Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [68]
"Borrow what you like," Husseina urged Anjali, as she unlocked the door to a ceiling-to-floor almirah. "Sunita's ironing the salwar-kameez I'll be wearing tonight. That girl's so selfless, it's almost annoying." The interior of Husseina's almirah glowed with a pastel rainbow of silk. "Key lime, lemon chiffon, apricot, mango, raspberry sorbet. My just desserts, I call them. Go on, take your pick. I'll be in blueberry."
"I couldn't," Anjali said, without meaning it. She fingered the silks, georgettes and organzas.
"Don't you like them?" Husseina sounded hurt.
"They're beautiful."
Husseina pulled two pistachio-green gharara sets out of the almirah. One was decorated with crystal beads, the other with sequins. "Swarovski," she said. "That's what I wore on my first real date with my fiancé after we were engaged. We had ice cream sundaes." She shut the mirrored door of the almirah and pointed to their reflections. "Pistachio matches your eyes." She pulled Anjali closer to her, pressing her body hard against Anjali as if trying to fuse their flesh. "The same greenish eyes, would you believe?"
Husseina's sudden intensity frightened Anjali, but she didn't want to risk losing the chance to borrow an expensive gharara that might inflame Mr. GG.
"We could be sisters," Husseina continued. "If we dressed alike, I bet we could pass for twins." She laughed as she handed the crystalspeckled outfit to Anjali. "I want you to have this. And not just for tonight."
"Oh, I couldn't..." Anjali said, but she grabbed the top. Rich and mysterious Husseina could afford to be magnanimous, so why insult her by refusing her exquisite gift? As Tookie often remarked, there was no point in worrying about Husseina's motives: "She's so rich, she lives on a different planet."
Husseina draped the shimmery top over Anjali's navy stretch T-shirt. "You're going to look very beautiful for your young man."
My young man? She decided Husseina was referring to Peter Champion, not Mr. GG. "He's not my young man." She could take Husseina into partial confidence. "Peter isn't young. You'll see tonight."
"But you call your teacher by his first name?"
"It's an American thing. Actually, he's more like my father's age."
Husseina arched a finely plucked eyebrow. "What's twenty, twenty-five years in the giant scheme of things?"
"He may be older than my father ... and he's got someone else."
"Ah, the fatal hesitancy. That fatal someone else."
Anjali couldn't tell if Husseina was consoling her or teasing her. "I think Americans like to say, 'He has a partner.'"
Husseina laid a maternal hand on Anjali's shoulder. "It's all a business arrangement. You'll get used to it."
"In the giant scheme of things." Anjali repeated Husseina's phrase. It was a comforting notion. "It's all a matter of light and angles, isn't it?"
2
Mr. GG, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers and a copy of Peter Champion's book, was the first to arrive. In the old days, according to Minnie, guests in ball gowns and tails were greeted by a long receiving line that ended with Maxie, Minnie, and the guests of honor. Gout and poverty had forced Minnie to dispense with such Bagehot House traditions. Asoke, instructed to meet guests in the portico with a welcoming salaam, ushered Mr. GG to the threshold of the formal drawing room, then hobbled back to his post. Minnie, majestic in a brocade caftan, had installed herself in a wing chair in the center of the room and Anjali on an ottoman right next to her a full hour before. The other three boarders hovered behind her like ladies in waiting, offering her appetizers of meat-filled pastries and refilling her glass of rum punch.
"That gentleman with charming manners, is he the fan who wants to meet our Peter?" Minnie asked Anjali in a tipsy whisper. "He cuts a dashing figure."
Anjali couldn't get over how dashing! She had remembered Mr. GG as a lithe man with a slight paunch, but here he was, tall and princely in black silk sherwani and white ruched churidar, gliding toward the hostess.
"Where are your manners, child? Go on, get