Not everything was linear or tidy. Their life had the strange geometry of two people moving around one another—sometimes parallel, sometimes intersecting. They rotated in an impulsive and grounded fashion. Maya would travel with Arjun when his job took months away, sometimes to live with him or sometimes to teach in an overseas country. Their creation of rhythm created the possibility of absence and of reunion.
Years later, on an autumn evening, a long time after that first clumsy kiss, Maya and Arjun stood on a small hilltop looking down on the river on which the city was melting to gold. Light was a chemical burn; leaves a confetti of time. They were altered both--they were smoothed along the edges, more deeply laced with laughter--but there was something familiar.
Maya, Arjun kneeling on the grass without ceremony, I have no great lines. I don't have guarantees. What I possess is this: A dishevelled, serious life. I should like to continue to choose it--with you--if you will have me.
Her laugh was putting away old fears. And you were never any good at speeches. She sat beside him. She might have responded with a catalogue of terms, a table of claims. Instead she allowed the city to breath upon them and spoke what was: I want to continue to choose this as well. Not that it is ideal, but because it belongs to us.
They never had an exchange of big words at that time. They made vows of attendance--a promise to resume the minor mendings, the enrollments of daily affection. They had heard that love is not one great, glittering deed but a series of little, careful decisions.