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desired.
    â€œJess?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œListen, you do your thing and I’ll do my thing and we’ll leave it at that. Personally, with your body and those eyes, I don’t care if you live in a fucking cardboard box in Union Square. I’d still do you.”
    â€œYou would, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œHey, four walls are four walls. Cement, wood, cardboard, whatever you got to give us some privacy, babe.”
    I laughed and was relieved. Vanessa was back to herself, back to the woman that had intrigued me with photos and incense and raw beauty. I forced myself to abandon my thoughts. The evening started to feel comfortable again. I was walking without a destination with a stranger whom I somehow adored. It seemed as if everything was in place and full of a promise I had never even tasted let alone believed was possible.
    It wasn’t that I wasn’t a believer; it was just that I had never known exactly what to believe in. I never doubted that anything was possible or impossible. Yet that faith that people seemed to have in the Universe was lost to me. Anjali had immense faith in the Universe and its doings. But then she had immense faith in me as well and here I was. But wasn’t she with Ish? Hadn’t she neglected to call me? Despite it all, I knew I was wrong, reaching and grasping for explanations that were so frail that I couldn’t hold them within me without them breaking. Anjali…
    â€œI don’t want to do you,” I blurted out. “I have someone waiting for me at home. And I love her. But I’m here because I feel safe with you. I can’t wait to see you. I somehow like being with you.”
    Vanessa stopped walking. I felt like an idiot and my face felt hot. She placed a hand in my hair and moved it slowly. She smiled at me.
    â€œYou don’t even know me,” she said. “You know nothing about me.”
    â€œBut…it’s true.”
    I wanted her to tell me the same. She did not. She kissed my forehead and my temple and my cheek.
    â€œYou’re sweet, Jess.”
    I didn’t respond. She took my hand and we kept walking. I tried not to think of what I had said and her lack of an answer. We stopped in front of a karaoke lounge. Vanessa faced me and was silent.
    â€œI don’t do karaoke,” I lied.
    â€œYou don’t do karaoke,” she said as she pushed a stray strand of hair behind my ear for me.
    â€œThere is more to life than doing women.”
    â€œIt’s not that. I just…”
    â€œHalf an hour. And if you’re bored out of your mind, then we’ll go back to my place. How’s that?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWe could stand out here all day,” she said. “But I’m not going anywhere else.”
    â€œBut why?” I asked.
    â€œWhy not? I just feel like it’s a karaoke kind of night.”
    We stood in silence. I looked at her and she looked back, unfazed.
    I sighed.
    â€œOkay,” I said, you win.”
    She smiled.
    â€œI knew I would.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œBecause of all that you have, you lack conviction.”
    â€œThat’s quite an accusation,” I said.
    â€œBut it’s true. Shall we?”
    I took her hand and we entered through a small entrance that opened to a bar on one side and a few low square tables with shabby couches throughout the room. In one corner, some too tall blonde was singing her rendition of “Bitch” by Meredith Brooks. I walked to the last table there was and took a seat in a chair that was farthest from the karaoke set up. Vanessa came and instead of sitting in the chair next to mine, sat in my lap. Then she slid off my thighs and made a space for her body between the arm of the chair and me. Her hair smelled like fresh peaches. I felt her leg against mine and wished we were in her apartment undressing instead of here, in a dark bar listening to bad voices.
    â€œWhat do you want to