—
She knew just how to take him in. She wanted all of him. To be full of him. There was no other way to say it. He talked about Italy in those moments after sex when they were lying on the bed smoking cigarettes. The atelier in which his suits were made, sun streaming through the Mediterranean air, dust motes in the skylight. The cafés he sat in during the day, the clink of spoon and coffee cup and saucer. He’d gone there when he was eighteen. He kept coming back to this memory. There was the toy shop in Meerut and there was Italy. There was an exhaustion in him sometimes, coming to meet her after she’d been waiting, sometimes an hour or two, drinking whisky and watching Star Movies with the AC on and the heat rolling in waves against the window from outside. He’d had no time to reset. And things were different then. She wanted to take care of him. People tire me, he said. They drain me. You’re too generous, she said. She was lost in him and him alone. She wanted his scent. She wore his shirts in bed.
* * *
—
Money’s a fucking curse, he said. It cuts out all the hard work. Before, you had to be kind or funny or fun. Interesting, intelligent. You had to take the time to know people. You had solidarity with them. Then you’re rich. It annihilates everything. Everyone is nice to you. Everyone wants you there. You’re the most popular person in the room. It’s so easy to be charming when you’re rich. Everyone laughs at your jokes, hangs on your word. You forget and think it’s about you. Then sometimes you go somewhere and you don’t spend, and it’s so miserable, it’s so horrible to go back to the drawing board, and you’ve forgotten how to earn someone’s trust or love, and you know it’s easier with a shortcut or two, so you bring out the cash in the end, the wad, the clip, the card, and the thrill of it is greater, because they didn’t know, and now they do. You’re rich. You’re in charge. They love you. Money’s a fucking curse.
* * *
—
“My grandfather,” he said one night in bed, “was a Walia. That was his name. He changed it to Wadia after he met a Parsi trader who was doing very well. This was way back, just after Independence. He thought the change would bring him fortune. That’s it. That’s the story. It’s not a story at all.”
“Did it change his fortunes?”
“Two generations too late.”
“Was he a religious man?”
“He died before I was born. I don’t know anything except the story Tinu told.”
“Tinu?”
“Tinu is Tinu. My father’s right-hand man.”
She paused. “What does your father believe in?”
“What?”
“What does he believe in?”
He thought it over.
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s just a question.”
“Money,” he said.
“Lakshmi?”
“No. Just money.”
“And to whom does he pray?”
He thought about it again.
“Himself.”
“Do you love him?”
He thought about that even longer, and the silence was too long to bear.
“What about your uncle Vicky?” she asked.
He tensed up. She noticed him withdraw.
“We don’t talk about him.”
“Why don’t you talk about him?”
He wouldn’t say.
“What was the Kushinagar incident?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“It seems like it was a big deal.”
He was quiet a long time, didn’t move, didn’t look at her.
“Just local politics. Things are different out there.”
“I bet. They have another name for him, right? Like a mountain. What was it? Himmatgiri?”
He looked away.
“Don’t ever use that name again.”
* * *
—
This was only six weeks, but it felt like a life completely. From waking to sleeping, she was consumed by it. They met in hotel suites no more than twenty times. He brought her jewelry to wear. Clothes sometimes. She dressed slowly. Went out like that for the night, a different person. Vanished awhile. She became herself when she left him, when she went back to her world. But there was something she carried away.
Something eroding her.
* * *
—
Outside, the city was submerging, collapsing. The monsoon filled the drains and gutters. The roads spilled over with horns. They never talked about it. There were protests. Evictions. Demolitions. They never talked. She transcribed for Dean. They never talked. He talked at her from bed. From across the table. There was a necessity to this. Sunny cited the law. Almitra H. Patel v. Union of India. The court opined: Delhi should be the showpiece of the nation. Should one give a pickpocket a reward for stealing?
* * *
—
Her mother asked, “Are you seeing someone?”
“Yes,” she said.
Sitting at the breakfast table.
“Hari?”
She laughed into her cereal. “God, no.”
“What’s wrong with Hari?”
“Nothing.”
“Is it Dean?”
“It’s not Dean.”
“Will we meet him?”
“I doubt it.”
“Are you taking precautions?”
“Of course.”
4.
With all the precautions in the world, it was bound to change. This note could not sustain. The monsoon eased off. It was four a.m. on a Friday morning. They were lying in bed, half awake. He said he was leaving for Lucknow the day after, he’d be gone for work. Dinesh Singh, he said. When she was with him, she lost sense of the days. They fell asleep and when she woke it was 6:30 a.m. and he was already getting dressed.
“What happened?”
“Change of plan. These assholes are coming to Delhi tonight.”
“Who?”
“Dinesh and his behenchod father. I have to prepare.”
“How do you prepare?”
“Mostly by remembering not to talk.”
“What do you do with them? You never say.”
“It’s my father’s deal.”
“And yours?”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s going on with you, the river?”
“Don’t ask.”
“I just did.”
“My father’s looking into it.”
He was about to leave.
* * *
—
She left the hotel that morning just after 7:30 a.m.
She was driving back home to change before work when Dean called. She didn’t answer at first. She figured it could wait. But he called again seconds later, breathless. “Where are you?” Before she could answer, he said, “I need you to get down to Laxmi Camp right away.”
“Now?”
“A demolition’s happening this morning, the bulldozers are already there. The High Court sent a notice right now.”
“OK.”
“I need you to cover it. I can’t get there, I’m in Meerut.”
“Right now?”
“Yes! Right now!”
* * *