Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

"Way cool-did I hear the magic words 'new girl in town'?" a bearded, mustached man in Ray-Bans called out. Angie assessed and dismissed: too short and dark, too loud and outgoing, too much laughing and joking, the mustache too full and hairy, and the double strand of gold chains definitely unnecessary. Probably a local boy, she thought, trying to ingratiate himself with cooler, big-city types, pushing too hard. If he'd been in a Bollywood movie, he'd be the hero's comic sidekick, too itchy and impetuous, cracking too many jokes in a too-high-pitched voice, too eager to please, getting the turndown from every girl he meets. He slung his arm around a tubular girl with spiky hair in a very tight T-shirt from which she threatened to spill at any minute.

"Do you have a room yet?" Javaroomyet? "Say no, we can squeeze you in." He said his name was Mike and his English was easy and a little coarse. He introduced the others: Millie and Darren. The tubular girl was Suzie. Darren was a handsome boy in a T-shirt and jean jacket, more her type, Punjabi-tall and fair, with none of Mike's strained flash and swagger. Millie was the classic "tall, slim and wheat-complexioned" girl of the marriage ads, with highlighted hair, twirling her cigarette with practiced ease.

"Can't smoke in the residence. Can't smoke on the job. Gotta get my fix when I can," she said, lighting another.

"I'm Darren. This week, anyway." Darren sniggered. "I think I'm going to kill him off. I fancy myself a Brad."

"You're not cool enough for Brad, lover boy," said Suzie. "He broke up with Jen last year."

"He's a has-been," laughed one of the girls. "He's with Angelina now. She'll spit him out her backside!" The girl looked like a servant; you'd never think she knew a word of English, let alone loud, aggressive American English. She called herself Cindy.

"So let me lay it out for you," Cindy continued. "If you say you're Brad, they'll say where's Angelina? Then what'll you say? Quick, quick, Old Bitch'll be listening in, hears anguished attempt of expendable agent to extricate himself from the deep shit he's gotten himself into… and you're out on your ass, wasting company time just 'cause you wanted to be Brad Pitt. Not cool, dude."

"I was Jen a few weeks ago," said Millie. "That's all I ever got. 'Where's Brad?' I said, 'Brad? Brad's so last week, man. Now what-say we cure your printer blues.'"

"Yeah, well, HP's a little loosey-goosey," said Darren.

"Motorola's a little uptight," said Mike.

"Mine'd shit bricks," said Cindy. "Play by the rules, that's all we ever get. You got a name-stick with it."

"Dudes, dudes, what is this, a bitch session? What'll our new friend think?" said Darren.

What could she think? She was numb with confusion. Brick-shitting was a new one on her. Shit, piss, fuck, asshole: so much to learn. And cool, cool, cool: everything cool or not cool, but never warm. These must be call-center agents, her competition and would-be colleagues. Her neck hurt from keeping up with the repartee. She felt the way she had on a family visit to Kolkata so many years before, recognizing the Bangla words but missing the meaning. She should know all this, it should all be second nature, this was the currency of her deliverance from Gauripur-but she truly didn't understand 90 percent of it. These people seemed better than she was, even though their vocabulary was minimal and they looked like servants or movie prostitutes, except maybe Darren, who was now pouting because he couldn't play Brad.

"Gotta keep it fresh," said Mike. "Russell Crowe's still good, but there's the bloody accent. Nicole's great. Bill and Hillary. George and Laura, but when you use those names, they might hang up on you. Lots of names out there. What's yours, honey?"

When she said Angie, Millie and Suzie admitted to having been Angies too, on different days. Suzie said, "I stopped being Angie when one American guy said, 'Yeah, you're Angie like I'm Mother Teresa.' They're catching on. Gotta be careful."

"They got 'tudes," said Darren.

"Yeah, but we got game," Mike responded. They high-fived. Angie wanted to cry, so she smiled, and Mike turned to her. "Bitchin' name, Angie. Real cool. Great smile. Love it." Still too enthusiastic, not cool, she decided. How could a bitchin' name, if she heard right, be cool? She remembered a favorite Championism: used-car-salesman friendly. She felt better.

Angie or Suzie or whatever, leaning across the table with her breasts all but pouring out, and one of them, she saw, with a butterfly tattoo fluttering up from the dark interior, would have caused a riot in Gauripur. And the tall girl with highlighted hair, calling herself Angie on Tuesday and Saturday and Millie on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, who had to smoke on breaks and at the coffee shop, said she was looking for a new roomie at two thousand a month with kitchen privileges. Angie said she hoped she had a room through a relative in Kew Gardens, a statement that caused no dropped silverware, no raised eyes. Two more boys from a neighboring table, a Steve and a Charlie, offered her a ride on their bikes, which, too late, she realized meant motorcycles. They were with girls, a ponytailed one named Gloria and a green-haired one named Roxie, "from Chicago," she said. "Where else?"

Ah, but did they teach you a Chicago accent? she wondered, remembering Peter. That'll be five dallers.

"Mukesh Sharma called again last night," Cindy said, "poor fucking loser, I almost feel sorry for him. He calls himself Mickey now, but it's the same old Mukky."

"You can block him," said Mike. "A guy calls support three, four times a week-they'll deal with him. You can say whatever you want to him, even the Old Bitch'll back you."

"Mukesh Sharma is a real Hannibal Lecter. He creeps me out from twelve thousand miles away," said Suzie. "I don't know why they let those guys into the States. University of Illinois used to have some class. I keep hoping I get him-he won't have the balls to call back again."

Mike started singing, "I get no kick from Champagne." He had a surprising voice: deep, American. "Mukky Sharma lives in Champaign."

"Well, no wonder he's crazy," Angie said, "living in Champagne!" Everyone laughed, and she didn't know why what she said was so funny. The sun was so bright, pouring directly into her eyes and boring into her skull. How does a person even manage to live in Champagne? They drink it like crazy in Bollywood movies. What's the word- flutes? An actual Indian name like Mukesh Sharma sounded strangely comforting in this ersatz America, with all its Mikes and Steves and Charlies.

"Indian guys in the States," Millie explained. "They're the sickest perverts. They spend all day in the lab, then they spend all night on the Indian marriage sites. They're so fucking horny, they invent computer problems just so they can be patched through to Bangalore and talk to an Indian girl. They don't know we have their name and credit history and previous calls on our screens as soon as they call in."

Cindy was playing to an attentive circle. "He goes, 'Hi, my name is Mickey. What is your good name please?'" She did a good imitation of a certain kind of Indian accent-Angie's father's, for example. "I say, 'Angie.' He goes, 'Am-I-detecting-an-Anjali-under-that-Angie-disguise, Miss Angie?' I nearly said, 'No, but am I detecting some kind of sick shit under Mickey?' What he really wants to know is, what's the weather like in Bangalore today? What's playing at the Galaxy? Do we still hang out at Forum? What about Styx or Pub World? What's your real name and where do you come from and are you married and how old are you and 'Please, Miss Angie, your height in centimeters…' Gawd, I hate this job!"

Darren raised his arms. "Silence, please. Kolkata Cutie needs to hear our tribute to Mukky Sharma." Everyone looked at Angie, raising their coffee cups in her direction, and began singing in what seemed to her nonsense syllables: