Sweet Sanjay

“You can’t have the job, Gupta. Not only are you not as qualified as any of the five I’m interviewing today, but you cannot have the job precisely because we have fucked. I can’t let you come back to New York with me as a man I’m fucking. I can’t do any of that in New York. I am married. I have a reputation.”

“But we have fucked, and I can say that all the way to New York if I must,” Gupta said, his tone just as hard as mine.

“You want a job, I’ll give you one. But here, in India,” I said, realizing the truth of what he said about knowing already that I went with men and my mind already racing ahead to repair my folly. “We are opening an office in India. Khurana will come here as chief. And you can work in the office, but only as long as you keep your mouth shut—and your body in India.”

We’d only talked at the corporate level of opening an office in India and no one had mentioned sending Khurana here, but I could make it so. I knew I could. Now I couldn’t have Khurana in New York either.

“I think you should make your own way back to New Delhi,” I said. “I will be traveling separately now.”

I stood up and marched toward the entrance of the consulate, right by the receptionist, not seeming to hear her trying to tell me that the five remaining candidates were here now and ready to be interviewed again.