“I can?” Gopal said.
“I am getting the potatoes, remember?” Lucky said, widening his eyes and tilting his head in Prem’s direction.
“Oh ya, no problem, I will do it,” Gopal said. “Prem, you just sit, rest.”
“Enough!” Prem said, in an authoritative voice even he did not recognize. He stood up to address the room. “Thank you, all of you, for helping me.”
“Welcome,” Deepak said.
“Mention not,” Mohan said.
Prem continued, “For taking my shifts and never leaving me alone, for cleaning the bathroom and getting the potatoes and sitting in my sweat. But you can stop all of this, okay? I am fine. I will be fine. Absolutely. Hundred percent.”
Though he spoke with conviction, he had none. It was as though his soul were in an in-between mode, a sort of waiting room before the next life. He couldn’t leave and go back to India, nor stay and forget about her. He had decided over the previous few sleepless nights that he just had to keep moving forward, try to make something of himself, and hope that she would somehow come back to him. She wasn’t married yet, and a lot could happen. Plus, her doctor fiancé could die; people died all the time. It would require tremendous forbearance, but he could wait. He had asked Leena to wait, so he should be prepared to do the same. He could not countenance the possibility that he had lost her forever, so whenever the thought entered his mind, he pushed it away and watched another movie.
“Great speech, man,” Mohan said. “Since you are up, can you rewind the song?”
After the damp actress finished her number and the hero finished snapping photos of her with his enormous camera, interest in the movie began to wane. Ram Teri Ganga Maili was a controversial yet widely lauded film, a social commentary with echoes of Hindu sacred texts coupled with gratuitous nudity. Only Prem and Iqbal continued to watch.
“She must be cold,” Iqbal said.
“Ya, those mountains get quite cold,” Prem said.
Though he was broken by the events of the previous few weeks, things took a slight upturn in mid-August when two improbable events occurred. First, Kailash Mistry gave him his bike. The former Revlon chemist had secured a new job as a junior formulation chemist in the body-hygiene division at L’Oréal and concurrently decided to dedicate himself more wholly to the practice of his singing. He came home from work by six, ate with his wife and attempted to talk to his two teenage daughters, then spent two hours belting out what he believed to be scales, followed by a series of jarring renditions of Anup Jalota ghazals. This left no time for casual bike rides. Prem imagined riding around town, the wind at his back—like Dev Anand and Nutan in the song “Mana Janab Ne Pukara Nahin,” in which the former pursues the standoffish latter against an obviously prerecorded green-screen backdrop of a city; or like Dev Anand and Mumtaz in the song “Hey Maine Kasam Li,” in which the couple rides through the countryside on a bike with her in front, then stops to cuddle in a field of flowers, then continues to ride, this time with her in back—and he was glad to have the bike.
The second improbable thing that occurred was that he met the biggest movie star in the world at the Exxon gas station. On that steamy day in 1988, Amitabh Bachchan was in Edison briefly to discuss a potential business partnership to create an American television station with Indian programming, and his friend stopped to fill up his tank. The international superstar actually had a very pleasant experience at the Exxon that day. An earnest, somewhat nervous attendant posed an interesting question that Amitabh enjoyed mulling over. At the end of that conversation, which he feared he may have monopolized, he gave the boy a dollar to build upon, for luck moving forward in his life.
The bill imbued Prem with a redoubled sense of hope and optimism and immediately became his most prized possession other than the pile of Leena’s hair. After work, he rode his bike to Drug Fair, barely registering the stifling heat, and picked out a small picture frame. When he reached the apartment, he opened the frame and positioned the dollar carefully in the center and closed it back up. Because he had no wall of his own on which to hang anything, he kept the framed dollar in his bag, where he could look at it daily and be reminded that luck was on his side. But he also thought of how Mr. Bachchan never relied on luck. His punctuality, impeccably memorized lines, and general professionalism were unparalleled in the industry. When he faced setbacks, he did not say, “I am too tall and unattractive to make it in this business.” He persevered. After reaching great heights, he remained humble and diligent. These qualities made him a colossal success; luck was never part of the equation. Prem took the dollar as a call to action, as though Amitabh himself were in his duffel bag, asking him every day, “When are you going to take action?”
After his wondrous encounter with the wise screen idol, Prem decided he needed to do something big. He had to stop his petty gambling and abandon his latest idea of jumping in front of a car in a pedestrian crosswalk to collect a personal-injury settlement. The appearance of Amitabh Bachchan was like an omen, a sign that it was time to take command of his life. Later that week, he had another such sign. He received a small package from his father containing a large check along with a note saying that if this was the life he was choosing, dealing with mysterious “significant matters” across the world, then he would be cut off from all family funds after this initial money got him started. Also in the box was a six-pack of tongue scrapers.
A feeling like suffocation overcame him. He’d never had to live solely off the money he earned and was sorely underequipped for survival. Leena’s father had been absolutely correct in refusing to give his blessing. He had reserved his approval for a more prosperous suitor, a man like Hemant himself who fully understood how to thrive. How did people know these things? Were they born that way, either built for self-reliance or for dependence? If he deposited the check, he would be declaring his intention to make it on his own. There would be no going back without abject humiliation, if he were allowed to come back at all. He thought then of a boy he used to see singing in front of Plaza Cinema, charming patrons for change. If he, born into those difficult circumstances, could carry himself with such strength and confidence, why couldn’t Prem? The reason he could not, he realized, was that he thought he had little strength and no confidence. He decided to forge ahead.
* * *
In the waning days of that summer, King’s Court erupted in jubilation upon the opening of a Pizza Hut restaurant on Oak Tree Road. The residents had not realized until then that a Pizza Hut, with its aggressively red roof and red vinyl booths, was what was missing from their lives. There was no waiting area or system for putting down one’s name, so customers had to stand in an orderly line in a narrow corridor until they reached the front, which, on a Friday or Saturday night, was typically one hour later. But they did not mind. It was a place where good times were had, so they waited, chatting happily and anticipating the doughy yet crunchy crust, stretchy cheese, and red pitcher of partially flat soda.
Prem was a reluctant fan of the Hut. He was not in a state of mind to become a new fan of anything but found that he now enjoyed the taste of pizza, especially this particular style. On an unseasonably cold day in September, Abdul Rashid suggested it for lunch before they reported for their afternoon shifts.
“Last time, I ordered pepper-onion pizza,” Gopal said, “but they brought the one with red circles of meat.”
“You must have said ‘sausage,’” Mohan said.
“Why would I say ‘sausage?’” Gopal said.
“I agree,” said Yogesh Cyclewala, a very short, entirely too loud new attendant with nearly connected eyebrows whose ancestors had repaired bikes. “You seem like someone who might say ‘sausage.’”
“What does that mean even?” Gopal said.
“They made a mistake in the kitchen, maybe,” Prem said.
“Excuse me, but I couldn’t help but overhear.” A sharply dressed man in his thirties, maybe forties, with hair slicked to the side elegantly and a round pair of Gandhi-looking glasses, spoke to them from the next table, where he was dining alone. In enviably smooth English, he said, “I had this problem once, with the pepper and onions. They think you are saying ‘pepperoni.’ Red meat circles.”
“Oh, pepperoni!” they all said.
The man nodded sympathetically. “You have to say ‘onion-pepper.’”
“Wow,” Gopal said.
“Roopesh Ghosh,” the man said, coming over and offering his hand around the table. “My friends call me Vinnie.”
“Why?” Abdul Rashid said.
“I don’t know,” Vinnie said.
He ended up joining them in their booth and sharing his pizza with them, which was greatly appreciated since they ordinarily split one small pie amongst the five of them, resulting in Mohan and Abdul Rashid fighting over Prem’s discarded crust. It turned out Vinnie knew Gopal’s uncle in Calcutta and had frequented his sweets shop, though the exquisite sandesh had caused him to put on more than a few kgs. He laughed at Yogesh’s joke about Indian newspapers and answered Gopal’s question about why America refused to use the metric system. Overall, he was marvelously charming, the kind of guy who called people “boss” when they weren’t his boss. By midway through the meal, they were all enamored of him, especially Prem, who admired everything from his pleasing personality to his gleaming shoes.
“How did you get this way?” Prem asked with wide-eyed wonderment. He thought at once that the others would taunt him for his fawning question and awkward demeanor, but they did not. They were equally intrigued.
“What way?” Vinnie inquired, dabbing one corner of his mouth with a napkin.
“You know,” Prem said, “just dressing nicely and talking nicely and, you know, just doing everything nicely.”
“Don’t be weird,” Mohan said.
Vinnie gripped the table with both hands and straightened himself up so that he seemed suddenly to be a head above everyone else. “Have you heard of Wall Street, boys?” he began. “It is a magical place where your one dollar can be multiplied to one million. I began by investing a small amount, just on the side of my regular job in engineering. But then, the investment grew and grew, and led to other investments that grew and grew, until I had so much money that I could leave my job. Now I help others manage their investments. You see, this is a country where everyone can dream of getting rich. Where the opportunity is endless. There is nothing standing in anyone’s way.”
The boys were mesmerized. There was an awed silence, which was broken by Gopal asking, “Which engineering company?”
