The Tusk That Did the Damage Read Online Free PDF Page A

said, pointing the open bag at me. A sweet scent wafted up from the unni appams, heaped like a clutch of warm eggs. Ravi popped one whole in his mouth.
    Teddy demurred, retracting into his vest like a turtle. An elephant he could handle, but Teddy lived in fear of food poisoning, always asking for bottled water over boiled, squirting his palms with an antibacterial gel that reeked of first-world caution.
    “Not a good idea,” Teddy advised me. “Your IBS?”
    “IBS?” Ravi frowned, through chews.
    Before Teddy could elaborate on my bowels, I reached into the paper bag.
    “I’m not trying to be pushy,” Teddy said.
    “I know. It just comes naturally.”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Ravi’s smirk.
    So did Teddy. “Have it your way,” he said and got out of the car, taking the camera with him. Bobin strode in another direction, without explanation, which meant he was off to take a semipublic leak.
    The unni appam was a spongy parcel of warmth, grease, and banana-flavored sweetness, the color of maple syrup. Ravi looked especially pleased when I reached into the bag for another and matched his grease-lacquered grin.
    I waited for Ravi to slip me some weirdly intimate aside. It happened from time to time, when Teddy was out of earshot.
You look like the girl from Dr. Zhivago … I like that funny tooth you have … Do you have freckles all over?
Once he asked me: “Why do you always wear that windbag?”
    “My Windbreaker?” I said. “It has lots of pockets.”
    “It hides everything.”
    “That’s kind of the point.” I could feel myself blush. “I’d rather not draw attention to myself out here.”
    “Too late for that.”
    At the time, the banter seemed harmless, maybe even necessary to our dynamic. I conducted all our interviews, drew stories from him that he rarely shared. “You have a way of talking,” he told me once, “that makes me forget the camera is there.” I thought I could preserve the intimacy he felt around me, keep him loose and trusting, but just when I’d fool myself into thinking I had the upper hand, he’d turn on me with that cutting cobra gaze, and my resolve would go woozy. I’d have to remind myself that we had three weeks left at the Rescue Center; there was no time for crushes, no room for any emotion other than pinpoint focus on the task at hand.
    A focus that was hard to maintain when he was leaning against the van, scrutinizing me. I expected him to volley a comment about “American girls” or my funny tooth.
    “You and him,” Ravi said, glancing at Teddy. “You are the same age?”
    “Yeah, why?”
    “He treats you like a child. And you let him.”
    I flinched. “Childlike” was not how I would’ve described myself. At twenty, I’d driven from Albuquerque to Asheville with only my dad’s German shepherd by my side. I resisted lengthymelodramatic relationships. My longest had lasted four months; I squashed it after Gus said that a woman driving alone, cross-country, was basically asking for it. The memory made me bristle all over again.
    “What is he doing?” Ravi asked.
    “Filming,” I said sharply. In the distance, Teddy was aiming his camera at a sign that said LIFE HAS NO SPARE . “He’s just protective. You don’t know him.”
    “I know you. I know you have your own mind.” Ravi balled up the paper bag as Bobin approached. “Does he?”
    Ravi opened the passenger door, allowing me to climb inside. The whole way home, I kept stealing glances in the rearview. I’d spent dozens of hours interviewing him, uprooting his past, editing his answers, studying every blink and pause and grimace. And yet there remained a version of Ravi I hadn’t seen until now, the guy who had all along been studying me.
    Teddy and I had never been romantic, aside from one recent and regrettable fling. Ours was a loyalty born of classes and collaboration and NoDoz and nerves, and his brush with expulsion.
    We had met in Intro to Film. On our first