She ran her fingers over her bracelet. “You don’t resent my spending, do you?”
I shook my head, then stopped to ruminate. Well, in truth, there have been times. She likes to shop at Nordstrom, Restoration Hardware, and Williams-Sonoma, places that are beyond my means, but she insists on having my company. I have an eye for quality and she values that.
I got back to the subject at hand. “Was today’s case one from our community, another hush-hush?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” She mimicked a British accent: “A ‘family matter, a kitchen accident.’” She paused. The waiter was hovering by her shoulder. We placed our orders.
Not for the first time, I agonized over the threats Kareena faces due to the nature of her job. Signs have been plentiful.
She is frequently called a man hater and, at least once in the last month, has been followed home from work. The spouse of one client even went so far as to publicly question her sexual orientation.
“You’re the only one I trust enough to talk about this case,” Kareena continued. “She’s an H-4 visa holder, so scared that she couldn’t even string together a few coherent sentences. I spoke a little Punjabi with her, which loosened her up. Still, it took awhile to draw out her story. Her husband beats her regularly.”
I appraised Kareena’s face. How she could absorb the despair of so many traumatized souls? Listen to songs that don’t finish playing? Lately, her lipstick color had gone from her standard safe pink to a risky red. Brown circles under her eyes spoke of fatigue or, perhaps, stress, and I suspected the brighter lip color was intended to redirect a viewer’s attention.
“Did you see bruises on her?” I asked and watched her carefully.
It was still so vivid in my mind, Kareena’s last cocktail party a few weeks before and the freshly swollen blue- black marks on her upper arm. In an unguarded moment, her paisley Kashmiri shawl had slid off her shoulders. Through the billowy sheer sleeves of her tan silk top, I glimpsed dark blue, almost black finger marks on an otherwise smooth arm. The swelling extended over a large area, causing me to nearly shriek. Adi must have attacked her. Upon realizing that I’d noticed, she glanced down and repositioned the shawl. Just then, a male friend approached, asked her to dance, took her arm, and they floated away.
“Yes, I did see bruises on her forehead,” now Kareena replied. “She’d be in worse trouble if her husband suspected she was out looking for help.”
“The law is on her side, isn’t it?” I allowed a pause. “You don’t have problems at home, by any chance, do you?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well, I happened to notice bruises on
I noticed the mauve of shame spreading on her face. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
“Sorry to barge into your private matters, but if you ever feel like talking-”
Our orders came. Mine was a ginger iced tea and hers an elixir of coconut juice and almond milk. She raised her chin and lifted her glass to clink with mine, her way of accepting my apology.
I took a sip from my beverage; she drained hers with such hurried gulps that I doubted she fully appreciated the flavors. Typical Kareena; appearances must be maintained. Both of us looked out through the window and took in the sky-colored Ship Canal where a fishing vessel was working its way to the dry docks that lined the north shore of Lake Union. Sooner or later, I thought, I’d have to find out the truth about those bruises.
When the silver waves died down in the canal, Kareena spoke again: “But enough of this depressing stuff! How did things go for you today?”
I filled her in on the most interesting part of my day: consulting with a paraplegic homeowner. “Believe it or not,” I said, “the guy wants to do all the weeding and watering himself. It’ll be a challenge, but I’ll design a garden to suit his requirements.”
“You live such a sane life and you have such a healthy glow on your face. Just listening to you, I seem to siphon off some of it. ” She gave me a smile. “Come on, Mitra. Let me buy you another drink.”
She signaled the waiter. The room was emptier now, the sounds hushed, and a genial breeze blew through a half-open window. We ordered a second round.
“Before the alarm went off this morning,” she said after a while, “I got a call from my nephew in New Delhi. He’s seven.”
“Does he want you to visit him?”
She nodded and mashed her napkin into a ball. I guessed she was undergoing one of those periodic episodes of homesickness for India, the country we’d both left behind. I, too, experience the same longing to visit people missing from my life. Whereas she can afford to go back every year, I can’t.
I digressed from this aching topic to a lighter one by pointing out a cartoon clip peeking out from under the glass cover of our table. A tiny boy, craning his neck up, is saying to his glowering father,
That got a spontaneous laugh from Kareena which, in turn, raised my spirits. I didn’t have a chance to discuss the newspaper story with her. Well, the next time.
I go back to my living room. The airy tranquility has been transformed into a murky emptiness, as though a huge piece of familiar furniture has been cleared out but not replaced. I have an urge to confide in someone, but who could that be? The only person I can think of is the one who’s gone away.
I wander into the kitchen, open and close the cupboard, rearrange items in the refrigerator, and fill the tea kettle with water. With a cup of Assam tea and a slice of multigrain toast, I sit at the round table. Bananas protrude from a sunny ceramic bowl within arm’s reach. I fiddle with my iPod.
The tea tempers to lukewarm, the toast becomes dense, and the bananas remain untouched. It’s difficult for me to stomach much food in the morning, and this news has squelched whatever hunger I might otherwise have. I stare at the
Could someone have murdered her?
I peer out through the western window. The Olympic Mountains appear stable, blue, and timeless. Somehow I doubt that Kareena could be the victim of a lethal crime.
How can I help find her? My career focus in art and landscape design-the study of the physiology of new growth, awareness of color and light, and harmony of arrangements-hasn’t prepared me to deal with a situation like this.
I walk over to my side yard. Blue bells are pushing up from the winter-hardened ground. I notice a slug, pick it up with a leaf, and deposit it on a safe spot. Once again, spring season is in the balmy air. I look up to the sky, out of a gardener’s propensity to check the weather. It helps me see beyond the immediate.
Back to the living room, I sit at my desk, grab a notepad, and begin listing friends and acquaintances who I can call upon. The page fills speedily. The Indian population in the Puget Sound area, described recently by the
I consult my watch. It is 10 o’clock, an hour when everyone’s up and about, when the disappointments of the day haven’t dulled one’s spirits. This’ll be a good time to ring Adi and draw him out. He loves to talk about himself in his Oxford-accented, popcorn-popping speech, which will give me a chance to tease information out of him, however distasteful the process might be, however potentially dangerous. Kareena is my best friend. When we’re together, I’m fully present and my voice is at its freest. Day turns into twilight as we relax over drinks, gabbing, laughing, and trading opinions, oblivious to the time. We don’t parse our friendship. It just is. We scatter the gems of our hours freely, then retrieve them richer in value.
With the phone to my ear, I pace back and forth in front of my living room window. Adi, at the other end, is ignoring the ringing.
The Emperor comes to focus in my mind-an impeccable suit, sockless feet (part of his fashion statement), and
