ANITA HAD TO tap Minkus Jhaveri on his shoulder several times before he would look up from his phone. His single flimsy stall was only a few inches wider than his sizable waist on either side, and he yet he had crammed perhaps thirty or forty pieces into the glass case.

“Mukund,” she said. “I’m sorry, Minkus.”

Prachi leaned over his messy tangle of jewelry—gold, silver, precious and semiprecious stones. She rapped on the glass. “Do you think you could open this? I may like that bangle set, if I could see it—and those chokers.”

Minkus drew a key from his pants pocket. He was wearing a faded jacket that looked as though it had once been emblazoned with camouflage print. The jacket shifted as his arm shifted, and that was when I saw the shape of something black and bulky wedged between his back fat and jeans. I had never seen a gun from so close before. I glimpsed it so briefly, and Minkus was so big, that I didn’t immediately identify the object. It might have been a retro cell phone holster.

His large hands dug into the case, and he began to roughly pull the pieces loose.

“Oh, be careful,” Prachi said. Minkus’s eyes flashed up at her. His pupils tightened and I did not see what Anita had seen—a lazy layabout—but a man defensive about his manhood.

As Minkus Jhaveri thrust a baroque choker at Prachi, and as Anita instead requested the one for which we had a Chidi-forged replacement, a woman I identified as Linda came bustling up the jewelry aisle, shouting, “I’ve been looking for you, where’s your walkie-talkie?” Bright orange hair crested above her head; she wore a pink sweater bedazzled with butterflies.

Tottering behind Linda was a decrepit auntie in a sari. Her Coke bottle glasses were slipping down her nose.

“This little old lady has lost her family,” Linda heaved when she approached Anita. “I did warn you this is what happens when you don’t go with outside security firms, see, I did tell you that I’d have to be chasing you down, now, can you talk to her, sweet little thing I’m sure but I keep on trying to tell her please talk slower, all right, and your interns, I can’t find them an-y-where.” She began massaging the dimpled flesh above her knees.