“He’s lost it.”
“Yes, he lost it. But what’s in envelope, boss?”
Sunny runs his hand over it and winces. “I don’t . . .”
“You don’t?”
Sunny reaches for his hip flask, unscrews it.
“I don’t want . . .”
“Don’t want what?”
He swallows all the vodka that’s left, holds his tongue out for the last drop, screws the cap back on, collapses back in his seat, and closes his eyes.
“Don’t want to know.”
* * *
—
It’s forty minutes since Sunny spoke. They’re three kilometers from the expressway, almost back in civilization. The words don’t want to know rattled hollow in their respective brains.
The vodka has stunned Sunny, for now. He’s sluggish, glassy-eyed.
“Eli?”
“Yes, my friend?”
“How many people you kill?”
Eli sucks the air between his teeth, takes some time to organize his thoughts. “With respect,” he replies, “you do not ask.”
“I’m asking you,” Sunny slurs.
“And I tell you,” Eli replies, “you do not ask.”
“More than ten?”
Eli glances at Sunny, slumped, leg up on the dash, leg slipping now and then.
“How many people you fuck?” he counters.
“Twenty?” Sunny goes on, ignoring the question.
“How many people you fuck?”
The words reach Sunny late. “What?”
“You tell me,” Eli states firmly, “how many people you fuck, and I tell you how many I kill.”
“Literally?” Sunny asks, seeming surprised. “Or metaphorically?”
Eli shakes his head. “You’re a mess. Why we play this game?”
“Because I want to know.”
They’re approaching the expressway.
“But what good does it do?”
They can see it in the distance.
Trucks and cars and bikes.
“I said you tell me!”
Eli sighs. “Who you want me to kill?”
There’s a brief moment when it looks like Sunny has blacked out. But then he sits up straight and sucks in a lungful of air and opens his eyes and he’s animated, manic even. “Fuck it.” He rips open the manila envelope.
Pulls out what’s inside.
A single, dark plastic sheet.
Like an X-ray.
Stares at it.
And behind the sheet, several photographs, some from a CCTV camera, some taken with a telephoto lens.
Eli cranes his neck but can’t quite make out what it is.
Either way, there’s no mistaking Sunny’s reaction.
Shock.
Nausea.
He starts to tremble.
“Boss?”
Sunny quickly stuffs the sheet back inside. Sober, instantly. “I want you to take this,” he says.
“What is it?”
“Put it somewhere safe. No one ever sees it. Ever.”
“OK, boss.”
“If anyone tries to see it, shoot them.”
“What if I try to see it?”
“You shoot yourself.”
“What if you try to see it?”
“Eli. I’m not fucking around.”
“OK, OK.” Eli’s spooked. “But what if your father tries to see it?”
“Then I shoot you.”
“OK, boss.”
The Bolero creeps into the narrow underpass.
Eli turns the headlights on.
Pitch darkness and deep holes where the concrete has worn away.
Sunny begins to speak in the dark.
“Dinesh Singh wants to bring his father down. And if my father goes down with him . . .”
When they emerge into the light, rising onto freshly paved tarmac, Sunny is staring at Eli with plagued eyes.
Eli is staring back at him.
It’s 5:49 p.m.
Friday, June 8.
Eli doesn’t see the masked man stepping out from behind the parked truck, wielding an antique shotgun.
Sunny does.
But by the time he cries out, it’s too late.
THE GODOWN
There’s this dream he keeps having.
Culled from life.
Back home in Meerut, aged five,
sleeping next to his mother,
the whir of the ceiling fan,
the cotton of her nightdress bunched in his fist.
It’s the dream he keeps having.
Only it’s real.
* * *
—
He’s five and awake, and his mother is no longer there.
Empty hand clenches empty fist.
The sheet still carrying her outline and her scent.
He calls out to her, but his voice is swallowed by the ceiling blades.
He must jump to reach the floor.
* * *
—
Tinu is sleeping in the kitchen.
In the study, a light is on. His father’s frame in the frosted glass.
He moves away, calls through rooms.
In the violence of the blades, his voice goes unheard.
But when he enters the sitting room,
the fan does not spin in there.
* * *
—
She hangs from it by her own dupatta,
tongue out,
eyes bulging,
void.
He comes up like he’s coming up for air.
From the turbulence of the ocean floor.
Rag-dolled.
Rasping.
Howling.
And the dream he was having is receding,
sucking up boulders, hurling them toward the shore.
Leaving only enough oxygen
for the scream.
“Namaste ji,” the Incubus says.
“You pissed yourself.”
And Sunny thrashes like a caged animal in this dank and humid room, with the monstrous presence in front of him and the ropes that bind him to the chair.
The Incubus watches his rage.
An ink blot in black jeans and blue-checked shirt.
“For a while I thought you were dead,” it says. “Then you started to scream. And you pissed yourself.”
* * *
—
Gnashing, gasping. The whites of his eyes. Teeth bared.
Sunny comes out of this twilight.
Breathing, panting, spent.
The Incubus holds his head and pours water over his cracked lips.
He chokes, then begins to groan.
Sunset leaking through the walls.
The stench of manure, buffalo, blood.
The pain across his nerves, inside his bones.
Taking him outside himself.
“I asked,” the Incubus says, “what’s he dreaming of that could make him so scared? I’ve had dreams like that myself.”
Sunny tries to gather the fractured parts.
“Where am I?”
His body won’t respond.
“You’re here.”
“Where’s here?”
“You don’t know?”
He doesn’t know.
“What’s happening?”
“You’re lucky to be alive,” the Incubus says. “You weren’t supposed to be in the front.”
Front of what? He doesn’t remember. He tries to stand.
“If you died, Sunny Wadia, so would I.”
Sunny’s eyes flicker at his name. “I don’t know you,” he says.
“But I know you,” the Incubus replies. He places a hand on Sunny’s cheeks. “I know this face.”
He takes a pill from his pocket and slips it into Sunny’s mouth.
“Take your medicine.”
He pours more water in, covers Sunny’s mouth, and pinches his nose with his spidery hand.
“Papa’s going to kill you,” Sunny says.
The Incubus runs his hand through Sunny’s hair. Drenched in sweat and blood. Presses his thumb down on the deep gash at his hairline.
“He can try.”
He’s in a hotel suite.
No place or time.
It could be Europe.
Milan.
Zurich.
It could be Paris.
He’s in the marble bathroom, under the shower.
Long, hot shower.
The beep and thrum of traffic outside.