The Elephanta Suite (15 page)

"It's South Indian style," the woman said. "Perhaps something for your wife."

She was sharp-faced, her green eyes set off by her honey-colored skin. She wore a necklace like a draping of golden chainmail, and her green sari was edged with gold highlights. She was the loveliest woman Dwight had seen in India.

"If I had a wife," Dwight said. "Which I don't."

"Pity. Any woman would love to have that piece."

On the pad next to it was its number and a list of names, the last one showing a bid of twenty-two thousand rupees.

"How much is that in real money?"

"In dollars, about"—the woman pursed her lips and swallowed hard, looking more beautiful in this moment of concentration and greed—"six hundred. Even twice that would be a bargain."

"So I'll improve on it." Dwight added five thousand rupees to the bid, and as he was signing his name, a woman passed by, waited for him to finish, and lifted the pad.

"Bidding is closed," she called to the room.

"You're in luck," the lovely woman said. "You're the last bidder, so you'll get the earrings." She smiled at him. "What will you do with them?"

He leaned toward her and said softly, "Maybe you can help me decide."

"It would be my great pleasure." Saying this, she drew a small card from the silk purse at her wrist and slipped it into his hand. Then she dropped her voice to a whisper and said, "My mobile number is on it."

"Thanks."

The woman was still talking. "It would be better if we did not leave together. The dinner is over in any case. Call me in thirty minutes and I will give you directions." She turned to go, then remembered something else. "You can pay for that at the table over there, where a queue is forming."

Shah saw him in the payment line. He said, "Ah, you succeeded in a bid. What did you win?"

"Just a bauble."

"You succeeded with Gopinathan, too. His wife said you are a great listener."

It had been his weariness, his inertia, yet now he felt wired, hyperalert, as though drugged. He wondered if it was the woman who had wakened him.

"Want a lift?"

"I'll get a taxi."

All day he had thought of Indru. At the dinner, especially seeing the expensive food and wine, he had tried to imagine what Indru might be eating at that moment. And having stayed up so late, he thought perhaps he'd stroll past the Gateway of India, just to see whether she might be out strolling herself.

But instead here he was in a corner of the Oberoi lobby, looking at the name on the woman's card—it was Surekha Shankar Vellore—and dialing the number on his cell phone.

"Hello."

"Is that Miss Vellore."

"Yes. Where are you?"

"Still in the lobby."

"Step outside. Have the doorman hail a taxi. Show the card to the driver and he will take you to my address. It's not far."

Blind to the progress of the taxi, Dwight had looked out the window hoping for a glimpse of the Gateway of India. He saw nothing. Yet he felt unfaithful—where was he going, and why? The last part of the brief taxi ride was a steep hill lined with tall whitish apartment blocks.

"Shall I wait, sir?"

"Not necessary."

Dwight pressed the bell labeled
Vellore,
and the door latch buzzed open. He heard her voice in the speaker: "Eighth floor." Dwight saw his haggard face in the elevator mirror and said, "What are you doing here?"

Her apartment, the door ajar, was diagonally across from the elevator, and she stood just inside. She had changed from the green sari into one that was crimson and gold. She had done something to her hair, unbraided it, combed it out. There was more of it than he had seen at dinner. She was barefoot.

"You're Surekha."

"Please call me Winky. Come in. What will you drink?"

He asked for water, and when she brought it, filling his glass from a pitcher, he said, "Um, Winky. You're not married?"

"Divorced." She sipped at a glass of white wine. "My husband left me for a more up-to-date model. The latest model. That's how he was in life, in business, and cars. Always competitive, but blessed with taste. Always he had to have the best of everything."

She seemed to be praising the man who had dumped her for a younger woman. Dwight said, "People like that are never happy."

"He was supremely happy," Winky said, contradicting him. "Arun had exquisite taste. It rubbed off on me, I'm afraid. When we used to travel to London together on holiday we always stayed at the Connaught. One shopped at Harrods, and we had many posh friends nearby in Ovington Gardens. They were delightful and highly educated, but London can be so ... how does one put it?"

She spoke slowly but deliberately, so Dwight could not interrupt, as he wanted to at this point, to tell her about his trips to London.

"So damnably trying. Masses of these colored people, hubshis from Africa who go there just to get welfare, all these lazy people on the dole. One can't bear looking at them. Knightsbridge and Kensington are fine, but parts of London are absolutely filthy. Arun used to say, All these welfare people should be given a broom!'"

Dwight said, "But Mumbai is..."

"Vibrant," Winky said. "One has lived here one's whole life. Oh, yes, visitors complain about the crowds. But look closely at these so-called crowds. Everyone has something to do, something to make. It is a hive of activity. We Indians manufacture everything under the sun. Arun said that it was only a matter of time before we'd be making jet aircraft. We make cars, buses, lorries, even ships. We have a great navy—my father was in the military. Arun told me that China has no navy, did you know that? It's true! And it's not just the broad range of manufacturing but of course we make quality too. Go to Jodhpur and you will see they are producing fine linens and silks and for the high fashion houses and the designer labels of New York. Go up and down New York and virtually everything you see in the best shops is made in India—women's handbags, fine coats, silk scarves, lingerie, garments of all sorts, even shoes, though all one's own shoes are made in Italy. But Americans hardly know the difference."

Shut up!
The throbbing in his temples was battling his desire, and yet the easy way she sat on the sofa, leaning slightly forward, caused her heavy breasts to sway as she spoke, and kept him attentive.

"Um." Sipping from her wine glass, she couldn't utter a word, yet she was making a droning sound in her nose, as if to signal that she was about to start speaking again.

"Where do you stay in New York?" Dwight asked.

"Gracious me, one would never go to America. It's far too violent. Everyone has a gun, and it's far too dirty. The fast life! Arun's brother had business there, somewhere in California. Electronics. He had so many stories about drugs and gangs—one was quite terrified just listening. An employee of his was killed, some sort of mugging. No, thank you. One has no plans to go to America. One's London holiday suits one nicely. One used to buy jewelry in Bond Street, but it's all got so predictable—all the shops in London cater to American tourists, so the pieces are nothing special and the prices are absurd. I think the piece you picked up at the charity auction was quite acceptable, was it not."

Was this a question? Dwight could not remember ever being subjected to such a barrage at short notice. In the woman's confidence was a weird honesty. Awful as it was to endure, he was almost grateful to her for this monologue, because in it she gave everything away: she was a snob, she was materialistic, a boaster, a bigot. Now he was too tired to respond, her talk had tired him the more, and so he sat on his plush chair in the overdecorated apartment watching her breasts move in counterpoint to her complaints. He also sensed that her talk might not be the idle chatter it seemed, but rather a way of wearing him down, a way of dominating him. She was still talking, but when at last she stopped, his willpower would be gone and he would be hers.

If her talk was like a test—of his patience and his own opinions—it also allowed him plenty of time to sit and stare. She was lovely, even if her chatter and her opinions were obnoxious. He smiled to think that the woman was desirable. Her golden skin, her lovely eyes flashing in indignation; her lips were full, her face fox-like, beaky, imposing. Her heavy breasts swayed in her sari, but such was the odd wrap of the garment that he could gaze at a great expanse of her pale belly, and in his fatigued state he imagined nuzzling its warmth and pillowing his face upon that softness.

Repelled by her talk, attracted by her body, aroused by being in the seclusion of her apartment late on this Mumbai night, he watched for the wine to take effect—and she was still talking! Now it was about her ex-husband, and what was strange about that was her frankness, her fondness for the man, how she talked about his bad-boy side in the way that Indian women—Miss Bhatia and Miss Chakravarti anyway—talked about men, always in motherly tones.

"What about children?" he managed to ask, reminding himself that in situations like this, which usually involved a nervous client, he felt like an interviewer.

"Thank goodness we didn't have any, so there were no entanglements. Aren't there enough unhappy children in the world without adding to their number? Though one sometimes thinks, Wouldn't it be nice to have a little girl to take shopping and to spoil rotten with all sorts of delicious treats? One can see her on a pony—riding lessons at the Gymkhana Club. Arun wanted a son. Well, maybe his new woman will provide him with one, and jolly good luck to them. He was a good provider. He found me this flat and he still keeps in touch. He knows that it's not easy for one. A divorced woman in India is damaged goods."

At the back of his throat he was gargling, blah-blah-blah, and was so intent that he did not notice, until a few moments had passed, that she had stopped speaking. What had she just said? He asked her to repeat it.

"You don't look it," he said.

"I assure you one is."

She laughed because she knew she was attractive and liked the conceit of calling herself damaged. Smiling, she looked even prettier. She tossed her hair, she laughed, she patted her hair into place. Her pale belly was dimpled, and only when she leaned over to refill her glass did a fold of flesh press against the silk. Now, sipping, she looked over the rim of her glass at him.

"What about you?"

She did not know his name, and after—what?—maybe half an hour of yapping, her first question.

"Me? Damaged goods."

"Not at all," she said. "You wouldn't have been at that charity ball, and at Gopi's table, if you didn't have some standing. All Mumbai was there, the best sort of people, and—hey, presto—you came up trumps with your bid."

Her tone annoyed him, but he was still so dazzled by her glamour, he tried to change the subject. "What kind of wine are you drinking?"

"Indian made. A vineyard in Karnataka. Quite drinkable, actually," she said. "Do you have them with you?"

"The earrings? I think so." He took the silk pouch out of his pocket. It reminded him of the pouch in which he'd carried his rejected wedding ring. That thought created an afterimage of Indru, who now possessed the diamond ring.

As he handled the silk pouch, Winky extended her arm, dark and slender and articulated—delicately jointed like the limb of a spider—and Dwight shook the earrings into the palm of her hand.

Deftly, she slipped off the earrings she was wearing, and in a set of movements like a dancer's gestures, more like touching her ears than attaching earrings, she hooked them, one and then the other, and turning to face him made them swing and glitter.

"They suit me, don't you think?"

Dwight said yes, realizing what was happening, but could not say any more.

"They catch the highlights of my sari," she said, and twitched her sash where it was trimmed with gold piping.

"Let me see," Dwight said. He placed his glass of water onto the marble-topped table and went over to the sofa and sat heavily next to her. He lifted her hair and smoothed it, then touched the earrings, poked one with his finger, and peered closely. "I guess they're a good fit."

"I'm delighted you approve."

He saw that this, like her rambling talk, was another test. He did not like her, but he was fascinated by how obvious she was, and he longed to weigh her breasts in his hands.

"Look at me," he said—because she was looking away, at a cabinet where there was a mirror.

She turned her head and lifted it slightly with a kind of hauteur that the earrings framed and accentuated.

He kissed her then, just leaned over and put his mouth on hers as though lapping an ice cream. She did not part her lips. She remained as she was, like a big doll, and as she did not even purse her lips to receive his kiss, they seemed to bump his, almost to resist. The first awkward kiss he had ever bestowed on a girl—at the age of twelve: Linda Keith, behind the First Baptist Church—had been something like this.

"What's wrong?"

"Isn't that a little sudden? A little previous?" She turned back to look at the mirror, as if to assess whether she had been injured by the kiss, and her earrings danced.

"I guess I had the wrong idea."

"You're a very nice man. A generous man"—still she was looking at her reflection, the earrings trembling on her ears.

"What's the plan, then?"

"The plan," she said, repeating it his way as though to mock him. "Perhaps we can meet for lunch sometime. Perhaps you can take me shopping."

Another test, another hoop.

"Perhaps," he said, using her tone as she had used his. She did not know that when Dwight said "perhaps," it meant never. At this moment he had finally concluded that he disliked her and almost said: I hope I never see you again. He got up and looked at his watch and put on an expression of surprise and said again, with finality, "Perhaps."

She seemed startled that he was leaving. She touched the earrings with her beautiful fingers. She said, "Well, then, cheerio."

"By the way, my name is Dwight Huntsinger."

"I'm terrible at names. Will you e-mail me? My address is on that card."