His closest friend in the diamond world was another cutter, about his age: Kirtan Boshi — they’d have lunch or drinks together frequently, sometimes double-dating, with Adeela and Kirtan’s girlfriend, an aspiring model. Kirtan worked for a diamantaire but some distance from 47th Street, in a building in the Fashion District; the shop had a name that gave no clue as to the Indian ethnicity of the owner — or that it was a jewelry store.
No, it seemed very unlikely that a killer, however determined, could find him.
Vimal tossed aside the towel, pulled on underwear, blue jeans, T-shirt and sweatshirt, his Nikes.
On TV: back to the earthquake. He couldn’t hear what the commentators were talking about. Two men seemed to be arguing. A crawl said that an environmental group thought that drilling work deep beneath the city might be to blame.
He shut the set off. Vimal Lahori had his own problems.
Filled with resignation, he trooped downstairs. In the living room, Sunny — younger, though taller, than Vimal — looked up from the TV screen and paused the video game. “Yo. Dude.”
The eighteen-year-old’s eyes revealed his concern, even if his low-key greeting and the deflecting grin hadn’t. Sunny was a freshman at Hunter, destined, the boy hoped, for medical school. Vimal believed he would — and should — end up in tech, an opinion he kept to himself.
“You, like, cool?”
“Yeah, fine.”
Awkwardly, the younger brother stood, as if debating whether he should embrace Vimal, who decided the question himself and dropped into the couch before the uneasy moment arrived. Vimal snatched up the controller and resumed the game his brother had been playing.
“Screw you,” Sunny said, laughing hard — too hard.
“You’re only at level seven?”
“I’ve been playing for ten minutes is all. You couldn’t get to seven in a day.”
“I got to eight on Thursday. Four hours.”
“Gimme.”
Vimal held the controller away as his brother grabbed for it. After some tame horse wrestling he handed the device over. Vimal took a second controller and they played jointly. A few more aliens died, another spaceship blew up. Vimal found Sunny looking him over closely.
“What, man? It’s freaking me out.”
“What?”
“That eyeball shit. Stop it.”
Sunny’s character on the screen got vaporized. Not seeming to notice, he asked, “What was it like?”
“Like?”
“Getting shot at?”
Vimal corrected, “It wasn’t getting shot at. It was getting shot.”
“No shit!”
“Yeah. I walked in. There he was. Bang. Loud, like totally loud. Not like on TV. I mean, loud.”
An abrupt voice from behind them. “You’re hurt?” His father had been standing in the hallway, it seemed. He walked into the living room.
Vimal wondered if he’d been hiding, to listen in on his conversation with Sunny. No other reason to be in the hall, except to eavesdrop. Son looked away from Father. “Nothing. I was just, you know. We were just saying stuff.”
“The news never said anybody was shot.”
“Because I wasn’t shot. I was just messing with him.” A nod toward Sunny.
“But something happened,” Papa said sternly.
“The bullet hit some rocks I was carrying. They stung me. That’s all.”
Papa was calling, “Divya! Come here. Come here now!”
Vimal’s slim, soft-spoken forty-three-year-old mother appeared in the doorway, looking affectionately toward her sons and then frowning as she saw her husband’s expression.
“What is it?”
“Vimal was hurt in the robbery. The man shot at him. He didn’t tell me.”
“No! That wasn’t on the news,” Mother said, her brow furrowed. She walked directly to her son.
“The bullet didn’t hit me. I was saying that. Some bits of rock. It was nothing.”
“My. Let me see.”
“It didn’t break the skin. Just some bruises.”
“You will show your mother. You will show her now.” Papa’s voice was a slow simmer.
“Where?” Mother asked, gripping her son’s shoulder gently.
“My side. It’s nothing.” Why had he said anything to his brother?
“Did you go to the hospital?”
“No, Mother. It’s all cool. Really.”
“Enough!” Papa snapped. “Let her look at it!”
Tight-lipped, Vimal turned to her, keeping his back to his father and brother. The woman — a pediatric oncological nurse at Mount Sinai Queens — knelt and lifted his two shirts. Only Vimal could see her blink when she saw the eggplant-purple bruises, the butterfly bandage and the Betadine stains. She carefully examined the wound that the kimberlite splinter had made and probably realized that an ER doctor would have stitched the site. His mother didn’t know about Adeela but she would guess that Vimal’s reluctance to say anything about the treatment meant that he’d sought help from a non-Hindu friend (that he’d gone to a Muslim he was sleeping with wouldn’t enter into any dimension of her thoughts).
Mother looked up. Their eyes met. She lowered his shirt.
“Vimal is fine. Some minor bruises. That’s all. Dinner’s ready. Let’s eat.”
Chapter 26
The Lahori family ate traditionally perhaps three nights a week, and Western the rest. There was no set schedule as to which cuisine would be served by Mother on which days, though when Papa was at bowling — he was in a league and very good — she made her sons dishes like meat loaf or spaghetti or pizza or sometimes soup, salads and sandwiches. Tonight she had made roasted chicken, corn on the cob, creamed spinach dusted with nutmeg. The concession to Indian cuisine was naan bread but that was less sub-Asian than a staple at Food Bazaar and Whole Foods and any Korean deli within walking distance.
Who didn’t like naan?
Mother was a good cook, with an instinct for seasoning. Vimal loved her food.
Tonight, though, it was no surprise to him that he had no appetite.
The last thing he wanted to do was eat — no, the second-to-last thing he wanted to do was eat. Number one on the list was not talk about the robbery. Fortunately, it seemed that Papa sanctioned this protocol. When Mother began to ask about Mr. Patel’s sister and children and funeral and memorial service, her husband waved a hand to silence her. It seemed to Vimal that the trembling in the man’s fingers was worse.
How patient Mother is, Vimal thought, as he had hundreds of times. He wondered if she’d developed this quality from her work. He imagined she would have to be resilient and strong and steady, yet kind, with those under her care, as well as with their parents. And she would have to practice these qualities all day long; doctors came by sporadically, of course; nurses were constants in hospitals.
The conversation skipped about absurdly. Papa asked Sunny about a test in his biology class. He asked Vimal several times how he had cut the parallelogram. Why had he picked that shape? What adjustments had he made to the dop sticks?
Vimal demurred. He said he couldn’t recall. And this was not far from the truth. He was exhausted. And the horror of the past two days had made his heart and mind weary. Every few minutes the image of Mr. Patel’s feet, angling outward and pointed toward the dim ceiling of the shop, flared. Papa segued to Premier League and the UEFA Champions League as if he were out with his friends after a bowling tournament, sitting at Raga’s, over a Kingfisher. The Real Madrid game had been a nail-biter, he told his sons. And in another game, the striker from Man U had twisted and probably broken his ankle. Papa delivered this news, for some reason, with a wink.