Madhavi shrugged. “Why are you here?”
“Come,” Poornima said, hoping there was a back way, “let’s talk inside. Have some tea.”
Her face darkened. Her voice grew panicked. “No. No, you can’t. No one is allowed inside. They warned us.”
Poornima made her eyes go kind. She nearly smiled. “It’s me, after all. Mohan showed me where you lived, just so I could visit you.”
“He did?”
“Didn’t he tell you? Anyway, how are you getting along? Do you live with other girls? Are they nice to you?”
She shrugged again. “They’re all right.”
“Are they Telugu? What are their names?”
Madhavi looked around and behind her. “I’m not supposed to tell.”
“You act like I’m a stranger,” Poornima said gaily. A car drove past, and they watched its red taillights disappear down the street. Poornima’s vision burned with that red; she felt Madhavi shivering beside her. “Is one of them named Savitha?” she asked.
“No.”
Poornima searched her face. “Are you sure?”
“I’m cold, Akka. I’m so cold. I want to go inside.”
Poornima gripped her arm. “I’m no stranger; you know that, right? I may be the only one who’s not a stranger.”
Madhavi nodded and ducked into the building.
*
When she got home, after stopping at the corner store, Mohan was waiting for her. He was making coffee. “Where were you?”
“Coffee? This late?”
“Where were you?”
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
“Where? At this hour?”
“I needed these,” she said, holding out a packet of sanitary pads.
“It doesn’t take an hour to go two blocks.”
“I stopped to rest at the children’s park. Cramps.” She grinned sheepishly, tilting her face just enough.
“No more going out,” he said, pouring the coffee into a strange metal cup with a lid. “I’ll pick up what you need from now on.” He asked for the keys—both for the front entrance and the door to the apartment—and pocketed them. He then pointed to the pot on the stove. “There’s some left. If you want.”
There was enough for nearly a full cup of coffee, but Poornima saw, after he’d gone, that he’d also left his coat. When she lifted it, a small book fell out. She went through the other pockets and found only change, a few receipts. She looked again at the book. It was odd—unlike any she’d ever seen. After her wide, flat accounting books, this one was minuscule, hardly bigger than her hand. When she opened it, she found that none of the lines went to the edge of the page; they all stopped short, and each was spaced differently. How strange, she thought. Was it the Gita? No: this one had an author, and an English title. It was tattered, clearly read through many times, but one page in particular was especially frayed, dog-eared and worn.
Poornima turned to this one and began to read.
*
The next morning, after a long night’s sleep—even after drinking the coffee—Poornima considered her options. She hadn’t learned much during her time in Seattle, but she’d learned this: Savitha was not living in the same apartment as Madhavi. Madhavi had been scared, undeniably, but she hadn’t been lying. So where was Savitha? She pondered that question; she’d pondered it for years. Mohan, too, she’d learned something about: she’d convinced him to show her where Madhavi lived, certainly, but she knew, just as she knew Savitha was here, here, that she could never—no matter how many lies she told, no matter how pathetic she looked—convince him to show her where any of the other girls lived.
And there was one other thing she’d learned about Mohan: she’d learned that he liked poetry.
She studied the dog-eared poem—called “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”—a few times and decided that she hated it. Or at least, she hated what she understood of it. The first few lines didn’t even seem to be in English, though the letters were the same. And though she had no idea who Michelangelo or Lazarus or Hamlet were, the person writing the poem—presumably the man with the unpronounceable name in the title—seemed weak to her. Utterly feeble. Why was he writing the poem? Why bother? Why not just come right out and ask his question, whatever it was? Then no one would have to drown at the end. Regardless, she read it with great interest, wondering what Mohan saw in it.
When he came to check on her that evening, she held it out to him, along with his coat. “You left them here last night,” she said.
He took them, seeming bewildered, and stuffed the book back into one of the pockets of the coat. Poornima waited for him to reach the door, and then she said, “It’s about regret, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That ‘Love Song’ poem. The one you like so much.”
He half turned; Poornima saw his grip on the doorknob loosen. “You read it?”
“Why not? I like poetry.”
“You do?”
“I’m starting to.”
He turned to face her; he took a step deeper into the apartment. “Somewhat. But it’s also about courage,” he said, after some hesitation. “It’s about the struggle to find courage.”
“And if we don’t? What happens? We drown?”
He smiled. “In a way.”
“You don’t think this, this Puffrock is weak?”
In that moment, Mohan’s eyes flashed with a sadness so intense, so violent that Poornima felt it—the sadness, the violence—flare against the back of her own eyes. Then it receded just as quickly as it had come. “I think he’s just like you and me,” he finally said.
Poornima looked at him. No, she thought, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. He’s nothing like me.
6
Madhavi might still be able to help her.
That was what Poornima considered that night, after Mohan left. She couldn’t be certain, but Madhavi, isolated as she was, as all the girls must be, might still have been taken to a different location initially—as a kind of holding cell, until space opened up in her current flat—or maybe the girls sometimes rode together, and she’d seen one or another being dropped off at various other apartment houses, or maybe the girls talked, or one of them mentioned a street, a neighborhood, anything.
It was her only chance.
She waited all the next day. Since she no longer had keys, she surveyed her own building and found an unlocked back way, by the trash bins, and she had to leave the door to her apartment open. She estimated that Mohan nearly always arrived between four and eight P.M. What did he do during the day? How many shepherds did he monitor? How many girls did they own? Did he know Savitha? She had answers to none of these questions; she knew only that she had to wait until after eight, after his departure, before setting out for Madhavi’s.
He was late that evening. He arrived near nine o’clock, offering no explanation for his delay, and yet, in some way, he seemed more conscious of her, softer in the way he studied the room, her face, the disarray of the sleeping bag, her few things spread across the floor. It was as if their conversation about the poem had awakened in him the possibility of Poornima, the possibility of her existing as anything other than a purveyor of girls.
“Need anything?” he asked.
“Vegetables.”
“I’ll bring some when I come tomorrow.”
“Stay for dinner.”
His gaze darkened, perhaps with revulsion at the request, perhaps in surprise, though Poornima understood suddenly, very distinctly, as though after a clarifying rain, that here was a man who was very alone, who knew very little beyond that aloneness. He left soon afterward without a word.