A Son of the Circus

Limo Roulette

In the morning, Julia found Farrokh slumped over the glass-topped table as if he’d fallen asleep while looking through the glass at the big toe of his right foot. Julia knew this was the same toe that had been bitten by a monkey, for which the family had suffered some religious disruption; she was thankful that the effects of the monkey bite had been neither fanatical nor long-lasting, but to observe her husband in the apparent position of praying to this same toe was disconcerting.

Julia was relieved to see the pages of the screenplay-in-progress, which she realized had been the true object of Farrokh’s scrutiny—not his toe. The typewriter had been pushed aside; the typed pages had many penciled corrections written on them, and the doctor still held the pencil in his right hand. It appeared to Julia that her husband’s own writing had served him as a soporific. She assumed she was a witness to the genesis of yet another Inspector Dhar disaster, but she saw at a glance that Dhar was not the voice-over character; after reading the first five pages, she wondered if Dhar was even in the movie. How odd! she thought. Altogether, there were about 25 pages. She took them into the kitchen with her; there she made coffee for herself and tea for Farrokh.

The voice-over was that of a 12-year-old boy who’d been crippled by an elephant. Oh, no—it’s Ganesh! Julia thought. She knew the beggar. Whenever she left the apartment building, he was there to follow her; she’d bought him many things, most of which he’d sold, but his unusually good English had charmed her. Unlike Dr. Daruwalla, Julia knew why Ganesh’s English was so polished.

Once, when he’d been begging at the Taj, an English couple had spotted him; they were traveling with a shy, lonely boy a little younger than Ganesh, and the child had requested that they find him someone to play with. There was also a nanny in tow, and Ganesh had traveled with this family for over a month. They fed him and clothed him and kept him atypically clean—they had him examined by a doctor, to be sure he wasn’t carrying any infectious diseases—just so he could be a playmate for their lonely child. The nanny taught Ganesh English during the several hours of every day that she was under orders to give language instruction to the English boy. And when it was time for the family to return to England, they simply left Ganesh where they’d found him—begging at the Taj. He quickly sold the unnecessary clothes. For a time, Ganesh said, he’d missed the nanny. The story had touched Julia. It also struck her as highly unlikely. But why would the beggar have made it up? Now here was her husband, putting the poor cripple in a movie!

And Farrokh had given Ganesh a sister, a six-year-old girl named Pinky; she was a gifted street acrobat, a sidewalk beggar who performed various tricks. This didn’t fool Julia. Julia knew the real Pinky—she was a circus star. It was also obvious that another inspiration for the fictional Pinky was Madhu, Deepa and Vinod’s newest child prostitute; in the movie, Farrokh had made Pinky totally innocent. These fictional children were also fortunate to have a mother. (Not for long.)

The mother is a sweeper at St. Ignatius, where the Jesuits have not only employed her—they’ve converted her. Her children are strict vegetarian Hindus; they’re quite disgusted by their mother’s conversion, but especially by the concept of Holy Communion. The idea that the wine really is Christ’s blood, and the bread really is his body… well, understandably, this is nauseating to the little vegetarians.

It shocked Julia to see that her husband, as a writer, was such a shameless borrower, for she knew he’d robbed the memoir of a nun; it was a terrible story that had long amused him—and old Lowji before him. The nun was working hard to convert a tribe of former cannibals. She had a difficult time explaining the concept of the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist. Since there were many former cannibals in the tribe who could still remember eating human flesh, the theological notion of Holy Communion pushed a lot of buttons for them.

Julia saw that her husband was up to his usual blasphemies. But where was Inspector Dhar?

Julia half-expected to see Dhar come to the children’s rescue, but the story went on without him. The mother is killed in St. Ignatius Church, while genuflecting. A statue of the Virgin Mary falls from a pedestal and crushes her; she is given Extreme Unction on the spot. Ganesh does not mourn her passing greatly. “At least she was happy,” says his voice-over. “It is not every Christian who is fortunate enough to be instantly killed by the Blessed Virgin.” If there was ever a time for Dhar to come to the rescue, now’s the time, Julia thought. But Dhar didn’t come.

Instead, the little beggars begin to play a game called “limo roulette.” All the street children in Bombay know there are two special limousines that cruise the city. In one is a scout for the circus—a dwarf named Vinod, of course. The dwarf is a former circus clown; his job is looking for gifted acrobats. Pinky is so gifted, the crippled Ganesh believes that Vinod would let him go to the circus with Pinky—so that he could look after her. The problem is, there’s another scout. He’s a man who steals children for the freak circus. He’s called Acid Man because he pours acid on your face. The acid is so disfiguring that your own family wouldn’t recognize you. Only the circus for freaks will take care of you.

So Farrokh was after Mr. Garg again, Julia thought. What an appalling story! Even without Inspector Dhar, good and evil were once more plainly in position. Which scout would find the children first? Would it be the Good Samaritan dwarf, or would it be Acid Man?

The limos move around at night. We see a sleek car pass the children, who run after it. We see the brake lights flicker, but then the dark car drives on; other children are chasing after it. We see a limousine stopped at the curb, motor running; the children approach it cautiously. The driver’s-side window opens a crack; we see the stubby fingers on the edge of the glass, like claws. When the window is rolled down, there is the dwarf’s big head. This is the right limo—this is Vinod.

Or else it’s the wrong limo. The back door opens, a kind of frost escapes; it’s as if the car’s air-conditioning is too cold—the car is like a freezer or a meat locker. Possibly the acid must be preserved at such a temperature; maybe Acid Man himself must be kept this cold, or else he’ll rot.

Apparently, the poor children wouldn’t be forced to play “limo roulette” if the Virgin Mary hadn’t toppled off a pedestal and murdered their mother. What was her husband thinking? Julia wondered. She was used to reading Farrokh’s first drafts, his raw beginnings. Normally, she felt she wasn’t invading her husband’s privacy; he always shared with her his work-in-progress. But Julia was worried that this screenplay was something he’d never share with her. There was something desperate about it. Probably it suffered from the potential disappointment of attempted art—a vulnerability that had certainly been lacking in the doctor’s Inspector Dhar scripts. It occurred to Julia that Farrokh might care too much about this one.

It was this reasoning that led her to return the manuscript to its previous position on the glass-topped table, more or less between the typewriter and her husband’s head. Farrokh was still asleep, although a smile of drooling-idiot proportions indicated that he was dreaming, and he emitted a nasal humming—an unfollowable tune. The awkward position of the doctor’s head on the glass-topped table allowed him to imagine that he was a child again, napping at St. Ignatius School with his head on his desk in I-3.

Suddenly, Farrokh snorted in his sleep. Julia could tell that her husband was about to wake up, but she was startled when he woke up screaming. She thought he’d had a nightmare but it turned out to be a cramp in the arch of his right foot. He looked so disheveled, she was embarrassed for him. Then her anger with him returned… that he’d thought it “inappropriate” for her to attend the interesting lunch with the deputy commissioner and the limping hippie from 20 years ago. Worse, Farrokh drank his tea without mentioning his screenplay-in-progress; he even attempted to conceal the pages in his doctor’s bag.

Julia remained aloof when he kissed her good-bye, but she stood in the open doorway of the apartment and watched him push the button for the lift. If the doctor was demonstrating the early symptoms of an artistic temperament, Julia thought she should nip such an ailment in the bud. She waited until the elevator door opened before she called to him.

“If that ever was a movie,” Julia said, “Mr. Garg would sue you.”

Dr. Daruwalla stood dumbfounded while the elevator door closed on his doctor’s bag, and then opened; the door kept opening and closing on his bag as he stared indignantly at his wife. Julia blew him a kiss, just to make him cross. The elevator door grew more aggressive; Farrokh was forced to fight his way inside. He hadn’t time to retort to Julia before the door closed and he was descending; he’d never successfully kept a secret from her. Besides, Julia was right: Garg would sue him! Dr. Daruwalla wondered if the creative process had eclipsed his common sense.

In the alley, another blow to his common sense awaited him. When Vinod opened the door of the Ambassador for him, the doctor saw the elephant-footed beggar asleep in the back seat. Madhu had chosen to sit up front, beside the dwarf driver. Except for the crusty exudation on his eyelashes, the sleeping boy looked angelic. His crushed foot was covered with one of the rags he carried for wiping off the fake bird shit; even in his sleep, Ganesh had managed to conceal his deformity. This wasn’t a make-believe Ganesh, but a real boy; nevertheless, Farrokh found himself looking at the cripple as he might stand back and take pride in one of his fictional creations. The doctor was still thinking about his story; he was thinking that what would happen next to Ganesh was entirely a matter of the screenwriter’s imagination. But the real beggar had found a benefactor; until the circus took him, the back seat of Vinod’s Ambassador would do—it was already better than what he was used to.

“Good morning, Ganesh,” the doctor said. The boy was instantly awake, as alert as a squirrel.

“What are we doing today?” the beggar asked.

“No more bird-shit tricks,” the doctor said.

The beggar registered his understanding with a tight-lipped smile. “But what are we doing?” the boy repeated.

“We’re going to my office,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “We’re waiting for some test results for Madhu, before we make our plans. And this morning you will be kind enough not to practice the bird-shit trick on those postoperative children in the exercise yard.” The boy’s black eyes kept darting with the movements of the traffic. The doctor could see Madhu’s face reflected in the rearview mirror; she’d not responded—she’d not even glanced in the mirror at the mention of her name.

“What concerns me, about the circus …” Dr. Daruwalla said; he paused deliberately. The emphasis he’d given to the word had gained Ganesh’s full attention, but not Madhu’s.

“My arms are the best—very strong. I could ride a pony—no legs necessary with hands as strong as mine,” Ganesh suggested. “I could do lots of tricks—hang by my arms from an elephant’s trunk, maybe ride a lion.”

“But what concerns me is that they won’t let you do tricks—no tricks,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. “They’ll give you all the bad jobs, all the hard work. Scooping up the elephant shit, for example—not hanging from their trunks.”

“I’ll have to show them,” Ganesh said. “But what do you do to the lions to make them stand on those little stools?”

“Your job would be to wash the lion piss off the stools,” Farrokh told him.

“And what do you do with tigers?” Ganesh asked.

“What you would do with tigers is clean their cages—tiger shit!” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“I’ll have to show them,” the boy repeated. “Maybe something with their tails—tigers have long tails.”

The dwarf entered the roundabout that the doctor hated. There were too many easily distracted drivers who stared at the sea and at the worshipers milling in the mudflats around Haji Ali’s Tomb; the rotary was near Tardeo, where Farrokh’s father had been blown to smithereens. Now, in the midst of this roundabout, the traffic swerved to avoid a lunatic cripple; a legless man in one of those makeshift wheelchairs powered by a hand crank was navigating the rotary against the flow of other vehicles. The doctor could follow Ganesh’s roaming gaze; the boy’s black eyes either ignored or avoided the wheelchair madman. The little beggar was probably still thinking about the tigers.

Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know the exact ending of his screenplay; he had only a general idea of what would happen to his Pinky, to his Ganesh. Caught in the roundabout, the doctor realized that the fate of the real Ganesh—in addition to Madhu’s fate—was out of his hands. But Farrokh felt responsible for beginning their stories, just as surely as he’d begun the story he was making up.

In the rearview mirror, Dr. Daruwalla could see that Madhu’s lion-yellow eyes were following the movements of the legless maniac. Then the dwarf needed to brake sharply; he brought his taxi to a full stop in order to avoid the crazed cripple in the wrong-way wheelchair. The wheelchair sported a bumper sticker opposed to horn blowing.

A battered oil truck loomed over the wheelchair lunatic; in a fury, the oil-truck driver repeatedly blew his horn. The great cylindrical body of the truck was covered with foot-high lettering the color of flame,

The oil truck also sported a bumper sticker, which was almost illegible behind flecks of tar and splattered insects.

Dr. Daruwalla knew that Vinod didn’t have one.

As if it wasn’t irritating enough to be obstructing traffic, the cripple was begging among the stopped cars. The clumsy wheelchair bumped against the Ambassador’s rear door. Farrokh was incensed when Ganesh rolled down the rear window, toward which the wheelchair madman extended his arm.

“Don’t give that idiot anything!” the doctor cried, but Farrokh had underestimated the speed of Bird-Shit Boy. Dr. Daruwalla never saw the bird-shit syringe, only the look of surprise on the face of the crazed cripple in the wheelchair; he quickly withdrew his arm—his palm, his wrist, his whole forearm dripping bird shit. Vinod cheered.

“Got him,” Ganesh said.

A passing paint truck nearly obliterated the wheelchair lunatic. Vinod cheered for the paint truck, too.

When the paint truck was gone from view, the traffic moved again—the dwarf’s taxi taking the lead. The doctor remembered the bumper sticker on Vinod’s Ambassador.

“I said no more bird-shit tricks, Ganesh,” Farrokh told the boy. In the rearview mirror, Dr. Daruwalla could see Madhu watching him; when he met her eyes, she looked away. Through the open window, the air was hot and dry, but the pleasure of a moving car was new to the boy, if not to the child prostitute. Maybe nothing was new to her, the doctor feared. But for the beggar, if not for Madhu, this was the start of an adventure.

“Where is the circus?” Ganesh asked. “Is it far?”

Farrokh knew that the Great Blue Nile might be anywhere in Gujarat. The question that concerned Dr. Daruwalla was not where the circus was, but whether it would be safe.

Ahead, the traffic slowed again; probably pedestrians, Dr. Daruwalla thought—shoppers from the nearby chowk, crowding into the street. Then the doctor saw the body of a man in the gutter; his legs extended into the road. The traffic was squeezed into one lane because the oncoming drivers didn’t want to drive over the dead man’s feet or ankles. A crowd was quickly forming; soon there would be the usual chaos. For the moment, the only concession made to the dead man was that no one drove over him.

“Is the circus far?” Ganesh asked again.

“Yes, it’s far—it’s a world apart,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “A world apart” was what he hoped for the boy, whose bright black eyes spotted the body in the road. Ganesh quickly looked away. The dwarf’s taxi inched past the dead man; once more, Vinod moved ahead of the traffic.

“Did you see that?” Farrokh asked Ganesh.

“See what?” the cripple said.

“There is a man being dead,” Vinod said.

“They are nonpersons,” Ganesh replied. “You think you seem them but they are not really being there.”

O God, keep this boy from becoming a nonperson! Dr. Daruwalla thought. His fear surprised him; he couldn’t bring himself to seek the cripple’s hopeful face. In the rearview mirror, Madhu was watching the doctor again. Her indifference was chilling. It had been quite a while since Dr. Daruwalla had prayed, but he began.

India wasn’t limo roulette. There were no good scouts or bad scouts for the circus; there was no freak circus, either. There were no right-limo, wrong-limo choices. For these children, the real roulette would begin after they got to the circus—if they got there. At the circus, no Good Samaritan dwarf could save them. At the Great Blue Nile, Acid Man—a comic-book villain—wasn’t the danger.

Mother Mary

In the new missionary’s cubicle, the last mosquito coil had burned out just before dawn. The mosquitoes had come with the early gray light and had departed with the first heat of the day—all but the mosquito that Martin Mills had mashed against the white wall above his cot. He’d killed it with the rolled-up issue of The Times of India after the mosquito was full of blood; the bloodstain on the wall was conspicuous and only a few inches below the crucifix that hung there, which gave Martin the gruesome impression that a sizable drop of Christ’s blood had spotted the wall.

In his inexperience, Martin had lit the last mosquito coil too close to his cot. When his hand trailed on the floor, his fingers must have groped through the dead ashes. Then, in his brief and troubled sleep, he’d touched his face. This was the only explanation for the surprising view of himself that he saw in the pitted mirror above the sink; his face was dotted with fingerprints of ash, as if he’d meant to mock Ash Wednesday—or as if a ghost had passed through his cubicle and fingered him. The marks struck him as a sarcastic blessing, or else they made him look like an insincere penitent.

When he’d filled the sink and wet his face to shave, he held the razor in his right hand and reached for the small sliver of soap with his left. It was a jagged-shaped piece of such an iridescent blue-green color that it was reflected in the silver soap dish; it turned out to be a lizard, which leaped into his hair before he could touch it. The missionary was frightened to feel the reptile race across his scalp. The lizard launched itself from the top of Martin’s head to the crucifix on the wall above the cot; then it jumped from Christ’s face to the partially open slats of the window blind, through which the light from the low sun slanted across the floor of the cubicle.

Martin Mills had been startled; in an effort to brush the lizard out of his hair, he’d slashed his nose with the razor. An imperceptible breeze stirred the ashes from the mosquito coils, and the missionary watched himself bleed into the water in the sink. He’d long ago given up shaving lather; plain soap was good enough. In the absence of soap, he shaved himself in the cold, bloody water.

It was only 6:00 in the morning. Martin Mills had to survive another hour before Mass. He thought it would be a good idea to go to St. Ignatius Church early; if the church wasn’t locked, he could sit quietly in one of the pews—that usually helped. But his stupid nose kept bleeding; he didn’t want to bleed all over the church. He’d neglected to pack any handkerchiefs—he’d have to buy some—and so for now he chose a pair of black socks; although they were of a thin material, not very absorbent, at least they wouldn’t show the bloodstains. He soaked the socks in fresh cold water in the sink; he wrung them out until they were merely damp. He balled up a sock in each hand and, first with one hand and then the other, he restlessly dabbed at the wound on his nose.

Someone watching Martin Mills dress himself might have suspected the missionary of being in a deep trance; a less kind observer might have concluded that the zealot was semiretarded, for he wouldn’t put down the socks. The awkward pulling on of his trousers—when he tied his shoes, he held the socks in his teeth—and the buttoning of his short-sleeved shirt… these normally simple tasks were turned arduous, almost athletic; these clumsy feats were punctuated by the ceaseless dabbing at his nose. In the second buttonhole of his shirt, Martin Mills affixed a silver cross like a lapel pin, and together with this adornment he left a thumbprint of blood on his shirt, for the socks had already stained his hands.

St. Ignatius Church was unlocked. The Father Rector unlocked the church at 6:00 every morning, and so Martin Mills had a safe place to sit and wait for Mass. For a while, he watched the altar boys setting up the candles. He sat in a center-aisle pew, alternately praying and dabbing at his bleeding nose. He saw that the kneeling pad was hinged. Martin didn’t like hinged kneelers because they reminded him of the Protestant school where Danny and Vera had sent him after Fessenden.

St. Luke’s was an Episcopalian place; as such, in Martin’s view, it was barely a religious school at all. The morning service was only a hymn and a prayer and a virtuous thought for the day, which was followed by a curiously secular benediction—hardly a blessing, but some sage advice about studying relentlessly and never plagiarizing. Sunday church attendance was required, but in St. Luke’s Chapel the service was of such a low Episcopalian nature that no one knelt for prayers. Instead, the students slumped in their pews; probably they weren’t sincere Episcopalians. And whenever Martin Mills would attempt to lower the hinged kneeling pad—so that he could properly kneel to pray—his fellow students in the pew would firmly hold the hinged kneeler in the upright, nonpraying position. They insisted on using the kneeling pad as a footrest. When Martin complained to the school’s headmaster, the Reverend Rick Utley informed the underclassman that only senior Catholics and senior Jews were permitted to attend worship services in their churches and synagogues of choice; until Martin was a senior, St. Luke’s would have to do—in other words, no kneeling.

In St. Ignatius Church, Martin Mills lowered the kneeling pad and knelt in prayer. In the pew was a rack that held the hymnals and prayer books; whenever Martin bled on the binding of the nearest hymnal, he dabbed at his nose with one sock and wiped the hymnal with the other. He prayed for the strength to love his father, for merely pitying him seemed insufficient. Although Martin knew that the task of loving his mother was an insurmountable one, he prayed for the charity to forgive her. And he prayed for the soul of Arif Koma, Martin had long ago forgiven Arif, but every morning he prayed that the Holy Virgin would forgive Arif, too. The missionary always began this prayer in the same way.

“O Mother Mary, it was my fault!” Martin prayed. In a way, the new missionary’s story had also been set in motion by the Virgin Mary—in the sense that Martin held her in higher esteem than he held his own mother. Had Vera been killed by a falling statue of the Blessed Virgin—especially if such good riddance had occurred when the zealot was of a tender, unformed age—Martin might never have become a Jesuit at all.

His nose was still bleeding. A drop of his blood dripped on the hymnal; once more the missionary dabbed at his wound. Arbitrarily, he decided not to wipe the song book; perhaps he thought that bloodstains would give the hymnal character. After all, it was a religion steeped in blood—Christ’s blood, and the blood of saints and martyrs. It would be glorious to be a martyr, Martin thought. He looked at his watch. In just half an hour, if he could make it, the missionary knew he would be saved by the Mass.

Is There a Gene for It, Whatever It Is?

In his stepped-up efforts to save Madhu from Mr. Garg, Dr. Daruwalla placed a phone call to Tata Two. But the OB/GYN’s secretary told Farrokh that Dr. Tata was already in surgery. The poor patient, whoever she was, Dr. Daruwalla thought. Farrokh wouldn’t want a woman he knew to be subjected to the uncertain scalpel of Tata Two, for (fairly or unfairly) Farrokh assumed that the surgical procedures of the second Dr. Tata were second-rate, too. It was quickly apparent to Dr. Daruwalla that Tata Two’s medical secretary lived up to the family reputation for mediocrity, because the doctor’s simple request for the quickest possible results of Madhu’s HIV test were met with suspicion and condescension. Dr. Tata’s secretary had already identified himself, rather arrogantly, as Mister Subhash.

“You are wanting a rush job?” Mr. Subhash asked Dr. Daruwalla. “Are you being aware that you are paying more for it?”

“Of course!” Farrokh said.

“It is normally costing four hundred rupees,” Mr. Subhash informed Dr. Daruwalla. “A rush job is costing you a thousand rupees. Or is the patient paying?”

“No, I’m paying. I want the quickest possible results,” Farrokh replied.

“It is normally taking ten days or two weeks,” Mr. Subhash explained. “It is most conveniently being done in batches. We are normally waiting until we are having forty specimens.”

“But I don’t want you to wait in this case,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. “That’s why I called—I know how it’s normally done.”

“If the ELISA is being positive, we are normally confirming the results by Western Blot. The ELISA is having a lot of false positives, you know,” Mr. Subhash explained.

“I know,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “If you get a positive ELISA, please send it on for a Western Blot.”

“This is prolonging the turnaround time for a positive test,” Mr. Subhash explained.

“Yes, I know,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

“If the test is being negative, you are having the results in two days,” Mr. Subhash explained “Naturally, if it is being positive …”

“Then it would take longer—I know!” Dr. Daruwalla cried. “Please just order the test immediately. That’s why I called.”

“Only Dr. Tata is ordering the testing,” Mr. Subhash said. “But of course I am telling him what you are wanting.”

“Thank you,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

“Is there anything else you are wanting?” Mr. Subhash asked.

There had been something else, but Farrokh had forgotten what it was that he’d meant to ask Tata Two. Doubtless it would come back to him.

“Please just ask Dr. Tata to call me,” Farrokh replied.

“And what is being the subject you are wishing to discuss with Dr. Tata?” Mr. Subhash asked.

“It is a subject of discussion between doctors,” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“I am telling him,” Mr. Subhash said testily.

Dr. Daruwalla resolved that he would never again complain about the nincompoopish matrimonial activities of Ranjit. Ranjit was competent and he was polite. Moreover, Dr. Daruwalla’s secretary had steadfastly maintained his enthusiasm for the doctor’s dwarf-blood project. No one else had ever encouraged the doctor’s genetic studies—least of all, the dwarfs. Dr. Daruwalla had to admit that even his own enthusiasm for the project was slipping.

The ELISA test for HIV was simple in comparison to Farrokh’s genetic studies, for the latter had to be performed on cells (rather than on serum). Whole blood needed to be sent for the studies, and the unclotted blood had to be transported at room temperature. Blood specimens could cross international boundaries, although the paperwork was formidable; the specimens were usually shipped on dry ice, to preserve the proteins. But in the case of a genetic study, shipping dwarf blood from Bombay to Toronto was risky; it was likely that the cells would be killed before reaching Canada.

Dr. Daruwalla had solved this problem with the help of an Indian medical school in Bombay; the doctor let their research lab perform the studies and prepare the slides. The lab gave Farrokh finished sets of photographs of the chromosomes; it was easy to carry the photographs back to Toronto. But there the dwarf-blood project had stalled. Through a close friend and colleague—a fellow orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto—Farrokh had been introduced to a geneticist at the university. Even this contact proved fruitless, for the geneticist maintained that there was no identifiable genetic marker for this type of dwarfism.

The geneticist at the University of Toronto was quite emphatic to Farrokh: it was far-fetched to imagine that he would find a genetic marker for this autosomal dominant trait—achondroplasia is transmitted by a single autosomal dominant gene. This was a type of dwarfism that resulted from a spontaneous mutation. In the case of a spontaneous mutation, unaffected parents of dwarf children have essentially no further risk of producing another dwarf child; the unaffected brothers and sisters of an achondroplastic dwarf are similarly not at risk—they won’t necessarily produce dwarfs, either. The dwarfs themselves, on the other hand, are quite likely to pass the trait on to their children—half their children will be dwarfs. As for a genetic marker for this dominant characteristic, none could be found.

Dr. Daruwalla doubted that he knew enough about genetics to argue with a geneticist; the doctor simply continued to draw samples of the dwarfs’ blood, and he kept bringing the photographs of the chromosomes back to Toronto. The U. of T. geneticist was discouraging but fairly friendly, if not sympathetic. He was also the boyfriend of Farrokh’s friend and colleague at the Hospital for Sick Children—Sick Kids, they called the hospital in Toronto. Farrokh’s friend and the geneticist were gay.

Dr. Gordon Macfarlane, who was the same age as Dr. Daruwalla, had joined the orthopedic group at the Hospital for Sick Children in the same year as Farrokh; their hospital offices were next door to each other. Since Farrokh hated to drive, he often rode back and forth to work with Macfarlane; they both lived in Forest Hill. Early on in their relationship, there’d been those comic occasions when Julia and Farrokh had tried to interest Mac in various single or divorced women. Eventually, the matter of Macfarlane’s sexual orientation grew clear; in no time, Mac was bringing his boyfriend to dinner.

Dr. Duncan Frasier, the gay geneticist, was renowned for his research on the so-called (and elusive) gay chromosomes; Frasier was used to being teased about it. Biological studies of homosexuality generally irritate everybody. The debate as to whether homosexuality is present at birth or is a learned behavior is always inflamed with politics. Conservatives reject scientific suggestions that sexual orientation is biological; liberals anguish over the possible medical misuse of an identifiable genetic marker for homosexuality—should one be found. But Dr. Frasier’s research had led him to a fairly cautious and reasonable conclusion. There were only two “natural” sexual orientations among humans—one in the majority, one in the minority. Nothing he’d studied about homosexuality, nor anything he’d personally experienced or had ever felt, could persuade Dr. Frasier that either homosexuality or heterosexuality was a matter of choice. Sexual orientation wasn’t a “lifestyle.”

“We are born with what we desire—whatever it is,” Frasier liked to say.

Farrokh found it an interesting subject. But if the search for gay genes was so fascinating to Dr. Frasier, it discouraged Dr. Daruwalla that the gay geneticist would entertain no hope of finding a genetic marker for Vinod’s dwarfism. Sometimes Dr. Daruwalla was guilty of thinking that Frasier had no personal interest in dwarfs, whereas gays got the geneticist’s full attention. Nevertheless, Farrokh’s friendship with Macfarlane was unshakable; soon Farrokh was admitting to his gay friend how he’d always disliked the word “gay” in its current, commonplace homosexual sense. To Farrokh’s surprise, Mac had agreed; he said he wished that something as important to him as his homosexuality had a word of its own—a word that had no other meaning.

“‘Gay’ is such a frivolous word,” Macfarlane had said.

Dr. Daruwalla’s dislike of the contemporary usage of the word was more a generational matter than a matter of prejudice—or so the doctor believed. It was a word his mother, Meher, had loved but overused. “We had a gay time,” she would say. “What a gay evening we had—even your father was in a gay mood.”

It disheartened Dr. Daruwalla to see this old-fashioned adjective—a synonym for “jolly” or “merry” or “frolicsome” or “blithe”—take on a much more serious meaning.

“Come to think of it, ‘straight’ isn’t an original word, either,” Farrokh had said.

Macfarlane laughed, but his longtime companion, Frasier, responded with a touch of bitterness. “What you’re telling us, Farrokh, is that you accept gays when we’re so quiet about it that we might as well still be in the closet—and provided that we don’t dare call ourselves gay, which offends you. Isn’t that what you’re saying?” But this wasn’t what Farrokh meant.

“I’m not criticizing your orientation,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. “I just don’t like the word for it.”

There lingered an air of dismissiveness about Dr. Frasier; the rebuke reminded Dr. Daruwalla of the geneticist’s dismissal of the notion that the doctor might find a genetic marker for the most common type of dwarfism.

The last time Dr. Daruwalla had brought Dr. Frasier the photographs of the dwarfs’ chromosomes, the gay geneticist had been more dismissive than usual. “Those dwarfs must be bleeding to death, Farrokh,” Frasier told him. “Why don’t you leave the little buggers alone?”

“If I used the word ‘bugger,’ you would be offended,” Farrokh said. But what did Dr. Daruwalla expect? Dwarf genes or gay genes, genetics was a touchy subject.

All this left Farrokh feeling full of contempt for his own lack of follow-through on his dwarf-blood project. Dr. Daruwalla didn’t realize that his notion of “follow-through” (or lack thereof) had originated with the radio interview he’d briefly overheard the previous evening—that silliness with the complaining writer. But, at last, the doctor stopped brooding on the dwarf-blood subject.

Farrokh now made the morning’s second phone call.

The Enigmatic Actor

It was early to call John D., but Dr. Daruwalla hadn’t told him about Rahul; the doctor also wanted to stress the importance of John D.’s attending the lunch at the Duckworth Club with Detective Patel and Nancy. To Farrokh’s surprise, it was an alert Inspector Dhar who answered the phone in his suite at the Taj.

“You sound awake!” Dr. Daruwalla said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m reading a play—actually, two plays,” John D. replied. “What are you doing? Isn’t it time you were cutting open someone’s knee?”

This was the famous distant Dhar; the doctor felt he’d created this character, cold and sarcastic. Farrokh immediately launched into the news about Rahul—that he had a female identity these days; that, in all likelihood, the complete sex change had been accomplished. But John D. seemed barely interested. As for participating in the lunch at the Duckworth Club, not even the prospect of taking part in the capture of a serial murderer (or murderess) could engage the actor’s enthusiasm.

“I have a lot of reading to do,” John D. told Farrokh.

“But you can’t read all day,” the doctor said. “What reading?”

“I told you—two plays,” said Inspector Dhar.

“Oh, you mean homework,” Farrokh said. He assumed that John D. was studying his lines for his upcoming parts at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. The actor was thinking of Switzerland, of his day job, the doctor supposed. John D. was thinking of going home. After all, what was keeping him here? If, under the present threat, he gave up his membership at the Duckworth Club, what would he do with himself? Stay in his suite at the Taj, or at the Oberoi? Like Farrokh, John D. lived at the Duckworth Club when he was in Bombay.

“But now that the murderer is known, it’s absurd to resign from the club!” Dr. Daruwalla cried. “Any day now, they’re going to catch him!”

“Catch her,” Inspector Dhar corrected the doctor.

“Well, him or her,” Farrokh said impatiently. “The point is, the police know who they’re looking for. There won’t be any more killings.”

“I suppose seventy is enough,” John D. said. He was in a simply infuriating mood, Dr. Daruwalla thought.

“So, what are these plays?” Farrokh asked, in exasperation.

“I have only two leading roles this year,” John D. replied. “In the spring, it’s Osborne’s Der Entertainer—I’m Billy Rice—and in the fall I’m Friedrich Hofreiter in Schnitzler’s Das weite Land.”

“I see,” Farrokh said, but this was all foreign to him. He knew only that John Daruwalla was a respected professional as an actor, and that the Schauspielhaus Zürich was a sophisticated city theater with a reputation for performing both classical and modern plays. In Farrokh’s opinion, they gave short shrift to slapstick; he wondered if there were more slapstick comedies performed at the Bernhard or at the Theater am Hechtplatz—he didn’t really know Zürich.

The doctor knew only what his brother, Jamshed, had told him, and Jamshed was no veteran theatergoer—he went to see John D. In addition to Jamshed’s possibly philistine opinions, there was what little information Farrokh could force out of the guarded Dhar. The doctor didn’t know if two leading roles a year were enough, or if John D. had chosen only two such roles. The actor went on to say that he had smaller parts in something by Dürrenmatt and something by Brecht. A year ago, he’d made his directing debut—it was something by Max Frisch—and he’d played the eponymous Volpone in the Ben Jonson play. Next year, John D. had said, he hoped to direct Gorki’s Wassa Schelesnowa.

It was a pity that everything had to be in German, Dr. Daruwalla thought.

Except for his outstanding success as Inspector Dhar, John D. had never acted in films; he never auditioned. Was he lacking in ambition? Dr. Daruwalla wondered, for it seemed a mistake for Dhar not to take advantage of his perfect English. Yet John D. said he detested England, and he refused to set foot in the United States; he ventured to Toronto only to visit Farrokh and Julia. The actor wouldn’t even stray to Germany to audition for a film!

Many of the guest performers at the Schauspielhaus Zürich were German actors and actresses—Katharina Thalbach, for example. Jamshed had once told Farrokh that John D. had been romantically linked with the German actress, but John D. denied this. Dhar never appeared in a German theater, and (to Farrokh’s knowledge) there was no one at the Schauspielhaus Zürich to whom the actor had ever been “romantically linked.” Dhar was a friend of the famous Maria Becker, but not romantically a friend. Besides, Dr. Daruwalla guessed, Maria Becker would be a little too old for John D. And Jamshed had reported seeing John D. out to dinner at the Kronenhalle with Christiane Hörbiger, who was also famous—and closer to John D.’s age, the doctor speculated. But Dr. Daruwalla suspected that this sighting was no more significant than spotting John D. with any other of the regular performers at the Schauspielhaus. John D. was also friends with Fritz Schediwy and Peter Ehrlich and Peter Arens. Dhar was seen dining, on more than one occasion, with the pretty Eva Rieck. Jamshed also reported that he frequently saw John D. with the director Gerd Heinz—and as often with a local terror of the avant-garde, Matthias Frei.

John D., as an actor, eschewed the avant-garde; yet, apparently, he was on friendly terms with one of Zürich’s elder statesmen of such theater. Matthias Frei was a director and occasional playwright, a kind of deliberately underground and incomprehensible fellow—or so Dr. Daruwalla believed. Frei was about the doctor’s age, but he looked older, more rumpled; he was certainly wilder. Jamshed had told Farrokh that John D. even split the expense of renting a flat or a chalet in the mountains with Matthias Frei; one year they would rent something in the Grisons, another year they’d try the Bernese Oberland. Supposedly, it was agreeable for them to share a place because John D. preferred the mountains in the ski season and Matthias Frei liked the hiking in the summer; also, Dr. Daruwalla presumed, Frei’s friends would be people of a different generation from John D.’s friends.

But, once again, Farrokh’s view of the culture John D. inhabited was marginal. As for the actor’s love life, there was no understanding his aloofness. He’d appeared to have a long relationship with someone in a publishing house—a publicist, or so Farrokh remembered her. She was an attractive, intelligent younger woman. They’d occasionally traveled together, but not to India; for Dhar, India was strictly business. They’d never lived together. And now, Farrokh was told, this publicist and John D. were “just good friends.”

Julia surmised that John D. didn’t want to have children, and that this would eventually turn most younger women away. But now, at 39, John D. might meet a woman his own age, or a little older—someone who would accept childlessness. Or, Julia had said, perhaps he’d meet a nice divorced woman who’d already had her children—someone whose children would be grownups. That would be ideal for John D., Julia had decided.

But Dr. Daruwalla didn’t think so. Inspector Dhar had never exhibited a nesting instinct. The rentals in the mountains, a different one each year, utterly suited John D. Even in Zürich, he made a point of owning very little. His flat—which was within walking distance of the theater, the lake, the Limmat, the Kronenhalle—was also rented. He didn’t want a car. He seemed proud of his framed playbills, and even an Inspector Dhar poster or two; in Zürich, Dr. Daruwalla supposed, these Hindi cinema advertisements were probably amusing to John D.’s friends. They could never have imagined that such craziness translated into a raving audience beyond the wildest dreams of the Schauspielhaus.

In Zürich, Jamshed had observed, John D. was infrequently recognized; he was hardly the best-known of the Schauspielhaus troupe. Not exactly a character actor, he was also no star. In restaurants around town, theatergoers might recognize him, but they wouldn’t necessarily know his name. Only schoolchildren, after a comedy, would ask for his autograph; the children simply held out their playbills to anyone in the cast.

Jamshed said that Zürich had no money to give to the arts. There’d recently been a scandal because the city wanted to close down the Schauspielhaus Keller; this was the more avant-garde theater, for younger theatergoers. John D.’s friend Matthias Frei had made a big fuss. As far as Jamshed knew, the theater was always in need of money. Technical personnel hadn’t been given an annual raise; if they quit, they weren’t replaced. Farrokh and Jamshed speculated that John D.’s salary couldn’t be very significant. But of course he didn’t need the money; Inspector Dhar was rich. What did it matter to Dhar that the Schauspielhaus Zürich was inadequately subsidized by the city, by the banks, by private donations?

Julia also implied that the theater somewhat complacently rested on its illustrious history in the 1930s and ’40s, when it was a refuge for people fleeing from Germany, not only Jews but Social Democrats and Communists—or anyone who’d spoken out against the Nazis and as a result either wasn’t permitted to work or was in danger. There’d been a time when a production of Wilhelm Tell was defiant, even revolutionary—a symbolic blow against the Nazis. Many Swiss had been afraid to get involved in the war, yet the Schauspielhaus Zürich had been courageous at a time when any performance of Goethe’s Faust might have been the last. They’d also performed Sartre, and von Hofmannsthal, and a young Max Frisch. The Jewish refugee Kurt Hirschfeld had found a home there. But nowadays, Julia thought, there were many younger intellectuals who might find the Schauspielhaus rather staid. Dr. Daruwalla suspected that “staid” suited John D. What mattered to him was that in Zürich he was not Inspector Dhar.

When the Hindi movie star was asked where he lived, because it was obvious that he spent very little time in Bombay, Dhar always replied (with characteristic vagueness) that he lived in the Himalayas—“the abode of snow.” But John D.’s abode of snow was in the Alps, and in the city on the lake. The doctor thought that Dhar was probably a Kashmiri name, but neither Dr. Daruwalla nor Inspector Dhar had ever been to the Himalayas.

Now, on the spur of the moment, the doctor decided to tell John D. his decision.

“I’m not writing another Inspector Dhar movie,” Farrokh informed the actor. “I’m going to have a press conference and identify myself as the man responsible for Inspector Dhar’s creation. I want to call an end to it, and let you off the hook—so to speak. If you don’t mind,” the doctor added uncertainly.

“Of course I don’t mind,” John D. said. “But you should let the real policeman find the real murderer—you don’t want to interfere with that.”

“Well, I won’t!” Dr. Daruwalla said defensively. “But if you’d only come to lunch… I just thought you might remember something. You have an eye for detail, you know.”

“What sort of detail have you got in mind?” John D. asked.

“Well, anything you might remember about Rahul, or about that time in Goa. I don’t know, really—just anything!” Farrokh said.

“I remember the hippie,” said Inspector Dhar. He began with his memory of her weight; after all, he’d carried her down the stairs of the Hotel Bardez and into the lobby. She was very solid. She’d looked into his eyes the whole time, and there was her fragrance—he knew she’d just had a bath.

Then, in the lobby, she’d said, “If it’s not too much trouble, you could do me a big favor.” She’d showed him the dildo without removing it from her rucksack; Dhar remembered its appalling size, and the head of the thing pointing at him. “The tip unscrews,” Nancy had told him; she was still watching his eyes. “But I’m just not strong enough.” It was screwed together so tightly, he needed to grip the big cock in both hands. And then she stopped him, as soon as he’d loosened the tip. “That’s enough,” she told him. “I’m going to spare you,” she said too softly. “You don’t want to know what’s inside the thing.”

It had been quite a challenge—to meet her eyes, to stare her down. John D. had focused on the idea of the big dildo inside her; he believed that she would see in his eyes what he was thinking. What he thought he’d seen in Nancy’s eyes was that she’d courted danger before—maybe it had even thrilled her—but that she wasn’t so sure about danger anymore. Then she’d looked away.

“I can’t imagine what’s become of the hippie!” Dr. Daruwalla blurted out suddenly. “It’s inconceivable—a woman like that, with Deputy Commissioner Patel!”

“Lunch is tempting, if only to see what she looks like… after twenty years,” said Inspector Dhar.

He’s just acting, thought Dr. Daruwalla. Dhar didn’t care what Nancy looked like; something else was on the actor’s mind.

“So… you’ll come to lunch?” the doctor asked.

“Sure. Why not?” the actor said. But Dr. Daruwalla knew that John D. wasn’t as indifferent as he seemed.

As for Inspector Dhar, he’d never intended to miss the lunch at the Duckworth Club, and he thought he would rather be murdered by Rahul than resign his membership under a threat so coarse that it had to be left in a dead man’s mouth. It was not how Nancy looked that mattered to him; rather, he was an actor—a professional—and even 20 years ago he’d known that Nancy had been acting. She wasn’t the young woman she’d pretended to be. Twenty years ago, even the young John D. could tell that Nancy had been terrified, that she’d been bluffing.

Now the actor wanted to see if Nancy was still bluffing, if she was still pretending. Maybe now, Dhar thought, Nancy had stopped acting; maybe now, after 20 years, she simply let her terror show.

Something Rather Odd

It was 6:45 in the morning when Nancy awoke in her husband’s arms. Vijay was holding her the way she loved to be held; it was the best way for her to wake up, and she was astonished at what a good night’s sleep she’d had. She felt Vijay’s chest against her back; his delicate hands held her breasts, his breath slightly stirred her hair. Detective Patel’s penis was quite stiff, and Nancy could feel its light but insistent pulse against the base of her spine. Nancy knew she was fortunate to have such a good husband, and such a kind one. She regretted how difficult she was to live with; Vijay took such pains to protect her. She began to move her hips against him; it was one of the ways he liked to make love to her—to enter her from behind while she was on her side. But the deputy commissioner didn’t respond to the rolling motion of his wife’s hips, although he truly worshiped her nakedness—her whiteness, her blondness, her voluptuousness. The policeman let go of Nancy’s breasts, and simultaneously (with his retreating from her) she noticed that the bathroom door was open; they always went to sleep with the door closed. The bedroom smelled fresh, like soap; her husband had already had his morning shower. Nancy turned to face Vijay—she touched his wet hair. He couldn’t meet her eyes.

“It’s almost seven o’clock,” the detective told her.

Detective Patel was normally out of bed before 6:00; he usually left for Crime Branch Headquarters before 7:00. But this morning he’d let her sleep; he’d showered and then he’d got back into bed beside her. He’d merely been waiting for her to wake up, Nancy thought; yet he hadn’t been waiting to have sex.

“What are you going to tell me?” Nancy asked him. “What have you not told me, Vijay?”

“It’s really nothing—just a little lunch,” Patel replied.

“We are—at the Duckworth Club,” the policeman told her.

“With the doctor, you mean,” Nancy said.

“With the actor, too, I imagine,” the detective said.

“Oh, Vijay. No… not Dhar!” she cried.

“I think Dhar will be there,” Vijay told her. “They both know Rahul,” he explained. It sounded crude to him, to put it the way he’d said it yesterday, to the doctor (“to compare notes”), and so he said, “It could be valuable, just to hear what all of you remember. There might be some detail that would help me …” His voice trailed off. He hated to see his wife so withdrawn. Then she was suddenly wracked with sobs.

“We’re not members of the Duckworth Club!” Nancy cried.

“We’ve been invited—we’re guests,” Patel told her.

“But they’ll see me, they’ll think I’m horrible,” Nancy moaned.

“They know you’re my wife. They just want to help,” the deputy commissioner replied.

“What if Rahul sees me?” Nancy asked him. She was always raising this question.

“Would you recognize Rahul?” Patel asked. The detective thought it was unlikely that any of them would recognize Rahul, but the question was spurious; Nancy wasn’t in disguise.

“I don’t think so, but maybe,” Nancy said.

Deputy Commissioner Patel dressed himself and left her while she was still naked in the bedroom; Nancy was aimlessly searching through her clothes. The dilemma of what she should wear to the Duckworth Club was gradually overwhelming her. Vijay had told her that he would come home from the police station to drive her to the Duckworth Club; Nancy wouldn’t have to get herself there. But the detective doubted that she’d heard him. He’d have to come home early, because he suspected she would still be naked in the bedroom; possibly she’d have progressed to trying on her clothes.

Sometimes (on her “good days”) she wandered into the kitchen, which was the only room where the sun penetrated the apartment, and she would lie on the countertop in a long patch of sunlight; the sun came through the open window for only two hours of the morning, but it was enough to give her a sunburn if she didn’t apply some protection to her skin. Once, she’d stretched herself out on the countertop, completely naked, and a woman from a neighboring flat had called the police. The caller had described Nancy as “obscene.” After that, she’d always worn something, even if it was only one of Vijay’s shirts. Sometimes she wore sunglasses, too, although she liked to have a nice tan and the sunglasses gave her “raccoon eyes,” she said.

She never shopped for food, because she said the beggars assailed her. Nancy was a decent cook but Vijay did the shopping. They didn’t believe in grocery lists; he brought home something that appealed to him and she would think of a way to prepare it. Once or twice a month, she went out to buy books. She preferred shopping curbside, along Churchgate and at the intersection of Mahatma Gandhi and Hornby roads. She liked secondhand books best, especially memoirs; her favorite was A Combat Widow of the Raj—a memoir that ended with a suicide note. She also bought a lot of remaindered American novels; for one of these novels, she rarely paid more than 15 rupees—sometimes as little as 5. She said that beggars didn’t bother people who bought books.

Once or twice a week, Vijay took her out to dinner. Although they’d still not spent all of the dildo money, they thought they couldn’t afford the hotel restaurants, which were the only places where Nancy could feel she was anonymous—among foreigners. Only once had they argued about it; Vijay had told her that he suspected she preferred the hotel restaurants because she could imagine that she was only a tourist, just passing through. He’d accused her of wishing that she didn’t live in India—of wanting to be back in the States. She’d showed him. The next time they went to their regular restaurant—a Chinese place called Kamling, at Churchgate—Nancy had summoned the owner to their table. She’d asked the owner if he knew that her husband was a deputy commissioner; indeed, the Chinese gentleman knew this—Crime Branch Headquarters was nearby, just opposite Crawford Market.

“Well, then,” Nancy wanted to know, “how come you never offer us a free meal?”

After that, they always ate there for free; they were treated splendidly, too. Nancy said that, with the money they’d saved, they could afford to go to one of the hotel restaurants—or at least to one of the hotel bars—but they rarely did so. On those few occasions, Nancy mercilessly criticized the food; she would also pick out the Americans and say hateful things about them.

“Don’t you dare tell me that I want to go back to the States, Vijay,” she said; she only had to say it once. The deputy commissioner never suggested it again, and Nancy could tell he was pleased; all of it had needed saying. This was how they lived, with a delicate passion—with something usually held back. They were so careful. Nancy felt it was unfair that a lunch at the Duckworth Club could completely undo her.

She put on one of the dresses that she knew she would never wear to the club; she didn’t bother with underwear, because she supposed she would just keep changing it. Nancy went into the kitchen and made some tea for herself. Then she found her sunglasses and she stretched out on her back in the long patch of sunlight on the countertop. She’d forgotten to put any sunscreen on her face—it was hard to find sunscreen in Bombay—but she told herself that she would lie there for only an hour; in a half hour, she’d take the sunglasses off. She didn’t want “raccoon eyes,” but she wanted Dr. Daruwalla and Inspector Dhar to see that she was healthy, that she took care of herself.

Nancy wished the apartment had a view; she would have liked to see a sunrise or a sunset. (What were they saving the dildo money for?) Coming from Iowa, Nancy would have especially appreciated a view of the Arabian Sea, which was the view to the west. Instead, she stared out the open window; she could see other women in the windows of other apartments, but they were constantly in motion, too busy to notice her. One day, Nancy hoped she might spot the woman who’d called the police and told them that she was “obscene.” But Nancy didn’t know how she would ever recognize the anonymous caller.

This thought led her to wondering if she would recognize Rahul; it was of more concern to Nancy that Rahul might recognize her. What if she was alone, just buying a book, and Rahul saw her and knew who she was?

She lay on the countertop, staring at the sun until it was blocked by an adjacent building. Now I’ll have raccoon eyes, she told herself, but another thought obsessed her: that she would one day be standing right next to Rahul and she wouldn’t know who Rahul was; yet Rahul would know who she was. That was her fear.

Nancy removed the sunglasses but she remained motionless, on her back on the countertop. She was thinking about the curl to Inspector Dhar’s lip. He had an almost perfect mouth, and she recalled how the curl to his lip had first struck her as friendly, even inviting; then she’d realized he was sneering at her.

Nancy knew she was attractive to men. In 20 years, she’d gained 15 pounds, but only a woman would have been troubled by the way she’d put on the weight. The 15 pounds had spread themselves over her generously; they hadn’t all ended up in her face, or on the backs of her thighs. Nancy’s face had always been round, but it was still firm; her breasts had always been good—now, for most men, they were better. Certainly, they were bigger. Her hips were a little fuller, her waist a little thicker; the exaggerated curvaceousness of her body lent to her overall figure a voluptuous definition. Her waist, however thickened, still went in; her breasts and her hips still stood out. She was about Dhar’s age, not quite 40, but it was not only her blondness or the fairness of her skin that made her seem younger; it was her nervousness. She was as awkward as a teenager who believes everyone is staring at her. This was because she was convinced that Rahul was watching her, everywhere she went.

Unfortunately, in a crowd, or in a new place where people would look at her—and people tended to look at her, both men and women—Nancy became so self-conscious that she found it difficult to speak. She thought that people stared at her because she was grotesque; on her good days, she thought she was merely fat. And whenever she was around strangers, she would recall Dhar’s sneer. She’d been a pretty girl then, but he hadn’t noticed; she’d shown him a huge dildo, and she’d asked him (quite suggestively) to unscrew it for her. She’d added that she was sparing him… to not let him see what was inside the thing. Yet, in his sneer, there’d not been the smallest measure of attraction to her; Nancy believed that she’d disgusted him.

She wandered back into the bedroom, where she removed the unsuitable dress; once again, she stood naked. She was surprised at herself for wanting to look her best for Inspector Dhar; she thought she hated him. But the strangest conviction was compelling her to dress herself for him. She knew he wasn’t a real inspector, but Nancy believed that Dhar had certain powers. Nancy believed that it would not be her beloved husband, Vijay Patel, who would catch the killer; nor would the funny doctor be the hero. There was no reason for it—none beyond the authority of an actor’s sneer—but Nancy believed that Inspector Dhar would be Rahul’s undoing.

But what exactly did Dhar like? He must like something rather odd, Nancy decided. A faint ridge of blond fuzz extended from her pubic hair to her navel, which was especially long and deep. When Nancy rubbed her belly with coconut oil, this blond streak of fur would darken slightly and become more noticeable. If she wore a sari, she could leave her navel bare. Maybe Dhar would like her furry navel. Nancy knew that Vijay liked it.