Gold Diggers

by Sanjena Sathian

  “After everything,” I said, “you don’t trust me.”

  “Anita?” came Linda-events-liaison’s wheedling voice through the walkie-talkie. “Are you free? I’ve got a confused lost old lady and I cannot understand her accent.”

  “I said, don’t get pissed. I trust you. I just want you to remember this is about my mother, who would do anything for you—”

  “I won’t fuck up,” I said, as lightly as I could manage. Perhaps she had never forgiven me for the Lemonade Period. Perhaps she could never believe in a better Neil. And if Anita didn’t know a redeemed Neil, then maybe he didn’t exist.

  I lifted the curtain and the first thing I saw, like a beacon, was a navy blue sign for the men’s room. I would just be a minute. I slipped in. When I stepped out, I was back, edges thrumming and eyesight clear. It was good product. I’d probably feel it for as long as an hour. An hour of this borrowed selfhood, an hour of trusting myself. Someone had to. I reentered the swarm.

  * * *

  • • •

  I found Prachi preening for Raja Rani Photos. “So special,” the square-jawed man said. “You look so special, see, I see many brides all the time, you look special, though.”

  “Prachi.” I waved. “Anita wants you to meet a couple of the jewelry people so she can hook you up with some discounts.”

  “It’s everything all in one place, Neil!” She panted as she tried to keep pace with me. “I’ve gotten, like, three things checked off my list. But Anita . . . Are you two . . . ?”

  “Something,” I said, stopping so she could reach me. “I don’t know what though.”

  Prachi dropped her purse on the floor and actually squealed. I reached down to pick it up, feeling my bag swing. I was aware of its new weight. “Neil! You haven’t said a thing! When did it start? But not that long ago—when I saw her—you weren’t even in touch then! How freaking random! Wait, so is she, like, a career event planner? And, oh, Amma, well—deal with her later. Neil, it’s exciting! I want you to have this feeling, I just knew, I saw it so fast with Avi . . .”

  I was sweating. “Prach, that’s all a longer thing, and I’m not ready.”

  Anita appeared behind Prachi. “Ready for what? Ready to see the jewelers?”

  Prachi began to walk quickly in front of us toward the banner reading jewelry bazaar. She peeked back several times, twinkling.

  “Did you tell her something?” Anita elbowed me.

  “She guessed.” (Anita’s breath sharpened.) “About us. She guessed about us. She could tell. She could tell we like each other. She could tell there is something serious going on here.”

  “Oh.” Her chest rose and fell more slowly. “Well,” she said. “Fuck.”

  I started. “Excuse me. Excuse me. You didn’t want her—other people—to know?”

  Anita shook her head. “We can have this conversation later, Neil.”

  “A conversation? It needs a conversation? What kind of conversation do you want to have? We can talk. We can talk later, or we can talk now—”

  “Ohmigod!” Prachi was leaning over the counter at creative jewelz: gold and diamonds all kinds. “That’s a classic mangalsutra; you know, we hadn’t decided . . .”

  “Actually, Prachi, I have this VIP badge for you.” Anita handed a laminated pink card to Prachi, glancing at me a moment, briefly, with a twinge of suspicion. “Let’s go over there.” She pointed. I shoved my hand in the tote, fingers widening the mouth of that first Ziploc, where I felt a cold 3D-printed fake, a smooth bangle. It seemed terribly flimsy, like if I squeezed it too hard, it might melt, staining my palm yellow.

  Prachi was trying on a stack of bangles at mehta gold when someone else began our first job for us. A heavyset man knocked into her and mumbled a harried sorry before scurrying on. I only had to complete the action, grabbing her as if to pull her up but instead dropping both of us to the floor. My sister landed in an embarrassed squat, as the bangles and two fat armbands (Anita having chosen several too large for Prachi’s wrist) slipped off.

  I had replacements in my bag for several of the thinnest bangles. The mess of the real ones littered the floor. For a millisecond, before instinct kicked in, I blinked stupidly at the gold on the vacuumed gray carpet.

  I knelt and began to gather the real gold, swapping in the fakes, which were lost among the authentic things quite quickly. Anita waved her clipboard in the owner’s face, demanding his signature on photo releases.

  Mr. Mehta pushed Anita aside to help Prachi stand. By then I had made the swap. My hands were clammy. But it was done—three pieces of bridal gold were stuffed in the inside pocket of my messenger bag. We had hurt no one. It hadn’t been that hard.

  “You know,” I said conversationally, dusting my hands off, for part of my role was to be blithe and dumb, “I think someone was trampled to death in an Indian mall the other day.”

  Mr. Mehta glared at me. “Not nice to generalize like that.”

  We arrived at the second target: screwvala purveyors of bombay gold. Hovering over the glass jewelry case stood the spitting image of grown-up Shruti Patel as I had seen her more than once now.

  “I’m Dia,” said Shruti.

  The moment of our most complex handoff was about to occur—we needed this stuff, and I saw, beneath Shruti’s—Dia’s—hands, through the glass, why. The pieces had a compact density to them. I thought again of Anita’s description of the right kind of toiling artisan, the one who kept the purpose of this wedding gold in the foreground of his mind as he worked. The Screwvala gold had clearly, even to someone as clueless as me, been made by such a hand. A row of rings, both simple bands and dramatic statement pieces stacked on top of one another in merry columns along disembodied white mannequin fingers. A few thin anklets, and an armband and one thicker tikka to drip onto a traditional bride’s forehead, plus a few sets of jhumka earrings that Chidi had mimicked in all their grooves. Pièces de résistance: two mangalsutras, the essential wedding necklace. In my bag, along with the forgeries: Anita’s ajji’s defunct mangalsutra, of no use to her now, as a widow.

  I heard myself say to Dia, “You remind me of someone. You look just like her. I almost would actually say you were her. It’s funny how that can happen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Shruti, Dia, agreed. “It is. It is funny how that can happen.”

  And I was positive that she knew me just then. Knew not just who I was now but who I had been before. Knew, too, how the mad lust I felt now, for her gold, was one long continuation of the desire she had met with in Hammond Creek.

  “Neil.” Anita’s eyebrows soared first in annoyance, and then, as she turned to Dia, recognition. “Oh. Oh.”

  “Actually.” I saw it then, the way out, and I improvised thusly: “Ani, you see it, too, don’t you? Dia, you look just like our friend who introduced us to each other. You know, while we have a minute. While we’re waiting for Prachi. Why don’t you look at a few pieces, Ani? See, Dia, Ani’s been so busy. So busy organizing this. That she hasn’t been able to look for herself. And we’re behind. On our own wedding planning.” I cleared my throat. Tried it on: “Babe?”

  Her eyes widened and the dark brown took on a sparkle of the fluorescent convention center lights. We had never been outside her apartment long enough to attempt pet names or public displays of affection. I placed my hand on her hip. Pulled her to me. Felt her stiffening through the black pleather. But going along with it.

  “He’s right,” she said. Shruti’s, Dia’s, small eyes flitted between us, and then to Anita’s bare left ring finger. “I never wear it, it’s inconvenient when I’m working.” Anita waved her hand as if to cool it from a burn. “But, Dia, could I?”

  Shruti blinked rapidly. “Of course.” She extracted a key and opened the case.

  “Dia, what kind of set did you go with?” Anita asked. Dia maintained a blank expression. “I thought you
mentioned, when we talked on the phone—weren’t you getting married soon?”

  “Ah.” Dia gave a muted smile as she covered the case with gold, gold, gold. “That did not work out, madam. The boy’s family had been dishonest about their financial situation, and even about his educational credentials. They were after our business success. But what to do? Everyone wants something from someone else.”

  “Oh, Dia, that’s terrible,” Anita said. “I’m sorry I asked.”

  “Yes, it was too bad,” Dia, Shruti, said. “He was nice-looking. And it’s a nice thing, a nice wedding. But you do not want to wind up with someone who just needs you for this, that, or the other. It should be a good match, all around.” She slid some bangles onto Anita’s forearm and considered them wistfully. “My grandmother had given me all of her old wedding gold. It is out of fashion, but we were planning to melt it down to make something new. Your wrists are very delicate. If you have any family heirlooms, we can of course do that for you, create something absolutely custom.”

  “Yes,” Anita said, pointing at several pieces. “I probably wouldn’t want my mother’s wedding gold.” I felt her eyes on me.

  She turned back to Shruti, to Dia. Everyone wants something from someone else, isn’t that true, Neil (came Shruti’s voice, in its careening, angled pitch). “Go on, let’s see that one,” she said, “and, oh, Dia, that’s lovely,” and so on. I lifted the curtain, on alert, seeing nothing but hordes of brown limbs and dark hair, hordes who (I could not suddenly help but feel, acutely) were dumb to the great power of what they were shopping for today. They believed they were planning weddings. Did any of them smell the ugly, world-inverting lusts undergirding the romantic ones? Everyone wants something from someone else.

  I felt fingers clasping my wrist and turned. It was Dia’s hand on my arm, gesturing toward the woman she believed to be my bride. “Look at her,” she said, as though she had made Anita herself. “Doesn’t she look lovely.”

  The diamond-shaped tikka connected to those jhumkas dripping against a fat choker. Her arm jangled with bangles. She’d clipped a huge ring to her nose. Perhaps it was regressive of me, but that picture of her—a demure, historical bride on top, the dominatrix-clad body beneath—was enormously appealing. I grabbed her face and kissed, wetly, but as the heat rose in my cheeks, my eyes flashed open a millisecond and through their slitted vision I saw Dia, saw Shruti, looking right at us, not glancing away, following the basic script of propriety, but looking with an intensity that implied she was seeing more than this moment. Her shaggy hair shook, and her marble eyes bore into the back of Anita’s gold-draped head, and there was something grisly about the way she was taking us in, as though this kind of perpetual, even haunting would always be her very basic right, having been denied the chance to live this way herself.

  And then I heard Shruti’s voice. Just like you kissed me. There was a satisfied squeal at the fact that we had kissed. You’re kissing her just like you kissed me, look at you, Neil. Everyone wants something from someone else. You like-like Anita for the same exact reason you went out with me. Everyone wants something from someone else.

  I withdrew from Anita. I muffled a gag.

  Prachi, wandering up, cheerily: “Did I miss something?”

  “Dia,” Anita mumbled, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and beginning to remove all the pieces. “I wanted you to show Prachi the more South Indian designs—could you?”

  Dia, cheeks tinting violet, dipped below the glass counter. Prachi stumbled over. The moment during which Prachi and Dia were fully occupied was so brief that Anita couldn’t get everything we’d planned. She managed to knock the mangalsutra and a few rings off the counter, into my open palm, before I tossed her ajji’s necklace and two forgeries onto the glass. Surely—I hoped—surely I’d chosen the right pieces, the ones for which we had Chidi’s replacements.

  Dia rose. “Do you have a date set?” she asked Anita.

  Prachi’s eyebrows furrowed, but Anita spoke forcefully before questions could be raised. “Dia, thank you so much, we’d better get going.”

  Before following Anita out, my eyes fell on Dia, who was rearranging a necklace on a velvet bust. She felt me looking too hard at her. Shruti raised a thick eyebrow.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. To the wrong person. At the wrong time.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Dia said.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “For what you went through. With that boy. That man. Your wedding. He sounded. He sounds . . . like a really bad guy.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Anita had to tap Minkus Jhaveri on his shoulder several times before he would look up from his phone. His single flimsy stall was only a few inches wider than his sizable waist on either side, and he yet he had crammed perhaps thirty or forty pieces into the glass case.

  “Mukund,” she said. “I’m sorry, Minkus.”

  Prachi leaned over his messy tangle of jewelry—gold, silver, precious and semiprecious stones. She rapped on the glass. “Do you think you could open this? I may like that bangle set, if I could see it—and those chokers.”

  Minkus drew a key from his pants pocket. He was wearing a faded jacket that looked as though it had once been emblazoned with camouflage print. The jacket shifted as his arm shifted, and that was when I saw the shape of something black and bulky wedged between his back fat and jeans. I had never seen a gun from so close before. I glimpsed it so briefly, and Minkus was so big, that I didn’t immediately identify the object. It might have been a retro cell phone holster.

  His large hands dug into the case, and he began to roughly pull the pieces loose.

  “Oh, be careful,” Prachi said. Minkus’s eyes flashed up at her. His pupils tightened and I did not see what Anita had seen—a lazy layabout—but a man defensive about his manhood.

  As Minkus Jhaveri thrust a baroque choker at Prachi, and as Anita instead requested the one for which we had a Chidi-forged replacement, a woman I identified as Linda came bustling up the jewelry aisle, shouting, “I’ve been looking for you, where’s your walkie-talkie?” Bright orange hair crested above her head; she wore a pink sweater bedazzled with butterflies.

  Tottering behind Linda was a decrepit auntie in a sari. Her Coke bottle glasses were slipping down her nose.

  “This little old lady has lost her family,” Linda heaved when she approached Anita. “I did warn you this is what happens when you don’t go with outside security firms, see, I did tell you that I’d have to be chasing you down, now, can you talk to her, sweet little thing I’m sure but I keep on trying to tell her please talk slower, all right, and your interns, I can’t find them an-y-where.” She began massaging the dimpled flesh above her knees.

  “Neil,” Anita said. The tense articulation of my name, and the surmised plea within it, was all she could get out, for Linda was steering Anita toward the auntie, who had removed her glasses to reveal eyes misting up with fear. I heard Anita snap, “She’s speaking English, Linda . . .” and realized I was on my own. If we had not just failed to get the best of the Screwvala gold, I might have walked away from Minkus, and all might have gone differently. But we had only eight pieces in my bag. We’d wanted closer to thirty.

  From the loudspeaker, “DJ Jai Zee in the house from Dil Se Entertainment letting you know we gonna have a hella-tight raffle following a fashion show in five-ten minutes.”

  Very briefly, my own eyes came into significant contact with Minkus’s gloomy ones. We shared something, a stab of scorn for this, our milieu.

  I cleared my throat, then brandished one collar-like necklace at Prachi. I’d forgotten the long list of proper Indian names that Anita had assigned each product. “This is cool.”

  She glanced sidelong at Minkus, and half shrugged. “Kind of a mess,” she said to me, but her voice was not quiet enough; Minkus Jhaveri’s hairy right ear cocked—a hunter’s ear, alert.


  “Anita says they source everything from, like, this one really good dude, somewhere in . . . uh, India . . . Anita says this is who she’d most want to go with—”

  I was growing frantic, for Anita had been drawn to the Jhaveri Bazaar wares not just for Minkus’s wandering eye but for his father’s taste. He was a gentle man, she’d said, who relished stocking wedding wares in particular; her mother had known him to receive invitations from the brides he outfitted, so warm was their relationship after the selling. His gold was the stuff of solid relationships and sturdy happiness. She wanted these pieces, for her mother. I wanted them for me.

  DJ Jai Zee, amplified: “If y’all are excited about your wedding days give it up give it up,” and a smattering of applause. “Oh god I hope y’all’s grooms didn’t hear that. Hey look, I see one dude out there he’s like I wanna be watching football, amirite?”

  Anita, behind me: “Auntie, do you remember where you saw your granddaughter last?”

  Minkus Jhaveri wasn’t turning away. Prachi was trying to get cell service. Anita was preoccupied. I didn’t know what else to do. I toppled forward and caught the Jhaveri Bazaar cart as I collapsed. The pieces on the case clattered to the ground. Minkus crouched over me. His gaze fell on my hands while I clenched my fists around whatever gold I could grab. No time to replace anything.

  He snarled, savagely. “Don’t fuck with me.” His arm shifted. The jacket rode up his back. And I saw for sure this time that it was not a cell phone holster but a goddamn gun.

  One hand formed into a fist and he raised it above me. The other jerked backward, heel nudging the handle of the weapon.

  “Lord almighty!”

  The squeal belonged to Linda, who grabbed Minkus by the collar with surprising strength. “Sir, we do not want to have to ask you to leave . . .”

  A small circle of people had gathered around me. Prachi’s hand rested on my head. I saw Anita’s black heels. I held my fists steady, afraid to let slip what I had grabbed. A few earring backs poked my palms. The silkiness of at least one ring and possibly a pendant. I stood, shoved my hands, and the gold, in my back pocket. By the time Minkus Jhaveri had shunted Linda aside, I was already apologizing, straightening his cart.