Flash House

by Aimee E. Liu

  The old man was a gem dealer from Moradabad. His name was Shrilal. As aged as I was young, he took me not to the blackness of the hotel car park but to the end of Old Delhi, to a Chandni Chowk flat that he kept for this purpose.

  “We are like two ends of a scale, you and I,” Shrilal said, studying me that first night by the orange light of a lamp swathed in silk. I lowered the red dress from my shoulders and stood before him naked. Then he laid me on the bed like one of his diamonds, inspecting every facet, crevice, angle of my anatomy, running withered hands over my flesh to search out the hidden flaws.

  He had a long trickling beard and eyes from which the color had drained so it seemed he must be blind, though he saw everything, that one, sensed everything. When he touched me I thought of photographs I had seen in Mem’s magazines, of those black-and-white maps called X-rays. Shrilal was not possessive, yet he wanted to know who else rented my body, where they marked me, how they entered me. He himself could not, you see. His decrepitude did not permit him to avail himself of my youth. He could no longer penetrate the span of time and sex that lay between us. He could only pay and hunger for it, possessing a right he no longer had the physical power to exercise. But together, we balanced the scale.

  He paid me well and afterward I knew he would come for me again.

  Between customers, when the roundabout was quiet, I would glean bits of information about my new sisters. The pockmarked girl had run away from home after her father, who owned a successful cinema in Jaipur, beat her for refusing to marry her cousin. The tall girl with blue-rimmed eyes (“You are blessed,” she told me. “I apply Krishna’s color for luck, but you are born with it.”) had a good-for-nothing husband who forced her to this work. Of the five or six other girls who came and went, two were widows whose husbands’ families had turned them out. The others had fallen in love with men who became their pimps.

  And yet, for all their sorrows, most of my new sisters possessed a cunning and strength that impressed me. They could pick out the high-paying customers simply by the register of the men’s voices. Many were actresses capable of portraying hilarity, pathos, haughtiness, or submission, all with the flash of an eye. And when the pimps or police came circling, the girls would banter and soothe them as if they were favored customers.

  Unlike the flash house where Indrani always negotiated with the police, the girls here divided the entertainment of police among themselves. Some refused, preferring to pay in rupees. Others didn’t seem to mind, even had chosen favorites among the officers. For these were not the same police I had known in G. B. Road. The pockmarked girl, whose street name was Scarlett, explained that the deputies here showed respect because our clients were more prosperous. This roundabout was known for its night birds. Some men traveled from as far as Chandigarh just to taste “our delights.” Many of the customers were government officers, even Members of Parliament. The police would not risk angering these men by roughing us up, so, while it was understood they had the power to arrest us—or to cause us otherwise to disappear—they appeared relaxed when they made their visits, and my sisters responded accordingly. None of these girls had ever heard of Inspector Golba. Not by name, anyway.

  The police came my fourth night out. I hung back, hiding by the statue as two of the officers played their flashlights over my sisters, making a game of identifying any new bangles or nose rings, measuring to see who had gained weight—in other words, who had been prospering the most under their protection and thus who might owe them a little extra. The girls joked with them, teased them. Then I saw a third figure circling the others. He was thick through the middle, had a large round head, and gave off a faint odor of fish. I drew back behind the Englishman’s statue and held my breath. I was afraid Mem’s carnation scent would give me away, but just as he was about to turn in my direction, Scarlett began to laugh. “We haven’t seen you in a long time, sir!” She beckoned him to her and whispered in his ear. The widows took the arms of the two other officers and the six of them climbed into the lorry and drove away. When I next saw Scarlett I tried to thank her, but she shook her head. “It was my turn. Yours will come. The police are a nuisance we share around, a dirty but necessary chore.”

  But my turn had already come with Golba. What was he doing so far from his own district? In fact he had been here once before, over a year earlier, then as now asking if any new girls had been working the roundabout. Then the true answer had been no. This time Scarlett lied, but if he was searching for one in particular, this would put him off only so long. From that night on, I went with the first man who looked at me, regardless how much he offered. And when that battered white Ambassador appeared in the roundabout again, I all but ran to it calling Shrilal’s name. I went with him as to a reprieve. I petted and sang to him, soothed his old feet. I touched his hair, his hands, his very eyelids as I had once spied Mem touching Lawrence. Now we set the next night for our meeting in advance.

  Scarlett warned me, “This old man will lose interest. He will die. They all do, you should not depend on him.” But she need not have worried. I already knew that no safe haven lasts forever. This Mrs. Shaw had taught me.

  Once a fortnight, as agreed, I met Jaggu at Humayun’s Tomb and passed him a tiffin box stuffed with money. In return he brought me signed receipts like bank chits from Indrani. The mathematics I had learned at school failed to prepare me for that magical invention called interest, which increased with the passage of time so that I owed more after the first month than I had owed at the outset. But the first time I challenged Indrani’s reckoning, Jaggu informed me that her old friend Golba was now Superintendent of Police for all of Delhi, and he had not forgotten how I once caused him to lose face.

  I refused to believe this. Surely, if Golba were Superintendent, some sign of his status would have shown itself that night at the roundabout. And if he did know of my arrangement with Jaggu—especially if he were taking his own squeeze from the profits—would he not have asked Scarlett more particular questions?

  “You are making it up,” I said. “You think you can frighten me.”

  Jaggu stroked his birthmark and gazed west to the smoke-stained sun. He spoke as if he had not heard me. “Superintendent Golba told Indrani that your American mother has been bribing the magistrate to remand certain girls from the courts. So it seems that Mrs. Shaw, too, breaks the law. It is rare for Indian police to arrest a foreigner, but such a scandal as this could make Golba quite famous if he were the one to bring the case.”

  I did not know what to say to this. It had never occurred to me that Mem might break the law. But, of course, she had done so when she took me in. If Golba was to be believed. If Golba represented the law. I eyed two policemen standing across Mathura Road. They were laughing broadly at a little boy with a brown monkey squatting on his head.

  “You must not try to escape,” Jaggu was saying, “or change the terms of our arrangement, for if you do, Mrs. Shaw and you both could suffer grave consequences.”

  “Why does Golba not come to say these things to me himself?” I demanded, but my boldness was as false as my night bird name.

  Jaggu laughed. “He is far too busy planning his rise to Parliament! But he has only to lift his little finger.” He drew his own forefinger across his throat and widened his eyes.

  Parliament! Oh, it sickened me, but I could just see him, his bulbous face staring out from posters around the city, his name blaring from loudspeakers, his presence forcing itself from every direction. I could just imagine him accusing Mem from the grandstand. This foreign woman breaking Indian law and meddling in India’s internal affairs. Perhaps, after all, I was deluding myself, and it would be best for everyone if I simply returned to Indrani.

  “Jaggu,” I asked, “does Mira still stay with Indrani?”

  “Mira?” He pursed his lips, no longer laughing. “The quiet one?”

  I nodded.

  “She is dead many months now, that one. Some female sickness. She refused to work, and Indrani
had her beaten. Then she refused to eat. Perhaps she starved to death.” He shrugged.

  I could not breathe. Then I could not see. I turned away blinking back tears. I thought of Mira’s secret smile, her sorrow and her tenderness. I had not recognized the strength of her courage.

  No. There was no turning back.

  At school I made certain to excel at my work so that Mem had no cause to challenge me. I spent lunch and recess in the library studying the spoiled firenghi girls as they retreated behind their glossy magazines. I recorded the curl of their lips, the disdain that prowled within their gaze. Leave me alone! they shouted without opening their mouths, and to my astonishment, everyone did. “It’s an awful age,” I heard their mothers complain in the car park as they waited for the daughters to emerge. “It’s an awful age,” I heard Mem say to Mrs. Solomon as I passed the living room one day.

  So I hid behind sleep and books and the world-weary mask of my awful age.

  Much to my relief, Simon, too, left me alone now. With his friends Brian Wilcox and Frankie and Willy Mann, he was too busy finding trouble even to notice my awful age. They formed parties to wrangle mongooses in the desert or fire BB guns at snakes. They used magnifying glasses to set scorpions on fire. On weekends Lazarus would take them all to the cinema, where they saw Yankee Doodle Dandy and Beau Geste over and over again. Afterward they made nuisances of themselves at the record shops in Connaught Place, then went for ice cream at the Milk Bar. At dusk the boys would get up a game of cricket, or take turns tying, closeting, and handcuffing each other like Simon’s hero Houdini.

  Simon, who had once been so sweet and trusting, was now stealing packs of rubber bands, chewing gum, and pencils from Mittral’s in Khan Market. I discovered this when I overheard Lazarus, of all people, dressing him down.

  He was late to pick us up at school, and I’d gone back inside for a book I’d forgotten. When I came out Lazarus had arrived but everyone else was gone except for a cluster of Untouchable children huddled beside the car park gate. They were awaiting the leftover snacks and cast-off lunches the school sweeper passed on to them each evening. Lazarus allowed his voice to rise in the empty yard.

  “I stole when I was your age because I bloody well had to,” he said. “I stole things I needed, things I couldn’t afford, not stupid odds and ends I’d just end up pissing away. You trying to get caught, Simon? Is that what you want?”

  It was that moment of dusk when the sky seems to suck the last light from the ground and dangle it like a lure. Lazarus and Simon stood on the other side of the Austin as I approached. I could not hear Simon’s answer, but through the car windows I made out the violet silhouette of his hanging head.

  “You get in trouble, you know who’s going to have to bloody answer for it.” The world revolved around Lazarus, at least in his opinion, and he had his own unpredictable way of inflicting discipline.

  “Get in the backseat,” he said when he saw me. “Simon, up front. It’s time you learned to drive.”

  Whether he was testing Simon’s bad-boy instincts or just wanted to have a little fun with him I could not say, but Simon was a poor choice for the challenge. He was still, for all his recent bluff, a cautious, fearful child. This was Mem’s car, and he did not have to ask what she would say if he drove it into a wall, with or without permission from Lazarus. “I don’t want to,” he said. “Shouldn’t we ask Mem first?”

  “Did you ask Mem before you took those knickknacks from Mittral’s?”

  “No, but—” Simon frowned at me as I came around the car.

  Lazarus gave him a rough push with the flat of his hand and he crumpled into the driver’s seat. “You want to take a risk. So all right.”

  Simon began to hiccup loudly. He hunched over the steering wheel, hiding his face.

  Lazarus slammed the door, but the window was open and the hiccups kept coming, like yelps of pain. I stood facing Lazarus now, and I was as tall as he was. “You wouldn’t try such a thing if Lawrence were here!” I said.

  He had no patience for me, either. Without a moment’s hesitation he took hold of my ears and shook me hard, demanded to know who I thought I was. Before I could answer he told me. “You bloody half-breed. Cheeky bitch. How dare you upset Simon so!”

  Lazarus’s skin stretched tight as polished wood across his cheeks, and his eyes flashed crisp black between sharp-cut lids. He could almost pass for a handsome man. I took this opportunity to say so, to his face, and he slapped me across mine. It was different from the time Mem slapped me. More like the shots the doctor gave us. I hardly felt it.

  Simon had gone silent.

  “Is this why Lawrence sent you?” I asked Lazarus. “To bully us and slap us and push us around? I think we should write and tell him, don’t you, Simon? Lazarus knows how to reach Lawrence. You’re staying in his flat. I’ll bet you read his mail and sleep in his bed. I’m surprised you don’t wear his clothes. But you’re nothing like him, you know, you never can be, for all your bloody this and that—”

  He’d had enough. He pushed Simon over, leaving me to climb in back, and reclaimed the driver’s seat. As we lurched forward he blasted the horn at the Harijan children who stood in their rags and festering sores, gawking and blocking our exit. When they failed to rouse themselves he screamed at them out the window, “Apka bapka rasta hai!”

  The question struck me as so preposterous that I began to laugh. Simon looked back at me, his firenghi eyes bleak and bewildered.

  “Apka bapka rasta hai!” Now the tears were slithering down my cheeks. “Does your father own the road?” It was ludicrous. Those children didn’t have fathers. They had nothing, nothing at all.

  3

  The original address Joanna had for Ben Eldon, the one she’d marked “home” and kept in her bedroom drawer, led Lawrence to a small corner house in Georgetown, a few blocks off Wisconsin Avenue. Gray clapboard with white trim, solid drapes in the windows, well maintained, and generally speaking, unobtrusive. Lawrence played bumbling tourist, marching up and down 34th Street, peering at the house numbers. Cold enough in reality, he made a show of blowing on his hands, breathing clouds of steam.

  It was three o’clock. Nothing moved in or around the house, but just in case, he only pretended to ring the bell. To the right of the entrance stood a tall bay window with heavy drapes drawn to a crack. The wedge of parlor visible through the crack glowed orange with the late sun, but was as anonymously furnished as a hotel. A rolled newspaper lay on the sofa. An empty hat stand stood in the corner. No logs filled the fireplace.

  Around the corner Lawrence found an alley bordered by a tall brick wall and a freestanding garage. He paused at the entrance. A handyman was repairing a fence halfway down the alley and two couples came strolling along the sidewalk. He decided to return after dark.

  Eldon’s mailbox—the address on his card—turned out to be conveniently located in a small post office just three blocks from the CIA’s E Street headquarters. The box sat midway down the wall of numbered compartments, adjacent to a section of larger units.

  Lawrence approached the service window and asked to hire two boxes, a small and large one, “Side by side, if possible.” The clerk glanced at him.

  Lawrence gave a shame-faced shrug. The man was florid, overweight, looked like a lager drinker. “I’m lazy. Every step counts.”

  “And my old lady complains about me.” The man checked his chart. “Well, you’re in luck. I’ll need a two-month deposit. Fill this out.”

  Lawrence completed the forms, listing the Australian embassy as his business address, visa officer his position. “I’m hopeless with combination locks,” he said.

  “Sorry, it’s all we got.”

  “No worries. I’ll just need a bit of practice is all.”

  “Practice your heart out.”

  “Got a lot of box holders here, then?”

  “Nah. Central P.O. over near the railroad station, that’s the one gets the business. Half the time nobody comes in here all
day. I keep telling ’em they should close this branch, but them bigwigs up top don’t take advice from grunts like me.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, mate. I can tell you’ve got management potential.”

  The clerk handed Lawrence his receipt and the combinations to his new boxes. “What the hell. Works for you.”

  As a matter of fact, it did. His boxes were positioned directly above Ben Eldon’s. He spent the next fifteen minutes unobserved, fumbling with his own locks, periodically snapping the doors open, then ineptly trying again. Meanwhile, he worked on Eldon’s combination. He’d never been much for safecracking, but he knew the basic drill, could feel when the tumblers started to give, the drag when he’d turned the knob too far. He had Eldon’s box open in eleven minutes. That was a personal record. Unfortunately, the box for the moment stood empty.

  He found a coffee shop with a view of the CIA’s front entrance and ate a supper of liver and onions while watching the traffic of golden boys stream in and out of the building. They ran to such a type, he thought, they might as well wear placards. Clean-cut, square-jawed, in fighting trim. In its four years of existence the agency had spawned enough of these young heroes that you could spot them all over the globe. Lucky for Eldon he’d been first in line. They’d never take him with that gimp leg now. As it was, it had to have limited his game—and his chances for promotion. He wouldn’t be the first to compensate by overplaying his hand with his mates.

  But Jack’s warning stayed his own impulse to march directly into the dragon’s den and demand the answers that he knew full well lay there. Even now the kitchen radio was blaring out the day’s proceedings at the House Un-American Activities Committee. Rumor had it all government offices—except, perhaps, the FBI—were bugged and all official phones wiretapped. No wonder Eldon operated out of a safe house.