very much wanted to beat and kick the man with the now paralyzed leg. But there were too many witnesses, and they had to settle for roughly taking him into custody.
The moving fight flowed in a steady curve around the fourth-floor level, finally petering out near the carpark exit. Security made one more arrest, but the other intruders managed to get away. All around Depahli shaken couples and families with crying children were rising to their feet. Talk of what had happened was terse and quickly put aside. After all, it was not as if such things didn't happen in Sagramanda every day.
The nature of the intruders and their offense became clear as soon as she entered the food court. McDonald's and Pizza Hut had been targets, but so had Cum-In Chicken, Flash Satay, and other non-American fast food outlets. A quick survey of those that had been vandalized and those that had been spared gave more than a subtle clue to the agenda of the attackers. All of those outlets that had been despoiled served meat. Those whose offerings were strictly vegetarian had been spared.
The attackers had been members of one of several underground but well-known radical vegan groups. Perhaps the Pushkar Commandos, she mused. Their members had been much in the news lately, ever since their fire-bomb attack on the offices of a certain national concern that had its headquarters on the east coast and specialized in the cloning and genetic engineering of avian foodstock. Having no sympathy for their aims, she deliberately and defiantly sought out an undamaged outlet that served not only meat, but beef. Bright, stinging memories of preadolescent starvation tend to trump whatever philosophies purport to discredit particular kinds of nourishment.
She ordered a double burger and fries, and to wash it all down, a Nathmull's teacola.
Sitting there, watching the crowd recover from the shock of the intrusion and temporarily free from the persistent drifting ads that were kept outside the dining area, she had time to ponder how drastically her life had changed. From a future promising nothing better than an arranged marriage to another Untouchable like herself, or worse, indentured servitude in a child sweatshop or outright sale as a lifetime servant to an abusive family, she had come to this. Sitting in the Chowringhee Mall eating American-style food, gold dangling from her ears and neck and encircling her fingers, a bag of designer clothing resting at her feet. Her perfectly made-up mouth contorted into a grimace of self-reflection, but not even that could distort her beauty. Not too many years ago she would have been abysmally grateful had someone just given her the shopping bag.
Gold, jewelry, clothing. An apartment, albeit a secret one, with a real induction stove, and a vit, and a molly player. A car, surely, was in her future, though until things were resolved her beloved insisted it was safer for the both of them to continue to rely on public transportation, where their movements would be far more difficult to track. And Taneer Buthlahee. She had him, too. Nothing would or could make her let go of any of that.
The two men did not ask permission to sit down opposite her. Like her, they were in their mid-twenties. They were fashionably dressed. Both wore gleaming wrist communicator/chronographs that reeked of money. So did their attitudes.
'I don't think I've seen in you in here before,' said the first. He made it sound like a challenge.
His companion grinned, showing perfectly capped (or regenerated) white teeth. He had a very thin, movie- star mustache and was to all appearances as confident in his looks as in his money. 'I know I haven't. There is no way I would forget you, if I had seen you.'
She bit down into the last of the hamburger, wishing the curried ketchup were hot enough to match the heat rising inside her. But she kept her voice level. 'That's all right. You can pretend.'
Sudden confusion did not diminish the man's smile. 'Pretend what?'
'That you've never seen me.'
Now the smile did fade, though the man's companion laughed appreciatively. 'Looks
'From the place to which I am now going.' Flashing a quick, tight smile of her own, she swallowed the last of the teacola and reached down with one hand to pick up her shopping bag. Before she could rise, the disappointed smiler had grabbed her other wrist. Not painfully. Just hard enough to restrain her. As her uncle Chamudi had often restrained her. Gently but irresistibly, his grin returning to its full enhanced orthodontic brilliance, the man started to pull her across the table toward him.
Somewhat less gently and just as irresistibly, she raised her left leg, locked it out straight, and pushed the heel of her foot against his crotch underneath the table. 'Keep pulling,' she suggested encouragingly.
The smile drained away from the man's face. So did some of the color. Letting go of her wrist, he sat back in his chair and affected the air of the unaffected as he looked around to see if anyone else noticed what was happening. In this he had only partial success.
She withdrew her foot. What she wanted to do was ram it into him hard enough so that it came out his asshole, with his balls balanced on her heel. But it would do no good to antagonize this spoiled pair any further. Mall security might take an interest in any more expansive confrontation, and if there was one thing Taneer had impressed on her more than anything else it was a need right now to avoid attracting any kind of official attention.
So she fought off the urge to make a point, drew back her leg, and rose. At least she could enjoy the look on the face of Mr. Smiley's now bewildered companion. As for Mr. Smiley himself, he was looking increasingly unwell.
'So interesting to make your acquaintance. Not seeing you again soon, I think.' She sashayed off, lengthening her stride as she reached the boundaries of the food court, deliberately refusing to look back. When she finally did so, her smarmy, self-confident accosters were nowhere to be seen. She started to shake: with anger, not with fear. Getting herself back under control, she began working her way toward the exit that linked the mall to its proprietary subway terminal.
Never again would a man, any man, treat her the way Uncle Chamudi had done. Touch her the way he had. The pop-out ceramic blade that was built into and took the shape of the heel of her shoe remained sheathed. Smiley-face would never know how lucky he had been that she had decided only to make an impression on him.
She did not go straight home. Taneer's instructions as to how she needed to travel had been very explicit. He had only to tell her some thing once and she would remember it. Halfway across the city she got out of the subway, took the escalator up to the street, and began to walk. Baroghly was a border area. As she covered ground, her sur roundings changed very quickly from lower middle-class to poor. Not to abject poor. She did not go as far as the antiquated hovels of Outer Sealadhan. She did not have to. There was enough of a mix in the human crush of Baroghly to suit her needs.
The reek from the public restroom was almost overpowering. No tourists could have stood it for more than a few seconds, and few respectable citizens of the city would have tried. Waiting until the entrance to the women's section was deserted, Depahli did not hesitate, but walked straight toward it and entered. She did not like the stench, but she had no trouble tolerating it. It was more than familiar to her from her childhood as well as from her early years in Sagramanda.
On the third try she found an empty plastic stall that was not over whelmed with the stain of urine, the slickness of vomit, and the smear of human feces. Removing the collapsible, lightweight garment holder from her bag, she undressed as quickly as possible. Every gleam of gold went into a small box. The contents of a can of deodorized antiseptic played over her naked body. From the bottom of the bag she extracted a second, airtight container. The pre-stained, simple cotton sari it held fit her loosely, badly, thoroughly obscuring her figure. Today's veil was beige, with strategic yet unrevealing rips and tears.
She stood thus inside the stall, listening to the comings and goings of poor women and their chattering, bawling, screaming children, before finally emerging. The stink of the restroom clung to her clothing but, thanks to the spray, not to her skin. No one looked in her direction when she stepped outside the overwhelmed public facility. No covetous female or lustful male eyes followed her progress as she limped up the street.
A short stroll through the sultry, steaming early evening would bring her to a bus stop. The creaking fuel-cell bus would carry her to the terminal for an older subway line, one that did not cross the gleaming tracks of the line that ran past Chowringhee Mall. One more change to another line, suffering the disapproving stares of irritated middle-class commuters, would deposit her a few blocks from the innocuous apartment building that was home. That would be followed by another foray into a much cleaner public restroom where she would change again, finally able to walk free and clean back to the temporary home she and Taneer shared.
