Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

"He sounds more like an anthropologist to me," Husseina countered. "We didn't exist until he discovered us and talked us up. We're his newest tribe."

Sunita missed Husseina's irony. "Hip-hip, Dynamo! I'm very okay with being a new breed of working girl."

"Please, career women." Tookie corrected her. "Dynamo's smitten with a harem full of career women." She refreshed her lipstick and blush. "Well, got to hit the Brigades so I can get through my shift. Anyone coming along?"

Husseina and Sunita declined, but Anjali eagerly accepted and hopped on behind Tookie on her Chetak. She was in the mood to celebrate Mr. GG's public homage to her. On the night of Minnie's dinner party she had been certain he would call her the next morning. No, she had expected him to surprise her by showing up at the front door of Bagehot House with a bigger bouquet than the one he had brought Minnie. What a sly suitor!

One of Tookie's co-workers bought the first round in the first pub; strangers bought the next several. A secret admirer (of Tookie or of Anjali-it wasn't clear which) bought them second drinks at the second pub; a leering man in a Ralph Lauren shirt bought the next; a plump middle-aged man wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses indoors bought a few more. By this time Tookie began to repeat what she was saying, and Anjali felt more like an Angie. After the third pub, Angie lost count of who paid for what at which club. This was only the second night she had tasted liquor. In Gauripur the fast boys in Peter's American English conversation group went out for beers after class maybe once a month, but they'd never asked her to join them, and if they had, she'd have been genuinely shocked. Women from respectable middle-class Gauripur families didn't drink, period. Her father drank local whiskey in private, as other neighborhood men who could afford to probably did. The really rich-and there were only four or five such families-guzzled, it was said, imported scotch and brandy in the back rooms of the Gauripur Gymkhana; menial laborers soaked up cheap country liquor in remote shacks on the fringes of town and apparently dropped dead on their way home. She'd read in the papers about illicit liquor distillers being jailed.

By eleven-thirty, when the bars were required to stop serving drinks, Angie was throwing up on the sidewalk. She couldn't remember any Bajaj Chetak ride back to Kew Gardens, let alone negotiating the steps from the front door to her room. At the lunch table the next day, Tookie gave her a big vitamin B-50 capsule and a lecture. There were two kinds of call-center boozers: big-city, upper-class practiced hedonists who could hold their liquor, and American-wannabe village bumpkins who got so puking drunk that they missed work. Angie prayed that Mr. GG hadn't witnessed her pub-crawling escapade the night before.

It was Parvati Banerji who called Anjali with the news that she had been admitted to CCI's two-week cram course and that she was expected at eight o'clock in the morning of the following Monday for the first class, which would be held in Reach for the Galaxy 3A, the apartment adjoining Usha's residence.

"Usha usually runs the accelerated program, but I'm pinch-hitting for her this session." Parvati went on to explain that Usha's elderly mother had undergone complicated surgery to repair a heart valve, and had suffered a post-op stroke. "Severe deficit, I'm afraid." There was no predicting when Usha would return full-time to CCI.

"Pinch-hitting?" Was that a form of Eve-teasing?

Parvati laughed. "Don't sweat it. Our course includes an intensive culture-familiarization unit." She made arrangements for the CCI minivan, which ferried students to and from the institute, to pick Anjali up in front of Bagehot House at 5 A.M. on Monday. "The gate's still standing, isn't it? Or have hoodlums carried it away to sell as scrap iron?"

"Not to worry, please. I'll be ready for shuttle bus by five minutes to five."

So her life, her real life, would begin (again) in six more days.

She was determined not to be overwhelmed by fellow students at CCI as she had been by call-center employees at Barista her first morning in Bangalore. To give herself an edge, Anjali went to bed early that night. She needed rest; she needed not just sleep but dream-free sleep. Banish the ghosts and night monsters. But she couldn't keep Baba away. He stormed into the room, screaming, "You're dead to me!" She scrunched her eyes shut and whispered, "You're dead to me too. Go haunt the 'Perfect Jamai Candidate' instead. He killed us both and got away." Baba melted into Subodh Mitra, and Subodh Mitra pulled her to a sitting position on the bed and, morphing into Ali, dirty-danced around her to a Bollywood soundtrack.

SOMETIME THAT NIGHT Husseina rattled the beaded curtain to Anjali's makeshift room, startling her out of bed. She'd been deep in an anxiety dream, and she wasn't certain she was actually awake. Husseina pressed a painted fingernail to her full lips and motioned for Anjali to follow her down the hall to her room, which, according to Tookie, had been the bridal chamber in which Minnie the blushing bride had yielded to the dashing, retired army officer Maxie.

A half-packed overnight case lay open on the four-poster bed. "I believe in traveling light," Husseina announced, smiling. "I'm leaving tonight. I'm so outta here, I'm already gone."

I'm awake, Anjali thought. This is happening. A dump? But that was unthinkable; Queen Husseina was not subject to the fate of commoners like Mira of Mangalore or Anjali of Gauripur. "Going home? Why?"

Husseina took in Anjali's look of shock and broke into a laugh that ended in a coughing fit. "Home to Hyderabad? What exactly is my home?" She flung open the doors of her almirah and pulled out the dresser drawers. Opulence! What was it like to be so rich? Anjali wondered, coveting Husseina's clothes, shoes, jewelry, stacks of wispy lingerie. She felt Husseina's arm slip around her shoulder and smelled Husseina's brand of sandalwood soap. She gave a squeeze, then let go. "They'll look even better on you, Anjali."

Of all the questions she had, Anjali could only ask, "Why?" Meaning, why are you torturing me with this display of all the stuff you own?

"Why am I leaving, or why am I giving all of this to you?" She tugged a slinky silk kameez off its hanger. "It's just a little trade, Anjali. My clothes for your clothes. It's a very good deal for you. It's something girlfriends do all the time, isn't it? Your jeans and T-shirts for all this. I'll throw in some underwear too." She scrunched the kameez into a ball and lobbed it into the open suitcase.

"But my things aren't even clean." Why are you doing this? But as in a dream, the words wouldn't come out.

"So? Bobby wants me to wear jeans tonight. Did I ever tell you about Bobby?"

"You're engaged to a cousin in London," said Anjali. "At least that's what you keep saying."

"Bobby is my fiancé."

"He's in Bangalore?"

"Actually he's not my fiancé. We've been married for seven years. He flew in from Bradford last week. He's so British, I barely understand him."

Bradford dimmed the luster of Husseina the Mysterious. Married seven years? But she's my age! This was dream logic.

Husseina flopped on the bed beside the suitcase. "I haven't been entirely honest with everybody. Actually, I've never been partially honest with anybody. But an air of mystery can be useful in a town like Bangalore, can't it? The truth is always more shocking than lies, isn't it?"

Now who was babbling? But Husseina was talking into a vacuum, not expecting answers. "I've noticed," she continued, "you have a touch of mystery about you."

Guile, yes; mystery, absolutely not. "I wouldn't know the first thing about acting mysterious," Anjali mumbled, to which Husseina merely cocked her head and retorted, "Perfect! Appearing innocent is the first step."