Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

"Still in Djakarta, Mr. GG?" Now she was the one standing, his face at her tummy level, and she could read the shock and surprise on his face. She flashed her famous smile, and he hit SAVE and flipped the lid down.

"Miss Bose! You're looking very fit and happy."

I am.

"Very pert and glowing."

"It must be Minnie's mutton stew."

He laughed. "I assumed it was because you are in love."

She bantered back. "I am in love. With Bangalore."

"Why haven't you called?" he asked.

"I don't have a phone."

"Let's get you a mobile, then. You can't not be within reach by voice or text in this town."

"I don't have the money."

"Maybe not today, but you'll have it tomorrow. But only if you carry a mobile in your handbag."

And so, half an hour later, Anjali Bose of 1 Kew Gardens, Bangalore, had a tiny silver cell phone, paid for by Mr. GG. She could call her sister or her mother or anyone in the world as long as she had the person's number, which she didn't, except for that of Moni Lahiri and Usha Desai and, if she thought about it, Rabi Chatterjee and Peter Champion. The phone presented more options than she could possibly master. "Is there a master number I can call for jobs?" she joked, and Mr. GG put his telephone number on speed dial for her. There seemed to be no need in the world that the phone could not satisfy. Owning a cell phone wasn't quite as impressive as inspecting virtual buildings in foreign countries, but on that morning, just having one, even a simple model-an unheard-of extravagance, in her family experience-felt nearly as miraculous. For weeks she'd been watching how everyone on the streets of Bangalore used this remarkable device, even the Muslim ladies in their black burqas: clutching their husbands, holding their children, and chatting on their silvery little phones as they rode on the back of a motorbike. Tookie carried hers in her hand, like a second purse; Husseina's had been stashed in a secret pocket sewn into her custom-tailored salwar. Anjali wondered where Husseina was honeymooning with Bobby of Bradford; she was the first-time owner of a phone, with no one to call.

"Any other numbers?" Mr. GG asked.

"Put in my father's," she said, and gave him the familiar Gauripur number. A sudden image of the heavy black phone, on a stool in the living room, its thick, dust-clogged cord gnawed by mice, appeared in her mind's eye. That number and the house must now belong to a stranger.

"And Usha Desai," she said, then recited the number, which she'd memorized. "And this one"; she read the number from Moni's torn-off slip of paper. "Call it ML."

"That's not a lot of numbers for a popular young lady," Mr. GG said.

"Put in Peter," she said, and gave him the number. She wished she had memorized Rabi's California number. That would have impressed Mr. GG.

"And how are things at Bagehot House?" he asked when he had inputted the numbers.

"The building's still standing."

"I meant the old lady. How's she holding up?"

"Surviving. But her mind is failing."

"Appearances can be deceiving," he said, smiling. "I trust in only the durability of the virtual universe."

Her bargain with Mr. GG went unspoken; in exchange for a few smiles and bright comments, she'd get a lift back to Bagehot House. He bowed to her: "Your Daewoo is waiting, Miss Bose."

The starving, bedraggled, overwhelmed Anjali, the one who, weeks ago, almost had to be carried into the Daewoo, had plumped into a "pert and glowing"-Mr. GG's words-cell-phone-owning HotBook cover girl.

Once again, she was walking to the Daewoo.

Mr. GG held the door open, always the gentleman. Vacation brochures were scattered on the front seat. "You asked about Djakarta," he said, "but we wrapped that up three days ago. Right now"-he put a brochure into her hands-"I'm working here, on a very cool condominium development in Puerto Vallarta."

"A pristine desert lapped by sparkling seas," she read.

"Mexico," he said, obviously amused. Anjali could see that he enjoyed imparting to her his wider knowledge. "Those seas won't be sparkling or lapping for very long without some high-level intervention. The good thing is, we've done oversight in Qatar and Dubai so we know something about heat and sandstorms and what they do to swimming pools and golf courses and yacht basins and how huge the power and sewage and refrigeration problems can be. It's a fun project. It's like building a small country."

A fun project? In her English class, Peter Champion used to warn Anjali about this: "You'll hear fun used as an adjective. Resist it. Fun is a noun, not an adjective." Not to be outdone, or overwhelmed by Mr. GG's worldliness or the strange languages and place names he invoked, she said, "One of the girls in Bagehot House went to an American school in the Gulf." The news seemed to silence him.

A moment later, he completed her thought. "I know. The famous Husseina Shiraz. I think she's no longer in residence-am I right?"

How would he know that?

"Some big changes on the way," he said. "All we can do is stay one step ahead." The city traffic was thinner than it had been that morning, when Rajoo's chauffeur had, cursing and honking, dropped her off at the TOS tower; they were moving along well, too well. She didn't want the ride to be over.

Mr. GG must have noted her reluctance. "I want to show you something new," he said.

Cubbon Park, she hoped. Moni had mentioned Cubbon Park. She was a woman with a phone and a glow from being in love with love.

"We'll stop at my place on the way."

"Where is that?" She knew Kent Town and Indira Nagar; she knew of Dollar Colony because Parvati Banerji lived there and Rabi crashed with the Banerjis when in Bangalore. Mr. GG had to live in an upscale area, something like Dollar Colony. She imagined him pulling up with her in front of a gate guarded by two watchmen; she would walk on a graveled driveway that sliced a flowering garden in two; she would beam at his white-haired parents as they greeted her warmly. Did he have living parents? "I'd love to meet your relatives," she heard herself say.

"I said my place." He had two addresses, he explained, a family residence beyond Kent Town, where he lived with parents, the widowed sister-in-law, and an older brother and his wife and infant nephew-and a private office, with a kitchen and sleeping accommodations close to Vistronics.

Every day is today! The morning had served her well, and now she was ready for whatever the late afternoon might bring.

THE OFFICE-APARTMENT occupied a corner on the top floor of a modern six-story building overlooking the winding paths and gardens of Cubbon Park. Only a few tall, old trees obstructed the hazy view of the city. Those treetops sprawled beneath Anjali like a wild, tufted lawn.

"Tea?" Mr. GG asked. A small kitchen and pantry lay just off the dining area. The familiar splash of water in a kettle, the snapping on of the gas stove: calming, reassuring Indian sounds. She wasn't sure why he had brought her here. A virtual voyage to Puerto Vallarta? To Djakarta? As long as it wasn't Gauripur, Anjali Bose had no fear of him.

This was, after all, her second time in a man's bedroom. This one, unlike Peter Champion's, was orderly, well-appointed, its walls hung with cartoonlike paintings, architecture magazines spread in an arc, like a lady's fan, on the table. She liked what she saw, liked what she saw very much, and she realized she wasn't safe at all. A pleasant itch coursed up her arms, just as it had when Moni Lahiri had snapped her photo for his HotBook. After all, she could tell herself, it's not as though she'd awakened that morning, then coldly decided to visit her personal Barista on MG Road, and then gone over to Mr. GG, rousing him from his work with the intention of seducing him or letting him think he was seducing her. She was incapable of such plotting. Therefore, she was not guilty of planning it or even wishing it.