Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [24]
Doctor Nayak, who had been yawning, closed his mouth shut. He grinned.
“That again. That city is going to kill you, Dharmen.”
“You should have come with me, Nayak. Roads as far as the eye can see, skyscrapers, everything clean, beautiful.” Shah hit the window; it trembled. “Those Chinese have all the will power in the world. And here we haven’t had ten minutes of will power since Independence.”
The doctor, with a chuckle, got up from his sofa and went to the window. He stretched.
“The experience of Shanghai being to a middle-aged Indian businessman what the experience of sex is to a teenager. You can’t keep comparing us to the Chinese, Dharmen.”
Shah turned to look at him.
“How else will we improve? Look at the trains in this city. Look at the roads. The law courts. Nothing works, nothing moves; it takes ten years to build a bridge.”
“Enough. Enough. Have some breakfast with us, Dharmen. Vishala wants to thank you. You arranged that deal for her friend in Prabhadevi.” Nayak placed his hand on the fat man’s shoulder. “You’re starting to grow on her. Stay. I’ll cancel a fourth appointment for you.”
Dharmen Shah was gazing out of the window.
The hawks rematerialized. Still in combat, blown towards the building by a sudden gust, they came straight at the window and slammed into it, before another current lifted them, as if at a cliff face, vertically up.
“Bloody nuisance,” Doctor Nayak said. “Leave shit on the windows, fight all day long. Someone should ….” He pulled an imaginary trigger. “… and knock them off. One by one.”
Pressing the buttons on his mobile phone, Shah walked through the basement car park until a spectral voice began echoing under the low ceiling.
“Mr. Secretary, members of Vishram Society ….”
Shah slipped the mobile phone into his pocket and walked with stealth.
A tall dark man in a white shirt and black trousers stood at the open door of the basement lift. Facing its half-mirror, he raised his left hand towards it.
“Mr. Secretary, members of Vishram Society, Towers A and B, all your dreams are about to come true.”
The man shifted the angle of his jaw: a broken upper tooth now showed prominently in the mirror.
“Mr. Secretary, members of ….”
A boy in dirty khaki, a tea tray in his hand, poked the man from behind, asking to be allowed into the lift.
The man spun around with a raised hand. “Sister-fucker, don’t touch me.”
The tea boy stepped back, shifting the tray with its leaping glasses to his left hand.
Shah cleared his throat.
“Shanmugham,” he said, “let the boy use the lift.”
With a “yes, sir,” the tall man hurried to a grey Mercedes-Benz, whose door he opened for his coughing employer.
On Marine Drive.
Coconut palms bent by the ocean breeze and pigeons in sudden flight added to the sensation of speed on the long straight dash down the avenue. A satin patch of sun gleamed on Back Bay.
“Has everything but the deadline in it,” Shanmugham said, turning from the front passenger seat of the Mercedes-Benz to show his boss a printed page. The driver changed gears as a red light finally snared them.
“I went over it word for word last night, sir. Made sure every comma was right.”
Ignoring the letter, Mr. Shah opened a little blue metal box, and flicked what was inside with a plastic spoonlet into his bright red mouth. Small black teeth chewed the gutka: he had lost a few.
“Don’t worry about words, Shanmugham. Tell me about the people.”
“You saw them, sir.”
“Only once.”
“Solid people. Tower B is modern. Finance, high-tech, computers. Tower A is old. Teachers, accountants, brokers. Both are solid.”
“Teachers?” The fat man winced. “What else about this Society? Has anything bad happened there?”
“One suicide, sir. Many years