Miss New India (19 page)

But there was a click, and the dial tone came on.

THREE WEEKS INTO
her stay, Anjali discovered that she was being charged the same rent for her closed-in porch as the other three boarders, even though those three had huge rooms, each with a high ceiling, an overhead fan, and a door that could be bolted and padlocked for extra security. So what if Sunita's sofa smelled of cat pee, or that the gilt-edged mirror in Husseina's room had a crack right down the center, or that bedbugs drove Tookie crazy?

She asked the others if she should confront the landlady.

"Confrontation is never the way," Husseina advised. "Never tip your hand. A dab of honey is always the answer."

Tookie jumped in. "Definitely, go with the honey. First few days, you're on probation. The old girl wants to make sure you meet her standards."

"What standards?"

"Only the old girl knows. I think it's a low threshold of pain. My first week here a paying guest got kicked out because she picked up her soup bowl and slurped it instead of using the soup spoon. The old girl's a stickler for idiot table manners."

"But there are dozens of rooms just on this wing. Why can't she open up another one for me?"

"Get real! Who knows what you'd find? I can't imagine what's behind any door. Snoop around for yourself. But if the old girl catches you, it's a dump for sure."

"Have you snooped?" she asked.

Sunita looked up from checking her text messages. "Wouldn't dare!" she exclaimed. "The public rooms are strictly out of bounds.
Verboten!
" She was learning German from language tapes in hopes of getting an early promotion at her security company, which had just been taken over by a German conglomerate.

Tookie laughed. "Why risk everything? As far as I'm concerned, the bottom line's all that counts. We may be inmates in a madhouse, but we're paying bargain rates because the old girl's stuck in a time warp. She thinks the rupee is still five to the dollar. In a newer boarding house, we'd be forking out twenty times more cash for pokey rooms shared with three other girls."

"Actually, I
have
copped a look," said Husseina. She cast a glance down the long, dark hallway. "We might not be the only roomers in Bagehot House. We're Minnie's only paying guests, yes, but ... I'll let you figure out what I'm getting at."

"I took a tour," Anjali admitted. "You can't imagine the trash she's got down there."

"I wouldn't call it trash, exactly," the regal Husseina snapped. "Unsorted, maybe. Like a museum without a curator."

A museum of unsorted, uncurated horrors,
Anjali thought.

They left the decision to Anjali with this final reminder: taking the risk of confronting Minnie might mean getting dumped, which was bad for the pocketbook, temporarily at least. But expulsion from the airless Bagehot House, with its cloistered secrets and ornate rules, promised a release into Bangalore's special freedoms—love and adventure. Minnie provided clean rooms cheap
and
a touch of the Old Bangalore prestige, but at a cost to one's self-image as a modern, quick-on-her-feet, funloving Indian girl.

Shh—she's talking to Maxie's ghost!"

The Bagehot House Girls had gathered at the top of the stairs at twelve noon, waiting for Asoke to sound the gong announcing tiffin, which was Minnie's term for the lunch-hour meal that she had Asoke serve them in an alcove off the padlocked formal dining room. But Minnie was in the foyer, speaking on the telephone. Her back was arched forward as she cupped the heavy receiver with both hands against her left cheek; her voice was louder than usual and sounded giggly-girlish.

"She has a gentleman caller!" Sunita gasped.

Regal Husseina gave an unregal wink. "Tookie, you put one of your guy friends up to this trick, didn't you? Just look at Mad Minnie, she's blushing under all that thick makeup!"

"And
you,
" Minnie simpered. "It's been ever so long! And I'm not getting any younger, but I'm still good for a waltz or two. Or three."

Tookie crossed her heart.
I'm above reproach,
her look said, as she led the other three down the staircase. Sunita coughed to warn the landlady that she had company in the foyer.

"Oh, splendid! Well, ta-ta, for now." But Minnie didn't hang up. She turned to face her boarders. "For you," she announced, holding out the receiver. None of the young women reached for it. The earpiece was caked with beige face powder. "What's the matter? I'm not charging you for receiving this call, Anjali."

"Me, madam?" The only person who knew where to reach her was Mr. GG. She hoped her excitement wasn't too obvious to Husseina and Tookie. "Anjali Bose here," she mumbled as Minnie pushed the receiver into her face.

And from a vast distance she heard a familiar voice: "Angie, it's me, Peter."

His voice was
so
American,
so
not like the Americanized banter of the Willies and Mickeys and Hanks at Barista.

"Peter! I was just talking about you!" It wasn't a lie, not really. She had mentioned his name when Husseina played the role of Usha Desai, to prep for the call she had not yet made. "Where are you, Peter?"
Oh, please, please,
she prayed,
let him be far away from Bangalore.

"It's Peter" were the words she'd most feared. She imagined what he'd ask:
Why haven't you called Usha Desai? How much money have you squandered?
She hadn't prepared her defense.
I tried to call Mizz Desai, but the lines were occupied, I mean, the line was busy.
Or a bold lie:
I called but she didn't recognize my name.
Except that Minnie would then find out she had made a freebie outgoing call and definitely dump her. Or
I just came down to the hall to call her. It's mental telepathy!
How could she admit the humiliating truth that she had been scared away by Usha Desai's answering machine?

"Well, I'm glad you made it to Bagehot House. You couldn't be in safer hands than dear Minnie's. Now about CCI..."

Minnie, Tookie, Husseina, and Sunita huddled around her, listening in. Even Asoke, waiting at the door to the dining room to serve the soup course, showed interest in Anjali's one and only telephone call in over three weeks. This was one time she didn't savor being the center of attention.

"CCI?" Anjali asked. She felt the idioms and accents she had practiced assiduously in Peter Champion's conversational skills classes desert her.

"Usha's outfit. Contemporary Communications Institute. She said she hadn't heard from you."

"Oh, CCI," she mumbled. So her Gauripur benefactor was tracking her lack of progress.
Mumble a noncommittal response; don't admit to procrastination.
"I agree..."

"Pardon? You're breaking up, Angie. Bad connection."

"Monday next I am planning..."

"Can't stay over till Monday, but at least I can make sure you have an interview set up with Usha. Listen, I'm flying in for the weekend."

"Here? You are coming?"

"Getting in Friday afternoon."

Tookie mimed a lover's swoon, collapsing into Husseina's arms. "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou"—she mouthed the words.

"This Friday you are coming?"

"Minnie's readying a room for me."

"In Bagehot House you are staying?"

Minnie snorted. "Where else would I put the adorable boy?"

"I thought it best to deliver Gauripur news in person, Angie."

An "Omigod!" slipped out before she could stop it. Why couldn't Peter accept that she had scoured Gauripur out of her life as roughly as her father scooped corns and calluses off his feet with a used razor? She tried to recover by asking after Ali.

"We have a lot to talk over, Angie."

"Does that mean..."

Minnie rapped her lace-gloved fingers on Anjali's back. "Long-distance call," she said sternly. Anjali got the hint and kept her goodbye brief.

"The dawning of a new durbar." Tookie giggled as she grabbed Anjali by the waist and fox-trotted her away from the landlady. "Would you believe the old cow is jealous?"

Asoke ushered them into the eating alcove without sounding the tiffin gong. Their places were set as usual on a wiped-clean plastic tablecloth. As they took their seats, Minnie launched into a soliloquy on the difficulty of hosting a Bagehot House gala, a true durbar, without the help of Maxie, God rest his soul in peace. The number of guests other than the guest of honor had to be limited to eight, because only ten diners could be accommodated at the table in the formal dining room. In her excitement, she'd taken out her hearing aid. "Let's see now, dear Opal Philpott absolutely cannot
not
be invited. You've all heard me talk of the poor, dear brigadier general's untimely death."

Sunita murmured a dutiful "Yes, madam."

"Dropped dead playing polo," Minnie informed Anjali.

Tookie nudged Anjali's foot with hers. "Last time she told the story, the late, lamented codger took an accidental bullet in the head during a tiger shoot," she whispered.

Asoke shuffled around the table, serving the soup course. Thick cream of cauliflower, Anjali noted happily, instead of the usual tasteless mulligatawny. She was about to dip her spoon into the soup when she caught sight of wiggly, white bugs among the florets. Her mother always soaked raw cauliflower bits in salted water for half an hour to tease bugs out
before
she started currying them. How was her mother coping? Had her own scandalous running away brought Sonali-di and Baba closer?

"Asoke could hand-deliver an invitation to Ruby. Ruby Thistlethwaite never made it to New Zealand as she'd hoped." Minnie took a dainty spoonful of soup and blotted her lips with her linen napkin, leaving a scarlet lipstick smear. "No. Dear Opal would never forgive me if I invited Ruby, not after Ruby insulted the brigadier general at the Gymkhana after too many gin fizzes."

"Widow Opal's the only living friend she has," Tookie muttered. "And she's barely alive."

By the time Asoke cleared the dessert plates, the landlady had come up with no additional names. She discovered, and casually reinserted, her hearing device. She asked Anjali—almost begged her—if she knew of Bangalore friends of her former teacher who should be invited. Anjali was absolutely sure she didn't want to meet Usha Desai yet, not on Minnie's terms, but what a fluke opportunity to impress Mr. GG with that fact that she knew the American expert on Bagehot House history well enough to get him invited to the dinner party. "Actually there
is
someone," Anjali offered. "Mr. Gujral is a fan of Mr. Champion's book on your home."

Minnie beamed. "Perfect! Make the call today at your convenience, no charge. Asoke, smelling salts. Oh dear, I'm in such a tizzy about the gala, my head is spinning like a top!"

Asoke pushed the landlady's chair away from the dining table and helped her stand. Then he pulled a small green bottle out of a pocket of his soup-stained livery jacket, unscrewed the cap, and held the bottle to her nostrils. She took a shallow sniff. "You girls are also invited," she said as she allowed Asoke to help her out of the room for her usual afternoon nap.

"How can the old cow stand that smell?" Tookie shuddered.

"More important, where does one buy smelling salts in this day and age?" Husseina said. She turned to Anjali and winked. "Smooth move. Getting former and future suitors acquainted!"

Bagehot House was staging its first durbar in sixty years.

By late afternoon of the day that Peter Champion called from Gauripur, a Wednesday, Asoke had recruited a small army of the compound's squatters to haul musty Raj-era furniture, mildewed velvet drapes, and a rat-gnawed Oriental rug out of a downstairs bedroom, scrub the cracked mosaic floor and water-stained walls with disinfectant, sweep cobwebs from the blades of the ceiling fan, and refurnish the room with lighter furniture from Minnie's private suite: a twin platform bed with a thick slab of foam instead of box spring and lumpy mattress, a dressing table with an oval mirror and upholstered stool, a three-drawer chest, a coat tree, a compact writing desk with hinged lid, and a chintz-covered overstuffed loveseat.

All—well, many—of Minnie's claims about Bagehot House's Raj-era opulence were true. There actually were stacks of silver trays and silver tea services, wooden chests of heavy silver cutlery, cut-glass decanters and goblets, gilt-edged champagne flutes, fine bone china bearing the Bagehot family crest, silver-capped elephant tusks and tiger-skin throw rugs stored on the premises in locations known only to Asoke. Live caparisoned elephants were beyond his powers. But he had the power to—and did—conscript scores of the squatters on the Bagehot compound to do the work that must have been done by liveried butlers, bearers, cooks, and sweepers in the heyday of durbars.

But who was paying for the delivery of live chickens and ducks and fresh-killed mutton, Anjali wondered. Baskets kept arriving: fruits, vegetables, sweets, a cake. And finally a case of French champagne. Champagne? Who could afford such gifts? None of her fellow boarders, not even nosy Tookie, offered a convincing guess. Minnie had mysterious purveyors.

On Friday morning Asoke had a half-dozen teenage boys chop down boughs from flowering trees, which he then stuck in umbrella stands made out of hollowed elephant feet. Minnie herself supervised as two garage-dwelling mother-and-daughter teams rinsed and dried stacks of dinner plates, soup plates, water goblets, punch bowls, and lemonade pitchers. Asoke trained a squatter girl, the one Anjali had seen straddling a window frame and combing her hair in the firelight, in the correct way to wait on tables, then sent her into the snake-infested jungle behind the main house to gather flowers. The girl must have been fearless; she sashayed barefoot into the dense vegetation and came back with two bucketfuls, which Husseina and Anjali had to arrange and rearrange in improvised vases—mainly lemonade pitchers, punch bowls, and old chamber pots—until the arrangements won Minnie's approval. Anjali remembered Peter's little joke: "I have a way with older women." The preparation for his visit was indeed monumental, an overturning of history itself. Out with the pewter-framed portraits of colonels with apoplectic pink complexions; in with brass-topped Indian tables and wall hangings of blue-skinned Krishna, the God of Love, at play with ivory-pale almond-eyed milkmaids. Watching as Minnie, giddy as an infatuated schoolgirl, fussed over plans to make Peter welcome, Anjali felt an odd sense of power. Minnie knew nothing of Ali; Anjali held that secret.