“Sometimes I manage to go months without thinking about it,” Anita said softly. “But then I remember that what we were consuming each time we drank some lemonade was an ambition or energy or power that once belonged to someone else. Which means some people come by this stuff honestly. And I guess I’d like to be one of those people. At some point.”

I swiveled her around to face me. I could do this now—move her, demand her gaze. But she shimmied away, and my palms went cold. For the first time since we’d begun whatever we were now doing, it occurred to me that perhaps we did not fully understand each other.

“I’m getting ready for bed. Just please contact Prachi, like, now,” she added, in a voice a less enlightened man than I would have called shrill.

She excused herself to the bathroom. (That sound of her in the shower in the next room now slightly less extraordinary than it had been when I was fifteen, yet still marvelous.) I began typing a note to my sister: Anita Dayal hit me up the other day… Deleted it. So it was Anita you saw… Deleted that, too. Clicked forward on the flyer Anita had emailed me a few days before: 15% OFF EVERYTHING FOR VIP SHAADI EXPO GUESTS.

Subject line: Fw: Random but… The body text: Hey this is random but Anita Dayal hit me up the other day and we’ve hung out a few times. Turns out that was her you saw. Anyway, she’s running this big Indian wedding thing, maybe you can make it? She says you get a discount with this coupon. Lmk if I can tell her you’re coming. She’d like to say hi she says.

I shut my laptop—that note had taken a half hour of dithering and blithering. In the bedroom, I found a damp-haired Anita asleep, a water stain blooming onto the cotton pillowcase. One hand rested on her stomach as it rose and fell. I turned out the light and tumbled into this, my new normal. Sometimes, it is not so hard to ad-just, not even to the most sublime unrealities. The new magic seeps into the old world, becomes as commonplace as the hoops strung through Anita’s small ears.

OUR PLAN, I calculated quickly on pen and paper as I sprawled on Anita’s floor one weekday morning, would involve the abduction of several thousand dollars’ worth of property. Grand theft. Up to ten years in prison.