And if it didn’t work? Kavya wouldn’t come out the same. She had known damage in others, the way it changed their faces and pulled them a step back from the world. She didn’t know if she—if they—could withstand it.
She couldn’t do it anymore. Or maybe the truth was that she wouldn’t. That’s what Rishi would probably say. Either way, she knew this with sudden clarity: She was done.
She’d never had to truly give up on herself before, having always had a trust fund of potential—untapped, hidden, wasted—to fall back on. It was early evening, dark already in the first week of December. Outside, she heard voices passing, restaurant patrons and market-goers. She was hungry. There was no food in the house, but the thought of stepping out onto a populated sidewalk struck her with deep fatigue. She’d never been prone to cramps or menstrual trauma, but on this evening she could feel the actual sloughing of her tissue. And from the shredding, the shedding, the loss, came an unexpected discovery. Her body was no home for a baby. But her lovely bungalow was, her charmed life. She’d gotten everything she wanted, and this left little room for the deep, transformative joy of having her own child. Her life, already, was too good.
“My life is too good,” she said. She said it again, aloud, to the ceiling. “My life is too good.”
It was perfectly rational: Kavya had everything she wanted, and the laws of karmic accountancy stipulated that one could only experience so much fulfillment before having to pay the piper. The cosmic piper. If Kavya had had a baby to add to her wonderful life, then something terrible would have had to happen to rebalance the scales. The baby that was almost hers had martyred itself to save its mother from being blindsided by disaster down the line. Kavya felt herself filling with knowledge. Her baby, yes, the lost one, had been part of the great universal whole, and it knew this—it knew this, the veinous little bundle. Her child had been a genius of the most unpredictable order. The thought left her positively apostolic. She rose, filled with light, to share the news with Rishi.
But then she stopped herself—what did it mean? He would ask her this. Rishi always had a follow-up question, and she would need an answer. She lay back down, her hand on the plain of her abdomen. She thought about karma. Something bad had happened to someone out there. Kavya had to correct that badness, by taking it on and making it a goodness. Kavya stood. The idea had occurred to her before, of course, but only in this moment had she truly awoken to it.
She would adopt. Kavya and Rishi would adopt a child.
She found Rishi in the living room. He sat mangled in an armchair, his elbows on his knees, a book wedged open between his fingers. A stranger would think he suffered some degenerative dystrophy, but really this was just Rishi, with his terrible posture, reading a book.
“Rishi, I want a kid.”
He didn’t look up. “I know,” he said. “I know, babe. I’m totally with you.”
She said nothing, stood still in the doorway. He put his book down, at last. “What do you mean you want a kid?”
“I can’t wait. I can’t wait like this. I want a kid now.” She realized she sounded like Veruca Salt demanding an Oompa Loompa, but there was no way but the direct way to say what she meant. She sat down next to him. “I want to have a child as soon as possible, Rishi. I want to adopt.”
Rishi stared blankly into her face, almost as if he hadn’t heard her. Under normal circumstances, Kavya would have assumed he’d not been paying attention. But this time, she knew he’d heard. She said it again for him, softly.
They sat for a long time, Rishi kneading the skin of her hand.
“I know you haven’t thought about this much—we haven’t really talked about it.”
“M-hm.”
“It kind of just dawned on me, you know? Like I finally just . . . knew.”
More silence followed.
“This isn’t like adopting a cat, Kavya. This is serious.”
She resisted the urge to snap at him. Of course he was hesitant. Who wouldn’t be? It would have worried her more if he’d stood up and said hurrah.
“This is going to take you a while,” she said. “It took me a while, but then it seemed really clear. Like this was the plan all along.”
“Let’s get some information.”
She pounced and flung her arms around him.
“It’s just information,” he said. “We can’t decide anything yet.”
It was too late for Kavya. Her mind was made up. Had Michelangelo tried dentistry before he painted the Sistine ceiling? Had Joan of Arc weighed the pros and cons of listening to her angels? Did the Queen of England send out résumés, in case something better came up? Kavya knew what she was meant to do, and it was only a matter of time before Rishi knew it, too.
• • •
ALMOST EVERY SEAT on the Weebus was taken, but Rishi found one near the front. No one spoke on the bus. They operated under the tacit understanding that the bus was an extension of the office, minus the big pink stuffies and the espresso bar. The quiet was alien to Rishi, who actually enjoyed small talk. It seemed, however, that no one else did, and so normally, he was left to check his e-mail and his news feeds and his Clash of Clans updates and whatever other time-wasting maneuvers would have whittled away his morning’s productivity. But that morning, neither news nor social media nor the maneuvers of warring clans could hold his attention. The memory of what he’d agreed to—adoption, the possibility of it—pinged him endlessly, like a bothersome coworker. Adoption. The word itself was overpowering, especially when turned on him.
Rishi had always been a diligent worker, if an indecisive one—it had taken two years of abandoned premed courses, an unused business school degree, and a two-year fizzle at law school before he discovered his interest in renewable energy and got the Ph.D. that landed him the job at Weebies. Going to work in Silicon Valley made Rishi feel like an active member of his age. It affirmed all the wrong turns he’d made in his career, to finally be part of a successful company, even if he was merely a cog, and a nearly invisible one at that.
Meeting Sen five months earlier had stirred in him the excitement of meeting a celebrity, only this celebrity had shaken his hand. This celebrity was the new husband of his wife’s supposed onetime best friend. This celebrity would remember him.
His inability to father a child didn’t have to seep into the rest of his life. Except that it did. Rishi’s ambition was flaccid, his heart pummeled.
Adoption. The word hogged the armrest and leaned into his breathing space. He tried to return to his laptop, to shove the word out of his morning, but it was hefty and stubborn and would not budge. So he watched the passing streets and did his best to think of other things.
They arrived at the Weebies campus and everyone filed off, preoccupied and orderly. There had been a time, during his first weeks and months in the Valley, when he could stand very still, listen very closely, and hear the air buzz with invention. He could feel it in the soles of his feet, reverberating up through the immaculate sidewalk. At the center of the buzz sat Vikram Sen in a massive office Rishi might never see. He thought back to the wedding and felt a tug of regret.
What would he say to Sen, if he did work up the courage to call? Sen would have to call him. Of course, he most likely would not. A year earlier, he’d been named one of People’s 50 Most Beautiful, and Esquire had done a full-page spread on his office, a lofted mirrored expanse that took up a sizable wedge of the main Weebies building. He’d been photographed in a tux with the tie undone, reclining on his white sofa, ankles crossed, arms splayed over the cushions. Rishi had read it with amusement, admiration, and aroused ambition.
And then, one afternoon, his laptop pinged. He looked around to see if anyone in his open-plan office was watching him, smirking, perhaps. He checked the name again. On his screen, an instant message from Vikram Sen.
Got a minute to talk?
Sure. His ph
one rang. He picked it up, waited for the snorting laughter of an office prankster.
“Rishi Reddy! Are you ready?”
“Hi there.”
“How’s it going, man. Listen.”
Rishi waited, still convinced that this was all going to end in laughter at his expense.
“Are you there?”
“Hi. Yeah.”
“Great. I’m calling in a favor.”
“Okay.”
“Did you read the Journal yesterday?”
“The journal?”
“Yes. Apparently, Rishi-bhai, good air helps people think. Did you know this? They did a study—scientists, that is, not the Wall Street guys—they did a study that showed that clean air improved the cognitive ability of children in classrooms.”
Rishi leaned in. The speaker’s accent was precise, Indian, with a British boarding school lilt. It seemed to actually be Vikram Sen.
“You know about VOCs, right, man?”
He knew more than most people did about VOCs, volatile organic compounds, the bad guys of the air quality world, the stuff of sick building syndrome and carcinogenic buildup. “Sure.”
“The clean-air craze has started, Rishi-bhai. And already we’re lagging. Everyone’s getting rid of their VOCs, cleaning up their air. All over the Valley. But I want to do it better. I want to create a room for our software guys that contains the cleanest fucking air anyone has ever breathed.”
Rishi waited.
“I’m calling it the Stratosphere.”
“Okay. Sorry. Calling it what?”
Sen paused. “Come to my office. Can you come right now? I’ll let Sally know.”
Rishi hopped on a blue-and-pink Weebike, rows of which were stationed around campus for employees to ride among buildings. He didn’t need to ask where Vikram’s building was—it was the largest and loudest, painted fluorescent, sky-piercing purple. On its roof sat a gigantic fiberglass infant, diaper clad, with glassy blue eyes that surveyed the valley, a rattle held aloft.
“The Stratosphere,” Vikram picked up exactly where he’d left off, “is what I plan to call the programming center.” Rishi had removed his shoes at the office door at the secretary’s request, and was immediately glad he had. The carpet in Vikram Sen’s office was thicker and softer than any he’d ever felt. As he sank into the white leather and wrapped his fingers around a warm cup of chai, he couldn’t imagine saying no to the man before him, whose very carpet left Rishi nurtured, nourished, ready to conquer. In a bid to hang on to its headier start-up days, most Weebies buildings were furnished with a studied shabbiness—scooters and cardboard boxes stacked against the walls, dorm room futons, formaldehyde-leaching beanbags and plastic tables in the common areas. But Sen’s office was fully grown-up, at once minimalist and lush, the domain of a man who’d come to terms with success. Sen sat in his own armchair, a wider, higher-backed version of Rishi’s. A stack of black binders rose beside him. A framed photo of Preeti Patel sat tastefully on his desk. Behind him hung a tiger pelt.
“Good chai, isn’t it?” Sen asked. “None of this hipster nonsense. None of this nutmeg bullshit. I trained Sally to grind cardamom.” He smiled mischievously into his cup.
“So what exactly do you want to do with—the Stratosphere?”
Sen slurped with gusto and smacked his lips. “I want a room that is completely free of VOCs. Completely.”
“No VOCs?”
“Zero.” He slurped again. “How do you see that happening?”
A Weebies newbie would have said that a zero-VOC programming center would be impossible, that between furniture, tech equipment—clothing, even—no modern office could be absolutely free of VOCs. But Rishi had been in the Valley long enough to know that no one respected a pessimist.
“I guess,” Rishi said, “we’d start by testing the paint. We could strip the paint and repaint with no-VOC stuff if we had to.”
Sen shot to his feet and headed for his door. “Come with me.”
Rishi rose, regretfully set down his chai, and put his shoes back on. He followed Sen down one hallway and then another. They came to a glass wall. Below them spread a field of programmers, hundreds of them, hunched around tables, their heads motionless as their hands churned over keyboards.
“Babies,” Sen said, and sighed. “You have babies, Rishi-bhai?”
You have no idea, he wanted to say. He had everything but a baby, and nothing but a baby. A baby couched in shadow. A baby that had filled their home, ceiling to floor, corner to corner, a vapor. “No.”
“Those are my babies, those fellows down there.” Rishi followed his gaze, and it took him a few moments to realize who Sen was talking about. And yes, there they were. All male. Bouncing baby boys. Most programmers were fresh out of college, milk-fed, softened by free snacks and office ping-pong. “All those fucking idiots are my babies, yaar.” It was jarring to hear Sen swear. Wrapped in the soft curl of his accent, the word came out especially obscene. “They’re not idiots of course, they’re highly intelligent, too intelligent, some of them. Some of them can’t have a bloody conversation, they’re so intelligent.”
“I see.”
Sen turned to him. “I don’t think you see. Yet. These are the company’s babies, Rishi-bhai. Everyone in this company who is not a programmer works for the good of the programmer. Including you. Including me.” He crossed his arms. “Well. No. Not including me.”
Rishi was beginning to understand what Sen wanted from him. “So the clean air is for these guys.”
“That’s right.”
“Because you read that cleaner air enhances cognitive function.”
“That’s it.”
“And the cleaner the air, the better they do.” He took a deep breath. “Which, of course, is better for the company.”
“You hit it! Think, Rishi-bhai, what might happen if those brilliant minds down there had nothing but the finest air filling their lungs? Already they practically live here. When they sleep, they sleep in the nap pods. When they shower—if they shower—they do it here. If they exercise, they go to our gym. And when they eat, what do they eat but the free fucking food we give them in our canteen? Do you know our people have walked out of Starbucks without paying because they’ve actually forgotten that the rest of the world pays for its food?”
Rishi stroked the windowpane with his finger. It buzzed faintly. “I can’t strip the paint, can I?”
“No. You can’t.”
“Because there’s no way you’d move all these guys to another building, or make them work with painters and construction guys hanging around.”
“Would you do that to your babies?” Sen wrapped an arm around Rishi’s shoulders. “See those fellows over there?” He pointed to a group of heads, curly black hair, dark skin, Indian. “I could have been one of them. IIT. H1-B. Easy. But I refused. I wasn’t going to be a worker bee, you see. Those fellows, they make a hundred K, which to them may as well be a million. They live like modest people. Nothing flashy. Their hearts are in India still. And their mothers are in India, and that’s where they send whatever money they can spare. Fair enough. But that was not for me.” He sighed, rubbed a hand across his chest. “I did my time at IIT, then I got my business degree and then I went to every bloody tech conference I could find, and I started to meet the right people. And finally, at last, I got my green card. And here I am.” He paused, then took Rishi by the shoulder. “Look at me,” he said. “When you decide what you want, don’t settle for anything less.”
Rishi nodded. “I think we can do this.” The possibilities of this project were beginning to reveal themselves. He’d have to source new furniture, figure out how many plug-in air filters he could possibly cram into the center, and whether they’d really make a difference. Rishi felt fortified now, with Sen’s arm around his shoulder. “I’ll have to put together a proposal,” he said.
“By Monday.”
A week. That would be enough time, if Rishi started right away.
They stood together, watching the hive of industry below. “The Stratosphere,” Rishi said. It wasn’t the most appropriate name—there was nothing inherently pure about the earth’s stratosphere, which was defined more by its distribution of hot and cold. But it had the right ring, and Vikram Sen, if nothing else, knew how to work a ring.
“I was going to call it the Nursery. But then I’d have to explain to these guys that I think of them as babies.”
If Rishi could create the Valley’s first VOC-free programming center, he’d begin to feel that all of it—organic chemistry, law school, the years of Ph.D. labor—was worth it. “If we could do this for Weebies, we could take the zero-VOC concept out to the world, couldn’t we? To real nurseries, even. The purest air for babies.”
“It’s like we really are brothers.” Sen sighed.
“We could make a lot of money.”
“This would mean more than that for you, Rishi-bhai. You could really make a name for yourself here.” He paused.
“I’d like that,” Rishi said, nervous about revealing this desire. “I’d like to make a difference here, Vikram.”
Sen nodded, and grew solemn. “But really, what we’re trying to do here, what we are all trying to do, is make this world a better place, isn’t it?”
Back at his desk, Rishi closed his laptop. He had a sudden hankering for the scratch of pen on paper. He was generating something absolutely new, and after nearly two years of trying and failing at the creation game, the thought of his plans coming to fruition—faraway as that day was—froze him with anticipation. He spent many minutes drawing squares on paper, letting a mild electric charge course up his elbow. He would plan out phases and experiments. He would plant his seeds, the seeds would grow. He began.
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