(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
Several minutes passed between his undoing of one button and the next, his eyes closed all the while, his head still on her shoulder, as the bus hurtled down the empty, dark highway. It was the first time in her life a man had touched her. She held herself perfectly still. She was desperate to touch him too, but she was terrified. Finally Dimitri opened his eyes. She felt his mouth near her ear, and she turned to him, prepared to be kissed, at seventeen, for the very first time. But he had not kissed her. He had only looked at her, and said, "You're going to break hearts, you know." And then he leaned back, in his own seat this time, removed his hand from her lap, and closed his eyes once again. She had stared at him in disbelief, angry that he assumed she'd not broken any heart yet, and at the same time flattered. For the rest of the journey she kept her skirt unbuttoned, hoping he would return to the task. But he didn't touch her after that, and in the morning there was no acknowledgment of what had passed between them. At the demonstration he had wandered off, paid her no attention. On the way back they had sat apart.
Afterward she returned to the university every day to try to run into him. After some weeks she saw him striding across campus, alone, holding a copy of The Man Without Qualities. They shared some coffee and sat on a bench outside. He had asked her to see a movie, Goddard's Alphaville, and to have Chinese food. She had worn an outfit that still caused her to wince, an old blazer of her father's that was too long for her, over jeans, the sleeves of the blazer rolled up as if it were a shirt, to reveal the striped lining inside. It had been the first date of her life, strategically planned on an evening her parents were at a party. She recalled nothing of the movie, had eaten nothing at the restaurant, part of a small shopping complex off Route 1. And then, after watching Dimitri ate both of their fortune cookies without reading either prediction, she had made her error : she had asked him to be her date to her senior prom. He had declined, driven her home, kissed her lightly on her cheek in the driveway, and then he never called her again. The evening had humiliated her ; he had treated her like a child. Sometime over the summer she bumped into him at the movies. He was with a date, a tall freckled girl with hair to her waist. Moushumi had wanted to flee, but he'd made a point of introducing her to the girl. "This is Moushumi," Dimitri had said deliberately, as if he'd been waiting for the opportunity to say her name for weeks. He told her he was going to Europe for a while, and from the look on the date's face she realized that she was going with him. Moushumi told him she'd been accepted ar Brown. "You look great," he told her when the date was not listening.
When she was at Brown, post cards used to arrive from time to time, envelopes plastered with colorful, oversized stamps. His handwriting was minuscule but sloppy, always causing her eyes to strain. Ther was never a return address. For a time she carried these letters in her book bag, to her classes, thickening her agenda. Periodically he sent books he'd read and thought she might like. A few times he called in the middle of the night, waking her, and she spoke to him for hours in the dark, lying in bed in her dorm room, then sleeping through her morning classes. A single call kept her sailing for weeks. "I'll come visit you. I'll take you to dinner," he told her. He never did. Eventually the letters tapered off. His last communication had been a box of books, along with several post cards he'd written to her in Greece and Turkey but not managed to send at the time. . And then she'd moved to Paris.
She read Dimitri's resume again, then the cover letter. The letter revealed nothing other than earnest pedagogical intent, mentioned a panel Dimitri and the professor to whom it was addressed attended some years ago. She could not bring herself to write down his address, though she didn't want to forget it. In the Xerox room, she made a copy of the resume. She stuck it in the bottom of her bag. The she typed a new envelope and put the original in the professors mailbox.
At home that night, after dinner, she secretly dialed Dimitri's number, wondering if he would even remember her, listened as the phone rang four times.
"Hello ?"
It was his voice. "Hi, Dimitri ?"
"Speaking. Who's this ?"
She paused. She could still hang up if she wanted. "It's Mouse."
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