When he finally leaned back and looked at me with that mild, expensive interest, I knew the shape of it before he spoke. I had known it from the moment he had ordered water instead of alcohol, from the way he had watched my legs when I crossed them, from the way his gaze had paused on the line of my neck like a hand that had not yet touched.
“I can help you,” he said.
There it was. The sentence every girl in Delhi heard in one form or another, from a man who wanted something in return and was insulted by the fact that he had to offer it with language.
“Help me how?” I asked.
He smiled. “You are intelligent. Don’t make me do the labor of stupidity.”
I took a sip of my vodka and let the ice hit my teeth.
“Then don’t,” I said.
He looked delighted. Of course he did. Men like Khanna loved women who understood the transaction and still allowed themselves to be charmed by it. It made them feel cultured instead of predatory.
He said he could arrange for me to meet the right people. Photographers. Casting heads. People who could place my face where it needed to be. He said Delhi was full of girls with beauty and no reach, and boys with reach and no taste. He liked the fact that I was not stupid enough to think the world was fair.
“And what do you want?” I asked.
He tilted his head. “Honesty.”
I laughed. “That is a cheap request from a man wearing a watch like that.”
His eyes narrowed, amused. “Fine. I want to spend time with you.”
That was the first lie he told me, and the first one I accepted for convenience.
I could have acted offended. I could have pretended that my ambitions were spiritual, that I believed in the purity of hard work and the sanctity of auditions. But I had come to Delhi from a family where politics had taught me that every system was a stage and every stage had a backroom. My father had built his life on understanding where the crowd ended and the machinery began. My brother had inherited the same instinct, though with less elegance and more noise. I knew how men worked because I had grown up around men who mistakened power for moral philosophy.
So I made my face thoughtful.
“How much help?” I asked.
He reached into his jacket and slid a card across the table. A number. A name. A promise wearing a suit.
“Call me when you want to start seriously,” he said.
I picked up the card and held it between two fingers like a cigarette I did not intend to smoke.
“Serious is expensive,” I said.
He smiled again. “So are you.”
That was the beginning.
Not the romance. Not the love. Please. I was not written by a fool. It was the beginning of a useful arrangement, one of those elegant Indian euphemisms for a thing that would have been called prostitution if it had been poor and called strategy because it was not.
I did not tell myself I was selling myself. I told myself I was investing in acceleration.
The first time he sent money, it came through a driver with a paper bag of cosmetics and a note that said: For Nisha. No signature. Men like Khanna never signed the first gift. They preferred mystery with a receipt. There was cash in the envelope, more than I had held in one place since leaving Mainpuri, and a phone that made mine look like a relic from the Stone Age.
I held the cash in my hand and felt something inside me tighten with pleasure. Not shame. Not exactly. A clean, cold exhilaration. It was the pleasure of being chosen by the kind of man who could open doors with a glance. It was the pleasure of speed. The pleasure of winning without waiting for permission from the universe.
I bought a new pair of heels, a better foundation, a lipstick that did not make me look like a girl in borrowed sin. I sent half the cash home under a different name because my mother would ask questions and my father would ask too many. When my brother called, furious about some political mess I did not care to hear about, I let him speak and spoke only at the end.
“I am fine,” I told him.
He said, “Delhi is not a place for you to be foolish.”
I almost laughed. “Then it is good I am not foolish.”
He did not like that answer. Men never liked women who sounded like they had already outgrown the family script.
The next week Khanna took me to dinner at a place in South Extension where the waiters behaved as if they were narrating your class to you with every movement. The mirrors were dark, the lighting was flattering, and the women at the next table wore diamonds as casually as other women wore bangles. He was attentive in the way of men who enjoyed the work of seduction more than the result. He ordered for me without asking, which I disliked enough to remember, and sent back a wine because it was not cold enough. He liked to perform control in public and tenderness in private, which is how powerful men keep their conscience clean.
“You should not be living in that area,” he said after the starter.
“Why? Because it is not romantic enough for you?”
He smiled into his glass. “Because you need a better address.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And who is paying for that?”
“You think too mechanically.”
“I think exactly mechanically. Delhi rewards mechanisms.”
He looked at me with what I can only describe as approval. Not desire, not quite. Approval was more dangerous. Desire could be exhausted. Approval made a man feel responsible for your rise.
He began sending cabs. He began sending clothes through an assistant who always looked embarrassed to be part of a plot. He sent a phone upgrade, a handbag that cost more than my first month’s rent, and once even flowers, which I found vulgar because flowers are what men send when they want to simulate innocence.
I learned quickly that Khanna liked to be admired for his taste. He did not merely want a woman; he wanted to feel that he had discovered her and improved her. This was useful. Men who confuse possession with patronage can be managed if you understand the difference between gratitude and obedience.
I gave him enough warmth to keep the line alive, enough distance to keep him hungry.
Meanwhile, the PG continued its performance of survival.