But the bricks I’m looking at have no factory stamp—just a shallow indentation where the logo would usually be. I spot another brick without a logo. Then another. These, too, have the same rectangular well in the center. Why are there so many decorative bricks? I look around the theater. Bricks weren’t used to adorn either the walls or the balcony facade. I think about those invoices I’ve been logging in. Every invoice for bricks came from the same place: Chandigarh Ironworks. So where’s their stamp?
I weigh the brick in my hand. It feels lighter and looks more porous than the bricks Manu showed me. If I were to pour a glass of water on any one of them, I’m pretty sure the water would flow through and saturate the brick in record time.
“Abbas?”
I raise my head to see Samir standing next to me. Dust has settled in the grooves of his forehead and the crevices around his mouth as if he were a stage actor made to look older than his years. I stand up, a piece of brick still in my hand. Samir looks at it, too.
“I told everyone to go home. Tomorrow morning, my people will start cleaning up.” He takes the brick fragment out of my hand. “After that’s done, we’ll sort out who’s doing what, and when.”
“But, Uncle. How could this have happened? So many people worked on this. The building was inspected many times—”
He holds up a hand. “I know no more than you do, Malik. But, for now, take Sheela home. She’ll be exhausted.” He looks directly into my eyes as he says this: “Ravi must have escorted the actress back to her hotel. He may not be aware of what’s happened.”
Is he guessing that’s the case, or is he telling me? It doesn’t matter. I’m too tired to argue, much less disagree.
Sheela and I are quiet in the car. We’re sitting in the back seat, as far away from each other as possible. Mathur’s driving. It’s almost 2:00 a.m. When we finally arrive at Sheela’s house, every light in is on. She looks at me.
“You’ll stay for a little while?” she asks. There’s a tremor in her voice.
I hesitate because of how it was the last time I was here, alone with her. I’m not impervious to her charms. Tonight, though, she and I have been through a catastrophe we could never have imagined, and I’m sympathetic to her need to talk to someone, someone who experienced what she experienced tonight.
When she says, “Please,” I ask Mathur to wait in the drive until I return.
Asha opens the front door and cries out, “Oh, MemSahib, please come inside. Samir Sahib called Mrs. Singh to let her know you are all right. It must have been so terrible! Mrs. Singh said she would keep the children tonight so you can rest. I was to wait for you, then go back to her house so I can take care of Rita and Baby in the morning.”
Sheela nods faintly. Her sari is in tatters. Her hair is disheveled. The ayah hesitates. “Ji, there is blood on your arm. Shall I get a plaster?”
Sheela looks at her arm as if seeing it for the first time. “It’s someone else’s blood,” she says.
The ayah’s eyes go wide, but she says nothing more about it. “I will serve the food,” she says. She locks the front door and steps around us to head to the kitchen, barely giving me a glance.
Sheela looks at me, as if to see if I want dinner. I shake my head.
“Asha,” she says, “we’re not hungry. You can go.”
The maid turns, her expression puzzled. Sheela shakes her head again. Then, with a quick glance at me, Asha heads down the hallway, to the back door where she’ll leave this house and walk the hundred yards to Samir Singh’s.
Sheela steps into the library. At the mirrored cocktail cabinet, she fills two glasses with Laphroaig. I’m still standing in the foyer when she holds out a glass to me. After everything that happened at the movie house, the frenzy and the chaos of it all, my body is too tired to move.
“Come,” she says.
I step into the room. “Thought you couldn’t stand the stuff.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” she says.
I take the glass from her. We sip the whiskey; this is not a night for offering a toast.
Now she smiles. “You’re a right mess.”
“Look who’s talking,” I reply.
I turn her by the shoulder so she can see her own face in the mirror over the fireplace. She looks at her reflection: face covered in dust, her blouse torn at the shoulder, her tattered sari, a tendril of hair that seems to be standing at attention while the hair on the other side of her head looks flattened. She takes a deep breath in, then lets out a whoop of laughter.
Her laughter takes me by surprise, and hearing it is a relief. This Sheela, this disheveled girl who’s laughing at herself, is a reprieve from everything that happened earlier tonight. It almost makes me happy. At fifteen, a privileged girl with rosy cheeks who thought herself a queen, she was too good to tolerate my presence. But at this very moment, I can almost believe I’m seeing the real Sheela, the one without polish, without pretense.
With her glass of scotch, Sheela gestures to my pants, ripped at the knees and covered in grime. We do look a mess: a pair of ruffians, or beggars. She covers her mouth with her hand to keep from spitting out her liquor. Then she starts to hiccup, and it’s one more thing we find hilarious. Now we’re doubled over, giggling. We’re in tears, because we’re giddy and exhausted. And we’re still alive, despite the mangled bodies, and the blood, and the tears and pain. It’s hard to believe it really happened, even if we saw the chaos for ourselves, the people suffering and people helping others, even when they couldn’t know if more was coming—more destruction, more suffering, more death.
When we finally stop laughing, Sheela wipes her eyes. Her kajal has smudged her face so that the area beneath her lower lids looks bruised. She studies her ruined makeup in the mirror, suddenly serious. Then she takes another gulp of scotch and glances at me.
“People died,” she says.
“Only one,” I say. So far.
She raises one eyebrow. “And that’s supposed to be a comfort?” She goes over to the cabinet to fill her glass again. “I saw that boy—the one whose tibia was smashed. He’s Rita’s age. And that actor, who plays everybody’s favorite grandpa—Rohit Seth. Millions of his fans will miss him...” She takes another sip of her drink. “How many injured? Forty? Fifty? This calamity will... There will be consequences. None of this will go away.”
Sheela has that look I’d seen on the faces of Omi’s children when they were feeling hurt and didn’t know what to do about it. The feeling of betrayal, when things went wrong, or didn’t happen in the way they expected. Tonight was supposed to be Ravi’s triumph. And she had stayed to help knowing full well that her husband was with another woman, oblivious to what’s happened. She must know that the others in their circle—the tennis club, golf club, the polo club—know about it, too.
When one of Omi’s children was confused, or sad, I’d sing a song and rub their back until they fell asleep. I can’t do that with Sheela, but I think of the remedy Auntie-Boss taught me years ago.
“Come,” I say, and take her elbow. “Do you have lavender oil?”
She frowns at me as, not sure why I’m asking. “Ye-es?”
“Good.” But in my head, I hear warning bells: Bevakoopf! Her husband isn’t home. Remember the last time you were alone with her? Can you trust yourself? I answer my own questions: she’s spent, traumatized, she needs comfort. I’m doing nothing more than drawing her a bath.
She’s a little unsteady and lets me lead her, drink in hand, upstairs. She points to their bedroom. I gently sit her down on the bed, covered in white satin. Then I remove my jacket, roll up my shirtsleeves and go into her bathroom, where I turn on the faucet to fill the bathtub.