twenty steps down from the ghat, past women laundering clothes and men doing their morning constitutional, and submerged herself to the neck.
She didn't come out feeling clean, or pure. Just wet. Kind of silly. Like the travel brochure lied to her when it promised that the holiest of India's rivers was renowned for washing away a pilgrim's sins.
But she's still here four years later, the memsahib with the camera. Capturing the women in the rice paddies, the packed trains with commuters hanging off the sides, and the little children that run naked in front of road-side hovels. They know her at the bajaar now…that she likes green papaya and fresh orange squash and the tiny little fish that she can deep-fry and eat in handfuls like chips. Rattan, the water bearer who comes to fill her barrels every morning calls her "Miss Sindhi," as most everyone here does. "Cindy" doesn't make sense to them and "Mac," even less.
She understands that. Sometimes Cindy and Mac don't make sense to her either.
**
Proper Calcutta, Kolkata now, is an hour away by car…and most of that hour is spent stuck in traffic on the Bally Bridge. Tinny Bollywood music blares from the taxiwallah's tape deck and she watches the Kali temple snow globe on his dash bounce as they pass the big version and hit one of the bridge's countless potholes. The fact that they make snow globes of the Dakshineswar landmark never ceases to amuse her. Apparently, even God needs to make a quick buck somehow.
She goes into the city about once a month, to use the business center at the Taj Bengal and e-mail things back and forth to her parents and Parker and her editors. There is, obviously, no wireless Internet on the boat.
She knows her friends would be boggled to see their old pal Mac, hacker extraordinaire pulling her laptop out of a storage box to use just every few weeks.
It's during one of these jaunts, when she's securing the strap of her laptop case and trying to pull the sash of her salwar kameez through it before she accidentally strangles herself, that she runs into, of all people, Logan Echolls.
He has his back to her, one hand in the pocket of his expensive gray suit jacket, as he talks to an Indian man about "overseas markets" and "profit shares." He's taller than she remembered. Of course, everyone from Neptune would seem taller here, where average height is 5'2" for both men and women.
And that simple connection, Logan + Neptune, is all it takes for Miss Sindhi to vanish and for the Mac this man used to know, the one who blushes and dyes streaks in her hair, to reappear. She stands there, fidgeting, sash finally out of potential garroting mode, waiting for him to gracefully spin on the marble floor and notice her.
He doesn't.
So, she has to call out his name, and that's when he turns and looks at her. It takes him a few minutes to find the familiar face hidden behind the purple silk and thick kohl.
"Mac?!" His perfect jaw drops. He's thinner, more polished, but still movie star handsome. And completely out of place.
"Namaskar, Logan," she murmurs with a grin, slipping into her near-desi skin again with ease. "Do you have any interest at all in seeing the real Bengal?"
**
They catch up in the hotel's coffee shop, trading awkward, stilted update stories like you do when you're suddenly faced with one of your ex-girlfriend's best friends in a completely unexpected place. He tells her that Veronica lives in New York City now and is dating some neo-classical artist guy named Zeke. She doesn't tell him she already knew. Instead, she tells him about living in India, about how much she loves it, and she can tell he doesn't quite believe her.
"So, what, you came here and found yourself?" He waves his hand around expressively, as if somehow her true identity is lurking behind neatly folded linens and overpriced samosas. "Smoked a lot of hash, joined an ashram?"
"Like you found yourself in corporate America, wearing two thousand dollar suits?" She arches an eyebrow, still trying to figure out how much of that laid back 09-er slacker with the yellow XTerra exists inside the man sitting across from her. "Things change. People change. But I wasn't *lost* when I came here, Logan, so there was nothing to find."
He doesn't need to know that she's lying. Especially since he seems to take her words as something profound. The way tourists always do when they come here and see the white woman wandering so comfortably amongst the natives.
"Did you mean what you said earlier? About seeing the real Bengal?" He says it like you'd say, "I'd sure like to meet Ben's gal." That's the first thing she's going to have to fix.
"Of course I did."
He hasn't exchanged his money yet, so she leaves a few crumpled rupee notes by their empty coffee cups and untouched water glasses.
"Aasho," she urges in her less-than-perfect Bengali. "Come on."
Let me dirty you up. Let me make you unclean.
**
The first thing she does after she gets him to pronounce the state's name correctly is get him to change his clothes. Jeans, sandals, T-shirt. ("I'm surprised you still own any of these items, Mr. GQ.")
And the decision to forgo all the typical Kolkata tourist traps is easy. He doesn't need to see Victoria Memorial or the museum or Rash Behari Avenue, which is crowded with shops just like TJ. She takes him back across the bridge, takes him home. To the dust and the cows and the children who crowd at the taxi's windows and beg for "Sindhi Ma" to give "one paisa."
She gives a few rupees to Buru, the oldest, telling him to buy some Cadbury's and distribute them to his motley band of little brothers and sisters. Logan looks horrified. She can't imagine him giving one red cent to the panhandlers back in the States… if he even takes notice of them at all.
She laughs at him when he patently refuses to eat pakoras from the skinny man with a skillet who sets up shop just up the path from the river. "That oil cannot possibly be trans-fat free!" he huffs. "And there are *flies* dipping into that batter."
"Fat and protein are good for the soul, Logan. Wait until I introduce you to my best friend, ghee." Whoever invented clarified butter is a bona fide genius. Just the mere thought of it, drizzled over plain white rice, is enough to make her mouth water.
She doubts that Logan, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, eyes darting this way and that like he expects to be mugged any second, has ever known such a simple pleasure.
She understands his discomfort, his fear. This is not a place where he can charm his way out of a tight spot, where he can reduce his enemies to quivering masses of stupidity with a slew of one-liners. This is a place that has a small pirate video store with a corrugated roof, where you can rent a grainy Aaron Echolls movie for less than 25 cents in US money. This is a place where the only English kids like Buru know is quotes from "The Long Haul."
Tomorrow, Logan is going to flee back to the safety of the Taj and pretend that the businessman's India is the real India. In two days, he'll fly back to Los Angeles and tell his friends witty anecdotes over sushi and sake about temples he's never seen and the pashmina he bought for Trina from the hotel's boutique.
"Come on," she says, reaching for his hand.
**
The houseboat sways against the dock, moving with each swell of the river. She closes her eyes, inhaling the faintly acrid smells of the water and the smoke from the temple fires. And Logan moves over her with the practiced elegance of somebody who's fucked a lot of women. She takes comfort in knowing that he's never fucked them on a dingy little boat on the Ganges river, never taken somebody who has Sanskrit tattooed on the inside of her thigh, and will likely leave this out of his travelogue.
She turns her head when he tries to kiss her, grips his hair in her hand and guides his mouth to her throat instead. He laughs, softly, and asks, "What are you, Pretty Woman? You don't kiss on the mouth?"
He's certainly no Richard Gere. Not yet. Not until he gets a little more gray and a little more global awareness.
"They're not hookers here, Logan. They're apsaras," she murmurs. Celestial nymphs who dance for kings, guide heroes to the ever after, and lead some men to their doom.
His eyebrows knit together in confusion, but she doesn't translate, doesn't define, doesn't educate. Not this time. She just smoothes away the lines with her lips and pulls him down and inside her.
It's been too long since she's had sex. She's thought about Ananda, but the guy is a priest and she's not that horrible a person. It doesn't matter that his dark brown eyes are kind and that his long black hair looks like it would be soft to the touch and the sacred thread he wears as a Brahmin looks like a come-on against his bare wet chest every time she sees him taking his morning dip. It's not going to happen. She's not going to sully his karma. She's not going to poison him with her caste-less foreign pussy.
But this…this is happening. Logan is pale beneath her hands and she's not used to it. To abs hewn from hours at the gym and perfectly capped teeth closing around her nipple. To someone whispering, "Mac, Mac, Mac," as they thrust into her. She hooks one leg around his hip and clutches a handful of his tight ass and pushes him harder, faster, imagining the houseboat rocking wildly to the rhythm and floating up river even though it's tied off.
He comes quickly, apologetically, but it's still good because he finishes her off with his fingers, which is something she's already familiar with, already trained to respond to. His index finger is longer than hers and it hooks up just right, hitting that spot that makes the fireworks go off behind her eyelids. She's still shuddering when he traces over her tattoo with sticky fingertips and asks her what it says.
"Apsara," she sighs.
The second time is slower. She climbs on top, slides down on his cock and rides him to an excruciatingly drawn out orgasm. She thinks of Cassidy and Veronica, ghosts in the room alongside them, whispering encouragement and telling them each where to touch the other to make it sexy, to make it work.
The third time is rougher, like monsoon rain against the tin roof, pounding through them both and trickling through the cracks in the untreated wood. Logan falls back on the thin mattress, worn to the bone and gleaming with sweat. He curses and gasps, "Jesus, that must have been some ashram you were at."
She rolls her eyes even though he can't see her expression in the dark. "Yeah, GQ. You'd be surprised what kind of extras they put in the hash."
He laughs, abruptly, and she thinks that maybe he gets it. At least for tonight. The sights and sounds and smells of India. In the crook of her elbow and beneath the curves of her breasts and buried in the syllables "yes," and "fuck me."
They have sex a fourth time as, somewhere across the water, the old priest welcomes the dawn.
**
In the morning, Logan gives Buru a dollar before climbing into the taxi she's hailed to take him back to the city. 48 rupees that the kid will never see because this strange green and white bill will go into a biscuit tin full of odds and ends. And besides, there is no currency exchange here. Just like there is no phone. So when Logan smiles at her and says, "I'll call you," it's an equally meaningless gesture.
He won't call. They never do.
Why should it be different here, on the other side of the world?
She watches the black and yellow cab get smaller and smaller, until it's nothing but a speck in the distance and then she buys a paper packet full of pakoras from the man with the skillet and eats them on her way back home.
**
A month after Logan's visit, she misses her period.
Two months later, she starts throwing up in the mornings.
She's not particularly surprised, as there were no condoms involved at any point in the evening. Logan somehow presumed she was on the Pill despite living in a small Bengali town that doesn't even have a full modern pharmacy. She didn't correct his assumption.
She'll have to move before she starts showing. They won't tolerate an unmarried pregnant woman in their midst. It's shameful. The mere sight of her will render people unclean. Worst of all, she'll have to give up the houseboat. It's no place to raise a child.
She's sitting on one of the stone steps of the ghat, watching a woman vigorously rub mustard oil into her protesting son's hair, when Ananda comes out of the temple. For once, his legs aren't wrapped in a white cotton dhoti. He's wearing black pants, like a sahib, though the effect is quite ruined by the brown leather sandals on his feet.
"You know, you have fantastic calves," she tells him when he's standing right beside her. "Why are you covering them up?"
"All Brahmin priests do. It is a pre-requisite." He smiles. "And they are covered because I am going to spend the day with you, Memsahib." Ananda holds out his hand. It's a nice hand. Brown and strong, with a long lifeline. She starts giggling like a lunatic because he asks her, softly, "Do you have any interest in seeing the real Bengal?"
"I'm having a baby," is what she says in response. Clearly what any woman should say when an attractive man asks her out on a day trip. That and, "I had sex. A lot of it. With my best friend's ex."
"I know."
"You know? What are you, some kind of crazy Indian mystic?"
His dark eyes are kind behind his wire-rimmed glasses, amused and not the least bit offended. "The sound carries both ways on this river, Sindhi." His hand is still there, waiting to be held. "Aasho," he urges. Come on.
She stands, brushes off dust and a couple of ants. The little boy is being dunked in the river now and he's wailing as if his mom is beating him with her shoe. But he'll be clean. That's the important part. "But won't I…taint you?"
Ananda laughs. "I certainly hope so." As she slides her fingers against his palm, she remembers that his name means, "joy" in Sanskrit.
**
When their son Narayan is six months old, she e-mails a picture to Veronica, Parker and her parents. It's of the three of them at Dakshineswar. The spires of the Kali temple are tall and white behind them and the baby is struggling to get out of her arms and reach for the whimsical snow globe that Ananda is holding.
On the next month's trip into Kolkata, she finds an e-mail from veronica.mars@alumni.hearstcollege.org praising her beautiful family. With a puzzled postscript saying that Logan has been wondering about her.
Before the typical gushing maternal update about little Naru's teething and inexplicably sudden (and adorable) baldness, she types back two simple sentences: "Tell Logan that I lied to him. There was something to find in India after all."
--end--
November 12, 2006
bajaar - marketplace
Brahmin - the highest echelon of the Hindu caste system
desi - Indian
dhoti - a traditional men's garment, involving folds of cloth draped from the waist down.
ghat - a landing place at a riverbank used for bathing and other purification rituals.
kurta - a long tunic-style shirt
Namaskar - Greetings
Om, shanti - a basic Sanskrit prayer for peace
pakora - vegetable fritters
salwar kameez - traditional women's garment consisting of tunic and pajama pants
samosa - fried meat or potato dumplings
Sindhi - a designation meaning the Sindh region of Pakistan and/or the language spoken there
taxiwallah - cabbie
If you're curious about what/who inspired Ananda, click here.