Oleander Girl (19 page)

“Surely, of course,” Mitra’s wife had gushed. “How lucky she is to have such a considerate man to be her husband.”

“Where’s Mitra? I tried his mobile, but he didn’t answer.”

“Gone to work,” Mitra’s wife said—which was what Rajat had expected, except there was a little hitch in her voice that worried him. In retrospect, he thought that Mitra had behaved strangely the last time
they spoke, answering in monosyllables when Rajat asked him to take good care of Cara.

“Tell him to call me,” he instructed Mitra’s wife. “And tell him to get Korobi to the investigator as soon as possible.”

Now Rajat wishes he had been less magnanimous. If he had heard Cara’s voice, cool as salve on burned skin, maybe last night would have gone differently.

Last night, while he was trying to catch up at the office, Khushwant had called. It was his birthday, he was turning twenty-nine, in a year he would be thirty and over-the-hill, my God, it was depressing beyond belief. A group of friends were getting together at the Pink Elephant, that new club near the race course, to help him overcome this tragedy. Rajat must come, too!

Rajat wished him happy birthday. But he excused himself; he was tired and had to check on a set of orders that should have been sent to Kanpur yesterday.

“Yaar, I can’t believe what a limp noodle you’ve turned into.” Khushwant’s voice went tinny with outrage. “You used to be the coolest guy even just at my birthday last year. Remember, how we were at the Taj, with you and Sonia dancing on our table. She ruined that tabletop with her stilettos! And when the manager complained, she threw down a stack of rupees, enough to buy two new tables. That girl had class! I never did understand why you guys broke up. And the weed we had afterwards in my flat? People were so wasted they couldn’t even make it home. That was some party, if I do say so myself! And now listen to you. You sound like some forty-year-old father of two. Makes me think your engagement’s been a bad influence. That Korobi, she’s beautiful and all, but she’s too serious, man. And her family—don’t they have like a temple in their house? That’s just insane! I’d think twice before marrying into shit like that.”

“That’s enough about Korobi, Khush!”

“Okay, okay, sorry! Forgive? Anyway, hasn’t she gone off to America or something?”

Rajat was shocked that Khushwant knew about Korobi’s trip already, in spite of all the efforts to keep it quiet. That was Kolkata for you. He
wondered who else—all right, he might as well be honest with himself—he wanted to know if Sonia had found out. He wanted to know if she would decide to do something about his being on his own now.

He ducked away from the thought. Sonia was like an infection in his blood, rising up to attack just when he believed he was cured.

“I bet she’s having a good time there,” Khushwant was saying. “So why not you come and keep your old friends company? The guys are all complaining that they haven’t seen you in months.”

Rajat felt himself wavering. He missed his friends, too, and the giddy, adolescent fun of drinking too much and watching the girls and guffawing at puerile jokes, the music thrumming all the while through your blood. He said weakly, “I really have too much to do, yaar.”

“What good is it working for your parents if you can’t fall behind once in a while? They can’t fire you, can they? You just have to put up with a bit of bad-mouthing. Hell, my old man yells at me every week.”

Rajat wanted to say that his parents would never yell. In fact, if his mother knew of Khushwant’s invitation, she would tell him to go.
You’ve been taking on too much, Son. You need a break.
That’s why he had to be sure to do the right thing himself.

But Khushwant barreled on, “Listen, yaar, come for one hour only. Hang out, have a couple beers. Then you can go back to work, mother-promise! You don’t even have to dress up. It’s just the boys tonight. Girls are too much maintenance, man.”

It would have been churlish to turn Khushwant down, after that.

“Okay,” Rajat said. “Just for an hour.”

But it hadn’t turned out that way.

Rajat dials Mitra’s mobile, gets a recording again. Is Mitra avoiding him? This hangover is making Rajat paranoid. It’s night in New York. Where on earth is Korobi? He resists the urge to call the number again, the way Sonia would have done, and leave a blistering message. Instead he dials Mitra’s home and speaks to Mitra’s wife, who sounds scared. A sound in the background, like a man’s voice, abruptly cuts off.

“They went out together,” she says. “I’ll tell Korobi-madam to call as soon as she gets back. Thank you, thank you.” She hangs up before he can ask anything else.

The music hit him like a fiery blast as soon as he stepped into the Pink Elephant. His ears, accustomed to 26 Tarak Prasad Roy Road through the many evenings he’d spent there, to its few, nuanced sounds, had grown unused to this kind of loudness. Light pulsed green and red across the room, then turned itself off, creating a moment of disorienting darkness lit only by small, pink fireflies that bobbed erratically through the room. It took him several minutes to locate his friends—six of them, huddled at a table on the other side of the dance floor. Wishing he hadn’t come, he threaded his way through couples gyrating with abandon, past a wild-haired, gesticulating DJ immured behind a glass wall like a sci-fi character, past waitresses in tiny skirts and dangly, pink, glow-in-the-dark elephant earrings. In the strobe flashes punctuated by darkness, he saw his friends, who had not noticed him yet, cruelly captured: a foolishly open mouth, a gesticulating hand sporting a Rolex, grinning lips that exposed expensively straightened teeth. The offspring of fathers who had fought their way into mansions and millions where these children now floundered. He was one of them, too, wasn’t he?

Then they noticed him and gave a great cheer, rising to their feet as though he were a Bollywood star. He was engulfed in hugs redolent with Johnnie Walker, that old, comforting smell. Such stupid thoughts he’d been having! See how they loved him. They were his people, they understood the challenge of languishing in the shadow of titans. He should not have stayed away from them for so long.

Still the image of that desk, piled with responsibilities, would not leave him.

“Just one beer, yaar, in honor of your birthday,” he told Khushwant. Jaikishan—Jay for short—pushed a plate full of shrimp kebabs at him. Rajat took one, suddenly ravenous. He needed this respite, this sinking into camaraderie as into velvet cushions. He’d slip away after this drink, catch a cab back to the office, call his mother, tell her he would sleep there tonight. She would protest that he was ruining his health, but underneath she’d be proud he was working so hard, shoring up the family finances. How good it would feel tomorrow, the clean desk, the orders sent out, the invoices responded to. Maybe he’d even get started planning the
Barua & Bose website, surprise Korobi with a preliminary design when she got back.

The shrimp kebabs were excellent. Likewise the beer, steaming cold in the bottle he raised to his lips.

Then he saw her walk into the room, dressed in a silver mini and tall silver heels. He was surprised at how long her hair had grown. She’d put something sparkly in it, and it swung about her face like satin.

The beer tasted flat, corrosive. He put it down and tapped Khushwant’s shoulder, pointing.

“Shit! I swear, yaar, I didn’t tell her anything. Didn’t even talk to her.” Khushwant was speaking the truth. Rajat could hear it in his slurred, shocked voice. But Rajat couldn’t believe it was mere coincidence.

“Looks like she has other fish to fry anyway.” Khushwant was pointing. A man had walked in behind Sonia, American, Rajat thought from the clothes, expensive but too casual. He was tall and blond, with that irritating American expression of trustfulness. He bent his face to say something, and she threw back her hair and laughed, her eye makeup glittering. He was no match for her. She would chew him up and spit him out within a week.

Rajat ordered another beer. He waved away the paneer pakoras that were going around. The two were seated at a corner table, heads close together, whispering. What did the blond fool have to say that was so interesting?

Khushwant must have seen something on his face because he grabbed Rajat’s elbow. “Ignore her, yaar. It’s not worth getting into trouble.”

Khushwant was right. Rajat turned toward his friends, raised his bottle, and drained it. Jay was telling them a joke. His jokes were so stupid, they cracked everyone up. But after a few minutes, Rajat couldn’t stop himself from glancing back. They were dancing. She moved her body in that fluid way Rajat knew so well. Half the room was watching her. He closed his eyes, tried to call up Korobi’s face, but the features kept shifting. Sonia tapped on the glass and said something to the DJ, and the music turned soft, slow. She was in the American’s arms now. If she’d noticed Rajat, she gave no indication of it. Rajat reached over and took
one of the glasses waiting on the table. The whiskey went down his throat smooth, making him feel a little better.

A few dances later, Sonia left with the American. Where had she gone? Rajat would bet anything it wasn’t home. Was it to another club? Or one of the fancy hotels where they knew her well enough to let her have a room, even though such things were not done by women from good families?

He didn’t remember much after that, except that the jokes stopped being funny. At some point, Khushwant put him in a taxi and gave the driver his address. Fortunately, everyone was asleep when he got home, and he could stumble into bed without having to face questions. Now here he is, with the grandfather of all headaches splitting his skull, cursing himself for his stupidity in letting a woman he doesn’t even care about rile him like this.

We had to take a taxi, even though I didn’t want it, because Mitra warned me that changing buses would take too long and Desai’s office would close. Another handful of my precious dollars gone. Now Mitra and I negotiate a street as narrow as the old Kolkata alleys, making our way past carelessly dumped garbage and people curled into blankets in random doorways. The chill evening wind flutters abandoned newspapers and sets me shivering in spite of my coat. The distaste on Mitra’s face mirrors my own misgivings. What kind of investigator would have his office in a neighborhood like this?

In the taxi, Mitra made an attempt to be friendly, asking about my life in Kolkata and pointing out notable landmarks. But I no longer trusted him and responded warily. When I asked about my cell phone, he said he was working on it, but it was hard for tourists to get phones because of tightened security. I didn’t believe him. Was he trying to keep me from talking freely to Rajat? This much I knew: I needed to become less dependent on him. Tomorrow, I promised myself, I’d buy a map of New York, ask Desai about buses, learn to get around.

Ahead of me, a man with a pale, shaven head and tattoos on his neck slowly pushes a rusted metal cart piled with plastic bags. I try not to stare, but I’m disconcerted. Maybe he senses my attention. He suddenly turns and lumbers toward me, mumbling, hand outstretched. His nails are bluish, dirt-encrusted. His eyebrows look scorched. In Kolkata I’d have known how to ignore a beggar, how to drop coins into an outstretched palm if the case merited it. Here I’m unsure. I look for Mitra, but he’s gone ahead around the corner of the building. I have no choice but to face the man, who’s almost upon me.

Heart thudding, I square my shoulders and yell, “Go away! Stop harassing me!” To emphasize my words, I clap my hands. The sound echoes eerily down the street like a shot.

The man doesn’t leave, but at least he stops advancing. That’s victory enough. I run and catch up with Mitra, stumbling in my unsuitable Kolkata sandals. He gives me a brief, appraising look. Was he watching to see how I’d handle myself in a dangerous situation? Was he hoping I’d break down? I’m happy to have disappointed him.

Desai’s building, a once-ornate Victorian, has been sectioned into apartments. As we enter the corridor, dimly lit by a grease-covered bulb, the smell of stale cooking assails us. Behind the doors, strange sounds coil and churn: arrhythmic thumps, a woman weeping, flute music. Bypassing an elevator that looks too ancient to be trusted, we climb three stories to the top floor. Desai’s office is at the end of the corridor and protected by a collapsible gate. Approaching it, I hear male voices raised in argument. One has a distinct Indian accent and sounds angry. The other is American and defiant. When Mitra knocks, there is sudden silence. After a minute, the door is opened by a man in his sixties wearing an old-fashioned suit. His lank hair reaches his shoulders in a style reminiscent of biblical movies. He’s taking deep breaths in an effort to calm himself. Behind him, leaning back nonchalantly in a swivel chair, is a young man in jeans and a leather jacket. He sports an ear stud and a short, stylish haircut. He’s distinctly good-looking and bears himself in a manner that suggests he knows this. He stares at me with frank curiosity.

Desai pulls himself together and greets us. Introductions are made.

The young man, who is Desai’s nephew and part-time assistant, bows mockingly and offers me his chair. The computer on Mr. Desai’s desk is unexpectedly sleek and modern. Indeed, the entire office is filled with sleek and modern gadgets I don’t recognize. I feel a little better; clearly, Desai takes his work seriously.