There was nothing to do but throw the skirts up and begin gnawing on the tight strings with my teeth. I loosened each secret pocket like this. The sexual tantrum of it all was not lost on me. Next door: an unarousing moan. Downstairs: one of the owners’ voices calling, Shubhaaaa!
I lined up the pieces on the peeling wooden desk and switched on the lamp. One mangalsutra. Three rings. Five bangles. A single jhumka earring. A tiny flower-shaped stud—for a nose? A rhomboid tikka. A few thousand dollars—grand theft—and yet only six or so months of lemonade. About the quantity I’d hoped to nab for myself, leaving the rest to Anjali Auntie.
I drank. The liquor stung. The warmth encircled my core.
The room, suddenly stifling. I jimmied the window, opened the drapes. That unpolluted night—not a lick of moon, no clouds within the gloaming, just an unmoving tarmac sky.
Everyone wants something from someone else. I paced and eyed the gold pieces and swigged again, stomach sloshing acidly. Did I owe Anjali Dayal anything? She, like her daughter, had left me alone with grief and guilt for ten years. I grunted massively and threw myself on the bed next to the rumpled Manish Motilal.
I remembered how to do it, didn’t I? Fire. Flux. Lemons and sugar. I recalled with clarity the singsong of those foreign words; the incantation had meandered in and out of my dreams for years. But there were other substances that went into the vessels whose names I’d never learned. When I’d asked, Anjali Auntie had brushed me off—It’s untranslatable, she’d say.
The truth: I didn’t know how to make the damned thing on my own. I was useless without the Dayals. They had made me. I couldn’t remake myself. I was going to be sick. I slept.
• • •
The pounding on the door—it could only be the cops. I smelled something on the floral duvet, dribbles of my own vomit. I rubbed the duvet into itself to spread the vomit, as though that would limit the stench. My eyes filled. I tasted sweat and metal as tears and snot slicked down my cheeks. I wiped and wiped on my T-shirt, staining it like a little boy. I had only wanted to see that it everyone kept talking about. That thing they all knew. That conviction about love, about the absolution love brings. I saw myself in the mirror, the T-shirt discolored with bodily gunk, cheeks beginning to darken with stubble. Redness veined my eyes.
When the cops cuffed me, what motives could I offer? That I’d only wanted to give the girl I loved a bit of jewelry? I pictured it like that—me, declaring I loved her, articulating the thing I’d not spoken aloud, saying it for the first time in salacious newsprint.
The pounding again. “Sir, sir, sir.” I wondered if an officer of the law would be so respectful. “Housekeeping, sir.”
I gagged and this time made it to the bathroom.
“Not right now!” I shouted after I’d rinsed my mouth.
I plugged my phone in to tap around on the Wi-Fi. What would I search: sanskrit gold smelting rituals? Shooting santa clara bridal expo? As soon as the white light flickered back on, glowing lustrous, the thing freaked, buzzing and buzzing, text after text, voice mail after voice mail, from my parents and Prachi. My eyes stabilized on the last message shuddering on the screen as the phone finally lay limp on the nightstand.
From Anita: Neil. I know you’re okay. I *know* you’re not doing something stupid. We just need to hear from you. I trust you. I love you.
“Marysville?” she said when I called. “Where the fuck is that?”
“I just got on the highway and started heading toward Berkeley and then realized I couldn’t stop there if anyone was, I don’t know, after me? So I kept driving and when I saw Marysville, I thought, oh, yeah—”
“Your mind is a messy place, isn’t it?”
I was crying again, hadn’t in ages and now couldn’t stop, tears of shock or relief or just the slackening of a body tightened by years of time and fear.
“You can’t drive, can you?” She sounded soggy, too.
I sniffed. “I’m crashing. I was kind of high. And then drunk. I think I’m still drunk.”
I could hear her head shake through the speaker. “Marysville?” I began to explain where it was, but someone said something I couldn’t hear on the other side. “Huh,” she said. “Apparently my mom knows where it is. We’re coming to you. Stay put.”
“Ani,” I squeezed out pleadingly. “What happened? Back there?”
“Which part?”
• • •
Minkus Jhaveri was taken into custody on the count of unlawful possession of a concealed firearm. But first, he went to the hospital for the bullet wound he had inflicted on his own left calf. The utter shock of seeing his new rival, Linda, heroically reaching for what he perceived to be
