The Benefit Season (35 page)

‘
Where would you like to
be dropped off?’ the driver spoke to them in the mirror.

‘
The Taj…’ she said,
‘…please’. At the hotel she rose and pulled Arjun after her. She
never asked him if he wanted to come along or not. She booked a
suite for them but had no money to pay the advance. So she called
up someone on the phone who spoke to the manager after which the
hotel people let the guests into their rooms. It was a palatial
accommodation with many bedrooms. Monal walked into the largest one
and shut the door on Arjun. He stood awhile in the living room and
then shrugged and went into the other room for a hot bath.
Afterwards he walked into the dining room in his bathrobe and
waited for Monal to join him. He knocked on her door but her shower
was running and she didn’t answer. So he went ahead and ordered
pancakes and eggs and orange juice and had his fill. He read the
papers and switched on the TV and waited. It was nearly two hours
later when she came out, all aglow and pink, wearing nothing but a
carelessly draped satin gown, leading by the hand another woman,
equally striking and radiant and casually robed.

It was none other than
Ruby! The woman Vishal had so hastily wed and more quickly
divorced! For whom Vishal had forsaken his foreskin and faith. The
belly shaking, husband stealing, harem-mate Monal so deeply and
jealously had despised just a few hours ago. Right now their lips
were locked and they held each other in tight embrace, caressing
and thrusting against each other ravenously. When they’d supped and
drunk of each other Monal turned to Arjun and introduced
her.

‘
I know her- saw her on
the boat’, he said, referring to the incident of her probing Monal
with a finger on Vishal’s crazed orders.

‘
Oh that!’ Monal laughed
and whispered to Ruby who also burst out giggling.

‘
What’s going on here’, he
asked, stupefied. Things, just when he felt he had grasped, had
again wrapped themselves into a tangled ball and rolled under the
sofa, out of his reach.

‘
She had always been my
girlfriend. He tried to steal her from me. You see; I prefer women
to men. Vishal, and I, we rarely made love. I admired him for his
ambition and style. Our marriage was a sham, for social acceptance,
while we went our separate ways and gave each other the space to do
as one liked’.

‘
If you like women, then
what about the love we made on the beach?’

‘
You call that love?
You’re so naïve. If it was so, it was made to me, and not
otherwise’.

‘
Then why did Ruby agree
to marry him? Why cut up the poor guy for nothing?

‘
He was an incorrigible
liar. He spun his web of deceit and lured her. He told her what he
told everyone else; that I’d run away with you and the money. He
wanted her for a safe passage- luckily or unluckily they caught up
with him. God bless his soul’.

‘
How do you mean? Is
he…dead?’

‘
He should be. Unless he
can fight off two hungry tigers with his barefoot kicks!’ she
laughed again, ominously.

What must have happened in
that cell when she’d gone back for a few minutes suddenly dawned
upon Arjun. ‘You wouldn’t set the animals upon your own husband,
you…!’

‘
He was her husband, the
last I heard’, she said, nodding towards Ruby, and the two of them
clapped their hands and broke into loud hilarity again.

‘
Now, are you with us or
aren’t you? Ruby here has a taste for both men and women. It will
be a merry party. We’ll make it worth your while’.

‘
Why me? You don’t need
me- you two look crazy enough to me to get by without any manly
escort.’

‘
Sadly, not always so in
this country. Abroad, where we are going, the three of us, it is
different. So if you haven’t got anything better than the company
of two very desirable women here, tag along. It’ll be fun. And I’ve
grown rather fond of you, you handsome rascal, I love that rustic
charm- you even pull chairs for a lady, that old-world integrity,
and your foolish sense of honor- o it’s so quaint, it’s a classic!
These qualities are hard to come by these days my dear, and I value
them but cheaply. So come along, trust me, you’ll never have to
work again.’

Arjun hesitated a little, and then replied.
‘What do you have in mind?’

‘
We have a joint locker
where he used to stash the cash always. You will wear an overcoat
with upturned collars and Vishal’s mask- I’ll have one arranged for
you. You two have nearly the same build. You can stand at a
distance and just come over to initial in the little book. Don’t
worry, I’ll show you how. The girl at the bank has no time to look
up at you. I will sit at her desk and engage her. First I will
sign, and then I’ll motion to you. You look down while signing and
then you follow us into the basement. Never face her. We’ll collect
the cash and take the first flight out to France where my parents
are. As simple as that.’

He looked from one
misguided, pretty girl to another and felt sad. They had probably
had a huge head start over 99% of girls on this planet and yet they
wanted to put themselves into danger and steal from others. What
was wrong with this world, he rued. ‘It’s the gang’s money. Don’t
you think they’ll come after you? Do you think for a minute that
you will live to spend the money? Hey Monal, let’s go back to the
company; it’s not bad. It’s a good life’.

‘
Good isn’t enough, we
want more. And if you know anything about the reputation of that
baby-slinging cop back there, she isn’t letting those goons come
out of that fort alive. She’ll never let them reach the courts or
make that one call to their influential lawyers. So you need to
stop worrying that cute head of yours’.

‘
What if you get rid of me
like your husband- how do I trust you?’

‘
You don’t! Take life as
it comes honey; I make no promises and I break none. I said I liked
you, didn’t I, now that meant something. And you look at what
Vishal did to me! Had things gone as per plan we would have flown
with the money, and Ruby would have joined us when she would have.
Are you going to be bad to me like Vishal’ she asked, ‘…bad boy’,
sitting next to him and holding his hands to her bosom, pouting
like a little scared girl.

‘
Alright, I’ll come along,
for a while, just to see how it works out’.

‘
Okay’, she said and
patted his cheeks and rose from the sofa. ‘I am hungry. We start
tomorrow, and who knows, the day after we are at the
Champs-Élysées!’

ϖ

Chapter 14

What a Good
Shot!

Ruby drove them to the bank rather early the
next chilly morning. Arjun wore an ill-fitting mask that made him
look like a rubbery version of Vishal. He derived cold comfort from
the collars of the trench coat that he’d raised high, enough to
cover much of the borrowed face, and the fur felt bowler hat that
he’d tipped low, enough to cover the eyes.

They breezed through the bank without a
problem. The clerk barely had time to lift her head from the
sheaves of papers on her desk and give a curt nod to Arjun; she
didn’t even look his way. Arjun scribbled Vishal’s initials; they
were quite easy to match. They followed her down the narrow
staircase to the tiny basement with the lockers. The housekeeping
man with a large vacuum cleaner greeted the clerk and squeezed
himself against the wall to make way for them. The clerk inserted
her key into the locker’s keyhole, Monal inserted hers and together
they turned them. The locker door clicked ajar, just slightly so,
not enough to show its musky innards. The clerk mumbled a “good
day” and clopped hastily up the stairs back to her crowded
desk.

Monal pulled a short stool close to the
locker with her foot and squatted on it, for the locker was at
ground level. She bent low and put her arm into the locker and
probed about, looking puzzled. She took the arm out and
straightened up. She stared at her empty hand, turning it up and
down as if she expected something to have stuck to it. Putting the
other arm in also brought out nothing, except a tiny scrap of paper
that clung to her lapel and floated silently to the floor,
unnoticed by either her or Arjun, who stood at a distance, away
from the viewing angle of the camera and was looking on with a
growing sense of unease. Monal kicked the stool away and went on
all fours, and putting her cheek on the cold floor peered into the
locker- still nothing- empty, zilch, nada! She slid back and sat on
her haunches, trembling slightly and staring at the empty metal
box. Then without a word she left.

Arjun walked to the locker, shut it and
withdrew Monal’s key. As he was rising he noticed the scrap of
paper that had slid into a tear in the carpet. It looked like a
piece of newspaper that someone may have used to wrap stuff in the
lockers. But the locker room was spotless; it had just been vacuum
cleaned! It meant the paper had fallen out of Monal’s locker. He
pulled it out and looked at it closely. It was a torn 1-Rupee note,
neatly torn in one half to be exact. These days, one rarely came
across this currency. He snuck it into his pocket, meaning to
discard it in the next dustbin he found, and came out of the
bank.

He slid into the backseat next to Monal.

‘
What now’, Ruby, who was
at the wheel, asked. Monal had told her of the empty locker. Monal
did not reply; she was bent forward, her face covered in her hands.
There was complete silence in the car.

‘
What now’, a little later
Monal said, with a sigh. ‘I have no clue what he’s done with the
money’. She sank back in the seat and dug her hands into her
pockets. ‘The locker was squeaky clean - purged with
hyssop
⁴
as
if.’

‘
Not really’, Arjun
declared, wryly digging the torn note out of his pocket and showing
it her. ‘This fell out of the locker… just a scrap’. Monal snatched
the note from his hands before he could crumple it into the
ashtray. She stared at it and a gleam slowly began to light across
her face. ‘We’ve got it!’ she burst out.

Ruby turned and saw the torn note in her
hands. ‘That’s what you call money?’ she said in scorn.

‘
This- is our key to the
money!’

‘
How so?’

‘
Do you even know what
this is? It’s not what it looks’, Monal said before Ruby could show
her sarcasm again. ‘This is a
Hawala
⁵
ticket! A note divided clean into two halves’.

‘
Pray,
explain?’

‘
It means the money
is
lying somewhere. The
other half of the note is with some Hawala agent. All we have to do
is take our half of the note to him and he will match it with his
half and hand over the money. It doesn’t matter who carries the
note- the transaction will have to be honored!’

‘
Sure. But where is this
agent? There must be so many of them.’

‘
It’s either a Hawala
agent, or maybe even a bookie with whom Vishal may have placed a
bet’.

‘
How do
we
know it’s
which?’

‘
I think I know the which,
and the who, both’, Monal smirked. ‘He was
my
husband after all’, she said,
poking Ruby in the nape. ‘There were no secrets between us’. They
giggled. ‘He would never keep his money idle- “make it work for
you”, was his motto. So I figure it would be a bookie- the biggest
in the game, no less; and we will pay him the visit’.

‘
What, now?’

‘
Today, for sure. Let me
call him and fix an appointment’, Monal replied, and began to dial
on her cell. She spoke in a whisper and then quickly concluded the
call. ‘This evening’, she announced.

‘
Where?’

‘
It’s a warehouse close to
Azadpur Mandi. He stocks veggies and stuff as a front for his
operations. I’ve been there before. Let’s catch a nice meal at Le
Cirque first, and wait out’.

‘
Are we bringing him
along’, Ruby said, jabbing the luxury car’s engine into
life.

‘
Who is going to carry the
bags stupid?’ Monal laughed, slapping Arjun’s thigh.

‘
I’m joking!’ she added,
turning towards him. ‘ Of course he’s coming. He’s quite handy
around an unruly posse. Aren’t you coming baby? Life is going to be
one hell of a ride now. Are you game?’

‘
You bet I am’, he said,
and set his jaw and narrowed the brow. It was time. Time to summon
the scourges and set them upon the devil and his agents. At the
first opportunity he was going to call up Krishnamala, and ask her
to land up tonight- not alone- with backup, at the warehouse, and
close this sordid chapter of his life and give him deliverance. He
longed for the normal life, the warm embrace of his mother, and the
soft bosom of his betrothed to lay his head upon.

ϖ

They had an excellent meal sitting out at
the terrace of The Hotel Leela, in a far corner meant for the
smokers. Arjun enjoyed a bit of the House Red Wine, and most of the
Paupiette of Black Cod, the Lobster Risotto and rounded it off with
a hearty dessert of the Floating Island. He didn’t mind ordering
fancy, unpronounceable stuff as long as somebody else was paying
for it- given his present pecuniary, jobless state. Later as the
girls smoked and gaily chatted, he leaned back in his chair, and
dreamt of freedom.