Anita removed the bamboo divider to see what was happening on the other side: I was lifting the lehenga, gathering it up to me. Her eyes landed on mine, and I saw some comprehension dawn on her.

“You all good with that, Neil?” she said.

“Neil, what are you doing, be careful!” Prachi cried.

“I thought,” I said, stealing the line in the script that was supposed to belong to Anita, “I thought I might take it to Mr. Harsh’s; didn’t one of you say it’s on my way back up to Berkeley? I’m actually pretty tired of all this, Prachi, it’s very girly, and I’m exhausted, I have to get home and do a whole lot of work on my dissertation, and if I just drop this off, I’ll just zip over to Berkeley, and—”

Anita reached for the lehenga. “Neil,” she said. And I could tell that now she didn’t want to abide by that original plan; she didn’t want me to be alone with the goods. Her fingers closed around the silk, but they were so small, and I was stronger than she was. “Why don’t you let me take the lehenga to Mr. Harsh’s shop? And he and I should talk more about, as you say, girly design issues.”

“I wish I had you guys fighting to run my errands all the time!” Prachi said, mildly bewildered.

“No,” I said. “Really, it’s no trouble. It’s no trouble at all.” I reached for Mr. Harsh’s card, which he’d left on the table for Prachi, and in the same movement, I hugged Prachi with one arm. My sister was looking strangely at me and Anita, and I rolled my eyes, hoping to signify that it was just an innocent romantic spat. And then I turned, pulling the lehenga from Anita’s grasp with ease. I pushed the conference room door open, and the last thing I saw behind me was Anita’s mouth hanging half-open, as I proved right every doubt she’d ever had about me.

The door banged shut behind me. Little puffs of the sleeves poked me in my eyes. I thought of Chidi admonishing me when I worked out with him and pled exhaustion… Neil, you can do anything for thirty seconds. I moved through the next minutes in thirty-second blocks. Nudge open the conference room door, hustle down the hallway, thirty seconds. Clunk downstairs, each footstep echoing cavernously. At the bottom door, work knob; thirty seconds of fear at its stickiness, as the lehenga dropped to my ankles. Thirty seconds as I realized I’d been turning it the wrong way. Outside. Thirty seconds, into the parking lot. Thirty seconds of terror as I realized a horde of women were exiting the front entrance en masse, slowed, presumably, by the metal detectors restricting that door… I had parked, where, in aisle A, row 30? Aisle B, row 20? Fucking where?