Chapter Seventeen
What exactly are we doing?” I ask, following Krish out into the street.
“Going to Anderson’s Jewelers before they close.”
“How?” I refuse to look at the motorcycle he’s standing beside, his stance suddenly all Power Ranger–y.
He unsnaps the helmet from the handle and hands it to me. “I’m riding a motorcycle, and you’re riding behind me.”
“I don’t think so.”
He straddles the bike’s thorax-like body. It looks a little like a garden ant was magnified and metallized. It rumbles like thunder when he turns it on.
“Do you even know how to ride that thing?”
He looks at me patiently. “I’m a better rider than I am a writer. Does that help?”
“That makes me very nervous about letting you write this story.”
He’s trying not to smile. “Well, a motorcycle race just got added to the story, so really, how can it go wrong? Hop on.”
“Ah, you’re being ironic,” I say, unable to move. “Also, how does one hop on this thing? What am I, a rabbit?”
He laughs, and it’s really weird to feel good about making someone laugh when you’re gripped by panic. “You just saw me get on. Do what I did. Take a step closer and throw one leg over the way I just did.”
“Can I throw you off it instead, and then we can take a cab?”
He laughs again. Suddenly Mr. Broody is all Mr. Amused. “Sure, if you want to get there after it closes.”
Ugh. “Fine. Can it take both our weight?”
“Mira, they close in twenty-five minutes. I’m a good rider. Trust me. Do you really want to wait until tomorrow when your flight leaves tomorrow afternoon?”
“Stop pressuring me. I’m terrified of heights.” I know that sounds unrelated, but it’s why I don’t get on roller coasters, and this feels a lot like that.
Another laugh. He takes the helmet, puts it on my head, and secures the strap. “We’re going to stay on the ground, I promise. No wheelies until we know who dropped the ring.”
I groan. I’m going to have to do this. I try to channel Charlie’s Angels , and I mount the growling machine. It’s the weirdest feeling I’ve ever experienced in my life.
“You’ve seriously never ridden a motorcycle?” he says, as though it’s a normal thing for people to ride killing machines where your breakable body is entirely exposed while flying through the air.
“I like a metal box around me when I’m traveling at high speeds. Do you know how many bike accident survivors I’ve treated?”
“I’m going to try my best to make sure that doesn’t happen to us. Okay?”
I squeak an affirmative-ish sound, and the motorcycle bounces as he takes it off the stand. I squeak again.
“Still okay?” There’s a smile in his voice but also kindness.
“There’s literally metal vibrating between my legs,” I say.
This time his laugh is big and free. “That’s what she said.”
That’s when I learn that when embarrassment and fear live together inside you, fear wins. “Why the hell would anyone want to do this voluntarily?” But I’m on, and I grab his shoulders because even though we’re not yet moving I feel off balance.
“Hold on, close your eyes, and imagine something soothing. Like shopping for your wedding.” And with that he takes off.
Krish helps me off the bike and leaves his hand cupping my elbow until my legs steady. “You did good. It’s normal to have shaky legs after riding.”
He’s totally patronizing me, but I haven’t caught my breath enough to be snarky in response. To be honest, it wasn’t bad. He did seem to know what he was doing, and it was more weaving through traffic and riding between lanes of cars than a 007-style thriller chase.
“I might throw up,” I say.
He bends down to study my face. When he determines that I will not actually be bringing up my guts, he looks at his phone. “They close in ten minutes.”
“We got here in fifteen minutes?”
He shrugs. “Bikes can be handy.”
I start walking, but I stumble, and he holds out a bent arm instead of taking mine.
“There’s something weirdly gallant about you, you know that?” I say and use his arm to steady myself.
“That might be the first nice thing you’ve said to me. Unless you’re calling me old.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Really?”
“How old did you think I was?”
“I thought you were younger than me. Closer to twenty-eight.”
“There’s an advantage, I guess, to not hitting puberty until college.” A particular kind of sadness flashes in his eyes. For the first time since we met, it seems like he’s forgotten to pull on his nonchalant mask.
He grew up the only Indian kid in his town, and he didn’t hit puberty until college. I would never call my childhood easy, but his doesn’t sound like a breeze either.
“That’s got to be the male equivalent of me being the first and only girl in my elementary school to hit puberty.” I’ve never verbalized childhood discomfort to anyone ever, and for a moment, I’m even more disoriented than I was flying across New York on a motorcycle.
We’re under the maroon awning of the store. He pulls his arm away from me, holds open the door, and does a gallant, gentlemanly bow.
I hate admitting this, but it’s freaking adorable.
This store is entirely different from anything we’ve seen today. For one, it’s small. There’s a single long counter that runs along the far wall. It’s the standard glass-topped case displaying pieces of jewelry that are nowhere near the scale of what we’ve seen everywhere else. There are a few mannequin heads on shelves lining the wall, which display classic Western pieces. Pendants of diamonds around sapphires and rubies, with understated drops for earrings. It’s much more Hollywood than Bollywood.
“May I help you?” a man asks from behind the counter, and Krish and I exchange a smile. That’s number fourteen today.
“I’m so glad you’re still open,” I say, more excitedly than I intended, and the man smiles a few-teeth-missing smile.
Krish introduces us in the exact same way he’s done all the times before and asks if someone can help with identifying if the chain came from this store.
The man, who looks almost exactly like the Albert Einstein photograph from one of my physics textbooks, beckons us to his glass case. More déjà vu makes me throw a glance Krish’s way, just as he does the same. It’s weird that we’ve only been at this for a day. It feels like this day has spanned a few years.
The man pushes a velvet tray toward us, and I place the chain on it.
He picks it up. “Ah, it’s our Marilyn. Beautiful. My late wife designed it. But it never caught on because it kept breaking when customers put a locket on it, especially a heavy one.” He stares regretfully at the chain. “We had to discontinue it.”
Krish and I look at each other again. Did we just do it?
“That was my wife’s name,” the man says. “Marilyn. She had black hair and brown eyes. An angular little woman.” He smiles wistfully. “She was named after everyone’s favorite bombshell, her mother’s favorite actress. Marilyn—my Marilyn, not Monroe—never understood why her parents named her that, given that she was black haired and brown eyed at birth.”
There’s a framed picture of a stern-faced woman, wearing a black dress buttoned all the way up to her neck, with hair so tightly tied back just looking at it gives me a headache. My own messy bun has really leaned into its name after that bike ride.
“How did you meet her?” I ask. “Your Marilyn?”
“She worked in my father’s workshop after her family moved here from Romania. The best metalworker I’d ever seen. I used to design pieces, and she would turn them into magic. Knew exactly how to tweak each piece to make it even more eye catching. There was nothing more beautiful than her when she was working on a piece. It used to make me breathless. All the way till the end, seeing her make jewelry made me breathless.”
“That’s beautiful,” I say.
He makes a sound that’s suspiciously close to pfft . “Outside the workshop she had an inferno of a temper. Couldn’t get along with no one. Not her own parents, not mine, not even our kids. Told everyone to go to hell. Except me. For thirty-five years.”
“Why do you think that is?” Krish asks. No wonder he’s won all those journalistic awards.
Mr. Anderson, which is what I assume the man’s name is, presses a finger to his lips. “Shutting up. I don’t enjoy talking much. When you shut up, nobody gets to tell you to shut up.”
Krish makes a sympathetic sound. Mr. Anderson has just talked for fifteen minutes straight without taking a breath.
“What about you two?” His gaze bounces between us. “She do all the talking, or do you get a word in?”
Once again Krish waits for me to respond.
“He’s a chatterbox,” I say. “Couldn’t get the man to shut up if I tried.”
Krish shakes his head, and I notice for the first time that he has the hint of a dimple that softens the sharp angles of his face when he smiles and he’s trying not to.
“I thought that’s why you fell in love with me, because you couldn’t get enough of what I had to say.”
“It’s true. It’s handy at night. He starts talking, and I fall right to sleep.”
His smile widens, and the dimple deepens.
Mr. Anderson looks like he just met someone who speaks his language in a foreign country. “Exactly. No insomnia when Mar was around. Now I can’t sleep without one of those gummies.” He pats the chest pocket of his white shirt.
“When’s the wedding?” he asks, pointing to my engagement ring. “Is it going to be one of those big Indian weddings? Based on that ring, I’m thinking it is.”
Before I can answer, he tells us about an Indian wedding he and his wife went to in 1999. A diamond-merchant friend had rented out all of Yankee Stadium. Obviously, it left an impression. “Heartburn for days from the food, but Mar got drunk, and we danced until two in the morning. They had flown in all your Indian film stars to do those dances. Will you be wearing one of those red-and-gold sari dresses? Will he be riding an elephant?”
Suddenly my cheeks are flaming.
“Would you know who might have bought this chain?” Krish asks, sliding a quick glance at me.
Mr. Anderson looks at the chain. “Mar was really good at keeping records of customers. We only sold this model when she was alive.”
“If someone brought it in to repair, would there be any way to find out? We think the repair was done fairly recently.”
His bushy-browed eyes light up. He presses a finger to his temple. “I think last week ...” He trails off and walks away, leaving us alone in the tiny little space filled with priceless merchandise. We could easily swipe something and make a run for it.
Krish points to the cameras and the locks on the display cases. “Everything’s secured. He’s done this long enough that he knows what he’s doing. He isn’t as frail and helpless as he seems.” he says softly, as though he assumes that the man is listening to us from wherever he’s gone off to.
“He seems lonely,” I whisper, close and soft too.
“Who isn’t?” he says.
Before I can quite absorb that, the man returns, his arms full of leather-bound ledgers.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Krish says, also under his breath. But he steps forward and helps the man put the ledgers down.
“We’ll have to look, but I think an old customer came in a week or so ago. I only remember because I recognize the Marilyn. Not easy to forget the piece you named for the love of your life.”
For the first time since the ring landed in my hand, I feel my heart beating in a completely different way. Although I’ve felt hopeful from the moment I found it, the hope has felt like it belongs to someone else, a character I’m playing. This time my hope feels real, like it’s mine. I bounce on my heels and lean over the counter. “Would you have her name in one of these?”
“Every single person who’s ever bought anything from us over the last seventy years we have a record of. But don’t worry, this is just the last few months. I brought it all out just to be safe. Also because they all look the same.” He opens a few ledgers until he finds the one he’s looking for. “This one’s from last month.” He starts poring over the neatly written entries.
A part of me is thrilled that they sell so much at the store. When I first walked in, I was a little sad about how run down the place looked.
When I look closely, I see that each page has only one entry with a lot of notes and drawings.
He flips through the pages, looking at the headings, which are words and phrases like Lightbulb , Cleopatra’s Eyes , Tiger’s Breath , and so forth.
“Mar liked to name our pieces,” he says as he flips pages, and it strikes me that it’s been half an hour since closing time. He hasn’t said anything, and so I don’t either.
Finally, I know he’s found something when Krish’s entire body language changes. He’s been reading the ledger upside down. I had forgotten about his photographic memory, which is ironic. I wonder if being able to read upside down goes with having a brain like a computer.
Mr. Anderson puts a finger on the center of the page. “That’s it. This one. It was the fifteenth of last month. The lady lives right here in Brooklyn. She bought the Marilyn many years ago to replace an old fake chain that was giving her a rash. I think she developed a nickel allergy. She said she had to have it because of its name.”
When I look impressed, he points to the notes. “Most of this information is here, but I also remember because we were not used to those types back then, so it stands out. I was uncomfortable serving her, but then Mar looked like she would take my head off, and I never went against my Mar.”
I’m about to ask what he means by those types when he says, “And we don’t get a whole lot of Indian customers. They tend to go to the guys in Jackson Heights. So, I remember.”
“Can we know her name and address?” I ask, but I already know that Krish has it memorized upside down.
Mr. Anderson pulls the ledger toward himself. “There are privacy laws, young lady. But I can call her for you and tell her you have the chain and the ring and ask if it’s hers.”