B Pattni brought the smell of the street in with him, of commercial agitations and milky coffee drunk in a hurry between the marking of cards. The little bell tinkled when he came through the door. He greeted me with a handshake that was designed to test me for structural weaknesses. His hands felt like they were less used to dispensing pleasantries to out-of-towners than to driving telegraph poles or throttling intruding leopards.
He asked me if I had the money and I lifted the carrier bag.
‘They’re not for baseball,’ I said. ‘They’re for a special thing. We need them to be pukka.’
‘I know what they are for, sir. Trust me, they are top-notch. Come.’
We followed him outside. He took us down a dank alleyway that led to the back of the shops. Industrial bins and rubbish bags overflowed with the stinking leftovers of fast food joints. At the far end of the alleyway there was a row of lock-up garages. B Pattni walked on tiptoes, trying to save his patent-leather shoes from the shit. He unlocked the furthest garage, hauled the door open and disappeared inside.
Bibhuti and his boy had gone quiet. The air around us crackled with flies and anticipation. We approached slowly, pyramid breakers sniffing for a dead king’s gold.
A rat ran past my feet and squirmed into a hole in a rubbish bag. It was wearing a diamanté collar and its little black eyes were intent on thievery.
B Pattni emerged and handed Bibhuti his first offering. Bibhuti’s eyes went wide when he saw it. He accepted the bat greedily. He stroked the length of it from the business end to the grip, smoothing his palm over the lacquered wood. He felt for faults in the grain. He read the bat like a sacred text.
‘Lovely, lovely,’ he murmured. He slapped the bat from hand to hand, felt its weight and breathed in the prophecy it carried. A shiver of something lustful went through him when he struck the bat against the air. Maybe he was thinking of the first strike against his own flesh and bones, the unsticking that would come with it.
‘It is good?’ B Pattni asked, dragging a shipping crate out and loosing another bat that he passed to me for inspection.
‘Lovely,’ Bibhuti repeated. He turned to me grinning, eyes vivid. ‘It has the perfect feel. We could not ask for better. Feel.’
I took a token swing at the air. ‘Feels good,’ I said.
Jolly Boy grabbed a bat for himself and imitated our ritual, weighed it up against the slim resistance of the air. Soon the three of us were waving our bats around in a solemn display, swinging at the ghosts of our former disappointments, planting our feet in the diabolical future. The same goal had taken hold of us all and we were lost in its grip like boys at play. Father and son hit synchronised home runs and then me and Jolly Boy were swordfighting. A mood for clowning fell over us and the alleyway rang with our make-believe war cries.
Jolly Boy took a swing at Bibhuti’s head. He ducked to evade it.
‘Break one now, Baba,’ he pleaded. ‘I will make the hit.’
‘Not yet,’ Bibhuti said. ‘Uncle has the job. We must let him have the first hit, he has come a long way.’
The boy pouted. He took a consolation swing at the air while his father freed another bat from the crate and stroked it, spellbound.
There was something printed on the shaft of my bat. In English: ‘B Pattni Fine Leather Goods, Import and Export, Wholesale and Retail’. An address and phone and fax numbers. I saw that Bibhuti’s bat had the same branding. They all did.
‘There was mishap,’ B Pattni said. ‘They are all useless to me. My son plays baseball, his team is the Malad Maroons. Last year was their inaugural season in Mumbai junior A league. I spent small fortune to supply the team with bats, and I paid extra to have them printed with the particulars of my business. I thought this would be great advertising opportunity.’
He pointed out the message on my bat. ‘B Pattni Fine Leather Goods, this is my business. I have just opened my second retail outlet in Evershine Mall next to Cell-bug cellphone showroom. You must come in, I have everything you will need: wallets, purses, iPhone case, briefcase, attaché, everything of finest quality.’
His mood darkened. ‘The bats are arriving tainted. The entire batch permanently disfigured. Look here, you see the telephone number? It is the wrong number. That should not be a two, it should be a seven. I clearly expressed my requirements when I made the order, the mistake was theirs but they would not accept responsibility.’
Raw emotion frayed his voice and danger had draped itself over him like a mist. I stepped back, putting some room between us in case he lashed out.
‘I am always doing these things by hand, you see, I do not trust the online forms. You will see there is no website on the bat. I do not conduct my business this way. The internet is not safe, this is how Pakistan is spying on us. I made the order by fax and they misread my instructions. Clearly my seven does not look like a two, my handwriting has always been very clean. It is the fault of the reader. If I had my pen with me I would show you.’
‘That’s okay, I believe you.’
‘I tried to reason with them but they would not amend their mistake. I had to place fresh order for the correct printing, I could not let my son down with pre-season practice around the corner. Now I have one hundred and twenty bats which I cannot use. They are collecting dust for the past year. Then BB is coming along and all is saved.’
There was a crash. Jolly Boy was pounding his bat against the door of a garage, caught in a whirlwind of sweet violence. Bibhuti snapped out of his trance and bounded over to take the bat from him, scolding the boy for disrespecting the equipment. He checked the bat’s snub end for damage.
The noise had nudged B Pattni off his stride. He licked a blob of spit from his lip.
‘I ask only that you cover the printing,’ he said. ‘I do not wish for further embarrassment.’ He looked anxiously to Bibhuti. ‘Did you discuss my price?’
‘It is decided,’ Bibhuti said.
Bibhuti steered me towards a neutral corner and shook me down for thirty thousand rupees. It sounded like a fair price to pay for two souls and all the highest hopes they had between them. I counted out the notes and handed them over. He thanked me ferociously. I was his benefactor now. Handshakes all round. But Bibhuti and B Pattni still had some unfinished business.
B Pattni hitched up his shirtsleeves, took a handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped the sweat from his face. His legs were parted and he was trying to bounce on the balls of his feet like a shadowboxer. It only made him look heavier.
‘I will take off my shoes if you prefer it.’
‘Let your shoes be there, it is no problem,’ Bibhuti assured him. ‘After you will help us transport the bats to my home, yes?’
B Pattni tilted his head, done deal. With no further ceremony he drew his foot back and gave Bibhuti a tentative kick in the balls. He paused to make sure there was no ill feeling, then gave him another one. All was well. He asked for one more, and he made it a showstopper. Bibhuti rocked on his heels and called time. Another handshake to seal the new friendship, and then they each took an end of the first crate and walked it to B Pattni’s pick-up.
Jolly Boy still held his bat jealously. He took a lazy swipe at a passing rat. The rat disappeared into the same hole the one in the diamanté collar had found. I imagined the first rat was an escaped pet. That it had found life on the streets hard at first, but had risen to the challenge of freedom. No longer was it the butt of the other rats’ jokes. It had earned respect through fighting and repeated displays of ingenuity.