Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

"Thank you for what you did." The night in the holding cell in the police station felt more immediate than the weeks as a Bagehot Girl with prospects. Gratitude was a higher form of love than lust. "I can't imagine what would have happened to me if you…"

He wasn't listening. He undid his seat belt with an angry snap. "I can't believe what I'm seeing." He strode out of the car without closing the door. "They're tearing this down without a permit."

Anjali let herself out but kept her distance from him. Mr. GG was staring past the bulldozers at the side of Mad Minnie's house, with its broken windows and fluttering curtains, its missing front door and torn, trampled-on banquet-night tablecloths on the floor of its foyer. The house, though structurally intact, seemed to have rolled over, like an ocean liner on its side. He might have been crying. It seemed possible; he was folding his handkerchief. "This is… tragic." He still hadn't faced her, so he might have been consoling Bagehot ghosts.

In profile, Mr. GG's jaw, flecked with gray, was just a little slack. Still, he was a handsome man, handsomer in profile than straight on. She thought, I'm standing here next to a man I've slept with. I'm standing here where I was handcuffed and dragged into a paddy wagon like a dangerous criminal, and I'm not talking about it. I'm acting as though were two normal people on a romantic date on a starry evening in Bangalore.

Some of Asoke's squatters must have stayed on in the partially cleared jungle. Anjali heard low whistling and then a pariah dog's howl of pain. Mr. GG shuddered. "Fearful symmetry," he muttered.

To lighten his mood, she made a callow effort at flirting. "I so envy you, Girish. You get to go to fun places like Mexico and call it work." She stroked the tiger lily in her hair. A petal felt wilted.

"I shan't always have a get-out-of-jail-free card, Anjali."

"What makes you think I'll need another one?" She liked the perky sound of her own voice.

"Come with me to Mexico."

What is he saying? I owe him more than I've given?

"And maybe on to Haiti. Depends on the deal coming through."

I'm just another business deal? Is that how life is?

"Can't promise Haiti."

"Pick up and go? Just like that?" Like rich-kid Rabi? Like terrorist Husseina?

"Give yourself a vacation. You deserve it."

"Vacation from what? Evil forces? Minnie's dead." She got carried away by self-pity. "So's my family. Dead. You are looking at a penniless orphan, a parasite, a charity project." The horror was that she wasn't lying, just exaggerating. "I don't need a vacation, I need a job."

"If you want a job, I can set up an interview with the head of human resources at RecoverySys. He was an MBA classmate. We'll get you in on the ground floor of the debt-collection industry." Mr. GG faced her squarely. "Now, what's your passport situation? Don't have one, no problem. I can expedite your getting one."

"In other words, you want me to know you are a big shot?"

"No. In other words, I want you with me in Mexico."

She could have screamed. Yes, I'm flattered, I'm grateful. Drive me to- night to Cubbon Park. Have your peon pick up my stuff from Parvati's tomorrow. She would spell her first name as Anjolie on her first-ever passport. She said, "Mr. Gujral, I shall consider your offer and make my counteroffer when you get back from your trip."

Mr. GG grinned. "You were born to be a debt collector, Miss Bose."

All the way back to Dollar Colony, he gushed about the sad, stark majesty of Mayan ruins. She imagined herself scrambling up the stony sides of an alien people's monuments. Every death made possible a new beginning. And then she thought, with a suddenness and finality that shocked her, I don't want a passport. My new beginning is here, but different from Baba's and Ma's generation. They had to fight the British; their big fight was to establish an independent India and create a nonaligned world. Theirs was a struggle-lost, in Baba's case-against communalism and caste-ism and poverty and superstition and too much religion. They were lucky. Their fights weren't easy, but simpler and clearer than mine with Mr. GG. Poverty terrified Baba. But I'm terrified, tempted, and corrupted by the infusion of vast sums of new capital. Light and angles, that was it. Truth revealed in an imaginary viewfinder. She stepped out of her Photoshopped Bangalore. Aloud, she said, "I get no kick from Champagne. Spend too much time away from India, and it drives you crazy."

In the Banerjis' driveway, she opened the passenger-side door to let herself out. GG grasped her arm and held her back. "I don't want you to go. Let's get you a passport. Visas are no problem. I have contacts. Don't just walk away from me."

She wondered what the night watchman and the dog sitter were making of the scene. The dogs would be curled up in bed with Auro and Parvati. "And what would you expect of me in Mexico?" she asked, swinging her sandaled feet out of the car. Porch light glinted off the silver anklets.

"Be my-"

Then Mr. GG stopped himself. His face was so pleading, so pained, she almost got back inside. "No," he said, "that came out wrong. Be whatever you want to be. If you don't want Mexico, fine. There's Indonesia. There's America. There's the world… I want you with me."

What a sad, pathetic thing it is, a man's cry for what? Favors? Companionship? His private little prostitute?

She felt a surge of power. Glad she had the night watchman and the dog walker as witnesses, she kissed Mr. GG on the mouth. "You'll be back," she whispered, stepping out of the Daewoo. She was careful not to slam the door.

Sometime late that night, in the hours when Anjali never slept, she was startled by a sudden, piercing whine. One of the advantages of Dollar Colony was the silence of the dark hours: no cars, no rickshaw horns, no bicycle bells, no cowherd flicking a stick on buffalo flanks. She ran to her window, the one that looked out over the narrow lane, but saw no one. Then she realized the watchman wasn't at his post. He must have gone to the servants' bathroom behind the main house. And the dog walker? Of course: he was with Swati. He'd left the house unguarded.

And then she identified the source of the whine. By moonlight and dim streetlamp she could make out the shape of Ahilya lying on her back, her legs straight up. Anjali had never seen a dog in such a posture, and as she watched-and watched-Ahilya didn't move.

A white van prowled the lane at bicycle speed, then parked, blocking the driveway. Two men in dark, hooded sweatshirts descended from the van and silently opened the heavy iron gate just wide enough to squeeze through. In Dollar Colony, no commercial vans circulated at night. No one was on foot at two A.M.

Ahilya was dead.

Anjali's instinct was to lock herself in the bedroom. How could two men break into the house? There were many windows on the ground floor, the living room was a wall of windows looking out to the garden, but shattering them would make a noise. Parvati trusted her dogs to sound the alarm, but one of them was already dead, and Malhar, despite his bulk, teeth, muzzle, and perpetual growling, was innately timid.

She knew it was up to her to take the initiative. Auro and Parvati were asleep in their ground-floor suite. Even if burglars had driven a truck into the living room and begun demolishing the walls with hammers, Auro's snoring would muffle the noise. Anjali and Rabi shared the second floor, separated by a second living room, but she couldn't bring herself to open his door and enter, as he so jauntily did with hers. And what good would he be in a crisis? He'd want to take a picture. She opened her own door and listened with a kind of attention she'd never exercised, because the last thing in the world she expected was a stranger in the house.