Every day that summer in London I went to the same café. It was a hole in the wall, and always crowded. I sat at the bar, ate my toast and read the newspaper. A burly man often sat next to me. Although we never spoke to each other beyond pleasantries, I liked that he was there. We read our respective papers every morning, carefully avoiding contact between our elbows.

I had just been fired from my shitty job in Boston. My job was to write emails targeted to old people, using scare tactics to get them to donate money to the candidates who had hired the firm to help them get elected. On a typical day, I’d show up an hour late to work. If I felt like it, I’d extend my lunch break to two hours.

Sonya the HR lady called me into her office one day while she was eating a gigantic salad. The bowl was the size of her head. ‘Rupa, is something going on?’ she asked. ‘You can tell me, sis.’

She used the word ‘sis’ to signify some sort of camaraderie between us because we were both brown. On the bookshelf behind her she had a bunch of mugs collected from bachelorette parties through the years: trophies from all the times she puked with white girls while wearing fuzzy pink tiaras.

‘It must be hard being one of the few people of colour here,’ she said. ‘I’m here to support you.’ She had on that voice: the one that stuffy South Asians used when they were disappointed in you for failing to uphold their model-minority status. They used the same voice when they found out my father had left my mother.

After I was sent packing with six weeks’ pay, I went to London. It was my first time, but my grandmother had lived there some fifty years earlier. I’d known her only through photographs on my mother’s vanity. She had taken a bus, by herself, from what was then called East Pakistan, for eighty-five pounds: a sum saved for her by the people of her village. It was a fifty-day journey. When she arrived, she got a job as a seamstress at a men’s tailor shop in Kensington. Every time I saw a blue-blooded man in London, I wondered: how many buttons of his father’s suits did my grandmother sew? I wondered, too, what her days were like in this city. All I knew was that she rode the tube to the shop every morning from Whitechapel.

That’s where I went every weekend to buy tilapia from an old Bangladeshi man. He told me he was going to retire one day soon to the seaside in Sussex, but I doubted he’d ever make it there. He was already decrepit. In Whitechapel, no Bengalis knew me, and nobody had an interest in me. Every weekend, I breathed in the smell of cinnamon floating between the dresses hanging from the clothing racks. Then I walked home.

I was renting an apartment in a sickly building in Hackney. The oatmeal wallpaper was peeling off the walls – truly disgusting – but it was worth it for the flat’s enchanting terrace, which had a view of the City skyline. On Sundays, I coated the tilapia with spices and waited on my balcony with a cup of coffee while the oven preheated. Often, I’d see the shadows of a couple unbagging their groceries in the apartment across the courtyard. A few things went in the fridge and the rest in the pantry. Some days the couple embraced. Other days they were in a hurry, their silhouettes quickly dispersing.

I was boiling water on one of those Sundays when I matched with a man on a dating app. The man was two miles away. His name was Milo. He was twenty-nine years old, with a dark beard, small piercing eyes and veiny arms. His hometown was listed as Bolzano, Italy, but he didn’t quite look Italian. A message appeared instantly on my phone after we matched: ‘A coffee now, bella?’

I thought for a minute, and then told him that I was already drinking one. Still, he managed to convince me to meet him at a café in my neighbourhood. I took a last sip of my instant coffee, grabbed my trench coat off the hanger and made my way down the stairs.

At the café, I expected to be disappointed by Milo, but he was even more handsome in person. His jaw reminded me of the men in perfume ads I made out with as a child. I disregarded all of this and instead focused on how he was dressed. Like a complete poseur, he was wearing a plain white T-shirt and black cargo pants from Dickies, and he was holding a book – something in Italian. A film camera sat on the table. I hung my coat behind my chair. When I turned around, an espresso that he’d already ordered for me arrived. It was burning hot when I took a sip, but I drank it coolly.

‘And how are you?’ he asked me, in an accent I couldn’t place. His cavalier attitude made me nervous suddenly. Before I could respond, he inched his sunglasses downward and scanned me, smiling.

‘Wow. Even more beautiful in person,’ he said. ‘But your breasts, bella … well, they could be bigger.’

I stared down at my boobs; they were the size of the sugar cubes on the table. For a moment I was silent in disbelief that he would say such a thing. But then, after what felt like a long time, I burst out laughing.

We chatted with our arms bent on the table, sipping our espressos. We heard the distant chatter of the couples that walked past us and tourists speaking their native languages. He talked passionately about his work on a documentary about migrants risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean. About half an hour later, the barista told us the café would be closing shortly. We didn’t want the evening to end there, so Milo invited himself over to my flat – because, he said, it was much closer to the café than his. I told him to meet me there in fifteen minutes. I said I had a personal call to take.

I didn’t actually have a call to take. My apartment was just disorderly. I didn’t have many things, but from the things I had, I created a mess.

Fifteen minutes, I thought, would be enough time to push my clothes under the bed, put the dishes under the sink. It was about time I learned how to clean up after myself, but what was the point? I hadn’t met a man I wanted to take home in months. I hadn’t yet met a friend that I wanted to have over to linger. If no one was coming over, why bother?

He was there at my door knocking in exactly fifteen minutes. He held up a six-pack of Peroni, ‘a gift from Italy’, he said.

I put the beer to the side and poured us some tequila. He made a sour face after taking a sip.

‘No good,’ he said. ‘Do you have something I can mix it with?’

As I searched my fridge, rifling through half-eaten sponge cakes, I could hear him snapping photos. Then he was looking over my shoulder into the fridge.

‘You eat this stuff? It’s all fake!’ he exclaimed. ‘It has poison!’

‘I like poison,’ I said, ‘It tastes delicious.’

He looked concerned, shaking his head as he put down his camera.

‘This will do,’ he said, when I found a bottle of Orangina.

He spotted a magazine on my coffee table, picked it up, and pointed to an ad on the back: ‘I took that photo.’

‘You take photos of lamps?’

‘Well,’ he said, making his way over to my bookshelf. ‘Taking photos of just the things I like doesn’t pay for holidays.’

His attention turned to my small collection of DVDs and books. He had seen every film I loved; he had read all of my favourite books. He told me I looked like a brown version of a young Julie Christie, his favorite movie star. ‘Which is funny because she was born in India,’ he said, observing my face. I was embarrassed not to know who she was, so I just nodded.

We sat out on my terrace and didn’t say much to each other at first. It felt good just being together, under the violet clouds. He rolled us cigarettes with spiced Dutch tobacco. He was unbothered by the sounds of children screaming in the courtyard. I puckered my lips extra hard in case he stared at me while I lit my cigarette. It was clear that everything was cinematic for him. When he laughed, I noticed then that he was missing a tooth on the right side of his mouth. I quickly looked away, feeling that I had seen something I wasn’t meant to see.

He told me his parents had emigrated from Algeria to Italy. He told me his aunt would sneak him into the mosques when he visited Algeria. The men at the mosque never believed that he was actually Arab since he had an Italian name and a left arm tattooed with naked women, peeking through the white linen kurta. When he was in Italy, people treated him as foreign too, even though it was his birthplace. I told him it was the same for me in America.

‘But at least my parents named me something normal,’ he said. ‘Yours screwed you over. Are they worried you’re here alone?’

My parents were probably too busy with their own entanglements to worry about me. I told Milo that we were estranged – that I’d excommunicated myself from them recently. It was easier this way: less to explain to them about myself, I told him. He was silent, but I felt he understood.

‘Do you get lonely here?’ I asked him.

It was only recently that he’d ever been truly alone. A year ago, he ended a relationship with a woman that had spanned most of his adult life. After the end of that relationship, he would sit in his room for days at a time, taking drugs and eating whatever was left in the fridge.

He stood up and ran his fingers across my hair, revealing my gold drop earrings.

‘Let’s go dancing,’ he said.

‘Already?’ I asked. We’d been together for hours at this point.

‘We can grab some food first if you’re hungry,’ he said.

‘I’m not hungry,’ I replied. The espresso and cigarettes kept me feeling full. Besides, I didn’t want him to see how I chewed my food.

I went to my bedroom, smeared on some lipstick and put on a nude slip dress. I thought about how I’d worn this dress for my last date months ago, and how turned on the guy had been.

We spent the night in and out of bars. He held my waist as he pushed us through the crowds. I don’t remember too much of that night with clarity. There were red-lit clubs and loud techno music in languages I didn’t understand. We bought drugs from a man on the street, but when we opened the aluminum foil there was nothing inside. I remember a few kisses in the taxi home. The cigarettes and alcohol made our mouths taste like burnt bacon. I remember my heels hooked onto my fingers as I swung the balcony door open when we got home. As I stripped naked, he took photographs, and the bright flash exposed me but also invigorated me. We ate the sponge cakes from my fridge, making a mess of little crumbs all over the counter. Then we had sex on the floor. Then again on my couch. We didn’t use a condom; in that moment, I wanted his children.

The next morning, I woke up with a terrible headache. The sun’s orange glow intruded through my sheer curtains and spilled all over my sheets. He was still next to me: awake, tracing circles with his pale fingers on my thighs. I ran to the bathroom and puked for ten minutes. When I was done, I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like one of those old women on meth when they get arrested after a high-speed chase.

I stood over him. ‘You have to go now,’ I said.

‘What? But we’re in love, babe,’ he said with a muffled laugh. I could feel his smirk from underneath the pillow.

‘No, we’re not. Listen, I have a lot to do today,’ I said, reciting a line from memory.

He pulled me back onto the bed. ‘Relax,’ he said.  I had no energy to say or do anything, so I said fuck it and dozed off.

When we woke up, we gathered ourselves in the kitchen. I took out my instant coffee and made two cups for us. I guzzled mine down without taking a breath.

He looked at me then the mug, unimpressed. ‘This … is coffee?’

‘Too strong?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘This isn’t coffee. This … this is syrup.’

He left the apartment, telling me he’d be back soon.  I thought I’d never see him again and got ready to take a shower. But thirty minutes later, a knock persisted on my door. Through the peephole, I saw him standing with plastic grocery bags in his hands.

‘Open up,’ he yelled. ‘I hear you! Mouth breather!’

I unlocked the door and he swung it open with his leg. Dumping the bags on the kitchen counter, he held up each item for me: eggs, oranges, butter, a loaf of bread, a bag of ground coffee and a ceramic pour-over pot. He measured the coffee in the pour-over by eye and cracked a few eggs into a pan sunny side up.

When the coffee was ready, he handed me a cup: ‘Here.’

I took a sip. It was deadly good.

 

That night, we stopped by his place so he could grab some of his things. He told me he had a cat.

‘I am terribly allergic to the Felidae species,’ I explained to him. ‘It’s a horrible sight to see.’ I dry-heaved to demonstrate.

I wasn’t actually allergic to cats at all. I just didn’t like the idea of hustling between two apartments. As I waited outside for him, I watched the calico cat curl up against the window.

Milo basically moved into my apartment, and we got into a routine: we took walks through Highgate cemetery, read poetry, and watched movies all night.

 

My travel visa lasted ninety days, and by August my time in London was coming to an end. Milo asked me to take a trip to Sussex. I agreed. He picked up a rented car the evening before. Meanwhile, I went to Whitechapel to get us snacks. I saw the Bengali man at the market. He asked me to say a prayer for him in Sussex so that he could make it there soon. I told him I would.

In the morning, it rained like hell. After driving in the deluge for over three hours, we got to the beach. By then, the rain had stopped and the air was hot. Milo was exhausted from the heat and from driving. I laid out our thin red towel and he fell asleep instantly. I shimmied my hand into his shorts and squeezed his penis, hoping to wake him up. Instead, he started snoring like a pig. I walked down to the water and let it cool my feet.  I squatted down to level myself with the sun, staring right at it, letting my eyes burn.

We sat in traffic for hours on the way back, barely moving. The rain started again, beating the car, demanding our attention.

‘Stay here,’ he told me.

I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘Here in this traffic jam on the Sussex coast?’

This conversation had been running through my head for weeks. My thoughts never reached completion on the matter. Now I was confronted with it. A series of images from the last few months floated through my mind. What did I have to go back to anyway?

When we got back to London, we parted ways for the night. Milo had to tend to his cat and a month’s worth of laundry. I tossed in bed for hours. It was the first time I’d slept alone in weeks. I felt suffocated underneath my comforter, too hot then too cold. I went onto the balcony and chain-smoked until my lungs started to rebel. I opened the window and then closed it, but the sleep had already escaped my body.

 

The last time I saw my father was a bit over five years ago, just after I graduated from college. He was still with my mother then, and he had asked me to go out to dinner with just him: the first time this had ever happened. I had been awarded a prestigious fellowship. I’d be conducting research in East Africa with an NGO.

Over pulao, I told my father I was excited to visit Lake Nakuru. I explained to him that from late spring to early summer, thousands of migratory flamingos flock to the lake, turning it into a sea of pink. Their colour comes from the organisms they eat – shrimp and algae.

His eyes searched mine like I was a foreigner who had stopped him to ask for help in a language he didn’t understand. Instead of asking me to elaborate, he settled on nodding his head and moving on, leaving me stranded.

The next day, my mother and I stood outside of our house with my luggage. We waited for my father to come home from work and give me a ride to the airport. After thirty minutes there was still no sign of my father, so she called me a taxi. She didn’t know where he was. When the cab arrived, she tucked me in, said goodbye and closed the door. As the car pulled away, I looked out the window to see if maybe my father was pulling up by now. Instead, I saw my mother standing in the middle of the street, sobbing into her palms.

 

The day after our trip to the beach, I waited for a call from Milo. I was in the shower when my phone rang. I expected him to ask me to meet for an espresso. Instead, he begged me to cat-sit. He had gotten a request that morning to do a shoot in the countryside for two days. The original photographer had cancelled at the last minute.

‘I’m sorry, bella. I wouldn’t ask, but you’re the only person available,’ he said. ‘I left allergy pills in case the cat bothers you.’

When I got there, I fetched the key from underneath his mat. I had never been inside his place. Until then, I’d only known his bay window and his cat who peeked through the beige linen curtains. When I opened the door, the cat was curled underneath the couch, wary of an unfamiliar body in its territory. I drew the curtains together. I looked around and saw open DVD cases scattered on the carpet. A cafetière full of wet coffee grounds sat on the kitchen counter. I walked into his bedroom. Dead flies and dust darkened the window sills. Several coats were spread across the bed and a laundry hamper overflowed with dirty socks.

As I moved around the apartment, I felt like a visitor in a museum. I examined the framed photographs that lined the walls. One frame held three photos of Milo from childhood. In the first he was a toddler in a park, waving. In the second he was being carried on his father’s back, and in the third he was swimming in a pile of crimson leaves, laughing carelessly, full of life. A woman with red lipstick who appeared to be his mother was standing next to him. She was smiling and holding a wide-brimmed hat.

Behind an oak bookshelf were old cards from family members for every birthday, every graduation. Underneath the pile of cards was a photograph of a Halloween party with a woman – his ex-girlfriend, I assumed. He was wearing a gorilla mask, she had black cat ears on top of her stringy blonde hair. I hadn’t imagined her to look the way she did in the photo.

There were more photos. There were stacks of glossy shots of women. Some of the women were nude, and the shots were similar to the ones he had taken of me when we met. Some of the photos had clearly been taken during private moments, on nights out or between bedsheets.

The cat was lying on the corner of the couch. Her paw dangled on the arm of the sofa. I poured myself a glass of gin and I poured the cat a heap of its smelly food. I slumped down on the couch and turned on the television. I finished my gin, then another.

I’d been fine being alone my whole life, but it’s one thing to choose a life of isolation. It’s another to be shoved back into it.

 

After a few more gins, I became sick. I crawled to the toilet and stripped myself of my jewellery and clothes. The cat followed me silently, and she watched me gush my insides out. When I was done, I sat up against the bathroom sink, the world spinning and spinning around me until I stopped seeing anything at all.

I woke up an hour later to the sight of the cat stretching next to me, looking at me with pity. I jumped into the shower, hoping the water would sober me up. My hair was still wet as I stumbled out of Milo’s apartment. The night was cold and stale as I lit a cigarette for the walk back. My vision was blurry, and each step I took had to be well thought out.

 

Milo called the next day. I didn’t pick up. He continued to text me – first with ciaos, then with expressions of confusion. A few days later, he messaged me about my gold earrings. I had left them in his bathroom. I asked him if he could leave them outside my apartment, but he never did. His messages stopped too.

On the flight back home, I re-watched half of Fight Club and looked out the window. The clouds crowded in until I could no longer see the city’s skyline. It’s disheartening to think that when you leave a place it doesn’t mourn you. The trains arrive on time, the residents resume their usual routines, the seasons change. On the screen, a map appeared with an arrow pointing to my final destination – to where I’d be in a future time. In the future time, the words you never had the courage to say can be said, even repeated.

On the screen, I caught my reflection—one without my earrings. I wanted to fall asleep to the humming of the plane, but I missed the ritual of pulling the earrings out and placing them in their box. I was used to abandoning things in my travels, things that didn’t fit into my bag. These belongings were thrown out or left to be found by someone who had no knowledge of their history. But when I was younger, I learned from my father that losing gold was different. It invites failure and doom, he’d warn me. Then, in the midst of turbulence, I became convinced the jet fuel was exhausted and somewhere over the Atlantic the plane would crash and my body would plummet deep into the ocean. I wished I had been careful to leave nothing behind.

 

To read the rest of Dublin Review 88, you may purchase the issue here.