“I’m impressed. How did he take it?”
Her mind turned back to Sunny. She felt him inside her, smelled his cologne and his sweat on her skin, his tongue on her tongue. She could feel the weight of his arms like phantom limbs. She reminded herself to buy the Pill 72. Her mind fixated on him entering her, the intoxicating sensation of being filled and consumed.
“Hmmm?”
“How did Dinesh take it?”
“He offered to take me to Lucknow actually. He said I was the kind of fearless reporter the world needed, or some such rubbish. No way am I going. I don’t fall for that kind of stuff.” She waved for the waiter. “Shall we order?”
* * *
—
A couple of days later, in the morning, she got a message on her phone.
—9 pm Park Hyatt. Japanese. Dinner.
She finished work at seven thirty. She’d taken a change of clothes. A black dress. Thick kohl, but no lipstick. She became self-conscious when she entered. Felt awkward, visible. She spoke tentatively with the Japanese restaurant’s ma?tre d’, said she was there to join Sunny Wadia’s party. The ma?tre d’ became excessively deferential; he led her through a corridor inside the restaurant, down another private corridor into a passageway with several beautifully painted, lacquered sliding screens. He stopped at one and opened it. There was a long table with seating for twenty, but there was only Sunny inside.
The ma?tre d’ said, “Ma’am, enjoy.”
She stepped in; he closed the screen door.
3.
So began a brief golden period. Two very different kinds of lives. By day the scorching, howling city, and Sunny Wadia by night. The cars would pick her up and transport her at speed through the sanctuaries of Delhi, beyond price or question or pain. She split herself in two. The monsoon hit at the start of July. The evictions in the city continued apace. She was disconnected, she slid above. Dean was out interviewing, recording, collecting evidence, collecting testimony, fighting against the tide. The city was changing shape and character before their eyes, being hollowed out, gutted. Dean followed every demolition, followed the evictions, mapped out the routes from the scoured centers to the resettlement colonies. At work she transcribed the testimony he collected, interview after interview of citizens whose lives were being broken like quarry stones to be used elsewhere, building blocks for other, more profitable lives. At her desk, she swirled in the vortex of these words, she felt pity, sorrow, but when she was done, she packed up her things and drove out into the night to be with him. She knew it was wrong.
* * *
—
That first meal was perfection. Never again would she have that. Alone in that private banquet room, Kobe beef, a 1993 Romirasco Barolo, gourmet fries, his eyes taking pleasure in her every bite, every sip of wine, living his own pleasures through hers. They moved to a dazzling sake, drank in square wooden cups, followed it up with Cuban cigars, their feet up on the table, snifters of Venezuelan rum cupped in their palms, as Sunny regaled her with stories of his travels through Europe, his awakening to sex and drugs and the finer things of life. They retired through a private elevator to another one of his suites. Drunk, laughing, owning the world. In the room they fucked and barely spoke.
* * *
—
She was swallowed into his group. “Like Paris,” someone said one night, “Sunny Wadia is a moveable feast.” Their affair was kept in the gray though. She understood this. He had a persona, a court. She had no desire to become its queen. She was content to watch on the margins with a secret inside. She arrived at these grand meals, sometimes in small restaurants, sometimes in five-star banquet halls, always a little shy, a little reticent, always alone, always late. Hari returned to the city. He’d been in Bombay after Kasol. He noticed the change. They looked at one another across the table sometimes, across the penthouse when a party was full on and she knew he knew, and his face was sad, because he’d lost her again, but he was happy she was alive to the world. They didn’t call one another, didn’t speak anymore. She was someone else.
* * *
—
She came to understand going for a meal with Sunny was not about the food. It wasn’t about the drink. It wasn’t about the size of the bill at the end, which no one ever saw. It was the performance, it was waiting to see what would happen next in this city of theirs, in this world they had conjured. Sunny called them and they came, they ordered wildly and barely touched their plates, they drank and drank and laughed and screamed, howled and told stories and were scandalous and outraged, they made demands of the place, they threatened its foundations, then Sunny paid the bill of his indulged children and they left.
* * *
—
He was looking at her from his seat, drinking, laughing, watching, watching. Some of the men were debating property. Others were talking about the pranks they used to play in school. Food kept coming, dish after extravagant dish, waves of such fine food; it was relentless. At one a.m., the table a battlefield.
* * *
—
Sometimes she would turn up in an auto or a taxi. He would disappear after the meal, sometimes excuse himself, always discreetly pay, sometimes just disappear without a word and there would be a pall over the night with Sunny gone, newcomers nervous about its course. He had set them rolling. She would wait until an appropriate time and excuse herself for the night. Sometimes they would try to keep her, to take her to the next place. She begged tiredness or tomorrow’s work. She knew when she left they were talking about her, especially since Kriti was no longer there. Maybe they would press Hari. She’s your friend, you brought her in. What’s she doing with him?
Sometimes she made a point to leave long before Sunny did. Sometimes Sunny spent time teasing her, insulting journalists in general. Accusing her of being a spy. Don’t say anything in front of her! And she just smiled and made conversation with someone else. Then they were both gone.
Where do you think they’ve gone?
She didn’t care.
* * *
—
Ajay would carry her. If Sunny had already left, Ajay would pick her up outside and deliver her to whichever hotel he was waiting in. If she left the party first, Ajay would deliver her to the hotel, she would be given the key card so she could wait. Silent, loyal Ajay, eyes lowered, never a word. They drove at speed through the night. Ajay never played music on the stereo, she noticed that. Sometimes she put her earphones in and pumped her music up so loud and stared out at the disconnected streets, the trash heaps smoldering by the roadside, the sleeping workers. The months of July and August, like this. Burning at both ends, never tired. Gilded hangovers. Iridescent with champagne.
* * *