Chapter Eighty-Eight
Diva Devnani called us to a meeting at her corporate office. It was on the Worli Seaface, a long slow smile of buildings beaming at the sea from a wide, curved boulevard. Diva’s building was like the upper deck of an ocean liner, with tall, rounded windows in full sail, and a continuous balcony serving as the rail.
When the elevator doors closed, I offered Karla my flask. She took a swig, and handed it back. The elevator operator glanced at me. I offered him the flask, and he took a swig, dripping the rum into his mouth without touching it to his lips. He passed it back, wagging his head.
‘God bless everyone,’ he said.
‘Speaking for everyone,’ Karla said, ‘God bless you back.’
The doors opened onto a marble and glass prairie, with several very pretty girls in very tight skirts grazing at desks of distraction.
While Karla spoke to the receptionist, I wandered among the glass and steel desks, glancing over shoulders. The girls were listening to music on their headphones, playing video games and reading magazines.
One of the girls looked up at me mid-flip in her magazine. She turned down the volume on her headset.
‘Can I help you?’ she threatened, her eyes fierce.
‘I’ll . . . you know . . . I’ll just be over there,’ I said, backing away.
The receptionist took us to an alcove with a view of the door to Diva’s office, where we sat in plush chairs. There was a side table, with business newspapers and magazines, soda water in a glass jug, and some peanuts, offered in a bronze cast of a human hand.
The palm of peanuts drew my eye as we sat down. I pointed at it, trying to figure out the message.
‘This is what we’re gonna pay you?’ I whispered to Karla. ‘Or maybe, this is what happened to the last guy who asked for a raise?’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Karla said.
‘Damn good,’ I smiled, my eyes applauding.
A tall, pretty girl appeared at our side.
‘Can I get you a cup of coffee?’ the girl asked.
‘Maybe later, with Diva,’ Karla said. ‘Thanks.’
The girl left, and I turned to Karla.
‘It’s pretty weird, out there in reception.’
‘It’s still a marble tile or two short of weird.’
‘No, I mean the girls. They’re not doing anything.’
‘What do you mean, they’re not doing anything?’
‘It’s a jive of inactivity.’
‘So? Maybe it’s a slow day.’
‘Karla, come on. There are seven very pretty girls out there, and not one of them is doing anything. It’s kinda weird.’
‘It’s kinda weird that you counted them,’ she smiled.
‘I –’
The door to Diva’s office opened. It was exactly one minute before our meeting. A grasp of businessmen filed out, wearing similar suits and identical stares of ambition, fed.
‘Punctuality is the time of thieves,’ Karla said, glancing at the clock, and standing.
Diva came to the door of the office, her hands on her hips.
‘Come in,’ she said, kissing Karla on both cheeks. ‘I’ve missed you both so much. Thanks for coming.’
She flopped into an immense chair, behind the curve of a black grand piano that she’d shortened, and converted into a desk.
A photograph of her father in a silver frame rested on the piano-desk. Flowers trailed over the picture, spilling yellow against lacquered black. Incense burned in a tray shaped like a peacock’s tail.
It was a big room, but there were only two chairs facing her desk. All those blank-eyed businessmen had stood, during the meeting with Diva. Tough girl, I thought, and who can blame her?
‘That was something,’ she said. ‘Can I get you guys a drink? God knows, I need one.’
She pressed a button on a console, and the door opened a second later. A very pretty girl walked across the large room, stalking the slippery floor on hysterical heels. She stopped at the desk with a flourish of her short skirt, long legs stiff.
‘Martini,’ Diva said, ‘I want you to meet Miss Karla and Mr Shantaram.’
Karla waved hello. I stood, put my right hand over my chest, and inclined my head. It’s the most polite way to greet any woman in India, because many women don’t like to shake hands. Martini inclined her head at me, and I sat down again.
‘I’ll have a Manhattan,’ Diva said. ‘What about you, Karla?’
‘Two jiggers of vodka over two cubes, please.’
‘A lime soda, for me.’
Martini spun on a fifty-calibre heel, and stalked away slowly, a giraffe in a glass zoo.
‘I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here,’ Diva said, giving me a different wondering, because I wasn’t.
‘I’m wondering,’ Karla said, ‘but not about that. You’ll get to the point when it’s sharp enough, right? How are you, Diva? It’s been weeks.’
‘I’m good,’ she smiled, straightening up in the chair that looked like half a bed for her small frame. ‘I’m tired, but I’ve been working on that. I sold everything today. Just about everything. That was the last, in a very long line of meetings I’ve had, yesterday and today.’
‘Sold everything how?’ Karla asked.
‘All the men who actually run the companies, in my portfolios, have tranches of shares as bonuses. I told them that if I sold my portfolio in one hit, their shares would be worthless. But if they gave the shares back to me, they could take the companies and run them with their own boards, and give themselves sweaty-palm bonuses, without spending a dollar, and I would resign.’
‘Smart move,’ Karla said. ‘As principal shareholder, you have an annual general meeting to use against them. But you skip the day-to-day. It’s like getting drunk without the hangover.’
‘Precisely,’ Diva said, as Martini arrived with the drinks.
‘Have you got a joint?’ Diva asked.
‘Yes,’ Karla and Martini said at the same time, turning their heads instantly to look at one another.
It looked tense, to me. But silent struggles between beautiful women are feminal magician’s tricks, faster and subtler than male eyes and instincts can follow. I couldn’t be sure what was going on, so I smiled at everybody.
Karla took a slender joint from her case, and passed it to Diva. Martini glowered, all legs and no pockets, and whirled away, the frills of her skirt like a creature designed by a reef.
‘Thanks, Karla,’ Diva said. ‘I’m a free woman, as of this minute. If the sun was down, I’d be drinking champagne. I can drink cocktails all day, but when I start on champagne my IQ drops twenty points, and that’s a stupidity I’m keeping in reserve, for later tonight. Meanwhile, to freedom for women!’
‘Freedom for women!’ Karla toasted.
Diva was silent for a while. Karla brought her back.
‘How bad was it?’
‘They all wanted control,’ Diva said, turning her drink in her hands. ‘They couldn’t bear to see it, a woman in control, when they’d all happily licked a man’s boot.’
‘They let you know?’ Karla asked.
‘I saw it in their eyes, at every meeting. And the whispering always came back to me, from men who betrayed men. Power, in my hands, was a declaration of war to them. These parasites that my father let infest the companies, these men who looked the other way when black money almost ruined us, they started getting nasty. Even threatening. You know what I mean, Karla?’
‘Men like that you crush, or you leave behind,’ Karla said. ‘You could’ve crushed them, Diva, because your father left you the power to do it. Why are you walking away?’
‘My dad was into energy stocks in a big way. That’s all we’ve got left, while the construction business pays off debts, and those stocks are still paying well. I wouldn’t have made those bets on oil and coal, but he did, and he locked me onto a wheel that thousands of people are running on. I can’t just turn it off.’
‘So you’re still in the game?’ Karla asked.
‘I’m stepping out, but I told the new managers that for every year they get cleaner, and better at what they do, they get a tranche of their shares back.’
‘What are your plans?’ I asked.
‘I kept one company, and quarantined it from the sale. I kept the combined modelling agency and bridal boutique, the one I told you about. I added a wedding advice service, and I’ve renamed it. I’m going to run it.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘so the girls you’ve got here are models, waiting for assignments.’
‘You could say that,’ Diva replied, turning to Karla. ‘I know it’s a while since we talked about this, Karla, but I was hoping you’re still interested. I’d love to have your ideas in this. What do you think?’
‘I liked it when it was just an idea,’ she said. ‘And I’m happy to see you make it real. Count us in, for as long as we’re here in town. Let’s talk about it next week, over dinner at our place, okay?’
‘Yeah,’ Diva said vaguely, her eyes drifting to the garlanded photograph of her father.
We let her have some time, both of us content to wait until her trance ended.
‘You know why I insisted that everyone call me Diva?’ she asked after a while, still staring at the photograph. ‘I was in the bathroom, at a party, and I heard what my own friends called me, behind my back. Trivia Divya, they said. Trivia Divya. And you know what? They were right. I was. I was trivial. So I changed my name to Diva, that night, and made everybody call me that. But this is the first time that I’ve felt untrivial, if there’s such a word.’
‘Essential is the word, Diva,’ Karla said.
The young heiress turned her face to Karla’s and smiled, laughing softly.
‘It’s all good,’ she said, standing from her chair with a stretch and a yawn.
We stood with her, and she walked us to the tall doors of her office.
‘So glad you’re free,’ Karla said, hugging her as we left. ‘Fly high, baby bird.’
We roamed free on the bike, at slow speed, thinking different thoughts. I was thinking of the poor little rich girl, who’d lived in a slum and given away a fortune. Karla was thinking something else.
‘They’re all very classy ex-callgirls,’ she said over my shoulder.
‘What?’
‘They’re all ex-callgirls.’
‘Who?’
‘The pretty girls back at the office, who were doing nothing, very prettily. They’re all ex-callgirls. Dominatrices, actually. Experts in fetish. Diva hired them for the fetish party, but after the party, offered them jobs. They all came. They’re not modelling for Diva. They’re running the marriage and wedding agency.’
‘They should do fine,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, when I brought it up?’
‘Stop the bike,’ she said, leaning away from me.
I pulled into the exit lane, near a bus stop.
‘Are you seriously asking me,’ she asked, her breath on my neck, ‘why I didn’t tell you that we were going to a carnival of ex-callgirls?’
‘Well . . . ’
I swung back into the traffic and rode for a while, but then stopped again, because Oleg was sitting in the middle of the road divider, playing the guitar. We pulled up beside him.
‘What are you doing, Olezhka?’ Karla asked, smiling a handful of queens.
‘Playing guitar, Karla,’ he grinned back, Russianly.
‘See you round, Oleg,’ I said, revving the engine.
Karla pressed a finger gently on my shoulder, and the engine cooled down.
‘Why here?’ Karla asked.
‘The acoustics are perfect,’ he said, smiling, deliberately. ‘The sea behind me, and the buildings –’
‘What are you playing?’ Karla asked.
‘It’s a song called “Let the Day Begin”, by The Call. This guy, Michael Been, he’s like a saint of rock and roll. I love him. Can I play it for you?’
‘See you round, Olezhka,’ I said, revving again.
‘Why don’t you hop on board,’ Karla said.
‘Really?’ Oleg and I said at the same time.
‘We’ll drop you at home,’ she said. ‘We’re on our way to Dongri.’
Oleg climbed up behind Karla. We rode with her legs wrapped around me on the petrol tank. She was leaning against Oleg, who had his guitar strung on his back.
We cruised past a group of traffic cops, waiting at a crossing to bring down a zebra or two in the jungle street.
‘Vicaru naka,’ I said in Marathi. Don’t ask.