—
They cruised the wide boulevards of Lutyens’ Delhi, smoking and sipping from their glass bottles of Coke, the ripe smell of flowering plants and wet grass coming from the traffic circles. Hari played new tracks on the stereo. The whomping bass squirmed below a tanpura drone. He said, “I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah,” she looked across at him and smiled.
“I was thinking about you the other day,” he said.
“Oh yeah?”
She closed her eyes.
If he could just keep driving like this, everything would be all right.
“You dropped off the radar,” he said. “At first I thought you might have finally done it, gone abroad.”
She took a long pull on her cigarette and frowned to herself. “No, I’ve been here. Work is just . . . hectic these days.”
“Yeah? You like it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I always keep a lookout for your name.”
She smiled, “Of course you do. You’re good like that.”
Loyal, she meant. Like a puppy.
“It’s always with his.”
“My name? Who? You mean Dean?”
“Dean H. Saldanha. Additional reporting: Neda Kapur.”
She shrugged. “He’s got me doing his donkey work.”
* * *
—
All of this was true. But it was an adventure too sometimes. Like the happy few months spent undercover researching corruption at a series of tourism ministry hotels, run as if they were private kingdoms, with lavish parties for senior bureaucrats, ministers’ families taking up whole wings, hotel cars and furniture being smuggled away and sold off, all at the taxpayers’ expense. She’d loved the gossip and intrigue of all that. And going undercover, pretending to be someone else.
* * *
—
“So you’re not with him?”
“Hari,” she sat up, gave him the eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Maybe he’s not your type.”
She relaxed. “Exactly not my type.”
“I remember the guys you went for in school. Assholes with big cars.”
“You know me, Hari. Mostly I just went along for the ride.” She finished the Coke. “And now look, see, everyone’s leaving me behind.”
“Your old gang?”
She counted on her fingers. “London. New York. Boston. Manchester. Durham. Stanford. Geneva. One of them’s even in Tokyo. I thought about going out there too to teach English. But . . . I’m stuck here.”
“You’re really not happy, are you?”
She tapped the ash. “I just can’t deal sometimes.”
“With?”
She shrugged, watched the roadside lights zip by.
“Your dad?” he asked. “I heard about his cancer.”
“Yeah, it’s no secret.”
“So? Is it too much?”
“No. He’s good now. And he’s become so chill. It’s almost scary how soft he is.”
“So?”
“Mom pisses me off.” She knew she was being unfair but couldn’t help herself. “All the money ran out in the middle of Dad’s chemo. I mean, it was almost gone before that, after the business went under, you know, but it was really gone. I told her to sell the house. Just sell it, but she said no, it’s the house that keeps us together. If she’d sold the house, he could have had really good chemo and I could have gone abroad after. We all could have had our lives, but no, she’s the one holding us all back.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.” She sighed and mentally washed her hands, turned to him and beamed. “Anyway, look at you, all shiny and new with your clothes and your name. WhoDini. Hari fucking WhoDini. Did you come up with that yourself?”
“I had some help.”
“You’re an escape artist.”
“I’m doing OK.”
“Well, I want a copy of this CD, signed and everything.”
“Sure thing.”
“And a poster of you for my bedroom wall.”
“Right next to Luke Perry.”
“Ha!” She flicked her cigarette out the window, watched the end explode on the hot tarmac. “That came down years ago.”
The night was heavy with the scent of jasmine.
“So are you seeing anyone?”
She shook her head.
“You?”
“On and off,” he said. “Chicks from parties mostly.”
“Oh-ho!” she laughed. “Listen to you. Chicks from parties!”
“But no one special.”
“OK, lover boy, what does special look like?”
“I don’t know.” He became shy. “Someone to come home to. Eat Chinese with, in front of the TV.”
“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
“No, I’m serious.”
“Man, I wish I wanted what you wanted.”
“What do you want?”
“I have no idea.”
“You’re always looking somewhere else, that’s your problem.”
“Maybe that’s why I feel so old.”
He laughed. “You’re being such a drama queen. You’re twenty-two years old. You know what you should do? Move out. Get an apartment, live on your own.”
“Yeah, maybe. But then it’s like I’m committing to Delhi.”
“And? What’s wrong with that? You really don’t get it, do you? Big things are happening. Delhi’s the place.”
* * *
—
Hari began to describe this art project he’d been pulled into, some “happening” inside a warehouse on the edge of Delhi. It was meant to be this big, crazy, free party, like the stuff they were doing in New York. Not just music . . . “all kinds of crazy shit, everything free, food, drink, games, beds, food by real chefs, cocktail bars, hammocks, bunk beds, graffiti walls, laser tag, bumper cars, all really nuts shit, and secret. So this guy came to see me in my studio, shook my hand and started talking about this set I played last year, the one in this farmhouse near Jaipur. Then get this, he handed me a lakh of rupees in cash right there. Just handed it over. Something about good faith. He wanted me to play so bad.”
“Sounds great.”
He watched her closely. “Now guess the guy’s name.”
She thought about it a moment. “I have no idea.”
“Think about it. It begins with an S.”
“Ahhh,” she said. “The mysterious Sunny Wadia?”
“The same.”
“So you knew him all along?”
“I told you those guys don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“Ha. How is he?”
“He’s really cool.”
“But what’s his story? Does he come from the States?”
“Nope.”
“He’s not an internet millionaire?”
“Nah.”
“Rich kid politician’s son?”
“Uh-uh.”
“So?”
“He’s just . . . Sunny.”
“But he’s loaded, right?”
“His father’s some businessman, yeah. But he’s not a rich kid. He’s, like, different.”
“Where’s he from?”
“Somewhere in UP. You’d never know it. He’s so cool.”
“So what does his father do?”
“I don’t know, farming. Fertilizer and poultry and shit.”
“That’s a lot of shit.” She lit another cigarette. “I was hoping for something more romantic.”
“You’re such a snob.”
She shrugged.
“So what happened with this party?”
“The cops shut it down before it even began.”