Ollie

Ollie Robnujab's mother looked like a paisley blue morel mushroom in her loose and tenting silk. His parents had been in the country for years but never Americanized to his satisfaction. He always had the only mother that swished. The sound of her sari was grating and enormous, especially next to the stealthy keds and surreptitious jeans the other moms wore. He secretly dreaded he smelled of the oriental spices she cooked with, and was mortified when her fingertips were stained turmeric yellow. Ollie begged for hamburgers, and referred to her as "cardi-mom" to deflect what his friends might be thinking. She wore an unsympathetic frown when he carried on about being so foreign. "Check more tags my son," she said with a waggle of her head, "all of your friends clothes were made in China. They look like little Chinese boys to me." He crossed his arms in a championship caliber frump. His mother took his chin in her hands, "Oliver Robnujab, it is a lucky thing your skin is brown, you are the most embarrassed young man I've ever known, and if you could blush everyone would know it." She clapped her hands once and adjourned to the pungent barrow of her kitchen.

Ollie kept a trim figure in college, not wanting to turn slowly into the rounded men of his father's generation. It gave his mother fits, but he ran cross country, growing longer and stringier with each year, instead of playing in the sunset cricket league like the other Indian students. They were all engineering majors, and after his freshman year, in his boldest departure, Ollie no longer was. He found he could apply his mechanical drawing talent to studying art. He secretly made sure to apply to universities that had both respected engineering and fine arts programs. In the great American tradition Ollie's parents disapproved of what he was doing, but let him pursue his own mistakes. In the great teenage tradition Ollie chafed at the expectations of family, and congratulated himself for slipping away, never noticing that he painted swirls of paisley and silk.

Smoke breaks were valuable. The entire bullpen, working at sloping architects desks drawing cartoons and advertisements, rose en masse to fume in the parking lot. It integrated their stress, and as individual deadlines approached the team simmered in unison. His bosses smoked and it was an opportunity to get their ear. It only took one instance of picking his head up to discover he was alone that Ollie decided to buy a pack of cigarettes. The young artists squinted against the sun, looking to the same horizon like a flock of birds, talking to each other. Rounding the parking lot, in a slow gyre, a team of Punjabi software engineers walked in long philosophical strides. Ollie looked down at his tennis shoes and put his hand through his messy hair.