A Son of the Circus

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Patel replied. “But I wanted to know your opinion. Can I trust him?” The deputy commissioner saw that his wife was about to cry again.

“You can trust me!” Nancy cried.

“I know I can trust you, sweetie,” Patel said. “But what about him? Do you think he can do it?”

“He’ll do anything you tell him, if he knows what you want,” Nancy answered.

“And you think Rahul will go for him?” her husband asked. “Oh, yes,” she said bitterly.

“Dhar is a pretty cool customer!” said the detective admiringly.

“Dhar is as queer as a three-dollar bill,” Nancy told him.

Not being from Iowa, Detective Patel had some difficulty with the concept of how “queer” a three-dollar bill was—not to mention that, in Bombay, they call a bill a note. “You mean that he’s gay—a homosexual?” her husband asked.

“No doubt about it. You can trust me,” Nancy repeated. They were almost home before she spoke again. “A very cool customer,” she added.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” said the deputy commissioner, because he saw that his wife couldn’t stop crying.

“I do love you, Vijay,” she managed to say.

“I love you, too, sweetie,” the detective told her.

Just Some Old Attraction-Repulsion Kind of Thing

In the Ladies’ Garden, the sun now slanted sideways through the latticework of the bower; the same shade of pinkness from the bougainvillea dappled the tablecloth, which Mr. Sethna had brushed free of crumbs. It seemed to the old steward that Dhar and Dr. Daruwalla would never leave the table. They’d long ago stopped talking about Rahul—or, rather, Mrs. Dogar. For the moment, they were both more interested in Nancy.

“But exactly what do you think is wrong with her?” Farrokh asked John D.

“It appears that the events of the last twenty years have had a strong effect on her,” Dhar answered.

“Oh, elephant shit!” cried Dr. Daruwalla. “Can’t you just once say what you’re really feeling?”

“Okay,” Dhar said. “It appears that she and her husband are a real couple … very much in love, and all of that.”

“Yes, that does appear to be the main thing about them,” the doctor agreed. But Farrokh realized that this observation didn’t greatly interest him; after all, he was still very much in love with Julia and he’d been married longer than Detective Patel. “But what was happening between the two of you—between you and her?” the doctor asked Dhar.

“It was just some old attraction-repulsion kind of thing,” John D. answered evasively.

“The next thing you’ll tell me is that the world is round,” Farrokh said, but the actor merely shrugged. Suddenly, it was not Rahul (or Mrs. Dogar) who frightened Dr. Daruwalla; it was Dhar the doctor was afraid of, and only because Dr. Daruwalla felt that he didn’t really know Dhar—not even after all these years. As before—because he felt that something unpleasant was pending—Farrokh thought of the circus; yet when he mentioned again his upcoming journey to Junagadh, he saw that John D. still wasn’t interested.

“You probably think it’s doomed to fail—just another save-the-children project,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “Like coins in a wishing well, like pebbles in the sea.”

“It sounds as if you think it’s doomed to fail,” Dhar told him.

It was truly time to slip away, the doctor thought. Then Dr. Daruwalla spotted the Hawaiian shirt in the paper bag; Detective Patel had left the package under his chair. Both men were standing, ready to leave, when the doctor pulled the loud shirt out of the bag.

“Well, look at that. The deputy commissioner actually forgot something. How uncharacteristic,” John D. remarked.

“I doubt that he forgot it. I think he wanted you to have it,” Dr. Daruwalla said. Impulsively, the doctor held up the riotous display of parrots in palm trees; there were flowers, too—red and orange and yellow against a jungle of impossible green. Farrokh placed the shoulders of the shirt against Dhar’s shoulders. “It’s the right size for you,” the doctor observed. “Are you sure you don’t want it?”

“I have all the shirts I need,” the actor told him. “Give it to my fucking twin.”

21

ESCAPING MAHARASHTRA

Ready for Rabies