—
She enters into chaos. Twenty, thirty sweaty and drunken men punching and kicking one another, falling over one another, shirts being torn. A dozen women too, in tight dresses, kicking, pulling, scratching. Blood on the floor. How did it happen so fast? She gets knocked to the ground. Through the melee of legs she sees Gautam running down the stairs to the street. Sunny is not far behind.
* * *
—
By the time she’s on the street, men are assaulting him. He manages to punch one cold, but the others take him down. More fights are breaking out. More screaming. Men and women are running. Men and women are climbing into their cars. A gunshot rings out. Clear in the night. Everyone freezes. Everyone scatters, Ajay is pointing his Glock at the crowd of men. He bears down on them, pistol-whips the first. The rest flee. Ajay pulls Sunny to his feet. Drags him away toward his SUV.
* * *
—
Gautam is climbing into his Mercedes, shoving his own driver out into the road. “Stop him,” Sunny says, even as he bleeds. He’s pointing Gautam’s way. Ajay sees. She could have left him right then. She could have run to her own car. She runs to Sunny’s SUV. Climbs in the back with Sunny as Ajay takes the driver’s seat.
* * *
—
Gautam is headlong through the streets, searching for the colony exit, racing around the corners for the open gate. She is in the back, pleading with Sunny to stop. Just stop. Just give it up. Think it over. He pushes her off. Scrambles from the back into the front seat. She tries it with Ajay instead, puts her hand on him, pulls at his shoulder as he drives, says his name, tells him to stop, but he turns to look at her with such bloodlust that she’s afraid.
* * *
—
Then they’re out of the colony, then they are out on the ring road. She expects the police will come. There will be a roadblock. She expects this madness to end, for sense to prevail. But no. Gautam is speeding ahead and there’s no one on the road, no one in the night, nothing but the roar of their engines, Sunny’s empty vengeful face, Ajay’s vengeful empty face, they look like twins of pain. For a moment time slows, speed and distance have no meaning, like those dreams or nightmares where you’re just falling, falling into infinity. And then it happens. A stray dog runs across the road.
* * *
—
She remembers her father. She was seven years old, it was her first time out in their new car, an Ambassador. Her father let her ride in front. She’d never sat up front with him before. They went on a tour of Lutyens’ Delhi. On the way he said something she’s never forgotten: Whatever you do, whatever happens, however much you love dogs, however much you care, never stop or swerve for a stray dog on the road, just drive on through it, there are too many of them, and it’s just not worth the pain. Even if it breaks your heart.
* * *
—
There’s a streak of burned rubber on the road. The tracer red of a brake light. The Mercedes swerves, veers toward the curb, pops up in the night air. The men and women are sleeping just ahead. That image is fixed. Then it lands.