"I like it loud. It's romantic. Maybe he's done it deliberately."

"Look, it'll happen. Trust me. It's just…Balram, why the hell haven't you turned the music down? Sometimes these people from the Darkness are so stupid."

"I told you that already, Ashok."

Her voice dropped.

I caught the words "replacement," "driver," and "local" in English.

Have you thought about getting a replacement driver-a local driver?

He mumbled his reply.

I could not hear a word. But I did not have to.

I looked at the rearview mirror: I wanted to confront him, eye to eye, man to man. But he wouldn't look at me in the mirror. Didn't dare face me.

I tell you, you could have heard the grinding of my teeth just then. I thought I was making plans for him? He'd been making plans for me! The rich are always one step ahead of us-aren't they?

Well, not this time. For every step he'd take, I'd take two.

Outside on the road, a streetside vendor was sitting next to a pyramid of motorbike helmets that were wrapped in plastic and looked like a pile of severed heads.

Just when we were about to reach the gardens, we saw that the road was blocked on all sides: a line of trucks had gathered in front of us, full of men who were shouting:

"Hail the Great Socialist! Hail the voice of the poor of India!"

"What the hell is going on?"

"Haven't you seen the news today, Ashok? They are announcing the results."

"Fuck," he said. "Balram, turn Enya off, and turn on the radio."

The voice of the Great Socialist came on. He was being interviewed by a radio reporter.

"The election shows that the poor will not be ignored. The Darkness will not be silent. There is no water in our taps, and what do you people in Delhi give us? You give us cell phones. Can a man drink a phone when he is thirsty? Women walk for miles every morning to find a bucket of clean-"

"Do you want to become prime minister of India?"

"Don't ask me such questions. I have no ambitions for myself. I am simply the voice of the poor and the disenfranchised."

"But surely, sir-"

"Let me say one last word, if I may. All I have ever wanted was an India where any boy in any village could dream of becoming the prime minister. Now, as I was saying, women walk for…"

According to the radio, the ruling party had been hammered at the polls. A new set of parties had come to power. The Great Socialist's party was one of them. He had taken the votes of a big part of the Darkness. As we drove back to Gurgaon, we saw hordes of his supporters pouring in from the Darkness. They drove where they wanted, did what they wanted, whistled at any woman they felt like whistling at. Delhi had been invaded.

Mr. Ashok did not call me the rest of the day; in the evening he came down and said he wanted to go to the Imperial Hotel. He was on the cell phone the whole time, punching buttons and making calls and screaming:

– "We're totally fucked, Uma. This is why I hate this business I'm in. We're at the mercy of these…"

– "Don't yell at me, Mukesh. You were the one who said the elections were a foregone conclusion. Yes, you! And now we'll never get out of our income-tax mess."

– "All right, I'm doing it, Father! I'm going to meet him right now at the Imperial!"

He was still on the phone when I dropped him off at the Imperial Hotel. Forty-two minutes passed, and then he came out with two men. Leaning down to the window, he said, "Do whatever they want, Balram. I'm taking a taxi back from here. When they're done bring the car back to Buckingham."

"Yes, sir."

The two men slapped him on the back; he bowed, and opened the doors for them himself. If he was kissing arse like this, they had to be politicians.

The two men got in. My heart began to pound. The man on the right was my childhood hero-Vijay, the pigherd's son turned bus conductor turned politician from Laxmangarh. He had changed uniforms again: now he was wearing the polished suit and tie of a modern Indian businessman.

He ordered me to drive toward Ashoka Road; he turned to his companion and said, "The sister-fucker finally gave me his car."

The other man grunted. He lowered the window and spat. "He knows he has to show us some respect now, doesn't he?"

Vijay chortled. He raised his voice. "Do you have anything to drink in the car, son?"

I turned around: fat nuggets of gold were studded into his rotting black molars.

"Yes, sir."

"Let's see it."

I opened the glove compartment and handed him the bottle.

"It's good stuff. Johnnie Walker Black. Son, do you have glasses too?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ice?"

"No, sir."

"It's all right. Let's drink it neat. Son, pour us a drink."

I did so, while keeping the Honda City going with my left hand. They took the glasses and drank the whiskey like it was lemon juice.

"If he doesn't have it ready, let me know. I'll send some boys over to have a word with him."

"No, don't worry. His father always paid up in the end. This kid has been to America and has his head full of shit. But he'll pay up too, in the end."

"How much?"

"Seven. I was going to settle for five, but the sister-fucker himself offered six-he's a bit soft in the head-and then I said seven, and he said okay. I told him if he didn't pay, we'd screw him and his father and his brother and the whole coal-pilfering and tax-evading racket they have. So he began to sweat, and I know he'll pay up."

"Are you sure? I'd love to send some boys over. I just love to see a rich man roughed up. It's better than an erection."

"There will be others. This one isn't worth the trouble. He said he'll bring it on Monday. We're going to do it at the Sheraton. There's a nice restaurant down in the basement. Quiet place."

"Good. He can buy us dinner as well."

"Goes without saying. They have lovely kebabs there."

One of the two men gargled the scotch in his mouth, gulped it in, burped, and sucked his teeth.

"You know what the best part of this election is?"

"What?"

"The way we've spread down south. We've got a foothold in Bangalore too. And you know that's where the future is."

"The south? Bullshit."

"Why not? One in every three new office buildings in India is being built in Bangalore. It is the future."

"Fuck all that. I don't believe a word. The south is full of Tamils. You know who the Tamils are? Negroes. We're the sons of the Aryans who came to India. We made them our slaves. And now they give us lectures. Negroes."

"Son"-Vijay leaned forward with his glass-"another drink for me."

I poured them out the rest of the bottle that night.

At around three in the morning, I drove the City back to the apartment block in Gurgaon. My heart was beating so fast, I didn't want to leave the car at once. I wiped it down and washed it three times over. The bottle was lying on the floor of the car. Johnnie Walker Black-even an empty one is worth money on the black market. I picked it up and went toward the servants' dormitory.

For a Johnnie Walker Black, Vitiligo-Lips wouldn't mind being woken up.

I walked rotating the bottle with my wrist, feeling its weight. Even empty, it wasn't so light.

I noticed that my feet were slowing down, and the bottle was rotating faster and faster.

I was looking for the key for years…

The smashing of the bottle echoed through the hollow of the parking lot-the sound must have reached the lobby and ricocheted through all the floors of the building, even to the thirteenth floor.

I waited for a few minutes, expecting someone to come running down.

No one. I was safe.

I held what was left of the bottle up to the light. Long and cruel and clawlike jags.