The Whore of Calcutta

The Whore of Calcutta

Bob missed the express train home. He sat on a small wooden bench on the platform and took out a book. No point in being pissed off, he thought. She wouldn’t be there again tonight anyway. It had been like this for two weeks ever since Anne took that secretarial job. Life was late nights and more late nights, dinner out of a box, and going to bed alone. Bob hated Anne’s new job. Anne told him too bad. She said that with the economy being what it was, he had no right to hate her job. There were millions of people who would be envious for her job, or hadn’t he watched the news, read a paper, lately. Maybe Bob should work a little bit harder at getting a job for himself.

Of course he hadn’t. He wouldn’t. Bob had wasted six months of his life on a fruitless job search. He’d wasted months waking up at five or six, having two cursory cups of coffee, and then hitting the online job banks for something, anything. There wasn’t anything. Nothing but a trail of jobs in the finance sector that about ten to eleven other qualified, most times better qualified, people all clamored for at the same time. Plus Bob was bad at interviews. He sweated a lot, stuttered, asked the interviewer to repeat certain questions over and over again because he sat there worrying about how much he was sweating and stuttering. It was a horror to interview in his eyes. That was one of the reasons why Bob kept with Harrison & Whitman even though the work was terrible, and the hours were long. How they were long? It was less than a year ago that Anne was in his position, waiting up until odd hours, cooking dinner alone, and ultimately going to bed by herself. Now the job was gone. Now it was his turn to wait.

Bob hated Anne’s boss, Dale, as well. When he saw Anne it was Dale this and Dale that. Dale has an apartment on the Upper West Side. Dale wants me to get a Blackberry. Dale eats lobster every Saturday night. We should get lobster sometime, Bob. It’s been since the beach since I had a lobster. Bob pictured Dale often. He imagined him as some tall, blonde, muscular type; one of the ones you see running on a treadmill on a Friday night in the window of one of those overpriced gyms, after you’ve just shoved down a plate of wings with a pitcher of beer. He bet Dale told Anne all about the gym. It made Bob jealous. Anne wasn’t the youngest thing out there, but she was still a good-looking woman. Anne had kept herself in decent shape by walking and eating like a bird. She still had that long, jet-black Italian hair and those big almond-shaped eyes. Bob often told her that she looked like that actress from that television show everyone was going nuts about on cable. Anne blushed when he told her this.

Bob heard the train come rumbling down the track. He put his book back in his bag and then stood on the platform and waited. He’d done nothing that day except wander around the museum again, and have a few beers over at Muldoon’s. Muldoon’s was a force of habit. That’s where Bob used to go to unwind after a day at Harrison & Whitman’s. He went for happy hour and to talk with his colleagues and the blonde bartender from Ireland. He loved hearing her accent, the way she joked around with all of the other suits getting their fix of booze on the cheap, before going home to face the hell of their domestic life. Bob had kissed her once, briefly. It happened during the office’s Christmas party at Muldoon’s. It happened right by the women’s bathroom. She walked out and made a joke, something about office drunks, and Bob just planted one on her. He thought she liked it. After all, the woman did smile at him all of the time. She didn’t really like it, however, and soon after the kiss, Bob went home to Anne.

He took his book out on the train and stared at it. Bob could never remember where he was at in the thing. It was some book about the French and Indian War, written by some authority on the subject. Bob knew nothing about the French and Indian War, and decided that with Anne gone so often maybe he’d learn something about something. But it was hard reading the book. It was hard keeping up with forts and generals, and what England was doing to France, how the American Colonies fit it and such. The book was more trouble than it was worth. It was hard to lug around too. Bob thought maybe he’d just leave it on a seat on this train, let someone else take up the burden of history, but he decided against it. The book had been a gift from Anne, something to get Bob motivated toward a goal, any kind of goal.

At Atlantic the train became packed with passengers transferring. An old woman got on lugging one of those metal carts. It was full of plastic grocery bags. Bob only had another three stops to go, so he gave up the seat to the woman. She didn’t even say thanks but grumbled something, and sat her fat ass down on his warm seat. Then there was Bob pressed up against the rest of humanity like a goddamned sardine. Most days he couldn’t believe this was one of the biggest cities in the world. It felt like Calcutta, riding on packed trains like this. It felt like being a passenger in the Third World. Anne hated when Bob used to come home yelling about the trains. She’d fix him a drink and tell him to forget it. Bob thought Anne was nuts. How can you just forget a constant indignity like the rush hour train? When Anne got her secretarial job she came home raving about the trains. Bob would pour her a drink as she went off about how the city had the best public transportation in all of America. When Bob remarked that Anne took the train during off-peak hours she said nothing, started in talking about Dale.

“This is something,” an old man said to Bob. Bob looked at the man. He was barely hanging on to his pole; he was so short and shriveled. All around them sat younger people with their noses buried in electronic books or in digital phones, playing useless digital games. Not one of them could give up a seat to the old man? Bob looked over at the old lady he’d given up his seat to. She was already asleep.

“This is hell,” Bob said back to the old man. “This is what it’s like in Calcutta.”

A tall redhead gave Bob a dirty look after he said the bit about Calcutta. Christ, he thought, another one of those PC types. They make the world so difficult sometimes; you have to watch what you say even amongst the salivating masses. He couldn’t stand people like that, these vegan, yoga types. He couldn’t stand uppity bitches who had nothing better to get angry about other than the abuse of farm animals or which belabored country we weren’t helping out this week. People needed help in America, Bob thought. He gave her a look back. He smiled smugly and raised an eyebrow. He winked at her. Yeah, baby, Bob thought. I’m one of those types. The redhead turned away in disgust.

Then an idea came to him after the next stop. Bob inched a little bit closer to the redhead, as they made their way toward his station. Bob began breathing heavily, blowing his hot breath on the woman’s neck. She tried not paying attention to him, keeping her nose buried in some drab magazine, but Bob knew he was getting to her. How could he not? Blowing hot breath on her neck. A couple of times she brushed the blow of wind away, as if it were a bug or something. She tried inching forward but there was nowhere to go. She had no room to look back, that’s how close Bob had gotten to her. She was his captive, his little whore of Calcutta.

When the train reached the next station, Bob hesitated just a second. The doors on the train opened and before anyone could make a move, he reached out and grabbed a handful of the redhead’s ass. It was fit and bony, but Bob got a nice chunk of it. The woman screamed, tried to twirl around but there still wasn’t enough room, what, with the rush of people heading toward the exit doors. Bob held on, pinched again, and then turned to head out of the train doors just as the redhead was able to spin around.

“Hey!” was all she screamed, as the influx of people getting on the train stopped her from saying any more.

“See ya!” Bob shouted, standing on the platform. He waved at the redhead as the doors closed. She gave him one last angry look, before the train barreled out of the station and down into the dark depths of the tunnel. Bob stood there and watched it until the thing was gone.

He was one stop away from where he should’ve gotten off the train, but it was worth it just to see the look on that woman’s face. His little whore of Calcutta. Bob laughed as he walked along the crowded evening street. He stopped in a bar, not his regular one, and had a couple of beers with a hamburger, as the evening news played on a huge television in the corner of the room. Bob ate the burger voraciously. He was happy that it didn’t come out of a box. When he was done the bartender took his plate away with a smile. She was another blonde. Bob imagined kissing her too, but decided to have a third beer instead.

It wasn’t a bad walk home. Winter was coming again, and the evenings were getting his kind of cold. Most people bundled up in this weather, but not Bob. Bob could go deep into December before he had to pull out the winter coat and hat. Sometimes he made it to January, he thought, stopping to look at sundry items in the many stores that lined the street. Maybe he’d pick up a little something for Anne, like a bottle of wine for when she got home. Yes, Bob thought. He went into a liquor store and bought a big bottle of red, enough for the two of them to get silly on.

There were voices in the apartment. Bob could hear them from down the hall. There was chatter and then laughter. A male voice he didn’t recognize was raised in the most dramatic fashion. What the hell? Bob thought. He could smell food cooking too, one of the dishes that Anne used to make before she got the job. Bob took in a huge huff of the smell and then reached into his pants to dig for his keys. But as soon as they dangled in the lock, the door opened. Anne saw him and smiled.

“Hey,” she said.

“I got the wine,” Bob said. “I thought you’d be working late.”

He stepped inside the apartment. In the kitchen was a short, balding man with a salt and pepper colored goatee. Bob eyed him and then scanned the living room. Sitting on his couch, on his seat, was the redhead from the train. She was drinking a glass of his good bourbon, watching the evening news on his television set. Bob gave her a dumb smile, which the redhead met with a dark glare. She put her glass of bourbon down and got off of the couch.

“Bob, this is Dale,” Anne said, directing Bob toward the bald man. Bob shook his hand but watched in the living room as the redhead reached for her coat.

“Yes,” Bob said, putting the wine on the kitchen table. Then the three of them watched as the redhead put on her coat and reached for her purse.

“And that’s Linda,” Anne said, an awkward look on her face. Bob had never heard about Linda. She put her purse on her shoulder and began walking toward them.

“Hello,” Bob said to the advancing woman.

“We were going to work from home tonight, if you don’t mind,” Anne said.