As time passed, darkness closed in on her. She gave up playing her poetry and word games, gave up pretending that Ahalya was beside her, gave up fantasizing about happiness through the portal of memory. She spent most of her time staring at the wall and pondering the inexplicable nature of her karma.
On Sunday evening before the club opened, Alexi came for her. He stood in the doorframe and commanded her with a single word: “Come.”
She stood and followed him into the hallway. He led her through the dressing room—now brightly lit but empty—and into the lounge beyond. A blond-haired man dressed smartly in slacks and a dark blazer sat on one of the lounge chairs, watching a horse race on the television. He nodded to Alexi and motioned for Sita to stand before him. His English was carefully pronounced and lightly accented.
“She is beautiful,” he said, appraising Sita from head to toe with piercing blue eyes. “And very young. I must compliment your brother on the acquisition.”
“Vasily knew you would approve,” Alexi replied.
The man walked around Sita, brushing his fingertips along the nape of her neck. He stopped in front of her and smiled thinly. “The color of her skin is dark enough to be exotic but light enough to be enticing. She will command a high price.”
Sita’s stomach churned and she felt faint. These men were speaking about her like an animal at the market.
“I will buy her for twenty thousand,” the man said.
Alexi bristled. “She is worth forty. I will take no less.”
They haggled about the price, and Sita closed her eyes. Another transaction was about to be made. The stranger was the next link in the chain of her destiny.
The bargain was struck at thirty thousand dollars. The blond man made payment with an envelope full of cash and then disappeared through the door to the club.
The next two nights passed in relative calm. Sita heard Igor growling at the girls in the hallway, but he stayed away from the room. Her isolation was broken only by Alexi’s brief visits. She began to wonder whether she had misunderstood the transaction in the lounge. Perhaps the blond man had paid Alexi for acquiring her in the first place. But that didn’t explain her presence at the club or Alexi’s violent reaction to Igor’s advances. Igor had said Alexi was saving her for Dietrich. Who in the world was Dietrich?
A preliminary answer to her riddle came on Tuesday in the form of a black man who wore dark sunglasses and a large gold chain around his neck.
“The baby ho go all the way to Harrisburg?” he asked when Alexi opened the door to Sita’s room.
“All the way,” Alexi responded. “The others go to Philly.”
“Yeah, for the tech convention. Manuel told me all about it.” He looked crossly at Sita. “You ready, baby ho?”
Sita glanced at Alexi, waiting for a cue.
“You go with Darnell now,” he said.
“That’s right,” the man called Darnell confirmed. “And I ain’t got time or patience for bitches with attitude.” He opened his coat and showed her the butt of a handgun. “You mess with me, I end you. You understand?”
Sita nodded, trembling. She put on her coat and then Darnell took her by the arm and led her out of the club to a van waiting in the parking lot. Three girls from the club were already seated in the back. A wiry Latino man occupied the passenger seat. He was nose-deep in a magazine and showed no interest in Sita.
She took a seat on the front bench and looked out the window toward the road. It was near midday and traffic was heavy. No one noticed the inconspicuous van or its human cargo. A police car drove by, but it vanished like the rest.
Darnell hopped into the driver’s seat and peeled out of the parking lot. The streets of the city were congested, but traffic opened up as soon as they merged onto the turnpike. They drove for ninety minutes without a break. Sita grew thirsty and needed to use the restroom, but she was afraid to ask. The girls in the back didn’t speak, and she never looked at them.
Darnell took a bridge into Philadelphia and exited onto Broad Street. He pulled the van up to the sidewalk outside the Marriott Hotel and placed a call on his cell phone. Soon a white man dressed in a pinstripe suit exited the lobby and walked in their direction. He greeted Darnell and looked appreciatively at the girls as they piled out of the van.
The white man gave Darnell an envelope and said, “Here’s the advance. You’ll get the rest when you pick them up.”
Darnell grunted. “Make the bitches work.”
The white man smiled thinly. “They’ll work all right. We have thirtytwo customers lined up and the convention hasn’t even started.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
The white man escorted the girls into the hotel, and the Latino reclaimed the passenger seat. Darnell turned the van around and headed back into traffic. They made a quick stop at a gas station to allow Sita to use the restroom, and then they were off again. They drove through the afternoon, stopping only for gas and to order dinner from a McDonald’s drive-through. Sita was ravenous with hunger, but she nearly gagged on the hamburger Darnell gave her. The greasy meat and salty-sweet condiments shocked her palate.
They reached Harrisburg half an hour before sunset. Darnell left the freeway at a truck stop half-full of tractor trailers and entered the parking lot of a motel.
“Baby ho don’t know how good she’s got it,” Darnell mumbled to Manuel. “If I was in charge, I’d make her a lot lizard. Teach her respect.”
Manuel laughed. “That’s why you just drive the van.”
“Shut the hell up,” Darnell replied.
They circled around to the back of the motel and parked. Manuel unlocked the door to a guest room, and Darnell hauled Sita out of the van and threw her on the bed. She sat up quickly and hugged a pillow, terrified that they intended to rape her. Darnell leered at her for a long moment and then burst out laughing.
“See that, Manuel,” he said, “she’s scared.”
Manuel ignored him and turned on the television. Still laughing, Darnell picked up a magazine and locked himself in the bathroom.
Darkness fell and night came. Darnell bought a late dinner from Burger King, which Sita ate reluctantly. At ten o’clock, Manuel took a phone call on his mobile phone. He grunted and walked to the window, looking through a crack in the curtains.
“Here they come,” he said, pulling curtains aside to reveal a panel truck sitting in the shadows beside a row of Dumpsters. Sita watched as seven young girls emerged from the truck and fanned out into the now densely packed truck lot. All of them looked to be underage.
“Lot lizards on the prowl,” said Darnell. “How much you figure they’ll make tonight?”
Manuel thought for a moment. “Two thousand, maybe more. The lot’s full.”
Darnell chuckled. “The truckers won’t be lonely tonight.”
Sita examined the threads of the faded comforter beneath her. The plight of the lot lizards broke what remained of her heart. What kind of human beings joked about the defilement of children? She wondered again what they had in store for her. What could possibly justify a purchase price of thirty thousand dollars?
At midnight Manuel got another call on his mobile phone. He listened briefly and then looked at Darnell. “They’re ready to roll.”
Darnell switched off the television and took Sita’s arm roughly. “Time to go.”
Manuel opened the door, and Sita saw the side of the panel truck twenty feet away. It was parked behind a line of cars, its engine idling. An obese woman stood near the back of the truck with her arms crossed. Darnell shuttled Sita between cars and handed her over to the woman.
The woman pushed Sita toward a man leaning out of the back of the truck. The man took hold of her coat and lifted her into the cargo bay. As her eyes adjusted, she realized she was not alone. She was surrounded by the lot lizards.
The man shut the cargo door and locked it. Sita caught only a glimpse of him in the shadows. His face was unshaven and he had a cigarette dangling f
rom his lips.
The interior of the truck was black as pitch. None of the girls spoke, but one of them was crying. The truck lurched and began to move. The cadence of the engine drowned out the sorrow of the invisible child. Sita hugged herself and shut her eyes. Her thoughts were a blur and her breathing rapid and shallow.
The truck drove for twenty minutes and then stopped and backed up. When the engine cut off, Sita listened to the silence. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. A car passed nearby. The girls sat in darkness until the man with the cigarette raised the door. They were facing a garage of some kind. The girls stood together and left the truck. The man waved for Sita to follow.
She trailed a young black girl with thin hips and a leopard-print skirt through the garage and down stairs to a basement. A single bulb glowed in the underground room. The girls waited in a huddle, looking at the ground. The fat woman came down the steps and moved aside a gun rack, revealing a hidden door. She turned a deadbolt and swung the door open. She could see that the floor was covered with blankets. The girls entered without protest, and the woman closed the door behind them.
Immediately, a fight broke out among the girls. Sita protected her head with her forearms and backed into a corner, sliding down the wall until her knees touched her chin.
“Get off of me, ho!” one of the girls yelled.
“This is my spot, you back-stabbing bitch,” another replied.
A strong voice spoke. “Cassie, Latisha, shut the hell up! Let it go, goddamnit!”
At last the girls grew quiet.
“What the hell is wrong with you two?” the strong voice asked. “This place is bad enough without your whining.”
“She’s always taking my spot,” one girl complained.
“And you’re always lying on me,” the other said.
“I can’t take this place anymore,” said a fourth voice, choking up.
The strong voice replied. “You can run if you want, but it’s your skin you’re risking. The last time I tried, they burned me with cigarettes.”
Sita closed her eyes and struggled not to gag. The room stank of sweat and dried urine. She clutched Hanuman inside her coat and started to cry. She tried to recall the sights and sounds of the Coromandel Coast, but the memories kept slipping out of her grasp. Instead, she saw Suchir and Navin and Dmitri and Igor and the imagined faces of truck drivers who had paid to have sex with the girls.
She leaned her head against a wall and rubbed her arms in an effort to warm herself. She was cramped and uncomfortable and had no idea how she would sleep. After a while, the girl nearest her shifted and the corner of a blanket fell into her hand. She pulled it slowly over her knees and felt a little warmth. The girl moved again and left her arm resting against Sita’s leg.
Sita took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
She would find a way to get through the night.
Chapter 27
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
—OSCAR WILDE
Paris, France
Thomas and Julia bought tickets on the late afternoon TGV back to Paris. Thomas found an Internet café in Quimper and booked a morning flight to Bombay. He sent two e-mails from the train station, the first to Andrew Porter, informing him that Sita had been trafficked to the United States, and the second to Jeff Greer at CASE, promising to return to the office on Monday. Afterward, he called Priya and gave her his flight information. When their train was called, he boarded the TGV and tried not to think about his failure.
At Julia’s invitation, he stayed the night at her small flat in the Fifteenth Arrondissement. She offered him her sofa, but he struggled to sleep, a prisoner of time and his own musings. Every minute that passed took Sita farther away from him. He thought about boarding a plane for D.C. and meeting up with Porter, but he knew it was a fool’s errand. He had no credible lead and his access to information at Justice would be severely circumscribed.
Sometime after midnight, he rose from the couch and paced the floor, feeling trapped and ridden by an inarticulable anxiety. He wandered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, only to find he wasn’t hungry. He returned to the living room and looked out the window at the lights of Paris. Under ordinary circumstances, the scene would have moved him. On this night, he was too preoccupied to notice.
Where are you, Sita Ghai? he thought. Where did they take you now?
Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around and saw Julia standing before him, dressed for sleep in a camisole and underwear. He looked into her wide eyes cloaked in shadow and saw empathy staring back at him. She took his hand and gripped it firmly. The moment was so unexpected that Thomas didn’t breathe, didn’t think, just stared back at her.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
He thought about lying, but he couldn’t do it. “I’ve been better,” he said.
She leaned into him and placed her head against his chest. “I know how you feel,” she whispered, encircling him with her arms. “It was the same when we lost my sister.”
He stood rigid, frozen in indecision. He thought of Priya in Bombay, four thousand miles away. He thought of Cambridge and Charlottesville and Georgetown and the years they had shared together. But his strength was no match for the disarming power of Julia’s warmth. His resistance gave way until his mind and heart were fused by a single desire—to return her embrace. His arms went around her, and he buried his face in her fragrant hair.
They held one another for long seconds, and then Julia looked up at him, her eyes forming a question mark. He saw the moment for what it was—the point of no return. Alarm bells rang in his head, but he made no move to disengage. When she pressed her lips to his, he didn’t draw back.
When she led him down the hall to her bedroom, he didn’t protest. The thought crossed his mind that it had been the same way with Tera. But he was past the point of caring. He wanted this. He needed this.
When they entered her bedroom, Julia turned around and took both of his hands. She drew him to her and leaned up to kiss him again. It was then that he saw the candle on the bureau and the heavy mirror behind it. The memory came to him in an instant. Candlelight before reflecting glass, flame banishing the dark. Priya waiting on the bed, asking him to make love to her. The bliss of abandon, the joy of release. The night Mohini was conceived.
He let go of Julia’s hands and touched the band of skin where his wedding ring once rested. He had taken it off when Priya left and had forgotten it in his haste to leave for Bombay. The ring reminded him of his vows. I, Thomas, take you, Priya … He had been naive, but so was everyone before the altar. With this ring, I thee wed. It came to him that sleeping with Julia would constitute not only a betrayal of his marriage at the very moment it was beginning to flower again, but also a betrayal of Mohini’s memory and of all the good things he had left in his life.
“I can’t do this,” he whispered.
Julia stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Why not?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m married. My wife is in Bombay.”
She sat down on the bed and hugged her knees. He stood still and watched her. He hadn’t been fair to her, he realized. He had allowed an emotional bond to form between them, a bond any fool could have seen coming. Then when she acted on her feelings, trusting her instincts, he had raised his guard and turned her down.
The silence stretched out until at last Julia spoke. “What’s her name?”
“Priya.”
“She is Indian?”
“Yes. But she’s lived most of her life in the West.”
Julia digested this. “Do you love her?”
He nodded slowly, knowing it was the truth.
She looked away, a hint of blush on her skin.
“I’m sorry,” he said, finding his voice again. “I should have told you.”
She stood slowly from the bed.
“Yes,” she said. “You should have told me. But I’m no
t sure it would have made a difference.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek. “It would have been nice,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes, steeling himself against the sudden urge to forget all else and take her in his arms again.
“Good night, Julia,” he said, retreating down the hall.
He returned to the couch and covered his head with his pillow, listening to the faint ticking of the clock. He tried again to sleep, but his thoughts were haunted by the memory of her embrace. Minutes turned into hours, and night became morning. When dawn broke, it felt like an emancipation.
He took a quick shower and packed his things while Julia fixed him coffee and fresh croissants with butter. Over breakfast, they talked about inconsequential things. When they finished eating, she walked him three blocks to the Metro station. They paused at the turnstiles and looked at one another. After a moment, Julia broke the spell and gave him a hug.
“I’m sorry about Sita,” she said.
“We did our best. No one could have done better.”
She gave him a brave look. “Maybe Andrew will catch a break.”
“You never know.” He paused. “Take care of yourself, Julia.”
She smiled at him in her easy way. “Go home, Thomas.”
He nodded once and walked away, struck by her choice of words.
He took the PER train to Charles de Gaulle and caught the midmorning Air France flight to Bombay. Exhausted from insomnia during the night, he pulled down the window shade and tried to rest. It didn’t work.
When he tired of faking it, he took out Ahalya’s photograph. Sita smiled back at him for the hundredth time, a child flirting with womanhood. She was everything he had dreamed Mohini would become. The thought struck him like a revelation. Was that what had driven him to France? Was it the shade of his lost daughter whispering of a life that could be saved?
The plane landed in Bombay half an hour before midnight. The darkened skies above the city were heavy with smog and humidity. Night was only a few degrees cooler than day. He met Priya at the baggage carousel and she surprised him with an embrace.
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