“I would love more biryani,” Casey says, beaming. “This is the best thing I've ever eaten. After Kavita's samosas. And the jalebi. And the Laal Maas.” He pauses. “Okay, everything here is the best thing I've ever eaten. India has ruined me for Canadian food. When I get home, I'm going to look at a Tim Hortons and weep.”
Verma laughs again. He is fully laughing now, the political mask abandoned, and he turns to Mother and says, “Meera, your son has excellent taste. This young man is delightful. I’m sad to have missed the engagement party, now.”
Mother's expression performs a manoeuvre so complex it would require an advanced degree in facial micro-analysis to decode. She has invited the Home Secretary to intimidate Casey, and the Home Secretary has just declared Casey delightful. She has deployed a nuclear option, and Casey has absorbed it like an oversized, biryani-eating sponge.
“Yes,” Mother says, and the word costs her something. “He truly is... something.”
After dinner, Verma shakes Casey's hand for an unnecessarily long time and tells him that if he ever needs anything during his stay in India, he should not hesitate to call. He gives Casey his personal card. His personal card. The Home Secretary of India has just given his personal phone number to the man he was brought here to intimidate, and Casey accepts it with the samefriendly, genuine gratitude with which he accepts everything, from samosas to surgical consultations to the undying affection of eighty-pound goldendoodles named Oliver.
I walk Verma to his car with Mother. The night air is warm and jasmine-scented.
“Charming young man,” Verma says to Mother, shaking her hand. “Very charming. You must be very pleased to have him join your family.”
Mother smiles. It is the smile of a woman whose most powerful weapon has just been turned into a groupie.
“Delighted,” she says.
The car pulls away. Mother and I stand in the courtyard. The silence between us is heavy and loaded and ancient.
“He compared the immigration enforcement apparatus to a gift shop's inventory system,” I say.
“I am aware.”
“You invited the Home Secretary to dinner to threaten my fiancé, and my fiancé made the Home Secretary give him his personal phone number.”
“I am aware of that as well, Arjun.”
“He asked Verma about paperwork. Paperwork, Mother. He expressed genuine sympathy for the filing volume.”
Mother turns to me. The candlelight from the house catches her eyes and the complicated, exhausted, grudgingly impressed expression on her face.
“Your fiancé,” she says, and each word sounds like it has been dragged from her at considerable personal cost, “is the most disarming human being I have ever encountered. And I once negotiated a land dispute with the Rajasthani state government.”
“He made Verma laugh. Nobody makes Verma laugh.”
“Goodnight, Arjun.”
She turns and walks back into the house, her burgundy sari rustling against the marble, her spine straight, her dignity intact but visibly battered. I watch her go.
Then I go upstairs, and I find Casey sitting on the edge ofthe bed, grinning, holding the Home Secretary of India's personal card between two fingers like a magician who has just pulled it from behind someone's ear.
“So,” he says, “that went well.”
I cross the room. I take the card from his fingers. I set it on the nightstand. I climb into his lap, which is a physical manoeuvre that requires his hands on my hips and my knees on either side of his thighs and an almost complete abandonment of every principle of dignified behaviour I have ever held.
“You,” I say, my face inches from his, “are the most ridiculous person I have ever met.”
“I made the Home Secretary give me his phone number.”
“You compared his department to a gift shop.”
“Your mom's face, though. Did you see your mom's face?”
“I saw my mother's face. I will be seeing my mother's face in my nightmares for years.”
He grins up at me, golden and warm and so absurdly, magnificently, defiantly himself that my chest feels like it's going to split open.
“Not a lapse in judgment?” he asks.