Sometimes she made a point to leave long before Sunny did. Sometimes Sunny spent time teasing her, insulting journalists in general. Accusing her of being a spy. Don’t say anything in front of her! And she just smiled and made conversation with someone else. Then they were both gone.
Where do you think they’ve gone?
She didn’t care.
* * *
—
Ajay would carry her. If Sunny had already left, Ajay would pick her up outside and deliver her to whichever hotel he was waiting in. If she left the party first, Ajay would deliver her to the hotel, she would be given the key card so she could wait. Silent, loyal Ajay, eyes lowered, never a word. They drove at speed through the night. Ajay never played music on the stereo, she noticed that. Sometimes she put her earphones in and pumped her music up so loud and stared out at the disconnected streets, the trash heaps smoldering by the roadside, the sleeping workers. The months of July and August, like this. Burning at both ends, never tired. Gilded hangovers. Iridescent with champagne.
* * *
—
She knew just how to take him in. She wanted all of him. To be full of him. There was no other way to say it. He talked about Italy in those moments after sex when they were lying on the bed smoking cigarettes. The atelier in which his suits were made, sun streaming through the Mediterranean air, dust motes in the skylight. The cafés he sat in during the day, the clink of spoon and coffee cup and saucer. He’d gone there when he was eighteen. He kept coming back to this memory. There was the toy shop in Meerut and there was Italy. There was an exhaustion in him sometimes, coming to meet her after she’d been waiting, sometimes an hour or two, drinking whisky and watching Star Movies with the AC on and the heat rolling in waves against the window from outside. He’d had no time to reset. And things were different then. She wanted to take care of him. People tire me, he said. They drain me. You’re too generous, she said. She was lost in him and him alone. She wanted his scent. She wore his shirts in bed.
* * *
—
Money’s a fucking curse, he said. It cuts out all the hard work. Before, you had to be kind or funny or fun. Interesting, intelligent. You had to take the time to know people. You had solidarity with them. Then you’re rich. It annihilates everything. Everyone is nice to you. Everyone wants you there. You’re the most popular person in the room. It’s so easy to be charming when you’re rich. Everyone laughs at your jokes, hangs on your word. You forget and think it’s about you. Then sometimes you go somewhere and you don’t spend, and it’s so miserable, it’s so horrible to go back to the drawing board, and you’ve forgotten how to earn someone’s trust or love, and you know it’s easier with a shortcut or two, so you bring out the cash in the end, the wad, the clip, the card, and the thrill of it is greater, because they didn’t know, and now they do. You’re rich. You’re in charge. They love you. Money’s a fucking curse.
* * *
—
“My grandfather,” he said one night in bed, “was a Walia. That was his name. He changed it to Wadia after he met a Parsi trader who was doing very well. This was way back, just after Independence. He thought the change would bring him fortune. That’s it. That’s the story. It’s not a story at all.”
“Did it change his fortunes?”
“Two generations too late.”
“Was he a religious man?”
“He died before I was born. I don’t know anything except the story Tinu told.”
“Tinu?”
“Tinu is Tinu. My father’s right-hand man.”
She paused. “What does your father believe in?”
“What?”
“What does he believe in?”
He thought it over.
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s just a question.”
“Money,” he said.
“Lakshmi?”
“No. Just money.”
“And to whom does he pray?”
He thought about it again.
“Himself.”
“Do you love him?”
He thought about that even longer, and the silence was too long to bear.
“What about your uncle Vicky?” she asked.
He tensed up. She noticed him withdraw.
“We don’t talk about him.”
“Why don’t you talk about him?”
He wouldn’t say.
“What was the Kushinagar incident?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“It seems like it was a big deal.”
He was quiet a long time, didn’t move, didn’t look at her.