The Loudspeaker and the Two Names

The cafe manager has known me since Heena's planning meetings. He has watched me split bills, tip well, host client dinners at his tables. He called my full name across the room like I was a parcel at the Andheri counter. Meera-ji. Table-7 order. Three college students turned around to see whose parcel it was.

And the confirmation tone. Of all the sounds a phone can make in public. I walked out with my face on fire and I will never go back.

But the part I keep turning over is that the fixer was right there. Two tables away. With a junior I had never seen. He looked up. I don't know what his face did. I couldn't look long enough to find out. If he saw me do that — send money, bounce, retry, ping, loudspeaker — and stayed quiet, that's one kind of man. If he saw me and looked away, that's the kind he is.

Heena's text came at 6:12. Kabir says my referral was forwarded to the fixer's new SIM. By someone inside our circle. I sat on the bed for an hour before I could move. The list shrunk to two. Two planner friends who knew about the BKC lead. Two women I have taken sangeet bookings for, sent leads to, toasted at their own engagements.

One of them did this.