When the water has, at last, gone cold, I step out of the tub, and Jay comes into the bathroom to stand before me. He wraps me in a towel and rubs it gently on my back, looking at me all the while, never taking his eyes off mine. He still smells of the outdoors, the scent of pine needles on the forest floor, the musty odor of the wool we’d sheared.
Then he lets the towel drop to the floor. He puts his forehead against mine and leaves it there. Is he sympathizing with me? About what Nimmi said? Or maybe he feels the same way she does. Perhaps he’s asking for forgiveness for kissing her? Is there anything to forgive? The rational part of me knows he acted in our best interest tonight when the police showed up. It’s ridiculous to think that he has been carrying on with Nimmi. Even so, I want to hear him say it. I know how long he waited for me, how long he wanted me before I realized I wanted him, too. But there are times—like now, when I’m at my lowest—that I need to hear the words.
Water from my breasts is soaking through his shirt. He slides his hands down my arms and lets them rest on my hips. He kneels.
The warm touch of his lips in the triangle between my breasts makes me draw a sharp breath. His lips travel lower—down to my navel—and lower still. My buttocks tense and every nerve in my body vibrates with anticipation.
I put my hands on either side of his head and press his lips to the space between my trembling legs. He squeezes my buttocks, pulls them apart, pushes them together. Then his tongue finds the spot that makes me tingle inside and out; it licks and sucks and darts until I feel that I’m about to faint. When I come, I let out a loud groan, not thinking of, or worrying about, the other woman in the house, in Malik’s room. Jay stops moving. We stay like that until I am no longer shaking. Then he turns his head to one side, wraps his arms around my legs and says, “You, Lakshmi.”
For a long time, we stay that way.
Finally, Jay says, pleadingly, “My knees.” And then he’s laughing. I feel his lovely eyelashes brush against my belly, and I release him.
Not long after, I will fall into the deepest slumber of my life, my arms around my husband.
THE COLLAPSE
17
MALIK
Jaipur
We’re still in the lobby, making our way back to our seats after the refreshment break, when we hear the crash. Followed by shrieks and groans, the plaintive cries for help. All at once, people are stampeding—into and out of the Royal Jewel Cinema. They’re pushing one another to get to the lobby doors or running inside the theater to tend to the injured. For a split second, our group—Kanta, Manu, me, the Singhs—stands frozen, in the middle of the lobby, as desperate people dash frantically around us. Baby is now awake and screaming.
Then Samir is fighting to get inside the ground floor of the theater. Manu is right behind him. I can hear Samir yelling at everyone to evacuate the theater immediately.
He calls for Ravi, who is nowhere to be found. I run toward the lobby, shouting at the ushers to open the doors and pleading with the crowd to quickly go outside. The exodus is a tidal wave, but there’s also an opposing force—people fighting to get in to rescue loved ones who remained in their seats during the intermission.
While Samir disappears inside the theater, I tell Sheela to take her children and Parvati and Kanta outside. But she shakes her head, hands the baby to her mother-in-law, and tells her and Kanta to go home. Then she runs inside the theater. I follow her.
Groups of men and women are lifting the mound of rubble off the injured. Sheela and I join them. We can hear pleas for help underneath the chunks of concrete, rebar and bricks.
I spot Samir talking to the theater manager, a man I know only as Mr. Reddy, whom Samir hired from a smaller movie house in Bombay.
Hakeem is standing next to Mr. Reddy. That’s strange. I’d expected to see the accountant earlier with his wife and daughters up on the balcony. Hakeem is nervously swiping at his mustache as if he’s wiping away the memory of the accident that’s just occurred. Samir is barking orders. Mr. Reddy wipes the sweat from his brow and snaps into action. Hakeem runs after him.
Manu looks as if he’s in shock; he keeps asking Samir how this could have happened.
The police arrive in short order, and for the next hour, about a hundred moviegoers who escaped from the building without injury help them rescue the wounded buried under the debris, lifting steel and concrete off the people underneath and making bandages from shirts and dhotis. I see Sheela rip her fine silk sari with her teeth and quickly fashion a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding of a crushed leg. By the time we get the injured to the lobby, a ragtag convoy of cars, trucks, scooters, cycle rickshaws, motor rickshaws and tongas are waiting to transport them to nearby hospitals. Sheela is efficiently directing who goes where. The few ambulances in Jaipur are privately owned and come only when called.
When I glance at my watch, I see that it’s now 1:00 a.m. For the past three hours, I haven’t stopped to think; I’ve been engrossed in what needed to be done. My arms ache from the effort of lifting bodies. I rub the back of my neck to ease the headache that I’ve just become aware of. My throat feels parched—from thirst, or from the dust of the debris? I go inside the theater, again, to see what I can do. One side of the theater is almost completely destroyed. That’s where a good part of the balcony collapsed. The theater’s other half appears to be intact. But no one knows, yet, why the structure in the one area failed, and so we can’t assume the rest of it won’t. Better we clear the building just in case the worst happens.
Samir is standing, arms akimbo, in the middle of the wreckage. The theater is almost empty. He’s speaking again to Mr. Reddy, whose face, and Nehru jacket, are covered in plaster dust. The man’s perspiring; he looks dazed. Mr. Reddy removes a handkerchief from a pocket, blows his nose, then wipes his eyes. He nods to Samir, walks around him, goes past me and heads through the corridor that leads to the back of the stage.
Now Samir stands alone, his back to me; I’m not sure he knows I’m watching him. His silk coat’s torn neatly down the center back seam and across one shoulder. His hair and clothes are covered with mortar dust. He cocks his head; something on the floor seems to have caught his attention. He leans down to pick up a broken piece of cement concrete. He examines it, turning it over in his hand.
I survey the rubble, too. I look up at the innards of the balcony, the skeleton of rebar and cement mortar. Three seats, still securely bolted to the now exposed balcony floor, lean precariously toward the gap, as if, at any minute, they, too, might let go. I can see that two columns supporting the balcony gave way, sending several rows—maybe fifteen, twenty seats—to the ground floor. These are the seats that landed on the audience sitting directly below.
I study the torn carpet, littered with chunks of building material, broken seats lying askew, covered in plaster and mortar dust. All at once, I feel pity for Ravi Singh—a thing I never thought possible. All the work that went into this building. All the hours. And the money, and the talent. He had planned this grand opening down to the last detail.
I kick one piece of broken brick, and it rolls over. I can tell by the indentation on one side that it was a decorative brick. Strange. I squat and pick up another piece. Also a decorative brick. Manu once showed me that one side of each decorative brick is stamped with the manufacturer’s logo. Suppliers take pride in their work.