“Why the sad face, honey? You’re totally fine. I’m going to go man the station. Go ahead and just do inventory today. I’ll take care of the register.”
Harit was relieved to have an easy task. His headache had subsided even though he had drunk only one cup of tea this morning and not his usual second cup in the break room. In fact, he felt strangely peaceful amidst the nice-smelling leather of the shoes. Instead of bending over with his clipboard and examining the shelves and stacks, he decided to plop the boxes on the floor, lie down with his back against the wall, and comfortably take notes about how many pairs of each design remained in stock. It felt comfortable because it felt like something he would have done as a child. He was one step away from emptying the contents of these boxes on the floor and lying in a bed of shoes just to be wrapped in their leathery smell while he dozed off.
He couldn’t remember the last time that he had thought of something so frivolous. And why was he, a Hindu, enjoying the smell of leather? That was blasphemy. His body felt braided with energy. He could feel himself shaking.
Then Harit wondered how Mr. Harriman had believed Teddy’s story. If Harit’s power had been out and he had no cell phone, how would Harit have called Teddy to let him know this in the first place? It didn’t make sense.
Perhaps Teddy was right and Harit was paranoid. Mr. Harriman had better things to do than worry about him.
FOR TEN MONTHS, A LARGE, GREEN SIGN HAD been flashing beside the highway: COMING SOON: PARADISE ISLAND—BEYOND YOUR DREAMS. That was all it read, not a single hint as to what Paradise Island was. The effect of this was thrilling. Traffic slowed as people drove past, and Ranjana took some comfort in thinking that others shared her curious fascination with the sign. All the same, she felt that it had been placed there for her benefit or her entertainment or, very possibly, her unraveling. She felt a particular communion with the concept of “Paradise”; it was a word that so many Americans used to euphemize India when they were being polite, when the truth was that, to them, India was a whole host of other things before it was Paradise (dirty, crowded, impoverished). To Ranjana, India did often represent Paradise; she missed parts of it as an angel would miss Eden; and to see the word Paradise every day to and from work was like passing her childhood temple or a favorite movie house. As a writer, that was how she saw things—not as what they were but as what they represented.
Paradise Island. It sounded like one of those horrid reality shows that her coworker Cheryl was always talking about: bright-haired twentysomethings dumped on an island for sex, fluorescent drinks, and black-and-white video clips in which their teeth, hair, and bathing suits gleamed in the same grainy hue. Yet Paradise Island’s intrigue had to do with elusiveness, not visibility.
The tension of not knowing what it was invaded her thoughts. Its meaning to her life was magnified by her need to know exactly what it was meant to be. She did not understand what kind of marketing tactic this was, this forced mystery. It was one thing to whet a public’s appetite, but to prolong the process had the adverse effect on people. They became annoyed, obsessed with something that had never even existed.
One day Ranjana took the exit and drove to where the sign indicated Paradise Island would be. She could not drive all the way up to the sign. Instead, she was stopped by a chain-link fence, behind which sat various piles of earth and debris indicating a work in progress. Afterward, she stopped at a nearby Starbucks to have some tea.
“Excuse me,” she said to a blank-eyed employee who was collecting used cups, discarded lids, and trampled napkins with a broom and dustpan. The boy barely looked up when Ranjana spoke. “Do you know what this ‘Paradise Island’ is?”
He snorted. “The hell if I know. You’re, like, the tenth person to ask me that today.”
“But what is it? They’ve been building it for months.”
“Look, I wish I knew, ma’am. My manager is pissed. He thought it would get us more customers. But that thing’s just been sitting there for months, and we have no effing clue.”
Ranjana went home and, enjoying the silence of an empty house, fixed herself a mooli paratha. If she wasn’t going to find out what that bloody Island was, she was going to gorge on something that she didn’t have to share with her husband. She stood at the kitchen counter, dunking hot pieces of the paratha into a pot of yogurt. She loved the contrast of the cool and hot on her fingers. In the pot, the yogurt looked like glaciers giving off a soft radiance.
*
Nothing taunted Ranjana more than a blinking cursor. Her eyes were beginning to cross as her computer screen burned into a hot indigo.
There had to be something besides the premise of the story itself; that was easy enough. Ranjana had devoured all of the series, knew all of the tricks. She had read about southern vampires—she often replaced the word southern with Madrasi in her mind—and she had read about Yankee vampires (she labeled these “Punjabi”). She had read about vampires that loved men and women alike. She had read about teenage vampires, nineteenth-century vampires, vampires with roots in Egypt, vampires with roots in India. Aztec vampires. Vampires with hearts of gold, vampires with fangs of steel. What was there to do with a vampire that hadn’t already been done?
So, tonight, she settled on the idea of an arranged marriage involving a vampire. She was capable enough as a writer to understand that she was drawing a deliberate parallel between her life and the lives of her characters. Ranjana had had an arranged marriage, and recently she saw something cold and almost menacing in Mohan. But instead of being drawn to the vampire-husband in question, she was repelled by him. What if vampires were not creatures of icily inviting mystery but, rather, creatures as threatening as our human instinct would have us believe? Sex would not be alluring, then. Romance would be as dead as a vampire’s body.
Ranjana put her head in her hands and tried to massage the purple flashes out of her eyes. She knew why she was seizing upon this idea right now, but she wasn’t sure how she could turn it into a viable story about vampires. The flashes dissipated from her eyes and were soon replaced by vulgar words in block letters across the computer screen, as if from some tabloid news story. But instead of MURDER or DRUGS, they were awful words used to describe the female anatomy.