She steered her own brain back on track as she caught sight of the familiar glass-encased cabin at the far end of the office. The whole top floor of the building was just one big open space, the kind of media office one saw in old Hollywood movies. Desks littered with files and papers – and laptops, of course. Shama and Tyron occupied a large cabin at the end, with glass walls as befitted their ‘open’ policy. But from the looks of it, they were moving. The office was bustling with young men and women in dark jackets and blue jeans, carrying boxes of papers and files out. And Shama and Tyron themselves appeared to be in some kind of meeting with a bunch of people in dark suits. What was going on? Had they finally lost the last of their financing? Were they being shut down for non-payment of dues? Those dudes and dudettes looked like bankers. Even the young men and women carrying stuff out seemed internship or postmaster’s age. The other thing was, all the young south Delhi Golf Links post-grad-types were carrying identical banker’s boxes, the kind made of heavy corrugated cardboard with cut-out holes for handles on either end. And all the banker’s boxes had the same logo on all sides. She recognized the logo as belonging to a major MNC accounting firm, the one that had taken top dog spot after Arthur Anderson’s bright star had waned in the wake of the post-Enron post-sub-prime double whammy. The odour of MBA finance degrees was so thick in the room, she could barely breathe.
She was stopped by a lady in a suit-and-skirt, a combination she had always hated and which, for some reason, always reminded her of FBI agents in B-grade action serials on a TV channel, one of those where the channel logo and English subtitles (for English serials) seemed to occupy most of the screen’s real estate. The lady in question was a dark brunette with lovely brown eyes and had about ten years on the post-grad types milling about her. She was quite lovely, actually, and when she saw Nachiketa, she smiled and Nachiketa smiled back at once, instinctively, like this was just a regular day and she was a regular visitor here on usual business.
‘Hello,’ she said in a distinct European accent that for some reason reminded Nachiketa instantly of the man who had come into her hospital room only a couple of hours ago, looking to kill her. Nachiketa’s smile slipped off and fell to the floor like a piece of dropped cutlery. ‘You must be Nachiketa Shroff?’
‘Er, yes,’ Nachiketa said, even more chilled by the similarity in the pronunciation of her name. Natch-ee-quetta Schrauff? The way he had said it would probably haunt her forever … or at least as long as she lived, which at the current rate, wasn’t expected to be very long. ‘Shama and Ty are expecting me.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the lady in the FBI-ish suit said, still smiling. She said something softly to the young groupies – adoring of and awestruck by her – and they dispersed reluctantly but efficiently. That left the woman alone with Nachiketa and Powar in this part of the office, Nachiketa realized. For some reason, the day’s events had made her hyper-aware of every detail of everything happening around her. She supposed near-death violent encounters had that effect. That, and the fact that she was probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
‘I have heard so much about you,’ said the European woman. ‘I am an admirer of your work. You are an inspiration to women in law everywhere.’
She looked down at Nachiketa’s legs as she said that, which implied that she was praising Nachiketa’s ability to overcome her physical handicap and still achieve all that she had as a lawyer. Somehow, that didn’t make Nachiketa feel very loved. She didn’t like people who patronized her. Either she was a lawyer who had done her bit, or she wasn’t. The fact that she was in a wheelchair for life, or a woman, or both, were really beside the point as far as her achievements were concerned. Unless this was a self-empowerment seminar, which it wasn’t.
‘You have me at a disadvantage,’ Nachiketa began with less than good humour, still trying to be polite. ‘I don’t even know your name, Miss …’
‘Kylliki Kolehmainen,’ she replied, pronouncing it in a way Nachiketa could never hope to pronounce without a year of language lessons reinforced with rigorous incarceration.
‘Um,’ Nachiketa said, momentarily at a loss. This was usually the moment when the person smiled and proffered a more easily pronounceable alternative. ‘Can I call you … Klickie?’
The woman’s attractive face lost some of its beauty. ‘You may not. In Finland, we are very proud of our names. If you wish to continue living in a global economy, you must learn to pronounce such names.’
Nachiketa didn’t know whether to smile disarmingly or just tell her to go fly a Finnish kite up a fabulous fjord. She settled for trying to be civil. She had enough enemies already today. ‘Look, ma’am, I really don’t have time to sit and discuss international linguistic geopolitics. I’m here to see my old friends Shama and Tyron on urgent business.’ She used her elbow to nudge Rajendra Powar who moved the wheelchair an inch or two forward, preparing to roll by this hardass Nordic female once she moved her iron butt.
‘You have no business with them,’ said Finnish Hardass, looking across the office with a gaze that would not have seemed out of place in the sentry tower of a Nazi death camp. ‘They can do nothing for you here.’
And she moved to bar Nachiketa’s way completely, making it impossible to roll past her to reach Shama and Tyron’s office.
This really pissed Nachiketa off. It was one thing to be a typical high-and-mighty DIC – Shonali’s private short form for Diplomatic Immunity Cats, with ‘Cat’ actually standing in for another far more offensive word – but this was taking Nordic fascism a step too far.
‘Listen, Kyllicki Delicki or whatever your name is, I’m going through what you might term a crisis and I really need to see Shama and Tyron right now, not that it’s any of your business, so for the last time, I’m asking politely, kindly move and let me pass.’
Those lovely brown eyes looked down at her. ‘Did you not hear me? They cannot help you. Nobody can. Nobody except—’
Nachiketa held up a bandaged hand. ‘Look, lady, I’m really not—’
But before she had finished speaking, the woman was leaning over, holding her open dark hair back with one practised hand, close enough to put her lips near Nachiketa’s ear, and said in her curt Finnish accent, ‘I can help you if you let me.’
13.3
SHEILA SIGHED, STRETCHED AND swung her feet off the bed. The lighting had adjusted itself when they were making love and it adjusted again now, also reducing the tint on the floor-to-ceiling windows by maybe 10 per cent (she guessed), just enough to provide her light to find her panties and jeans and slip them on. She stayed bare-top for the moment, knowing that Wu was watching her. She knew her scars were visible and didn’t care: he had seen them before. It was because he had seen them before that she felt so comfortable with him. Once you’ve shown someone your deepest scars, you don’t need to hold anything back. She sat and basked in his discreet attentiveness, liking the way the blue luminescence of the external lights limned her naked body.
She supposed that his invisible bodyguards must be watching too, and had been all this while, but she really didn’t care. She had long since got past things like coyness and shyness, shedding them along with the myriad illusions most people retained in order to continue living a hypocritical life. It was the reason why she didn’t have a religion and didn’t give a damn about it: stuff like religion and spirituality were for people who believed in good and evil, grace and sin. She believed in survival, love, and Kung Pao chicken with egg noodles – in that order. She felt the air-conditioning grow a tad cooler to compensate for the reduced tint and increased lighting, and felt her nipples grow hard again. She sat a moment, looking at the table which had borne the food they had eaten after making love a while back, still feeling like she could eat another bowl or two.
‘Hungry, kya?’ Wu’s voice said from the bed, mimicking McDonald’s Indian advertising slogan.
She turned her head just enough that he could see her profile and she could see his legs beneath th
e satin sheets. ‘You know what they say about oral sex with Chinese women?’
‘What?’ he said in a pained we’ve-heard-these-before tone.
‘One hour and you’re hungry again.’
He sighed. ‘That’s racist.’
‘Of course it is. All jokes are either racist, bigoted, or culturally insensitive. That’s why they’re funny, just like toilet and sex humour. We laugh at the things that make us uncomfortable.’
‘Chinese jokes don’t make me uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘Bad Chinese jokes do.’
‘So tell me a good one.’
He came over and sat beside her. She felt the tips of his fingers trace the outline of her scars. So he had been looking at them. Well, what the fuck. It wasn’t like she was a Playboy playmate: real women didn’t get the luxury of airbrushing. This was all her in the flesh.
But his touch was arousing something within her, something deeper than sexual arousal. She could feel him feeling, and knew he was remembering the time she had spilled her guts to him, told him all the things that had been done to her – by men, of course. And how he had held her and loved her and she had loved him back. She had especially loved the fact that he hadn’t commented or analyzed or explained her past abuse away; he had simply tried to wipe it away with his lips, his hands, the stroke of his erect penis within her, his warm breath upon her vulva …
‘You know what they say about Chinese torture,’ he said softly.
‘What?’ she asked, in a barely audible tone.
‘One hour and you’re ready to talk again.’
She didn’t laugh. He didn’t either. But in the fluorescent blue light, they looked at each other and something passed between them. It’s okay, he seemed to say to her. You were fucked up by men in the past, but I won’t fuck you up. And the incredible thing of it was: she believed him. She trusted him.
After a while, he moved away. She heard the click of a lighter and smelt the fragrant aroma of a Chinese herb cigarette. He came crawling up to her on his knees and sat on the side of the bed beside her. He was naked and his cock was semi-erect. She liked the fact that he didn’t shave his pubic area. He was hairless enough as it was.
He offered her the herb cigarette. ‘Herb fag? Specially made for me.’
She took the cigarette and took a small drag. It was pleasant, not in the choking throat-throttling way of tobacco, more like the second-hand smoke and aroma of good pipe tobacco when it lingers in a room. She took another, deeper drag, filling her lungs, and was amazed that not only did she not feel like coughing, she actually felt as if it was warming her lungs and chest in a pleasant, soothing way. ‘… Fuck is this?’ she asked, holding it up so he could take it back.
He gestured and produced another one seemingly out of nowhere, already lit. ‘Keep it. They’re harmless. No nicotine, no tar, nothing. It’s like marijuana, except it isn’t a drug.’ He took a drag and released it, saying, ‘Unless you want a joint, in which case …’
‘No,’ she said. She wanted to keep her head clear for whatever lay ahead. ‘These are fantastic. Why doesn’t everyone smoke them?’
He shrugged. ‘Because there’s no market for harmless vices? If alcohol and adultery weren’t bad for you, would anyone still want them?’ He gestured. ‘Have you seen the show Mad Men? The one with all the dudes in ’60s get-ups and suits and do’s and all?’
‘Yeah, why?’ She had caught an episode or two while surfing the TV in the gym office and been struck by the looks of the main lead. What was the character’s name? Dan Draper? Don. It was Don Draper. ‘Sexy dude.’
He nodded, agreeing. His cock twitched. ‘We supply them.’
‘You’re shitting me.’
‘No, seriously. California has a legislation that prohibits smoking or drinking or consumption of any controlled substances in a work environment. That includes movie and TV show sets. So everybody has to smoke herb cigarettes and drink fake liquor.’
She thought about that for a moment. ‘All of them? All the shows?’
‘All of them.’
She looked down at the herb cigarette. She had smoked it almost down to the butt. ‘No wonder everybody on that serial smokes and drinks all the time like that without anything happening. I wondered how they did it.’
He spread his hands. ‘Well, technically speaking, the characters are supposed to be actually drinking and smoking that much, so …’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘I get it.’
They smoked the rest of their cigarettes in silence. He held out another one for her but she shook her head. A guy came with ashtrays and took the butts away. He didn’t look at Sheila’s boobs once – she would have known if he had, she always knew when a guy looked. That was one of the things men never seemed to realize: women always knew when you were ogling their tits. That was why she didn’t feel half-naked (or fully naked, earlier) in Wu’s place, even with a dozen men watching her every move. They were watching her as a subject of potential threat, not as a woman, not as a sex object. She supposed that must be the only time men could watch a woman without sex as the primary motive: when they viewed her as a physical threat or target of violence.
She slipped on her bra and then her shirt, but she didn’t button it up. It was her way of saying, maybe we could still have a bite or two more, maybe I might still be a little hungry, kya. Stanley never asked or demanded sex from her, he always waited for her to offer – or not offer, as she pleased. It was the reason why she had become involved with him earlier. Because he understood that she couldn’t be had by his choice, only by her own choosing. It was also the reason why she had walked away one day and never come back, just to make the point. The truth was, she liked him as a lover. He was the best she had ever had. Maybe it was the fact that there was nothing else between them; he didn’t expect or need anything else, nor did she. That made it almost perfect.
‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘What’s going on with me? Why are they out to fuck up my existence? Most of all, who are they? What do they want?’
Fourteen
14.1
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT HAPPENED mostly in darkness, lit occasionally by the light of an Eveready torch waving wildly, at other times by the pools of light from the lamps on the pathways, and once by the light from the helicopter overhead. For some reason there were no lights in the heart of the habitats themselves, probably because there was no reason for humans to venture into those parts at night. Also because bright electric lights might not be conducive to creating the illusion of a natural habitat. The zoo management definitely hadn’t designed the place for a desperate chase and shootout at night.
Anita heard grunts and snorts from something nearby. Very nearby. Close enough that she thought she could make out dim shapes hulking in the darkness, and feel the thud of their treads as they came towards her. She froze, thinking that this time she had really stepped in it. The smell of the animals wasn’t catty or furry, or even canine, but of course, she was no fucking expert on animal odours. Still, she thought this smelt more buffalo-like, or elephant, maybe. Though the dark shapes moving towards her seemed too big and bulky to be buffaloes yet not big enough to be elephants. Then there was a succession of sucking wet sounds to her right and the unmistakable sound of water dripping in great fat drops and streams from a leathery hide onto grass and she knew what they were at once.
She began moving as quickly as she could to the left. She had a vague sense that the far wall of the habitat was in that direction. She now knew that the water was to the right. It was a miracle she hadn’t gone into the water because if she had, with her leg, she would probably never have got out alive, crutch or no crutch. She kept to the left, moving slowly and trying to be as quiet and non-menacing as possible.
She felt the creatures approaching her, then passing by. One bumped her and the nudge almost knocked her down. The stench was overwhelming, yet the water dripping from their hides suggested that they had just bathed. She couldn’t imagine what they must smell like when they
hadn’t bathed. But then she recalled that they needed to immerse themselves in muddy water virtually all the time to keep their fatty bodies cool. She felt hot odorous breath wafting across her, redolent with the smells of some kind of half-digested substance and almost puked thanks to the stink. She had an image of an enormous open pink mouth and knobbly teeth the size of her fists. If that creature had taken a bite off her …
Then they were past her and moving left and behind, towards the wall she had just climbed over. She didn’t know why they ignored her. Maybe because they felt more threatened by the larger group of invaders coming over the wall after her, or perhaps they smelt her injuries and sensed she was no threat to them; maybe it was for a dozen different reasons, but she liked to think it was because she was female.
She paused a moment, turning her head to try and figure out what was happening. She saw the herd, or group, or whatever they were called in large numbers, shamble in the direction from which she had come, saw the flashes of torches in the darkness, glimpsed backs and shoulders and arms of men with guns revealed in those flashes, saw the silhouettes of the men, moving purposefully after her, only one goal in their minds: to kill. She knew her brothers would be with them. They would want to be there to finish her off. She knew that she probably wasn’t going to get out of this place alive. This zoo! She thought, issuing the mental equivalent of a deranged cackle. Gadzooks, this was like some crazy surrealistic film. Only the Marx Brothers were missing. Or her perennial favourites, Abbott and Costello. Yup, she thought, Abbott and Costello meet the Matthew family in Trivandrum Zoo. Yuk it up, kids.
She knew she should run. Or hobble away at a rapid pace. Make some attempt to escape. But she felt strangely compelled to watch. Just as her mind kept repeating that last glimpse of Philip, his throat exploding, his artery spouting blood like in a zombie horror film. They’re coming to get you, Philip! And she paused and watched.
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