Chitra Divakaruni - One Amazing Thing

Malathi, too, had subscribed to this worldview until Mr. Mangalam began to single her out. As his attentions grew, an illicit hope blossomed in her breast. She found herself thinking, If he really cares for me… She changed her break times to match his, though she knew that people would gossip. Several times a day she went into his office to ask what to do with applications she knew perfectly well how to handle. Waiting for his response, she leaned against the closed bathroom door in a casual pose that showed off her curves. These strategies led to the gift of chocolate and to today’s kiss, but not to the words she most wanted to hear: an invitation to use his bathroom, which would have countered the smug smile on the wife’s face and proved to Malathi that Mangalam did not consider her just another time-pass girl.

Barricaded in his office today, Malathi had realized that this was her chance to explore it; once her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, she went through it systematically. She discovered that the bathroom was nothing like the girls’ fantasies. It was a tiny rectangle into which a sink and a toilet had been crowded. Like the rest of the building, it was old and dispirited. The mirror’s edges felt uneven and worn under her fingers, and the toilet-paper holder wobbled. The only personal items in the bathroom were an air-freshening spray that smelled of chemicals and a bottle of mouthwash. Malathi had used it, swirling generous amounts around in her mouth. It was the least Mangalam and the universe owed her. The mouthwash tasted minty and bitter. Like love, she thought. Then she clicked her tongue, annoyed at having come up with a cliché like that. Finally, she had dipped into his file cabinets, not really expecting to find anything. But her fingers had closed around an item that made her grin fiercely in the dark. For now, she would keep that discovery to herself.

When Malathi led him into this sagging, cramped space, Cameron couldn’t have been more delighted if he’d been ushered into a spa suite at a resort hotel. He checked the faucet to make sure that the water was running clean and asked if there were any containers that could be filled. There were. The party supplies for the consulate were housed, in spite of several memos of protest from Mangalam to the people upstairs, in a cabinet in the back of the visa office. Foraging, they discovered two fake-crystal punch bowls complete with ladles, a large saucepan for boiling tea and another for coffee (God forbid the flavors should be mixed), and one hundred bon voyage! bowls purchased for the farewell party thrown for Mangalam’s predecessor. There were also several matchboxes from Madras Mahal and sixteen packets of blue cake candles, which got everyone excited until Cameron pointed out that lighting any kind of fire was out of the question in case a gas line had ruptured somewhere.

Still, people felt better than they had in a long time, chatting as they lined up in front of the bathroom. Soon the countertop was lined with filled bowls. They shimmered like fairy pools when Cameron passed his flashlight over them, giving the room an unexpected festive aura. Cameron gave each person a bon voyage! bowl that they could fill from the bathroom faucet any time they felt thirsty. This way, he said, the water in the containers could be saved for the future, though probably they would be rescued before they needed it.

Uma could tell Cameron was thankful that he could say something everyone wanted to hear. There were other words he was holding back. She heard them faintly in the back of her head. Thetap water might run out . There’s food for only one more meal . She was glad he did not say those things, allowing everyone happiness for the moment.

When it was her turn to use the bathroom, Uma looked at herself in the mirror in the pencil light, which Cameron had given her. (The bigger flashlight was to be used only for communal activities, such as handing out food, or in case of danger.) In its narrow, angled ray her face was gaunt and more interesting than it had ever been. She touched her cheekbones, which had taken on a sharp, tragic definition, and wondered what had gone through the minds of the others as they examined their reflections. She drank three cups of water and splashed water on her neck, amazed at how normal this simple action made her feel. The pain in her wrist was still there, but like a nagging old relative to whose complaints she had grown accustomed. With the ebbing of pain, her natural curiosity resurfaced; she found herself imagining the lives of her companions, their secret reasons for going to India.

Cameron suggested that people get some rest. If the phone lines were still down when they awoke, they would have to try to open the door. A murmur swirled through the room. Uma felt a prickle at the back of her neck, half anticipation, half dread. Then her mind moved on to the untold stories that lay around her, just out of reach. Would she get a chance to discover some of them before they made it out of here? The possibility invigorated her.

When Cameron said that they needed two people to keep watch, she volunteered.

MR. PRITCHETT, THE OTHER VOLUNTEER, SAT UP STRAIGHT IN his chair and looked out across the room. Though they had turned off the flashlights, he was surprised at how much he could see. Were his eyes growing used to the darkness, like those of deep-sea creatures? Or was he imagining the bodies, some passed out, exhausted with worry, some tossing restively. Wherever possible, they huddled under desks and chairs, forming small, compact mounds. Some slept close to others, taking comfort from proximity. Some had staked out the corners, their limbs splayed out. Ah, the alphabet of limbs. How much it revealed of what people didn’t want to give away.

Mr. Pritchett tried to ascertain which of the bodies was Mrs. Pritchett’s. He had been careful to note where she had been sitting when Cameron turned off the light, but now he could not find her. He scanned the room from one dark edge to the other. Had she moved? He imagined her scuttling crablike through the debris into the far recesses of the office, where she disappeared. Then he was disconcerted at having conjured up such a bizarre image. But that’s how it had been since she had landed in the emergency room: whenever he didn’t know what she was doing, his brain, usually so clear and orderly, ran amuck.

His fingers tightened around the lighter in his pocket. A cigarette-even a few puffs-would have calmed him. An entire pack of Dunhills sat in his other pocket, but smoking was impossible. The African American sergeant was right about the dangers of a broken gas line.

“Mr. Pritchett,” the young woman with the broken arm whispered. She sat on the floor two feet away from him, leaning against the bottom of the customer-service counter. Her arm hung stiffly in a makeshift sling the color of Lake Tahoe on a sunny day. He had visited that lake as a child, the only vacation his mother and he had ever taken.

“Are you all right?” the young woman whispered.

He felt a frisson of irritation. Of course he wasn’t all right.

“Mr. Pritchett?”

He felt at a disadvantage because she remembered his name while he had let hers slip away. But he had to admit that it was kind of her to be concerned for him when she must be in significant pain herself. Hurting made most people selfish. Hadn’t that been the case with Mrs. Pritchett?

“I’m fine,” he said. To indicate appreciation, he added, “Call me Lance.”

If Mrs. Pritchett had been nearby, she would have raised an eyebrow; he was not a man for rapid verbal intimacies. He liked formality. That is why he loved being an accountant. Early in their marriage, Mrs. Pritchett had protested that he wanted even the plants in their garden in neat rows, like entries in a ledger.