*
It was after midnight when Madhavi was dropped off at her flat. Poornima waited again in the bushes, at the border of the apartment house in which Madhavi lived and the one next to it, to the north. This time, the girl seemed unfazed by Poornima’s abrupt appearance as she passed through the thin light of the entranceway. Poornima looked at her and saw that there was no point in asking how she was doing; it was obvious that she had hardened. That in the space of a week, she had reached a slow and stoic resignation. A week. How little time it takes to sever the spirit, Poornima thought, if the spirit is disposed to severing. Above them, clouds obscured the moon, the stars; a nearby streetlight flickered.
Madhavi sighed. “Are you here about that girl again?”
“You met her? Do you know something?”
“Please, Akka, stop coming around. If anybody sees us—”
“Look, just tell me if you know where the other girls live. Any of them.”
“I don’t.”
“They’ve never dropped someone off at another apartment house? You’ve never ridden with another girl? Talked to another girl? They’ve never taken you to another location?”
Madhavi shrugged and looked away.
“You have, haven’t you? Who? Where does she live? What did she say?”
“Not another girl. Just…” Here Madhavi trailed off, and Poornima nearly burst; she clenched her fists to keep from shaking it out of her.
“Just what?” she asked gently, steadying her voice.
“Well, he took me to a room once. Different from the ones we clean.”
“Where was this room? Were there other girls in it? Other people?”
“No.”
“Who took you?”
“Suresh.”
Who was that? Poornima wondered. The brother? They stood silent for a time, Madhavi avoiding her eyes. “Where was it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Was it close to here?”
“No.”
“Close to the airport?”
“No.”
Poornima searched her mind for other landmarks, other sights that Madhavi might know. “Was it near that tower? That thin one? Was it near water? Or was it in the middle of the tall buildings? How about the college? Did you notice a college?”
“Akka, please.”
“Anything? Do you remember anything?”
Someone on a bicycle passed without seeing them. Wind rustled the leaves of the nearby tree. Poornima heard a dim and distant moan, coming from the direction of the sea. “There was something round nearby,” Madhavi said slowly, forlornly, into the dark.
“Round?”
“Like a cricket stadium. But bigger. Much bigger.”
How did this girl know about cricket stadiums? “And what else?”
“There were not many people. None. It was empty.”
“This entire country is empty.”
“And the buildings had no windows.”
Poornima nodded. She would’ve smiled, but she didn’t want to scare the girl. Instead she looked into the hushed shadows: the low clouds, unmoving, the streetlight, now gone out, the silent streets, the wearied face, the lifeless body. She recalled then the delight in Madhavi’s eyes as she’d eaten the pastry—on that day in a wholly different life—the sugary dough crumbling between her fingers. Poornima took a deep breath, a deep American breath, and she thought, Such a quiet country, and yet so much to cry for. She could think of nothing more to say, and so, before leaving, before walking into the night, she said, “Be careful,” knowing that care had already been squandered, that care—for this girl, for her journey—had already, long ago, been scattered and spent.
*
Poornima started early the following morning. She arrived at Third and Seneca, after asking no less than a dozen people how to get to the stadium, and waited for the 21 line. She took it to where she was within sight of the stadium, and then, not knowing where else to start, walked back to Third Avenue. On one side of the street were warehouses, and on the other were railroad tracks. She looked at the warehouses: no windows, and not a single person. But Madhavi had not mentioned railroad tracks, which Poornima guessed she would have had she noticed them. So she walked deeper into the rows of long, single-story buildings, all of them painted either gray or beige. She took her time, slowly reading the few signs on the outsides of some of the buildings, peering into the windowed garage doors. She kept close to the sides of the buildings, studied every car parked along them, and scanned around each corner. She knew she was conspicuous, even with her western clothing and a scarf draped over the side of her face to hide the scarring, but only Mohan knew her face—that was her biggest advantage. Besides, she concealed herself the best she could when the few cars drove past her, knowing she could spot his car a kilometer away.
She walked for hours. The maze of warehouses went on and on. Some of the alleys between the buildings had no names, so Poornima would reach the same warehouses from the other side, having walked in a wide circle. She lost her sense of direction, so when she came into a clearing, she looked for the tops of the downtown buildings to indicate true north. Two men slowed—one in a pickup truck and another in a blue sedan—and asked if she needed help. Poornima pulled the scarf higher across her face and shook her head. She heard a freight train go by and thought suddenly of the train she hadn’t gotten on in Namburu. She thought of the torn pieces of the ticket, fluttering to the ground. What if I had gotten on that train? she wondered. What would I have become? She was unused to such a thought—a thought that had no end—and so she shuttered it, slammed it closed, as if it were the door to a house that was haunted.
She left when the sun swung to the west. She was hungry and tired on her bus ride back. It was possible she wasn’t even in the right place, she considered; it was possible Madhavi had meant another neighborhood entirely, but it had now been a week since she’d arrived, and she had only two left. She returned to the warehouses the following day, and every day for the next four. It wasn’t until the fifth afternoon, after walking for hours through an increasingly heavy rain, that she turned a corner—along a gray building advertising radial tires and other car parts—and saw it: she saw the black car. It was Mohan’s, that much she knew immediately, but from where she was standing, she couldn’t quite see the entrance to the building. She walked the long way, around the massive warehouse that faced Mohan’s car, and emerged on the other side, hiding against one wall. She was now closer to the door but farther from his car. There was one other car, red, parked in front of Mohan’s, and this, she guessed, belonged to either the brother or the father.
She waited, shivering, in the cold rain, but not a single girl came out of the warehouse or went in. At three o’clock, she returned to the bus stop, knowing it was an hour’s ride home. The rain picked up in the evening, after Mohan left, so she waited until the next morning—she bought a flashlight and thicker socks, and when she arrived, she saw that this time neither car was parked in front of the building. She tiptoed to its entrance and squinted to see through the darkened glass door. Nothing. She tried the flashlight and saw a few meters into what she guessed was a vast room, piled with boxes, and with the outlines of maybe a desk at the far end. There were no other rooms that she could see. She walked around the building, looking for an unlocked back way, or a loading dock, like she’d seen in so many of the other warehouses, but this one was only metal siding on all sides; she listened for sounds, voices; she thought she might try to break open the lock on the door, but as she stood examining it, a car passed along the adjoining alley.