That year of that summer he chose to reduce. He had read somewhere that this was a gypsy’s curse, but he had always taken it upon himself to indulge in the rites of the transcendental one day.
His path of reduction shined silver in the moonlight of south India. There, paper and fliers from a political election blew in the breeze past cherry blossoms hanging over the rue walls. He once sat in that still, warm night and listened to her voice over the phone. Technology had allowed him to send lies to a good Christian girl in Maine. A cell phone took the form of Maara’s fourth daughter.
Reduction comes at a price. His was the last chance for a normal romantic life. Gone. No more would he ever be doomed to pay a mortgage and ask a woman how her day went.
Maara’s fifth daughter, the one that succeeded, was named Chitra. He met her on the beach, as he let his legs sun and the rest of him read a book about Tamil Language devotion under the shade of a polipot palm. 5,000 Rupees is a price no sane man would pay for sex. But he evolved that night, in a stilted grass hut, to the sound of a slow buzzing ceiling fan.
Chitra had dark nipples. They were black, like her hair. Her eyes were like a deep, bottomless abyss. He couldn’t see his reflection in those eyes. She moaned when he bit her nipples, and she hid her mouth and averted her gaze like an innocent village girl. In broken English she asked to return to America with him. Did he lie to her in Tamil? This we will never know, but we know he returned to us a thinner man. Lifetimes of depression melted away and revealed a soul that longs for beauty.
Is simple beauty too much to ask for? He still has fat clinging to his mind, but he sometimes stops in the city he lives in now, and he looks past the smoggy American skyline and wonders at the golden sun dancing through the glorious clouds. Are those multitudes of angels singing?