the one with wings? But then the thunder crashed, and she stumbled out of the clearing, around the back of the gas station—the wind whipping around her, swirling with the strength of a sea—holding on to the walls, blinded as she was by wind, by rain, by sudden storm.
There was no one behind the counter. The key was where she’d left it.
She opened the door of the bathroom, saw her reflection in the mirror, in the light through the open door, and slammed it closed as she crumpled to the floor. And here, then: another clearing. Her money was gone. Her clothes were gone. The photo and the small white rectangle of paper were gone. Even the remaining loaf of bread and the potato chips and the apple were gone. But of all the things that were gone, that they had taken, it was Poornima’s half-made sari that pinned her to the floor.
The rain started. She could hear it, clambering like little feet over the metal roof, hurrying on their way. To where?
East, she thought, east.
And what was there to the east? Nothing. Just as there had been nothing to the west.
She began to sob, and the sobs became a wail, and the wail became a low and gentle hum. She looked over, humming. Another toilet. It, too, was humming. She crawled over to it and put her arms around the cool porcelain. She smiled. But then the strong stench of urine reached into her head, cut her reverie with a knife, and it snapped her back—or was it the jiggling of the door handle that snapped her back? She didn’t know, but she saw now that there was so little to be done. The single naked bulb above her ached, in its lonely, buzzing way. Her skin, illuminated by the bulb, shrieked with sorrow. Her thoughts folded and unfolded in pain. For it was here, under this white light and in this horrible stench, that Savitha realized how lost she was. How mislaid. How all the beacons of the world, standing all in a row, couldn’t save her.
Poornima
1
It came down to this: her only chance of finding Savitha was to invoke her. Talking about poetry was well and good, but Poornima was running out of time, and what was the worst Mohan could do? Ignore her? Throw her out of the apartment? Deny knowing Savitha? Put her on an earlier flight back to India? Quarantine her until that flight?
None of those was worse than neglecting to use the last and only weapon she had.
That evening, she dispensed with preparing dinner, and when Mohan arrived, she simply handed him a glass. She waited for him to take his first sip of whiskey, pushed her gaze toward him, and said, “I became a shepherd for one reason. And one reason alone. To find someone.”
Mohan studied her, nonplussed. He gestured toward her face. “Him? The guy who did that to you?”
Poornima hardly heard him. She spoke out into the room, dauntless now, insentient, and as if she were alone. “He doesn’t exist for me. No, the person I’m looking for is my friend. Her name is Savitha. That’s who I’m looking for, why I’m here.”
Mohan seemed to shudder at something she didn’t understand, and though his face was lost in the gray gloom of the far wall, Poornima felt his shudder through the floor, suspended in the air between them. Into that air, he said, “How do you know her?”
Poornima looked up. “She’s from my village. The last time I saw her was four years ago.”
He held his face against the light, away from it, as if they were locked in battle.
“Do you?”
“No,” he said, and Poornima knew he did.
“I have to find her,” she continued. “I need your help.”
He swirled the whiskey in his glass. His body stiffened. He looked at the floor. “She left.”
“What?”
“Two days ago.”
“Two days?” Poornima felt a scream, a hot pulsing pain, rise to her throat. Two days! “Where? Where did she go?”
Silence.
“You have to know something.”
“She took a bus. That’s my guess.”
“But to where? Where? These, these girls—they don’t know anybody, any other places. They don’t even know English. Where could she go? And without money.”
Silence again.
Poornima’s mind raced. Her plane ticket was through JFK. In one week’s time. What was better, to stay here or to go to New York? What if Mohan didn’t let her stay? What was the point of staying? When Savitha was gone? She knew, she knew already: if he made