“I’ll just be over here,” I called unnecessarily. “I’ll just be over here while you guys do your girl thing over there, don’t worry.”
I fingered the lehenga, laid out on the conference table. It was surprisingly rough.
“It’s amazing, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure it’s totally my style, Anita,” Prachi said. “And it’s a summer wedding, in Georgia—it’ll be so hot.”
“Give yourself a chance to get it altered,” Anita said. “You’ll fall in love with it when Mr. Harsh sizes it perfectly. Trust me, I’ve seen Deepika Padukone in this, you two have the same figure, and it looks like a lot, yes, but when it hangs on you, ooh, it’s stunning. If you hate it, give it to a cousin or something. Mr. Harsh will leave space for a few sizes, right?”
I began to pull the Jhaveri gold from my pockets and the Screwvala and Mehta pieces from the bag; felt inside the skirt for the trick pockets, each one sewn into the middle liner . . . there, there was the first one. I grabbed at the loose thread and felt something give way. I shoved the first bangles in, then retied the string.
It was so much less gold than we’d planned on. What if I didn’t bother with smuggling it in the lehenga, just carried it out on me? But then came Anita’s determined eyes, peering round the bamboo. She didn’t know how little I’d gathered. And besides, what if someone—what if Minkus Jhaveri, or the single security guard—demanded I empty my bag? No one would guess about these trick pockets. I kept at it. I tried to work without the awareness of Anita’s gaze on me. Leave you, she’d made me recite how many times. If something goes wrong, I leave you, and I take everything to Anjali Auntie.
You know I’d have to leave you, too, right, Neil? she’d said to me. You understand that if something goes wrong, I will get to my mom first?
“Turn. Arms up.”
“I hate to ask, Anita, but . . .” Prachi was saying on the other side of the divider.
“Arms down.”
“It was all . . . fair and square, wasn’t it? I mean, I don’t want you to do something, like, to get me to like you. Because you feel you need approval from our family?”
“Of course it isn’t that.”
I finished tying up the gold in the skirt. I smoothed the lehenga. I stepped back and saw Mr. Harsh gripping my sister’s hips like they were flanks of meat.
The tailor drew a datebook from his breast pocket. “Thursday after next,” he said, head waggling, that indeterminate promise.
Anita removed the bamboo divider to see what was happening on the other side: I was lifting the lehenga, gathering it up to me. Her eyes landed on mine, and I saw some comprehension dawn on her.
“You all good with that, Neil?” she said.
“Neil, what are you doing, be careful!” Prachi cried.
“I thought,” I said, stealing the line in the script that was supposed to belong to Anita, “I thought I might take it to Mr. Harsh’s; didn’t one of you say it’s on my way back up to Berkeley? I’m actually pretty tired of all this, Prachi, it’s very girly, and I’m exhausted, I have to get home and do a whole lot of work on my dissertation, and if I just drop this off, I’ll just zip over to Berkeley, and—”
Anita reached for the lehenga. “Neil,” she said. And I could tell that now she didn’t want to abide by that original plan; she didn’t want me to be alone with the goods. Her fingers closed around the silk, but they were so small, and I was stronger than she was. “Why don’t you let me take the lehenga to Mr. Harsh’s shop? And he and I should talk more about, as you say, girly design issues.”
“I wish I had you guys fighting to run my errands all the time!” Prachi said, mildly bewildered.
“No,” I said. “Really, it’s no trouble. It’s no trouble at all.” I reached for Mr. Harsh’s card, which he’d left on the table for Prachi, and in the same movement, I hugged Prachi with one arm. My sister was looking strangely at me and Anita, and I rolled my eyes, hoping to signify that it was just an innocent romantic spat. And then I turned, pulling the lehenga from Anita’s grasp with ease. I pushed the conference room door open, and the last thing I saw behind me was Anita’s mouth hanging half-open, as I proved right every doubt she’d ever had about me.
The door banged shut behind me. Little puffs of the sleeves poked me in my eyes. I thought of Chidi admonishing me when I worked out with him and pled exhaustion . . . Neil, you can do anything for thirty seconds. I moved through the next minutes in thirty-second blocks. Nudge open the conference room door, hustle down the hallway, thirty seconds. Clunk downstairs, each footstep echoing cavernously. At the bottom door, work knob; thirty seconds of fear at its stickiness, as the lehenga dropped to my ankles. Thirty seconds as I realized I’d been turning it the wrong way. Outside. Thirty seconds, into the parking lot. Thirty seconds of terror as I realized a horde of women were exiting the front entrance en masse, slowed, presumably, by the metal detectors restricting that door . . . I had parked, where, in aisle A, row 30? Aisle B, row 20? Fucking where?