Although Harit’s English was far from ideal, it was augmented by a certain attention to pronunciation and vocabulary that set it apart from that of most Indian people. This made him the best Indian presented to the people at Harriman’s in quite some time. For his interview, he showed up dressed in his nicest outfit—a tailored herringbone jacket, brown corduroy slacks, cream dress shirt, and maroon silk tie. He waited for Mr. Harriman, the general manager, in a poorly lit office on the top floor. The office was very plain. Given the grand appearance of the store, Harit had envisioned a lavishly furnished room that resembled a professor’s study—not this, which brought to mind a hospital without the cleanliness, a DMV without the people. Mr. Harriman’s secretary, Stella, brunette with a pointy nose and small face, carried the unmistakable expression of someone who didn’t have a damn clue as to how she had ended up in a job like this. Why was she assisting the general manger of a department store when working in the store, graceful behind a perfume counter, seemed so much more attractive? Harit could only assume that the pay was better in her current position.
“Mr. Harriman will see you now.” She said every word as if it were new not only to him but also to her. Harit nodded politely and walked up to her desk. She flinched slightly, and he realized that she had not intended to walk him to Mr. Harriman’s door. To put her at ease, he pointed in the direction of the office, indicating that he was headed that way.
Mr. Harriman—whose first name Harit never learned—was in his late sixties and was a smart dresser, contrary to the dour and unbecoming photograph of him that Harit would eventually see in the employee break room (E. H. HARRIMAN—no first name—engraved on a placard under it). Harit would soon learn that when Mr. Harriman got particularly stressed, his skin became red and he looked like a bell pepper. His voice was by turns mellifluous and grating, and he had an unexplained southern accent.
“So, Mr. Singha, what brings you to Harriman’s today?” Harit’s last name was Sinha, but Mr. Harriman added a g to it, as if it were a Thai beer.
Harit did not understand the question. Why else would he be here? “I have come to see if I might find employment.”
Mr. Harriman threw his head back and laughed. His teeth sparkled. “Right to the point. I like that in a salesman.”
“Oh, I did not come for a salesman position,” Harit said. Mr. Harriman’s mouth fell into a frown, and Harit panicked. “Uh, I would love to be considered for a salesman position, but I was informed that you need men for your storage room.”
“Ah, yes, yes, we have had many helpful boys from India, but I like the look of you, Mr. Singha. Do you have any sales experience?”
Harit wished that Mr. Harriman had looked at his résumé. It clearly indicated that he had done his schooling in Commerce and that he had worked for several years back in India as the operator of the projector in a movie theater, before coming to the States and working as a janitor at a medical supplies company. None of this made him an ideal candidate for a salesman job.
“No, sir. No sales experience.”
“Do you like Harriman’s?”
“It is a nice store, sir.” This was the first time that he had ever set foot in it.
“Well, Harriman’s is the crown jewel of this community, Mr. Singha. I opened decades ago with an aim to make it the premier shopping experience in Greater Cleveland, and it is my belief that it has remained such since that time. We’ve survived the supermall, the cybermall, and about a million apps that turn your phone into a mall.” Harit could tell that Mr. Harriman had given this speech several times. “Throughout the years, we have employed a wide variety of employees. A former assistant manager of ours was African American!” Mr. Harriman raised his eyebrows, as if Harit were supposed to be very impressed. Harit realized in this moment that Mr. Harriman was offering him a salesman job because of his ethnicity.
After the interview, Mr. Harriman walked Harit out of the office and said to Stella, “This is Mr. Singha. He is going to be working in Men’s Furnishings. Can you get his paperwork started, sweetheart?”
Stella looked up at them as if Mr. Harriman had just said that Harit were making a trip to the moon.
*
On a Thursday afternoon, Teddy asked Harit if he wanted to go for a drink after work. “Fancy a drink?” was the way that Teddy phrased it, and it struck Harit’s ear strangely, for the Anglo-bred English he had learned gave “fancy” a sexual connotation—a mundane question made illicit in Teddy’s mouth.
Harit offered up a quiet “I must tend to my mother at home,” but no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Teddy was pulling him by the shirtsleeve and saying, “No ifs, ands, or buts, mister.” They left the Thursday night quietude of the store—Thursdays were generally calm before the weekend rush on Friday—and soon they found themselves in a TGI Friday’s in a nearby mall that Harit had passed on his way to work but had never examined up close.
“Table for deux, please,” Teddy told the pimple-faced hostess.
Her eyes flicked from Teddy to Harit and back. “Two of you?” she asked, already plucking two menus from a stack and turning on her heel.
“Yes, darling,” Teddy said as they walked down the middle of the restaurant. “Honey, you need to get yourself some nicer pumps.” He pointed to the girl’s old shoes even though her back was turned. She ignored him.
Their booth was in the far corner of the restaurant, under an oblong window that looked out on the mall instead of the parking lot. Through the window, Harit could see a girl standing attentively in a hat and apron at the cookie shop in the food court—waiting for anyone at all to bite.
“It’s about time we did this,” Teddy said, opening his menu and scanning its contents with one outstretched finger, the way one might do to a tax form. It struck Harit how out of place Teddy was. Harit had only ever seen him in the store and, once, briefly in the parking lot, but now, against the red and orange swells of the bar and grill, Teddy looked like a paper doll that had been plucked from a book. “What are you gonna have?”
Harit had never had a drink with another person in his life. He’d never had a drink, period, until after Swati’s death. A week after the tragedy, Gital Didi came by with a few groceries for his mother, and in the middle of pulling bundles of coriander, tubs of yogurt, and flour from the brown paper bags, she pulled out a six-pack of Bud Light and set it on the counter, as if it were the most natural thing to give him. Harit froze in the middle of the kitchen, eyeing the beer as if it were a squirrel that had bounded in through an open window. Gital Didi said, “Perhaps that will help,” and turned away to put a gallon of milk in the refrigerator. Later, after his Swati act, while reaching for that milk to make a nighttime lassi, Harit saw the beer, large and prominent on the small shelf. He lifted the whole six-pack up, the cans thumping against each other, and eyed the cold metal carefully. Then, as he had done at ten years old when extracting an orange Fanta from his parents’ icebox, he set the package back on the shelf and pulled off one can. He took it to his room, sat on his bed, opened it—the psst of the can making a much louder sound than he had expected—and had to shove it into his mouth to stop the foam from hitting the floor. He sucked at it, the bubbles burning his throat and the taste acrid and so bitter compared to soda. By the time he finished the can, he was already drunk. He spent the rest of the evening moaning with heartburn into his pillow, but the next night, he drank two more cans, finally realizing why people got drunk—to forget things.