We tried calling Genie, but he didn’t pick up his phone.
“Do you think he’s left?” I asked Anjali.
“Left where?”
“I mean, gone. Taken his stuff and left.”
“Let’s check his room and see if his things are still here.”
We did the unthinkable and went into Genie’s room. I rarely entered this room, even though I was tempted. The room was extremely neat. Tidy paperless surfaces, with no personal belongings outside. A pink-themed patchwork bedspread my mother and I had made for Genie covered his bed.
Anjali gingerly tried the door handles of the cupboard nearest the door. It was locked. “Don’t you have extra keys for these cupboards? They usually come in doubles and triples.” She looked at me hopefully.
“Why isn’t there a mirror here?” Anjali said absentmindedly, drinking in the entire room.
“Oh. One of the cupboards has a mirror on the inside of the door.”
“Do you think that’s where he keeps all his toiletries and things?”
It was like the room had no character… save for the picture of my parents, Genie and I in happier times. The photograph was in a slim silver folder, the kind that could be propped up, kept in a pocket or slid into a briefcase. I’d never seen anything like it in India. I picked it up and stared at my parents. A lump soon formed in the back of my throat and my eyes blurred. Anjali took the slim picture frame from my hands and set it down and her arm went around me.
******
This is a fictional series surrounding the narrator, her parents’ former man Friday Genie and Fish.
The narrator and her friend Anjali are unable to contact Genie and enter his room to see if he has packed and left. Unfortunately, they get carried away.
******
Then she went and
tugged at the handles of all the cupboards. The ones without key holes opened,
revealing Genie’s toiletries, clothes and other things. “If he keeps his
clothes here, what must he be keeping in the locked cupboards?”That was an interesting question, because there were two tall cupboards with locks and one short cupboard with a lock, in addition to a locked steel almirah.
“He only wears white t-shirts…” I said.
“… white t-shirts and jeans. And how many cupboards of white underwear can a man have? I think the cupboards are empty.” She went up to them and knocked. We couldn’t figure out if the sound was hollow.
“Well, looks like all his clothes are here. Nothing has gone. Maybe we should check the shoe rack.” I opened a drawer in his table. Stationery was neatly organised, instantly putting Anjali and me to shame.
“I really want him to be my housekeeper,” Anjali mumbled. “And I want to bonk him.”
“Me too. The tidy part, for the most part.” Except for the numerous bumps in my life, I had not seen anything ruffle Genie. That included the running of a household. If he didn’t know cooking when he first entered our home, he did by the time my parents left this realm. The only plus was I was a better cook.
“You know, geniuses are like this. Everything in neat rows. Look at this,” Anjali picked up a box of paperclips. “I bet the clips are in neat rows, spooning each other.”
“Okay. Open it.”
We opened it. There were a couple of coins in them. We stared at the Queen Victoria half anna. There was another coin in it, but I slapped Anjali’s hand away from it.
“What did you do that for!”
“We’ve poked around Genie’s things too much. We have no business doing so. Come on!”
“Yes, Miss Potty-Calling-Miss Kettley-Black. Where to?”
I walked to the sitting room. Fish were arguing on the phone. I stopped. It sounded like they were speaking with Genie.
“When will you be back?” Penaaz asked.
“You’ve got to come back,” Pervez said plaintively.
“Who’ll keep order here? And we may run out of food… or toilet paper… or just… things,” Portas said.
“You can’t stay away for long, old man. That Danny business fizzled out long ago. Uncle Joy was a tiresome old fart. A tiresome, game-playing, manipulative old fart. Fortunately, our little one hasn’t inherited any of his genes,” Gregory said.
“Please come back, we’re worried sick. Besides the girls will be alone. What if things get worse… TV news sounds worse by the hour. It’s safer for you to be here at home than outside. Please come back soon!” sweet gentle Dimitri said.
“He’s so annoying and stubborn,” Penaaz grumbled.
“Yes. How rude of him to cut us off while we were speaking,” Portas said.
“I don’t think he had a chance to speak at all, with us yammering and cutting him off every time he spoke,” Gregory said.
That silenced Fish. I moved into the sitting room, wondering why Anjali wasn’t with me. I sighed in frustration. She was examining the other coin in the paper clip box and taking a picture of it. “Anjali, stop that!”
“Stop that, you! You nearly gave me a fright,” Gregory shouted. I could see Fish hold their hearts, panting in shock and pressed into the sides of the fish tank.
“Er, sorry, guys. Do you have any idea when Genie will be back?”
“No,” Penaaz said.
“Did you call him?”
There was a long pause. “No,” Gregory said, looking at the top of my ear and adjusting his glasses. I looked at the other fish, each one of them was acting innocent.
They had learned well the fine art of fingering. It didn’t take a lot. I felt my piss fizz. I wondered what it was. Did they think I only needed to know on a need-to-know basis. Or I was just a helpless useless nut that needed to be manipulated like a puppet whenever they wanted. I screamed shrilly in my head, glaring at them all the while. Idiots!
I looked behind me. Anjali was now sitting on Genie’s bed and looking through a notebook. She then lifted a pen, that looked… my God! I sprinted into the room and grabbed the pen from her hand. “It’s a f****** Mont Blanc. What the eff! Do you think it’s real?” I put the pen to my nose and sniffed.
“Eek! Do you have to smell everything, you crackpot! What if he used it to scratch his balls.”
“Why can’t he just use his hands like everyone else?” I said, still looking closely at the pen. It looked like an original. I’d bought a couple of fakes at the Russian Market in Phnom Penh last year. And I had eyed the originals often enough at the mall. The markings seemed right. I pulled off the cap – it was a fountain pen. “You know, I have never seen him use this pen.”
“Maybe he has a secret journal he likes to write in with a special pen. There are some books and diaries in this larger drawer here. Shall we look?”
“I think we should stop touching his things. He may figure out we’ve been rifling through them. Do you think he’s one of those people who remembers the way he leaves a book or pen in his drawers?”
“I imagine you mean the drawer in this table and not the other type,” Anjali smirked. I felt exasperated but also strangely, and reluctantly, titillated. Anjali shrugged and sighed. “Yeah, I think he’s the sort who’ll remember what went missing and who’s touched what. I better put it back in his journal.”
“Journal? Give me that.”
“Don’t know if it is one.” She showed me a green moleskin diary. It looked like it had been well thumbed, and the sides of the book and pages looked grimy, though they were blank. Most of them. Some had words that didn’t make sense.
I had a sense of foreboding. “Put it back exactly the way you found it, Anjali.” I pushed the pen and notebook into Anjali’s chest. “We have no business touching Genie’s things. Put it back, put it back now!”
“Damn right you shouldn’t be touching my things. Put them down and get out of my room. Now!” Genie said coldly from the doorway. I felt Anjali gasp and I shrank into her, feeling intense shame at our actions and being caught. Anjali pushed me and we stood. She put the pen and book on the table and we walked slowly to the door.
“Very sorry, Genie. We didn’t mean to,” Anjali said.
“But you did.” He moved to the side of the doorway to let us pass, then went in and locked the door behind him.
******
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