He dropped from the plank he’d been holding and raised his index finger in a little Eureka flourish. “I want to meet Anita’s mother or grandmother.”
“What? Why?”
“You said they’ve been studying the properties of gold for years.”
“Yes.” I rubbed my forehead.
“You’ve lived with me how long, and you can’t guess what I want from them?” Chidi went into the kitchen and poured from a cloudy brown growler of Judith’s homemade kombucha.
“That stuff is alive,” I said. “It grosses me out.”
“You drink gold, man.”
I laughed—actually laughed. A millimeter of this secret’s power had loosened.
Chidi was rolling on. “Those women, Lakshmi and Anjali? They must know a thing or two about alchemy.”
“Alchemy? You want to talk to them about pseudoscience?”
“Alchemy was about the pursuit of longer life. Lon-gev-i-ty! People across tons of cultures thought drinking or making gold might help prolong the human life span, you know?”
I remembered, then, Anjali Auntie talking about things like this here and there, on those afternoons while she cooked and made up lemonade batches, as I snacked greedily.
“Wait. Right,” I said, recalling a spare detail from long ago. “It came from China?”
Chidi shrugged. “China, maybe—I think it started there and traveled to India, and the Europeans got ahold of it at some point. But see—thousands of years ago these alchemists were looking into the same thing I’m studying now. Everyone wants more time, Neil. For so many reasons. So they don’t have regrets. So they can just go on a few more hikes, or meet a few more grandchildren or great-grandchildren, or see the world change. We all just want time. And soon, we’ll actually be able to give it to them.” I nodded and sighed audibly, so Chidi would remember how many times I’d heard this spiel.
“Come on,” I said. “There’s magic, and then there’s nonsense.”
10.
His name, I found out later, was Mukund Jhaveri, though he preferred Minkus. This was a sobriquet of his own choosing, because the other option, first floated in second grade by an unoriginal bully, was Monkey. Minkus had purchased his first gun ten years earlier and taken his first shots eight years before that.
Anita had invited the Decatur, Georgia–based Jhaveri Bazaar Jewelers to the Santa Clara expo along with many other renowned gold dealers nationwide. Jhaveri was one of those Atlanta shops whose wares Anjali Auntie had always praised—high quality, intentionally designed, “as good as what Kaveri Padmanaban brings back from Tanishq.” Anita had not expected Mr. Jhaveri to accept a cross-country summons. It was merely good practice to get the expo’s name out there for future events. But the elder Jhaveri had given her an eager call back, saying his son was opening a new branch in Fremont—“Same-caliber pieces, I assure”—and could use the exposure.
When Anita met Minkus at the new store, he looked everywhere but at her. His eyes remained on his phone, and she thought she heard pornographic grunts streaming from it when she returned from the bathroom. Distractible, perfect, she thought. He was large, though not intimidating. She shook his hand and told him his wares would be most welcome at the expo.
She did not know then that Minkus was the proud owner of a Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter, or that he possessed a concealed-carry permit in Georgia, though not yet in California. Minkus’s love affair with guns had begun in part because Jhaveri Bazaar Jewelers had been the target of an armed robbery when Minkus was ten. He was doing his homework in the back room. The sun was setting, the whole strip mall closing up. Gopi D-Lites Idli Shop and Kulkarni Sweets and Merchant Grocers were lowering their metal grates for the night. The elder Jhaveri was puttering around, slow in closing, flimsy in a way his son, who was coming to believe in manhood as an essential concept, loathed. When the men in balaclavas, burly and big-voiced, kicked open the door and waved their pistols, the father put one hand on his son’s head and said, “Down, beta.”
Ineradicable was the feeling of his father’s hand bowing him before the men, who took some forty thousand dollars’ worth of gold and cash that night. He remembered it when his neighbors said he could come deer hunting with them anytime he liked. He remembered it when his father said he didn’t think going and shooting-shmooting things was such a nice hobby. He remembered it when he returned home from hunting, suffused with the splendid smell and smoke of the reeling weapon.