Very briefly, my own eyes came into significant contact with Minkus’s gloomy ones. We shared something, a stab of scorn for this, our milieu.
I cleared my throat, then brandished one collar-like necklace at Prachi. I’d forgotten the long list of proper Indian names that Anita had assigned each product. “This is cool.”
She glanced sidelong at Minkus, and half shrugged. “Kind of a mess,” she said to me, but her voice was not quiet enough; Minkus Jhaveri’s hairy right ear cocked—a hunter’s ear, alert.
“Anita says they source everything from, like, this one really good dude, somewhere in . . . uh, India . . . Anita says this is who she’d most want to go with—”
I was growing frantic, for Anita had been drawn to the Jhaveri Bazaar wares not just for Minkus’s wandering eye but for his father’s taste. He was a gentle man, she’d said, who relished stocking wedding wares in particular; her mother had known him to receive invitations from the brides he outfitted, so warm was their relationship after the selling. His gold was the stuff of solid relationships and sturdy happiness. She wanted these pieces, for her mother. I wanted them for me.
DJ Jai Zee, amplified: “If y’all are excited about your wedding days give it up give it up,” and a smattering of applause. “Oh god I hope y’all’s grooms didn’t hear that. Hey look, I see one dude out there he’s like I wanna be watching football, amirite?”
Anita, behind me: “Auntie, do you remember where you saw your granddaughter last?”
Minkus Jhaveri wasn’t turning away. Prachi was trying to get cell service. Anita was preoccupied. I didn’t know what else to do. I toppled forward and caught the Jhaveri Bazaar cart as I collapsed. The pieces on the case clattered to the ground. Minkus crouched over me. His gaze fell on my hands while I clenched my fists around whatever gold I could grab. No time to replace anything.
He snarled, savagely. “Don’t fuck with me.” His arm shifted. The jacket rode up his back. And I saw for sure this time that it was not a cell phone holster but a goddamn gun.
One hand formed into a fist and he raised it above me. The other jerked backward, heel nudging the handle of the weapon.
“Lord almighty!”
The squeal belonged to Linda, who grabbed Minkus by the collar with surprising strength. “Sir, we do not want to have to ask you to leave . . .”
A small circle of people had gathered around me. Prachi’s hand rested on my head. I saw Anita’s black heels. I held my fists steady, afraid to let slip what I had grabbed. A few earring backs poked my palms. The silkiness of at least one ring and possibly a pendant. I stood, shoved my hands, and the gold, in my back pocket. By the time Minkus Jhaveri had shunted Linda aside, I was already apologizing, straightening his cart.
At last I saw Anita. She was walking to the fashion show to join DJ Jai Zee. She didn’t nod, smile, or pretend at concern. That vision I’d had of her here and there, in the days leading up to the expo—gold slicking her lips before she brought them to mine—went out, like a light suddenly cut.
I reached a point of clarity as I heard her voice reciting the names of the fashion show sponsors over the loudspeaker before DJ Jai Zee ignited the soundtrack, thumping Goa trance.
It was all for her mother. She didn’t think I could be trusted. She thought I was smaller than the sum of my lusts.
“We’d better get to that raffle, Prachi,” I muttered. I didn’t dare look at Minkus, who was still being scolded by Linda.
“Now, I told her she’d better hire a security firm, sir,” she was saying, “but I am only too happy to escort you out, I will not have this behavior, I don’t know how you people do things.”
A swell of voices intervened, some woke ABCD suggesting Linda ought not use that phrase, you people; a fobby uncle addressing Minkus, “Mr. Jhaveri, do not make us look so bad, like this only people will think Indians are trampling on each other, sets very bad reputation.”
Freed by the nosy, gossipy horde, Prachi and I arrived at the packed fashion show. The Jhaveri gold prodded me through my jeans but I didn’t dare transfer it to my bag. Anita stood on the raised platform while DJ Jai Zee polished his sunglasses on a bright red mesh Adidas T-shirt. Beneath, he wore ’90s Reebok track pants, white stripes on black. His hair was buzzed. His chin dimpled. He was grinning at Anita lasciviously.
“So hot,” a girl behind me whispered.
The models swished up and down the runway. On one skeletal girl: a crimson hoop skirt large enough to hide a flock of small children. On another: a corset-like bodice, scaly as a mermaid tail, culminating in ruffled pants. Prachi pooh-poohed a few. (“Gaudy,” she whispered.) She began taking notes as DJ Jai Zee name-dropped designers and Anita interspersed commentary. I turned my head, slowly as possible. I saw no sign of my armed rival. Still, I sweated.
When the white-clad women completed their walk, Anita declared that it was time for the raffle announcement. She held up a red box, shook it, then extracted a green ticket. She mouthed the numbers back to herself. I could see, from my seat, the fear passing over her, the momentary terror that she’d misremembered. But then she spoke them aloud. Some hundred brides fiddled with purses and wallets. Prachi was still writing on her legal pad when a lovely tall dark-skinned girl stood, only to have someone else say, “No, Sonia, that’s not you.”
“Prachi?” I whispered. “Check and see?”
Behind us: “Ey, wave yours, who says they’ll look?”
Prachi laughed. “I never win anything,” but then she dug in her purse as Anita read the numbers out once more. Prachi’s head swiveled in
