Chapter Six:Dev journal
585 Words
Dev’s Journal
Why the hell am I still writing in a journal? Cheaper than therapy, I suppose. Maybe Mrs. Hamon knew something all along. Nah, strike that. She’s still a half-wit. University is challenging enough, but New York is beyond a refreshing change from Fairview, Texas—which is a backwards hell hole brimming with simpletons. I think I’ve found a place I belong. No one here accuses me of being a terrorist, or assumes I’m from Saudi Arabia (though I’m been told I look more Italian than anything). People here tend to know that India is, in fact, considered part of Asia and not the Middle East.
Plus I can get decent curry two blocks from campus. But something is pulling at me to
return home for the summer. Something happened recently. Gerald Franklin, CEO of Franklin Bank, called me out of the blue…and
wanted to get to know me. Come again?
I realize my parents knew him at some point in the past, but I wouldn’t think it was well enough to warrant a personal call from one of the most powerful men in New York, but especially an invitation to his Hamptons estate for
dinner. I went out of curiosity, and it was the oddest most perplexing experience of my life. He was so charming and warm, and
completely overly-familiar with his hugs and shoulder squeezes, I initially thought I should jump out of bathroom window before he
showed up in a silk robe and a bottle of lube. But then I noticed his right cheek, a deep dimple appearing when he smiled, his grin lopsided a
bit, favoring the right and leaving the left cheek a flat barren wasteland in comparison.I noticed it because my mother always commented on mine. Which is a carbon copy of his. If it wasn’t something that others had pointed out to me several times while growing up, I would have
missed it. But I had actually been self conscious of it a bit until I realized women found it attractive. Obviously women found Gerald
Franklin attractive, too. Perhaps even my mother?No, that’s ridiculous. Isn’t
it? She worked for Franklin fresh out
of India. That’s where she met my father, fell in love and got married. Then they moved to Texas with the purchase of their first hotel.
As Franklin insisted that I consider jumping into the banking industry after college—using the
same tone as a concerned father would—I couldn’t stop analyzing his features. His forehead was high, and his nose straight and
European. He was exactly my height, too. Six foot three.Holy s**t, I look like him.
Even more unnerving was his
barrage of inquiries: Did I have a good childhood? Was my education
up to par? Do I like sailing at all? Have a girlfriend? I’m rattled beyond belief and
unsure what to do next, except maybe return home for summer and try and find some answers whilst being discreet of course. Perhaps it’s nothing and I’ve misread everything, but this fitting quote from
Voltaire comes to mind: “Judge a man not by his answers, but by his questions.
P.S. Mum mentioned Scarlett
Sommerfield is staying at the house this summer. I decided that I will try to be pleasant and courteous as always, but Annika is so
frivolous and easily influenced, I worry about the friends she keeps. Most of the girls in town are loose and…shockingly stupid. I certainly don’t want my sister corrupted by her ilk.
- Writer
