“Have you met a girl yet?” his mother cut in, eagerly. His name was Tony Thava-something or other; she’d lost interest by the third syllable. We can take the bus.”
***
When they reached the mall, this turned out to be harder than it sounded. Rachel made at least some effort to hide her amusement, but could not mask the wide grin on her face. Tony got up, ignoring the sputtering Tiffany, and hurried after her. “How about right after math class on Monday? Manjula, who spoke Sinhalese as well as Tamil and English, knew this well. Would she think him clueless too? Can I trust you to act like a man? “Ama,” said Tony. He wasn’t used to looking at girls’ clothes without an actual girl in them, but the mannequins were a reasonable starting point. “This was — how do I say it? She must really want to learn slang badly if she’s willing to spend so much time on me, he thought. I was just having lunch with her.”
“Okay.” She started to turn away, then he had an idea.”Tamil theriyama?” he asked, hoping he’d pronounced it correctly. Movies featured much more skin than real girls would show, at least in her village. “That’s nothing,” Tony replied. Tony thought about how much fun she was to be with, whether they were seriously
