“I’m getting up, I’m getting up,” Prem said.
“See?” Amarleen squished Prem’s cheeks together with one hand. “Stress.”
Guests were settling in for Munna Bhai by the time Prem dressed and left. He had considered not going to the hospital that morning but decided that would be a childish, knee-jerk reaction to recent revelations. He was determined not to be childish. But when he got to the hospital and discovered that Leena had stepped out, obviously to visit a caterer or to interview deejays, he had an internal meltdown right there in the room with her father, kicking a side table and causing a vase of flowers to tip over.
“Jesus. Let me just …” Prem sopped up the water dripping to the floor with a towel and righted the bouquet.
“When I met you,” Hemant said from his bed, “you were also dropping things and wiping the mess just like this. Nothing much has changed!” Though Hemant was trying to say something funny, Prem took it as an accurate summation of the pathetic standstill that was his life.
“Exactly. What has changed? Nothing. Except things maybe have become worse,” he responded.
Hemant sighed. “Lousy day already?”
Prem sank into a chair by the bed and hung his head. “Listen, if I die, don’t forget your blood pressure medication.”
“Don’t take tension, Leena is there. Also, why are you dying?”
“She might become occupied with other things, other people.”
Hemant looked at the boy’s face and suddenly understood. He patted Prem’s hand. “She is a good girl. You are a good boy,” he said. “Now I will sleep for some time.”
Prem wandered a long while on his bicycle before turning toward Edison’s Memorial Tower. Though it was not yet summer, the sun was like the Delhi sun of his youth, blazing and relentless. Eleven days on and there was still the suggestion of smoke in the air, from what source he still didn’t know. He was panting and drenched in sweat when at last he came face to face with Tiger Nayak.
She was not at all as he’d imagined. Short in stature and slight, she was more delicate than brawny. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she wore all black leather, yet seemed unbothered by the heat. Prem had pictured the head of T-Company to be a fearsome and strapping figure, scarred, hairy, and a man. He recognized her as Tiger, however, because she was striking a relaxed pose, casually leaning back against a black Escalade while thugs of various shapes and sizes were standing at attention in T-Company-issued uniforms.
Prem parked his bike next to a tree and crossed the street.
“Well, well, Prem Kumar, son of the Titan of Technology, CEO of Superstar Entertainment, confirmed bachelor who lives under onions. Finally, we meet.” She looked Prem up and down. “Wristwatch did not report that you are slightly handsome. Wristwatch!”
A rear window rolled down and the henchman said, “Sorry, madam, I did not think he was handsome.” The window rolled back up.
“Come, Junior Titan,” Tiger Nayak said. “Let us walk around this Edison Memorial Tower and its scruffy, unworthy grounds.”
Her words were benign but her tone was inscrutable at best. Prem could see respect tinged with terror in her subordinates’ eyes. Their knees quivered as she passed.
“Tiger is proud of you,” she began. “You have built something big and successful with the money Tiger so generously lent to you. And as you know, Tiger likes making dreams come true—that is what Tiger is most known for.”
Her manner of speech made Prem wonder if he was mistaken in assuming this tiny woman was the cunning and ruthless mafia boss he thought she was. They kept walking.
“But you have made Tiger angry. Tiger does not like to be angry.” She stopped short and gave him a bloodthirsty death glare.
Prem swallowed hard. It was definitely Tiger Nayak.
“Tiger is not an unreasonable gang leader,” she went on, her hands clasped behind her back now as they turned toward the deserted back of the monument. “She understands that people make mistakes. Do you think you made a mistake?”
Several of Tiger’s men, one holding a very fat stick, encircled them. Prem, trying to appear unpanicked, gave the answer she was looking for. “Uh, yes? Yes, I made a mistake.”
“And?”
“And I will pay Tiger, I mean, you back as soon as possible.”
Tiger closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath. The goonda with the stick took a step closer, and Tiger opened her eyes and exhaled. “You know what Tiger does when someone disappoints her?” Prem shook his head vigorously. He thought he might throw up and prayed it wouldn’t land on her. “She gives her soldiers a game to play. In this game, the players compete to reach the target first. They spread out and search for them, sometimes taking days or even weeks. The winner of the game is the one who finds the target and stabs them in the eye.”
“She calls it eye spy,” one of her men added proudly.
“Clever, no? Eye spy.” Tiger smiled and nodded in praise of herself, then reassumed her grim countenance. “One thing Tiger forgot to mention. The target is never the one who made the mistake. No. The target is a loved one of the guilty party. Often, this means a woman. T-Company has stabbed many types of women in the eye: wives, mothers, teachers, doctors. Even … engineers.”
At this point in an archetypal Bollywood gangster film, a dramatic instrumental track blares out of nowhere, sometimes alongside a flash of lightning. Bells from five different temples toll at once, and maybe a faraway loved one, who intuitively knows the worst has come to pass drops a tray of teacups, fruit, or religious supplies and either freezes or falls to the floor herself. In Prem’s case, that hideous moment was underscored by the long-long-short-long whistles of a southbound New Jersey Transit train and an Amtrak northbound train approaching Metropark station at the same time, bells clanging as they hissed and screeched to a stop. Prem’s fear turned to fury, but he managed to keep his cool. Sensing it would be the wrong tack to take with a seasoned murderer like Tiger Nayak, he refrained from trying anything along the lines of “Take me, don’t hurt her.” But the rage was written on his face.
“Oh no, I have angered the Junior Titan,” Tiger said in what Prem did not think was an especially contrite manner. She patted him on the back and recommenced the walk. “As I said before, Tiger is not unreasonable. Forget the money.”
Prem gasped. Before he could say anything, Tiger continued.
“Instead,” she said, “there is one thing Junior Titan must do to save the target.” She paused and looked up at the memorial’s giant unimpressive orb. “He must make a date for Tiger with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta.”
The trains’ bells clanged once more as they peeled away from the station. Prem looked to the T-Company thugs for some validation of his profound stupefaction but found none. “I guess, I didn’t know, I mean, what?”
Tiger made a sound close to laughing. “What can I tell you, what can I tell you, Junior Titan? I am a fan.” She was an entirely ruthless and deranged character; he could see that now. There was no negotiating with her, but still he tried. “I have the money. I will give you the money.”
“Look at this,” she laughed to her men, “the Junior Titan is begging!”
Prem did not think he was, but the idea of it seemed to make her so happy. “Please, I am begging!” he said.
“Too bad! You should have given the money before, but you were hoarding it to buy the wife.”
“Buy the wife? What? No,” Prem said. He quickly considered the possibilities. “Can I get Deepak Chopra instead?”
“No.”
