“Uh, that is not an easy thing to do.”
“You should always do the things that are most difficult for you,” Hemant said, nodding knowingly to his pupils.
Prem faced the squirrel. It sat still, cowering, and he thought he might actually be able to hit it with the can. But then he decided this was not the best course of action and purposely threw the can the wrong way.
When Prem descended without a squirrel, Hemant went next door to ask the hardware store owner, Mr. Settergren—whom he treated as an on-staff handyman, regularly coaxing him into performing odd jobs for no pay except the occasional bag of expired Bombay Mixture—for assistance. The crowd dispersed and Prem returned the ladder to its place against the wall. This was the right moment to place the note under the canola. He lobbed a silent prayer in the direction of the Ganesh and Lakshmi stickers on the cash register and hoped for the best.
After Mr. Settergren was firmly established in the ceiling, Hemant dusted off his hands as if he had removed the squirrel himself. Ever since the terrible incident some weeks back when the boys talked about Leena then destroyed the lentils aisle, he had been considering putting an end to the labor-in-exchange-for-life-lessons program he had instituted. But when he did some rudimentary calculations for how much it would cost to hire extra help and the number turned out to be too far above zero, he decided he could put up with the boys a little longer. He would have them stack the kidney beans cans in a neat pyramid then dismiss them for the day.
He headed to the backroom to tell Leena that the okra fridge had been shifted and they now had room for a Maggi Noodles display when something slimy caught his eye amongst the cooking oils. It was some sort of scrap of paper, a receipt or wrapper or something. He pulled it out from under a gallon jug and read it from the “mere sapnon ki rani” beginning to the Dairy Queen end, at which point he crushed the paper in his hand and yelled “Good for n—!” The phrase was meant to end with “nothing” and then move into a variety of insults and curses followed by threats, but Hemant caught himself. If I chuck them all out now, he thought, I will never get to the bottom of the mess. He smoothed out the wrinkled paper and placed it in his shirt pocket and waited a moment for his blood to simmer down before heading to the front of the store.
“What were you saying?” Mrs. Bhardwaj, the squat wife of a prominent pulmonologist, asked.
“I said something? I did not say anything,” Hemant said. “Here, have these pistachios.”
“No, no, you said, very loudly, ‘Good for’ and then you stopped.”
“Oh, oh, yes, I was saying, ‘Good for you!’” Hemant said. “For choosing the green peppers. Excellent quality, fresh from Mexico.”
Mrs. Bhardwaj did not appear convinced, but Hemant moved on to inspecting what the boys were up to. They seemed not to be doing much of anything, and when he approached them loitering near the bitter melon, they straightened themselves up as if he were a brigadier general of the Indian army. Prem was with them, standing at attention, looking reliably disheveled. It could not have been him, Hemant thought. He was too awkward and incapable of clandestine anything. Hemant motioned for Prem to come forward and follow him outside.
The previous days of sunshine and heat had given way to a gray, cool day that threatened rain. Prem, not yet understanding the unreliability of New Jersey weather, stood shivering in a shirt and torn jeans. “Listen,” Hemant began, pulling out the note.
Prem recognized the scrap of paper instantly and contemplated which way he should run. If he ran toward King’s Court, Hemant could easily corner him; if he ran the other way, he could get hit by a car, which, all things considered, was the more desirable option. He felt like a trapped mouse, akin to Amitabh’s character Vijay in Kaala Patthar stuck in a coal mine, as sweat accumulated on his stubbly chest.
“One of these donkeys has written this and tried to leave it for my daughter to find,” Hemant said. “I am thinking it is the donkey in the WrestleMania shirt, but who knows?” He peered inside between the herbal products window display and unique shopping experience sign. “I am giving to you the job of finding out which one it is.”
Prem nearly cried from happiness, then agreed to do everything he could to ferret out the culprit and requested the day off so he could gather clues.
Back at King’s court, he collapsed onto Beena’s plastic couch and didn’t do anything the rest of the day. When the fear wore off and the shaking stopped, he came to the realization that Leena would never get his note.
“This is good!” Beena said. She was kneading an enormous ball of dough at the kitchen counter. “You have already impressed her father with your … with your what?”
“Height,” Prem said.
“Height, yes, very important. In India Abroad ads, everyone is looking for good height-body for the daughter’s husband.”
Prem rolled over on the couch, causing the plastic to whine. “I don’t care about the father, I care about the daughter.”
“Prem, Prem, father is always the key,” Beena said. “Now, did Leena see what happened?”
“She maybe saw her father finding the note, but nothing else.”
“Okay, first we must get her a note explaining that the other note was taken. Then we will write a new note and establish a new note place.”
“No, that’s it,” Prem said, sitting up and waving his hands in objection. “No more notes. I need a plan where I actually can see her.”
Beena slapped her big ball of dough and came over to the couch. “What if you tell Hemant who your father is?”
“What? Why? No, nuh-uh,” Prem said.
“If he comes to know you are from the wealthy family, he will embrace you like a son and get his daughter married to you. You will not have to throw cans on a squirrel anymore.”
“Out of the question.”
“And you could stop this Exxon work.”
“But I like it there.”
“And move to Watchung!”
“Where?” Prem looked out the window at a child chasing a bird. “No one is telling anything to anyone,” he said.
“Okay, do what you want, be alone, murder squirrels with Punjabi tinda,” Beena said, returning to her dough.
There was a knock at the door, and an Americanly dressed woman entered without waiting for Beena to let her in. There was an exchange of cash for vindaloo and an ensuing discussion of next week’s order, which included a disproportionate amount of peas. Prem rolled over on the couch and closed his eyes. He felt the stirring of a familiar sadness rooted in his continued dependence on his father’s wealth and reputation. The pain of his failed attempts at autonomy came flooding back. The small victory of his employment at Exxon seemed suddenly slight. Leena’s sweet, somewhat husky voice came into his head, and he considered the possibility of following Beena’s advice after all. With this question spinning around in his mind, Prem fell asleep. After a while, Beena covered him with a blanket and made seventy-five rotis.
* * *
The next few weeks for Prem were like Mera Naam Joker—excruciatingly long and brimming with the loneliness of an aimless clown. He had decided not to say anything about his father to Hemant. While listening to his favorite compilation tape of Hindi movie love songs, Romantic Duets Jukebox 2, he was reminded that he wanted to be a hero, not a bad guy. Only a villain would use his family’s wealth to attempt to win over a girl. A hero would remain patient and humble and try to find a way to be with his love while continuing to work at Exxon. So Prem quietly did his work, dropping in to the India America Grocers every few days to placate Hemant with reports of made-up leads—a guy with one eyebrow was loitering in front of the store with a pen and paper, Gopal had been looking dreamily into the distance a lot lately—and to catch a glimpse of Leena, which he never did. He attended the usual get-togethers and chuckled at the usual jokes, but all the time he was looking toward doors, hoping that Leena would walk through them.
In his fifth Leena-less week, nearly three months since he fell in Gold Spot, on a regular July Wednesday with staggering heat and Minerva naked on the lawn, Prem was working a double shift. Mohan was standing at attention at the pumps, eager to make it clear to Mr. Khosla, the gas-station owner who was there for a routine visit, that he was alert and ready to meet his customers’ most dire gasoline needs. Though Mohan was often the first to pick on someone, ever ready to pounce with a sarcastic comment, behind the bravado lurked a wounded soul, one who had seen his father, a civil engineer, lose his job and, after years of unemployment and despair, take his own life. Mohan grew up determined to get to America, a place where jobs were magically never scarce. He had been angling for a managerial position at Exxon for weeks now and hoped today was the day he would impress his boss with his superior interpersonal and windshield-wiping skills. But Mr. Khosla was a tall, oblivious man who was more interested in the arrangement of candy bars in the Tiger Mart than in the yearnings of his gas attendants.
Mohan leaped over Prem to attend to a Pontiac, but the car veered over to the pumps on the other side. He went around, but when he approached, it circled back until it came to a stop at the pump nearest Prem. Again Mohan tried to attend to the car, and again it moved away as he came close. Although Mr. Khosla was nowhere in sight, Prem knew this was Mohan’s day for impressing the boss, so he stayed where he was and let Mohan come around again and handle the customer, who had rolled down her window and was scowling. She was a pale Indian woman with sharp features and too-bright lipstick, and even from a remove, Prem could see she had deadly long fingernails, one of which was now pointing at him. “Not you!” she snapped at Mohan. “Him!”
Her name was Varsha Virani, and in eleven years she would be thanking Prem profusely for his help in getting her pirated-video-and-passport-photo store off the ground, but for now, she slipped him a note between the dollar bills when paying for her half tank of unleaded and drove away.
“What did your girlfriend want?” Mohan said. He didn’t seem to be looking for a real answer. “Next time, tell her I can give it to her too,” he said.
