Neda got up from the table. “I didn’t say that.”
“Are you walking away?”
“Yes.”
“She wants to quit.”
* * *
—
She drove by Sunny’s mansion that night. Turned and parked some distance down the road and watched the entrance. She’d done it before. She parked and sat with a cigarette, smoking, watching the comings and goings of servants, service providers, men and women, the comings and goings of blacked-out cars. She made a rule for herself. When three cigarettes had burned down, she would drive away.
* * *
—
She was sent out by Dean to visit the resettlement colonies, to get some quotes and a flavor of the scene and to try to find the parents of the dead kids. She drove at sunrise, fifty kilometers out, where Delhi became desolate, dusty, lined with derelict industrial complexes and dairies with emaciated cattle. A series of stinking canals bifurcated the land. On the patch of land that had been designated for the slum dwellers’ resettlement, the recently evicted looked at one another in confusion. What were they supposed to do here? She began recording.
“They tell us this land will be worth something in fifteen years. That there will be everything we need. We had everything we needed there. We built it ourselves. Who can wait fifteen years?”
“What use is land if there’s no work nearby?”
“It’ll take four hours to commute to my job in the city. It used to take twenty minutes in all. How can we live like this?”
One of the men told her he was selling his deed to a property broker.
“We need money, we can’t live here and starve, you can’t eat a plot of land.” Many others were doing the same. They told her several brokers were visiting the land daily, buying up their deeds for ready cash, enough money for them to start again somewhere else, or return to Delhi and take up in another slum. They pointed across the settlement plot a couple of hundred meters, where a broker stood with his men. She thanked them, walked over to this group. A fat, bald man in a white shirt and black pants stood in the middle of a group of toughs. She waved as she approached them. Could she ask them a few questions? The bald man turned away and began walking slowly. Not with fear but with contempt. She pursued him. She wanted to ask him some questions. Who did he work for? An arm stuck out to bar her from getting any closer. It belonged to a young man with a lazy eye. His face was froggish, fleshy, his hair thick with curls. He reminded her of a venereal boy in a Caravaggio painting. She recoiled.
“Don’t touch me.”
The broker was walking away, and the Caravaggio goon was facing her down.
She tried to step around him and he stepped with her.
Several poor men among the evicted came to her aid. They asked her to go back with them to her car. The goon’s face was set in a snarl. She retreated. She asked her saviors about the parents of the children who had died. She needed to distract herself. Someone knew them. They were migrant laborers, they’d only been in the city three years. Did they come here? No, they weren’t eligible for resettlement. What about the compensation money, the money announced in the paper? No, no one knew anything about that. She took some names anyway. She took the number of a man among them who had a mobile phone. She promised to return. “Why bother,” the man said, “anyone with half a brain will be gone.”
“Will you sell your plot to these brokers?”
“Of course.”
“Do you have their names? Their cards? Anything?”
“No. They just turn up with cash and give us the money and take our deeds away.”
* * *
—
She reported this news to Dean.
“Interesting,” he said. “And what about the parents?”
“Nothing. They’ve gone.”
“OK. I want you to do something for me,” he said. “Get in touch with Sunny Wadia. You met him before. You must have a number. His official lines are shut, but let’s try to see what he has to say.”
“I never knew him like that.”
“Get it from your friend.”
She waited until the end of the day to come back to Dean.
“They say his number has changed.”
* * *
—
After weeks had passed she tried Hari again.
She sent the text so breezily.
—Hey! Long time. Are you back? Do you want to catch up for that drink?
He replied an hour later.
—I’m here. Leaving tomorrow
—Oh wow. How come?
He didn’t reply for another two hours, then he said:
—Meet at Market Cafe. Tonight. Six.
His tone was flat. There was none of his old warmth.
* * *
—
She met him on the small terrace at Market Café where everyone went to smoke pot. He was leaning over the railing, alone. He looked tired; he saw her and hesitated for a moment before giving her a hug. It had rained an hour earlier, the lingering tail of the monsoon. The cars in the outer parking lot shined.
They stood side by side, old friends who’d fast become strangers, with no word of the thing that had come between them.
“Did something happen?” she finally said.
“I’m just trying to figure out who my friends are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re leaving tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re in demand.”
“I found an apartment.”
“Where?”
“Bombay.”
“But you love Delhi. You’ve been planning so many things.”
“Plans change. You can fall out of love with a place.”
She lit a cigarette. “Was it a girl?”
He glanced at her oddly. “No.”
“What then?”
“People make promises they can’t keep.”
“It definitely sounds like a girl.”
“Does it sound like you?”
There was spite in his voice.
“Have I done something to upset you?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Why are you pretending you don’t know?”
“Know what?” she replied in a quiet voice.
“Tell your boyfriend he’s an asshole.”
The shock made her laugh. “My what?”
“Your boyfriend.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Sunny.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Right.”
“I swear. I have nothing to do with him. Nothing.”
“Sure.”
“I haven’t seen him for months.”
“Come on, Neda, everyone knows you’re fucking him.”
“I fucked him once Hari, and it was a mistake. He’s an asshole. I hate him.”
“Really?”
“Listen, just tell me what happened.”
* * *