The Immortalists(46)

‘I’m not like that anymore. Something’s gone. I’m weaker.’

‘You’ve been doing better since you stopped drinking. You’re only weak when you get into your head, when you get stuck down there and can’t climb out. You have to stay up here,’ he says, holding his hand flat under his chin. ‘Above water. Focus on what’s real, like Ruby. And your career.’

When Klara thinks of Ruby, it’s like trying to hold on to a rock in the middle of a river, like trying to cling to something small and hard while everything is pulling her away.

‘If we go to Vegas,’ she says, ‘and I can’t do it. If we don’t get hired. Or if I . . . if I just can’t. What then?’

‘I don’t think that way,’ Raj says. ‘And neither should you.’

Vegas,’ says Gertie. ‘You’re going to Vegas.’

Klara hears her mother’s hand muffling the receiver. Then she hears her shouting.

‘Varya, did you hear me? Vegas. She’s going to Vegas is what she said.’

‘Ma,’ says Klara. ‘I can hear you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s my choice.’

‘No one said it isn’t. It certainly wouldn’t be mine.’

There is the click of another receiver being picked up.

‘You’re going to Vegas?’ Varya asks. ‘For what? A vacation? Are you bringing Ruby?’

‘Of course we’re bringing Ruby. What else would we do with her? And not for a vacation – for good.’

Klara looks out the window of the RV. Raj is pacing while he smokes. Every few seconds, he glances at Klara to see if she’s still on the phone.

‘Why?’ asks Varya, aghast.

‘Because I want to be a magician. And that’s where you have to be if you want to be a magician – if you want to make money doing it. And besides, V, I have a kid; you don’t know how expensive that is. Ruby’s food, her diapers, her clothes –’

‘I raised four children,’ says Gertie. ‘And I never once went to Vegas.’

‘We know,’ says Klara. ‘I’m different.’

‘We know.’ Varya sighs. ‘If you’re happy.’

Raj is walking back to the car before she’s put the phone back in its cradle.

‘What’d they say?’ he asks, swinging into the driver’s seat, putting his key in the ignition. ‘Disapprove?’

‘Yup.’

‘I know they’re your family,’ he says, veering onto the road. ‘But if they weren’t, you wouldn’t like them, either.’

They stop in a campground in Hesperia to sleep. Klara wakes to the sound of Raj’s voice. She turns over and squints at Saul’s watch: three fifteen in the morning and Raj is sitting next to Ruby’s crib. He’s peering at her through the bars, whispering about Dharavi.

Sheet metal painted bright blue. Women selling sugarcane. Houses with walls made of jute bags; enormous pipes that rise, like the backs of elephants, in the streets. He tells her about the electricity goons and the mangrove swamp, the shanty where he was born.

‘That’s Tata’s house. Half of it was demolished when I was a kid. The other half is probably gone by now, too. But we can picture it that way. Picture the half still standing,’ he says. ‘Each floor is a business. On Tata’s floor are glass bottles and plastic and metal parts. On the next floor up there are men building furniture; on the one above that, they’re making leather briefcases and handbags. On the top floor are women stitching tiny blue jeans and T-shirts, clothing for children like you.’

Ruby coos and waves a hand, bluish white in the moonlight. Raj takes it.

‘They say that your people are untouchable, worse than the ones who came from beneath Brahma’s feet. But your people are workers. Your people are shopkeepers and farmers and repairmen. In the villages, they aren’t allowed to enter temples or shrines. But Dharavi is their temple,’ he says. ‘And America is ours.’

Klara’s head is turned toward the crib, but her body is rigid. Raj has never spoken of such things to her before. When she asks him about Dharavi, or the insurgency in Kashmir, he changes the subject.

‘Your tata would be proud of you,’ Raj says. ‘And you should be proud of him.’

Raj stands. Klara presses her cheek to the pillow.

‘Don’t forget it, Ruby,’ he says, pulling the blanket up to her chin. ‘Don’t forget.’





16.


In Vegas, they stop in an RV park called King’s Row. It’s fifteen minutes from the strip and costs two hundred dollars a month, which Raj hands over resentfully, because the pool has been drained and all the laundry machines except one are broken. ‘It’s just for now,’ he tells Ruby, kissing her button mushroom nose. ‘We’ll sell this thing soon.’ While he levels the rig with electric jacks and hooks up the utilities, Klara explores the grounds. There’s a rec room with a ping-pong table and a half-empty vending machine. The RVs seem to have been anchored for months, with wooden decks on which residents have placed potted plants or American flags.

They get a long-term car rental, three months with an ’82 Pontiac Sunbird, and drive to the Strip. Klara has never seen anything like it. Waterfalls that never dry. Tropical flowers in constant bloom. The resort hotels are metallic and angular as space stations. ‘Live hot girls,’ someone hisses, and a postcard materializes in Klara’s hand. Gods parade in front of Caesars; a woman lies facedown on the side of the street, her head on a pink leather pocketbook. Showgirls and fake Elvises stand beside a live Chucky doll that waves to Klara with its knife-wielding hand.