“Pay attention, then.” She stood. Her body was ruddy from her stretches. She pointed to the whiteboard: beneath the column Tasks, squeezed into the right-hand side, her centipede-shaped girly handwriting read Prachi.

I had slacked. I had yet to invite my sister to the bridal expo, courtesy of Anita Dayal. (What! she would say. Anita-Anita? You guys are in touch?)

Prachi, our bride, was to win a rigged raffle. Was to step onto the runway where, moments before, girls would have just modeled the high, fine fashions of brown bridal couture. Prachi was to flutter her French-manicured hands in delight at winning. She was to receive as bounty a designer lehenga—heavy, it was to be heavy, can-can skirt, brocading on the silk. Prachi would watch the dress’s mirrorwork reflecting the light staggering out from the gaudy oversize chandeliers in the convention center. She would feel tizzies being pulled backstage. A tailor would measure her for alterations. Prachi was to feel (Anita promised all girls feel this way) the creep of recognition as the tailor fitted the cloth to her, that sense that the world wished you to look this way.

Prachi was never to know that her brother had come along to this menagerie in order to stuff golden chains and bangles and tikkas into loose folds and trick pockets in the liner of the skirt, already so hefty one would not notice the extra weight. Anita would tell her, Let Neil take it to the tailor. I would gather it up. Carry it to Anita’s green Subaru parked in the employee back lot, through the doors without metal detectors. I would drive with the windows down on the highway and listen to the airstream whooshes and make straight for Sunnyvale.

We would give most of the bounty to Anjali Auntie, of course, but surely both of us would take a few fated sips. We would be foolish not to accept the blessing it could confer on our little union. Because now we were together. Because gold was what we did. Because I still badly needed it. Which meant she must need it, too. No matter that she claimed otherwise.

The junkie’s plan. The belief that another hit, the right hit, will settle everything.

“If anything goes wrong,” Anita said as she paced, “you do what?”

“Leave you.” I’d recited the words so often they’d become devoid of meaning. “Leave you, take the gold to your mother and grandmother.”

“And I do the same.”

Our eyes met. I rolled over on my stomach so that I did not have to return that stony stare for too long. I did a push-up, feeling strong.