Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [103]
"What does that have to do with us?" she asked.
"Butterfly effect," he answered. He launched into a long explanation of how anything that happens anywhere in the world affects Bangalore. She didn't follow his theory and stopped listening to his actual words, cocooning herself instead in the pleasure of his desire for her. He kept reaching for her hand. She wished Kew Gardens was far, very far. She wanted him to keep talking, keep driving, keep lusting. She wanted to love even more than to be loved.
Respecting Minnie's house rules, Mr. GG stopped the car two blocks from Bagehot House. She let herself out the passenger door and walked around to the driver's side. He stayed behind the wheel but didn't drive off. He said, "I want to see you again."
She could tell he wanted to say more, and she wanted him to say more, so she lingered on the sidewalk, tracing invisible circles with a fingertip on his door. Mr. GG didn't bring out the sweet, clean wine-and-moonlight flirtiness that Moni Lahiri had, just a couple of hours before. She couldn't make even make-believe love to Moni in Moni's apartment. Did he live in a rented apartment, or did he own a house? He was a magician, who took Anjali and Angie, waved his wand, and made both disappear, then created an ethereal Miss Two Scoops, the stuff of popular dreams. He Photoshopped her: that was it. But Mr. GG saw through her, and into her. Her attraction to Mr. GG had a rawness and authority that thrilled her.
"Yes?"
He had expected confirmation, not a question. The engine started up. "Take care," he said. The car eased into traffic.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon, a normally quiet time. A light mist was falling, Bangalore's version of the monsoon. Kew Gardens Corner and Bhajot Lane were unusually crowded. Pedestrians—not strollers, but young men running with purpose—had spilled over the sidewalks and into the roadway, throwing traffic into a honking chaos. At three o'clock most houses were usually shuttered and many of the smaller shops were closed.
I'm a woman now, she said to herself. I'm quite a woman. I'm hot, according to Tookie. Secretive and oh so mysterious, according to Husseina. Sherbet-cool, sherbet-refreshing, according to Moni. And funny and fascinating, if I'm reading Mr. GG correctly. All in all, it had been quite a day, and it was still the middle of the afternoon.
9
The promised day had arrived! Shortly after daybreak, Anjali and eleven other students piled out of the CCI minivan for the first day of the two-week intensive course, itself a preparation for a new life as a salaried, independent career woman. She was glad, in a way, that she had procrastinated about getting in touch with Peter Champion's contacts. Big carp in a small pond is a minnow in a lake. She wasn't the frightened country bumpkin she had been in her first few weeks in Bangalore. She felt cocky as she watched the other eight women and three men take hesitant leaps out of the minivan. They clustered around the newly installed elevator, which could accommodate only four at a time. She chose to walk up the three flights to the door of CCI and Desai Data Systems, the first arrival, and she was rewarded with a special smile from Parvati Banerji, who had stationed herself on the third-floor landing to welcome her students.
The floor plan of DDS and Usha Desai's home office, in which Anjali had been interviewed, were identical, except that all three bedrooms had been turned into classrooms furnished with desks and chairs and equipped with computers, whiteboards, and floor-to-ceiling panels that depicted American life.
Parvati began lessons by dashing off a list of words on the whiteboard: please, deliver, development, circuitry, executive, address, growth, management, garbage, opportunity, hearth, addition, thought. Words that customer-support-service employees would need and would use on every work shift but would very likely mangle.
"Our goal for the intensive sessions," she announced, "is accent enhancement. The regular