“I’m pretty blazed,” she said, “and hungry. What time is it?”
“Nine.”
“Kebab?”
“Let’s get some Coke first.”
* * *
—
They cruised the wide boulevards of Lutyens’ Delhi, smoking and sipping from their glass bottles of Coke, the ripe smell of flowering plants and wet grass coming from the traffic circles. Hari played new tracks on the stereo. The whomping bass squirmed below a tanpura drone. He said, “I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah,” she looked across at him and smiled.
“I was thinking about you the other day,” he said.
“Oh yeah?”
She closed her eyes.
If he could just keep driving like this, everything would be all right.
“You dropped off the radar,” he said. “At first I thought you might have finally done it, gone abroad.”
She took a long pull on her cigarette and frowned to herself. “No, I’ve been here. Work is just . . . hectic these days.”
“Yeah? You like it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I always keep a lookout for your name.”
She smiled, “Of course you do. You’re good like that.”
Loyal, she meant. Like a puppy.
“It’s always with his.”
“My name? Who? You mean Dean?”
“Dean H. Saldanha. Additional reporting: Neda Kapur.”
She shrugged. “He’s got me doing his donkey work.”
* * *
—
All of this was true. But it was an adventure too sometimes. Like the happy few months spent undercover researching corruption at a series of tourism ministry hotels, run as if they were private kingdoms, with lavish parties for senior bureaucrats, ministers’ families taking up whole wings, hotel cars and furniture being smuggled away and sold off, all at the taxpayers’ expense. She’d loved the gossip and intrigue of all that. And going undercover, pretending to be someone else.
* * *
—
“So you’re not with him?”
“Hari,” she sat up, gave him the eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Maybe he’s not your type.”
She relaxed. “Exactly not my type.”
“I remember the guys you went for in school. Assholes with big cars.”
“You know me, Hari. Mostly I just went along for the ride.” She finished the Coke. “And now look, see, everyone’s leaving me behind.”
“Your old gang?”
She counted on her fingers. “London. New York. Boston. Manchester. Durham. Stanford. Geneva. One of them’s even in Tokyo. I thought about going out there too to teach English. But . . . I’m stuck here.”
“You’re really not happy, are you?”
She tapped the ash. “I just can’t deal sometimes.”
“With?”
She shrugged, watched the roadside lights zip by.
“Your dad?” he asked. “I heard about his cancer.”
“Yeah, it’s no secret.”
“So? Is it too much?”
“No. He’s good now. And he’s become so chill. It’s almost scary how soft he is.”
“So?”
“Mom pisses me off.” She knew she was being unfair but couldn’t help herself. “All the money ran out in the middle of Dad’s chemo. I mean, it was almost gone before that, after the business went under, you know, but it was really gone. I told her to sell the house. Just sell it, but she said no, it’s the house that keeps us together. If she’d sold the house, he could have had really good chemo and I could have gone abroad after. We all could have had our lives, but no, she’s the one holding us all back.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.” She sighed and mentally washed her hands, turned to him and beamed. “Anyway, look at you, all shiny and new with your clothes and your name. WhoDini. Hari fucking WhoDini. Did you come up with that yourself?”
“I had some help.”
“You’re an escape artist.”
“I’m doing OK.”
“Well, I want a copy of this CD, signed and everything.”
“Sure thing.”
“And a poster of you for my bedroom wall.”
“Right next to Luke Perry.”
“Ha!” She flicked her cigarette out the window, watched the end explode on the hot tarmac. “That came down years ago.”
The night was heavy with the scent of jasmine.