Your Polar Bear

"What?" she said.

"What?"

"What?" she repeated.

"Oh!" he exclaimed and repeated himself—but it didn’t really register because something on the menu had caught her eye.

"Excuse me," she said to Jayesh, a passing waiter.

Jayesh stopped, struggling to balance two trays of cocktails.

"What is that?"

"The vada pav?" said Jayesh. "Fried potato dumpling, spiced and served in a bun with a choice of chutney. From Maharashtra, it says there. Highly recommended."

"Does it contain nuts? I'm allergic to nuts, you see. All nuts. It doesn’t matter the type—I’ll react horribly if it contains any kind of nut. Do you understand?"

Jayesh nodded rapidly. "I’ll ask the chef."

She thanked him. She always thanked everyone. She always made sure.

Her husband looked at his menu. On the table between them were two taper candles, one on either side of a chrysanthemum centerpiece, and two sets of flatware wrapped in purple napkins. Two white lace doilies were set, ready to receive supposedly delicious and exotic plates. The restaurant was dim and didn’t have music, and he liked that.

"India," she said to him. "We really must go. In a place like this, you get a taste of it, but it just isn’t authentic, is it? I mean, look at the waiters."

"What about the waiters?" he said, laying down his menu.

"Oh, nothing, nothing. Except... it’s the accent. You can hear the Indian in it, but it’s just so... so..."

He looked at the couple at the table next to them. They hadn’t ordered either. It was a comforting coincidence.

"So... what?"

"So inauthentic. The staff have lived in England too long. That one sounded like he was born here. We really should think about going to India."

He nodded and picked up his menu. His eyes moved up and down. He saw the words, the prices—but he couldn’t read them.

"Have you decided yet?" she said.

"Yes. We can go to India," he said.

She laughed. I didn’t mean that, she nearly declared, but she stopped herself.

"It isn’t just the food, you know? It’s about new things. It’s about being away, somewhere else entirely."

Applause rose from the other side of the room as a waiter carried an enormous funfetti cake out of the kitchen. Five or six staff members followed, singing Happy Birthday to You. She turned and clapped and sang along. He looked at her. He didn’t blink.

The song ended with three hip-hip hoorays, as though there had been some enormous triumph up there. The recipient of the cake looked to be about half his age and surrounded by friends. She was beautiful—a beautiful birthday girl. Admittedly, she was. She blew out the candles so he could no longer see her face, and his wife said:

"I remember when you did that for me once. Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"Do you?"

The couple at the table next to them still hadn’t ordered. Before, it was comforting; now, he realized they simply weren’t in a hurry. They didn’t care. They hadn’t even looked over.

"I was twenty, wasn’t I?"

"Twenty. That’s right."

"I’ll be forty next year. Forty is a big one."

He nodded. He would be forty-one before she was forty. He considered this, and somewhere between one thought and the next, the image of a polar bear flipped up in his mind like a carnival duck shoot. There it was again. And again. He picked up his menu. He tried to read it. But there, in the middle of every sentence, appeared the polar bear, standing on two legs, grinning at him. It wouldn’t go away.

"Oh, I have something in my eye," she said. "Ooh. Ouch!"

"Let me see," he said, leaning over the table.

"No, no. I'll just nip to the loo. Don't order without me!"

She left. He wished he could see the birthday girl again, but it was too dark. All he could do was listen to the laughter drifting by, like watching snowfall through a windowpane.

And then she was back. "Have you decided yet?"

"Yes. I have decided. I want to go to Greenland."

She looked at him. She blinked—five, at least five times.

"What are you saying?"

He turned to the couple at the table next to them.

"Excuse me."

"Yes?" said the girl.

"What are you having?"

She looked at her companion. He shrugged.

"We haven’t decided yet," she said.

"That’s what I thought," he said. "Have you eaten here before?"

They shook their heads.

"So you don’t know what’s good either. No clue. Zip. And you’re okay with that, are you?"

"What are you doing?" said his wife.

Again, the polar bear flashed before his eyes. "You’ll order whatever you want, whenever you want—is that right? That’s the game, is it?"

"Stop!"

He turned back to her.

"What’s gotten into you?"

He looked at her and shrugged. He never usually shrugged. It felt great, and he was pleased with himself.

Jayesh was in the kitchen, changing his shirt—the sweat circles under his armpits had become too large to hide. It was his first shift, and he didn’t know anyone’s name. The chef was at the griddle, toasting flatbreads. He noticed him and said:

"It gets easier."

Jayesh smiled and tucked his shirt into his trousers.

"Where are you from?"

"Bradford. You?"

"New Delhi, originally. Do you have a relationship?"

"Yeah. I mean, no. Not really."

"Get one," said the chef, turning back to the griddle to flip his flatbreads. "That’s how it gets easier."

Jayesh ducked into his elastic-collared tie, straightened it, then started for the front of the house. He didn’t want a girlfriend. Or a wife. He had spent none of his life pursuing one or even thinking about it, since all Jayesh really wanted was to snowboard. He was eleven when he saw a snowboarder in a music video on MTV. He couldn’t remember the band or the song, but the image of that lone shadow winding down the white wilderness had put a lasting spell on him. He wasn’t interested in the contrived accesses in France or Austria. He yearned for the rock and raw ice at the top of the globe.

"Oh, the lady out there’s allergic to nuts. She wants to know if there are any in the vada pav."

"Can’t guarantee it," said the chef.

She apologized to the couple. She always apologized. She always made sure.

"Greenland? What’s in Greenland?" she said.

He couldn’t say. Nothing. Everything. A gaping oubliette begging for his minuscule footprint. Forty-one next year. That had happened quickly. So quickly that being sixty—or even eighty—didn’t seem like such a foreign country anymore. He was considering this when an enormous polar bear came up to the table.

"I’m sorry, madam, the chef says the vada pav does contain nuts."

"Haaaaa!" he cried. "Haaaaa! Haaaaa!" He pointed at her. Then he pointed at the polar bear.

"What’s your name, bear?"

"Jayesh," said the bear.

"Jayesh, she can’t eat it. No matter what. Under no circumstances can she have what she wants. Even if she kicks and screams and pulls her hair out, she can’t have it. Am I right? Tell me I’m right!"

"It is my understanding the lady can’t have nuts, yes, sir."

He slowly rotated his point to the boy at the table next to them.

"You. Now you’re really frightened, aren’t you?"

"What?" said the girl.

"Not you. You!"

"What?" said the boy.

"Stop it! Stop it!" screamed his wife.

But it didn’t really register because he had thrown his menu across the room and was laughing harder than he had ever laughed before.