money, she was going back-though not to her hometown of Coimbatore -to open a beauty shop. At night she clutched her lumpy pillow, closed her eyes, and was transported to it: the brass bells on the double doors (curtained for privacy) that tinkled as clients came in, the deliciously air-conditioned room walled with shining mirrors, the aproned employees who greeted her with polite, folded hands, the capacious swivel chairs where women could get their eyebrows threaded or their hair put up in elaborate lacquered buns for weddings or relax while their faces were massaged with a soothing yogurt and sandalwood paste.
Then Mr. Mangalam had arrived at the visa office and derailed her.
Malathi’s roommates agreed that Mr. Mangalam was the best-looking man at the consulate. With his swashbuckling mustache, designer sunglasses, and a surprisingly disarming smile, he looked much younger than his age (which, Malathi had surreptitiously dipped into his file to discover, was forty-five). He was the only middle-aged man she knew without a paunch and ear hairs. But alas, these gifts that Nature had heaped on Mr. Mangalam were of no use to her, because there already existed a Mrs. Mangalam, smiling elegantly from the framed photo on his desk. (The photo frames had been provided by the consulate to all its officers, with strict instructions to fill and display them. It would make the Americans who came to the office feel more comfortable, they were told, since Americans believed that the presence of a smiling family on a man’s table was proof of his moral stability.)
Malathi, a practical young woman, had decided to write Mr. Mangalam off. This, however, turned out to be harder than she had expected, for he seemed to have taken a liking to her. Malathi, who harbored no illusions about her looks (dark skin, round cheeks, snub nose) was mystified by this development. But there it was. He smiled at her as he passed by the customer-service window in the morning. The days it was her turn to brew tea for the office, he praised the taste and asked for an extra cup. When, to celebrate Tamil New Year, he brought in a box of Maisoorpak, it was to her he offered the first diamond-shaped sweet. On occasions when she stepped into his office to consult him about an applicant’s papers, he requested her to sit, as polite as though she were a client. Sometimes he asked how she was planning to spend the weekend. When she said she had no plans, he looked wistful, as though he would have liked to invite her to go someplace with him-the Naz 8 Cinema, maybe, where the latest Shahrukh Khan mega-hit was playing, or Madras Mahal, which made the crispiest dosas but was too expensive for her to afford.
Could anyone blame her, then, for visiting his office a little more often than was necessary? For accepting, once in a while, a spoonful of the silvered betel nuts he kept in his top drawer? For listening when he told her how lonely he was, so far from home, just like herself? For allowing his fingers to close over hers when she handed him a form? In idle moments it was her habit to doodle on scraps of paper. One day she found herself writing, amid vines and floral flourishes,
Today, Mr. Mangalam had pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
Malathi had to admit that the action, though it surprised her, was not totally unexpected. Hadn’t he, just yesterday, placed in her palm a small golden cardboard box? She had opened it to find four white chocolates, each shaped like a shell and tucked into its own nest. Try one, he urged. When she shook her head bashfully, he took one out, ran it over her lips, and pushed it into her mouth. The crust had been crunchy, but the inside-it was the softest, sweetest thing she’d ever tasted. Guilt and elation had filled her throat as she swallowed it.
That same guilty elation had made her scalp tingle as he pressed his lips against her mouth. If he had groped or grabbed, she would have pushed him away. But he was gentle; he murmured respectfully as he nuzzled her ear. (Oh, how deliciously his mustache tickled her cheek!) Though Malathi had never been kissed before, thanks to the romantic movies she’d grown up on, she knew what to do. She lowered shy eyes and leaned into his chest, letting her lips brush his jaw even as a worrisome thought pricked her: by dallying with a married man, she was piling up bad karma. When he drew in his breath with a little shudder, a strange power surged through her. But then her glance fell on Mrs. Mangalam’s photo, which sat next to a small sandalwood statue of Lord Ganapathi. For the first time she noticed that Mrs. Mangalam’s shoulder-length hair was exquisitely styled-obviously from a tiptop-quality beauty salon. She displayed on her right hand (which was artfully positioned under her chin) three beautiful diamond rings. Had the man whose face was currently buried in Malathi’s throat given them to her? Mrs. Mangalam smiled sanguinely at Malathi-sanguinely, and with some pity. The smile indicated two things: first, that she was the kind of woman Malathi could never hope to become; and second, that no matter what follies her husband was indulging in right now, ultimately he would return to her.
That smile had made Malathi untangle herself from Mr. Mangalam. When he bowed over her hand to plant a kiss on the inside of her wrist, she had snatched her hand back. Ignoring his queries as to what was wrong, she had fixed her sari and her expression and hurried out of the office.
Before she had taken ten steps, the wheel of karma began rolling, and retribution struck in the form of the earthquake.
IN THE SPARSE GLOW OF THE MINI-FLASHLIGHT, MALATHI SAW the black man holding someone by the elbow, pulling her to the center of the room. It was the Indian girl-though could one really call her Indian, brought up as she had clearly been in decadent Western ways? From the first, Malathi had disliked her because of her hip-hugging jeans, the thick college book she carried, as if to advertise her intelligence, and her American impatience. But now when the man grasped her arm and the girl gave a yelp of pain, Malathi couldn’t stop herself from sending out an answering cry. She regretted it immediately, because the man let go of the girl and started walking toward her. She ducked under the counter, though without much hope. The glass that normally sequestered her from the people who came into the visa office had shattered in the quake. It would be easy for him to lean over and grab her.
The man did lean over the counter, though he did not reach for her. He was saying something, but panic had siphoned away her English. He repeated the words more slowly. The syllables ricocheted around in her head, unintelligible. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine the beauty shop, with herself safe in its calm center. But the floor rose up, the mirrors cracked and fell from the walls, and the ground was full of shards like those under her hands.
Behind her she heard Mr. Mangalam’s door open. Glass crunched under his unsteady shoes as he walked toward her and the black man. Though she had not premeditated it, she found herself flinging herself at him and pummeling his chest, crying out in Tamil, “It’s our fault! It’s our fault! We made this happen!”
When the earthquake had hit, Mr. Mangalam had ducked underneath his desk. Subsequently, the desk had slid to the other end of the room, trapping him against a wall. He had pushed and kicked for several minutes before managing to extricate himself. When he rose to his feet, disconcerted by how badly his hands were shaking, his eyes had fallen on his prize possession-no, not the photo, which lay on the carpet smiling with sly triumph, but the sandalwood Ganapathi that his mother had given him-
Mr. Mangalam did not have any prior experience of earthquakes. He had, however, dealt with hysterical women before. He took hold of Malathi’s shoulders and shook her until she fell silent. “Don’t be stupid,” he told her in Tamil, using the icy tone that had worked well in past situations. “It was an earthquake. Earthquakes have nothing to do with people.” In English he added, “Pull yourself together and listen to what this gentleman is asking you.”
Cameron didn’t like how the officer had shaken the woman and wanted to say something about it, but there were more pressing issues. “Do you have a first-aid kit?” he asked again, enunciating the words as clearly as he could. “A flashlight? How about a radio with batteries? Tylenol? Is the phone working?”
“I checked the phone in my office,” Mr. Mangalam said. “The line’s dead.” He repeated the other items for Malathi, substituting terms she would be familiar with-
Dazed as she seemed, Cameron didn’t expect much from her. But in a few minutes he saw a bobbing circle of
