You're Invited(45)
“Good evening, Piyadasa. Mahesh sir athuley de?” Is Mahesh sir inside? My Sinhala felt alien coming out of my mouth. Like my tongue was not used to forming the sounds.
“Naa, madam. Thawa mahaththayekta podi baduwak deliver karranna awey.” No, madam. I came to deliver a package to someone else. Was it me or did some of the other drivers smirk at this?
“Is your vehicle coming, madam?” one of the English-speaking drivers asked, peering down the street to where the angry man continued to walk.
I had called an Uber and it was just turning in.
“Who did he want to see?” I asked, looking in the same direction.
“No one, miss. He was crazy. Don’t worry.”
I was about to dig for more details when Aunty Josephina’s voice rang out.
“Leaving early, darling?”
“Y-yes, Aunty. Not feeling so great. Must be the jet lag, you know, no?”
“Yes, yes. I’m not feeling so well too. I thought I’d head home early. My driver needs to leave for the night as well. Ah, there he is.”
Her chauffeur-driven BMW pulled up right alongside my Uber, and we air-kissed our goodbyes. A vision of her blouse getting caught in the car door, dragging her screaming on the gravelly road, crossed my mind, but I shooed it away.
The man trying to make his way into the party was like the forgotten leftovers of a dream. I had bigger things on my mind. Things like the envelope in Aunty Josephina’s handbag.
How much longer did I have to wait?
Ticktock.
LAKSHI
Interview Transcript: Lakshi Malalasekara (abbrev. LM)
Date: January 25, 2020
Location: The Mount Lavinia Hotel
LM: I’ve heard that Kaavi might be in trouble. Please tell me what I can do to help.
EP: Thank you, Miss Malalasekara. Could you please state your name and address for the record?
LM: My name is Lakshi Malalasekara and I live at 56 Jayanthi Mawatha, Pita Kotte.
EP: And you work at Miss Fonseka’s charity organization. Is that correct?
LM: Yes, ma’am. I work as a senior project coordinator at Pink Sapphires. I joined as an intern three years ago, was hired as a permanent employee within three months, and received my latest promotion last May.
EP: How well did you get to know Miss Fonseka in this time?
LM: Kaavi was always a welcoming boss. Even when I was an intern, she spent so much time with me, showing me the ropes and encouraging me to make decisions for myself. She’s truly an inspiration. You should see the way she encourages women. I’ve even seen her advise the girls in the program—coaching them through insecurities, giving them a voice. I always knew I wanted to work in this field—you know, helping others. But Kaavi really gave me a direction. So much of who I am today, I owe to her.
EP: So you would say you were close?
LM: [Short laugh] Well, she was my boss. But we had a good relationship, of course.
EP: Did she confide in you about her own problems?
LM: Well, how many problems could a woman like Kaavi have? She would tell us when she got stressed-out with work, I suppose. It was a struggle sometimes, working with her family. It would be for anyone, though, wouldn’t it? She rarely saw eye to eye with her sister, Tehani, but she never spoke badly about her or anything. I mean, Kaavi worked directly under her father. Mr. Fonseka had even handed over a significant part of the business duties to her, so Kaavi was as good as the boss. I don’t think Tehani liked that much.
EP: In what way?
LM: Oh, you know, just the usual sister stuff. Kaavi’s, well, she’s perfect. Must have been hard to come second to that all the time. But it’s not like they hated each other or anything. Tehani would come by the Pink Sapphires office sometimes—Kaavi had her set up as an art mentor, to coach the girls interested in graphic design, and then she and Kaavi would chat and joke and all would be normal. Tehani even played a huge part in Spencer’s proposal. It’s a pretty sweet story, actually—Spencer knew he wanted to propose to Kaavi during the award ceremony. After all, working on the charity is what brought the two of them so close together, and it only seemed right. That’s what Kaavi told us all afterward. But of course, he needed to figure out a way to get onstage, right? He couldn’t just walk on up there, after all.
So he asked Tehani to help him, and she convinced Kaavi to invite him up onstage to thank him. I was in the office when Tehani asked her. Kaavi thought it was ridiculous at first. “I’ll thank him in my speech,” she said, “but doesn’t it defeat the purpose to invite a man up onstage to accept an award given to a woman?”
I remember thinking that she had a point.
But Tehani convinced her that it would be a nice thing to do, and I guess it worked because, well, you’ve seen the video, right?
EP: Did you know that Matthew Spencer was going to propose?
LM: Oh no, of course not. He spoke to me before the ceremony and asked me to personally make sure everything was recorded, but I thought that was just for her YouTube channel or footage for the charity, you know. I didn’t even imagine he would ask her to marry him.
EP: Did you know that they were a couple?
LM: Well, no one did. And you know what? I can understand. You know how it is in Colombo. We all keep our relationships a secret unless it ends in marriage. I do wish she would have told me though. I could have helped them. I know how difficult it can be to sneak around and keep things from our parents.