That no one had died did not alleviate my dread or guilt. Regarding the first, there was still the matter of Minkus’s opportunity to out me to the police. And indeed, in the weeks following the expo, a pair of portly disgruntled cops would arrive at my Ashby Avenue apartment to follow up on Mr. Moo-koond Juvvery’s complaints about my odd behavior, his insistent claim that I was a bad guy. But by then, the evidence of our crime had long since been smelted away, and little came of the inquiry; perhaps the cops in the end found the whole thing to be a weird cultural entanglement beneath the dignity of the state.
“What he was doing was illegal either way,” Anita said over the phone, as the three generations of women sped northeast from Sunnyvale. “The guy didn’t have the right permits. He must have just skirted the metal detectors. But, Neil. Call your sister. Tell her you and I had a fight earlier, and that’s why you were weird, and then when Minkus came at you, you just freaked, you’re a panicky guy so you panicked, et cetera. Then we’ll get there and do the thing. It’ll all be over soon.”
I left the television on mute while I called my parents, then Prachi. A crime procedural played. Two detectives surveyed the bloody floor of a New York apartment, traded morbid puns. I was telling my family, then Chidi, that I was okay, that the dude had seemed to have it out for me since I fell down on his cart, that some primal instinct had sent me fleeing.
My mother was weepy, which was infectious, and before I could stop myself, I was crying again. “It’s okay, rajah,” she said. “It’s okay now.” (For a long while after, she talked often, and scathingly, of Minkus, as though critiquing him could undo the horror he had nearly inflicted on her baby boy; she told people this was what happened when you let your brown children go off copying the ways of white people—hunting-schmunting, shooting-wooting.)
I apologized to Prachi—I didn’t have the lehenga, I said. I wasn’t sure where it was.
“Honestly,” she said, after assuring me that what mattered most was my safety. “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to wear white, and Amma can suck it up.”
Chidi just whistled. “Fucking A,” he said. “How are we supposed to live forever if you plonk yourself in the middle of shit like this, huh?”
When I was done reassuring everyone, I shoved all the gold under the mattress, left the lehenga on the duvet, and half jogged back to the corner store to buy a toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant. From the Goodwill next door I grabbed a cheap Hanes T-shirt. Arriving back at the motel, clutching my loot, I found three willowy Indian women, all with the same thick hair, the same sudden widening of the hips, the same swanlike neck, standing outside room 214. One of them was pounding, deliberate and furious.
“Ani,” I said. Three faces turned toward me. Each one a startling inheritor of another. Lakshmi Joshi’s face was lined, but she was curiously youthful in the eyes, which were lighter—wet sand, rather than muddy brown—and more judgmental than Anita’s or Anjali Auntie’s as they assessed me. Anjali Auntie looked the oldest—older even than her mother. Her hair was white and gray in the front, though black around the top and back—it had only been streaked with silver when I saw her in June. It was as though age were imperfectly, somehow unscientifically encroaching.
Each woman had a large bag slung over her shoulder—supplies, I thought, relieved. We could, in moments, eliminate all evidence of the crime.
For a wild moment I had the urge to touch Anjali Auntie’s feet the way my mother once forced me to touch my ajji’s.
“Hi,” I said, and let us all into the room.
Anjali Auntie smiled irresolutely. The frailness of her hand was matched in her face, too.
“This is my grandmother.” Anita lifted her elbow unnecessarily in her ajji’s direction.
Lakshmi Joshi sniffed pointedly.
“Yeah, um. I should shower.” I lifted the mattress up, handed the gold to Anita. In the bathroom, I left the water scalding. Burn me away, I wished it. I emerged, smelling better, to find Anita and her mother watching as Lakshmi swirled some clear liquid in a dish soap bottle.
We gathered into an assembly line, intuitively. I stood at the far edge, pulling tools from bags. Me and the witches three.
The procedure this time was different—a distinct recipe. I laid out on the table several round steel boxes, three long spoons, two more of those dish soap bottles. Lakshmi muttered rapidly, monotonously, trailing through a longer invocation I didn’t recognize. The old woman was efficient, hiking her lavender pallu up her shoulder a few times as it slipped, barely stopping to breathe as she placed each piece of gold in a stone basin. I handed Anita the bottles; she passed them to her ajji. The few times our eyes met I saw that she was as disoriented by the changed procedure as I was. Were we brewing another potion entirely?
Anjali Auntie seemed to need a wall or a chair to hold her up. Once or twice Anita’s ajji looked at her and paused her recitation so the daughter could repeat after the mother in a faint voice. Various liquids were squeezed out, and Lakshmi began to massage the gold. It didn’t liquefy as I remembered. It took on a batter-like quality, thick and jiggly on the surface.
“Light,” Lakshmi Joshi said, breaking her rhythm. Anita extracted a butane canister. I took so many steps backward, I nearly buckled onto the bed.
Anita flicked on the blue flame, which angled steeply over the basin.
