* * *
—
Christmas. Decorations with Santas in Connaught Place. Paeans to consumption. Paying lip service to religion. She went with her parents to St. James’s Church for Midnight Mass. A secular family tradition—they went every year. The three of them in the pews, not quite understanding what was going on. She closed her eyes and said a prayer. She thought she saw Ajay in the congregation, sitting a little ahead, praying too. But when it came time for Communion, she saw it was just another man.
* * *
—
The desolation of January. The city choked by smog. The temperatures dipping toward zero some nights. Her first story of the new year: the lack of adequate shelter for the homeless, an organized blanket mafia. A mafia for everything. She took the TEFL course after work. She had given up on Sunny. And given up on herself. She knew it was too late. She wouldn’t go to Dean. She could only plan to leave and never come back.
4.
On the morning of the last day of January 2004 she asked Dean to lunch at China Fare. She wanted to tell him her news: she was going to hand in her notice that afternoon. He agreed to see her, he might be a little late, he had a busy morning on the cards. She idled at her desk and saw his office locked. She went to Khan Market early and browsed the shops, everyone wrapped in sweaters and shawls. She wasn’t sure if she was going to confess. She didn’t know what she’d say until she was face-to-face, until he gave some clue from his end. All she knew was she was done. She took a table in China Fare at one and waited for him. Ate spring rolls and drank green tea.
* * *
—
When he came in she knew something was very wrong. He sat down at the table and held the edge with his fingers as if it were a cliff. He wouldn’t even look up at her. He seemed only to care about breathing. He knows, she thought. But what? What does he know? It didn’t matter. She was leaving. He lifted his hands from the table, rubbed his eyes under his wire-rimmed glasses, then removed the glasses entirely, placed them on the table, and covered his whole face with his hands. Finally he looked up and his eyes were shining and faraway.
“I just quit,” he said.
Of all the things she’d expected him to say, this was not it.
“Seriously?”
“Or maybe I was fired.” He frowned. “I don’t know.” He was talking to himself. “Maybe I jumped before I was pushed.”
“Dean . . .”
He looked up. “Let’s go get a beer.”
* * *
—
They went to Chonas. He started to talk. “You know how I started investigating Bunty Wadia? I dug up so much dirt you wouldn’t believe. I shortchanged him when I called him one of Ram Singh’s mob. Turns out the tail was wagging the dog. Ram Singh pretty much works for him.”
His voice turned contemplative. “Seems like almost everyone works for him.” She waited for him to go on. “I had a mentor,” he eventually said. “An old editor at one of the papers here. I’m not going to say his name. Respected. A straight shooter. All the way down the line. I’ve only known him in person awhile, but I corresponded with him and read his byline when he was younger and he taught me how to be a journalist, a reporter, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say he taught me how to be a man. At least in my head. What’s that saying? ‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him’?”
“Dean. You’re rambling.”
“I finished my exposé last week. It’s huge. And it’s completely fucking meaningless.”
“Why?”
“The night I finished, this mentor of mine gave me a call. Ten p.m. He invited me to have breakfast with him the next morning at Yellow Brick Road. Nothing strange about that, right? Just a coincidence with the timing. I was buzzing with the story, the way you get when you’ve landed something big, something that’ll make waves. So I was excited to meet him. But I didn’t tell him anything about it on the phone.”
“What was in the story?”
“Wait. This is the story. I turned up for breakfast. And there he was waiting, sipping orange juice, his coffee by his side, at one of the tables by the window, the one that looks out over the lawn and the driveway, it catches the sun. He was facing the room. I sat opposite him. He’d been ill last year but he was much better now. He looked tidy, tanned. That was unusual, to see him tanned. I asked if he’d been on holiday, but he said no, he’d been swimming a lot these days in an outdoor pool, he’d caught the sun that way and found it agreeable, though his wife nagged him relentlessly about it. All this pleasantry, small talk. ‘So,’ he said to me, ‘what’s going on with you?’ And I told him I was about to send a story to my editor, a big one.” Dean took a sip of beer, touched his hand to his forehead. “He nodded at me. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘about that . . .’?” And my stomach flipped.