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I

As they strapped Dr. Alan Tillman onto the gurney where they would administer his

lethal injection, his last thoughts were of his wife, Enakshi. He saw her as he had first seen

her, in the spring of 1972, the week before they met, her long black hair streaming in the

wind as she chased her umbrella down the San Francisco street. He had longed to chase

her in kind, to help her catch the wayward rainshade, to take her in his arms and bury his

face against the velvety, safe skin of her neck, amid that cloud of sable hair, and to never let

her go. They say that smell is the sense most strongly tied to memory, and as the

anesthesia closed his eyes, Dr. Tillman could smell the sweet scent of his wife’s perfume,

mingled with the fresh chill of the peppermint soap she used on her golden skin and the

harlequin floral aroma of her shampoo. In these moments he loved her most, when his

head was tucked against the stretch of supple caramel skin beneath her jaw and his arms

were around her, molded around her slender back to keep her close, and her arms rested

around his shoulders, fingertips dipping into his dark hair, her lips like rose petals brushing

his ear as she whispered sweet Tamil nothings. He loved her in all moments, and his love

swelled with each that passed, for Alan Tillman’s love for Enakshi was as awesome and

ever-expanding as the universe full of bursting, brilliant stars, and each star was a shining

moment in which she held him close.

Alan Tillman was born and raised in Boston, abandoned by his mother and brought

up in a state-run home for boys until the age of seventeen, when he sold all but the clothes

on his back and struck out west to California, following that tenuous manifest destiny of so

many who came before him, to attend college and eventually medical school. He found the

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clear air and near-constant sunlight and warmth a welcome change from the dreary

eastern streets, and in the summer of 1968, he moved into a small flat just across the

bridge from San Francisco, where he would begin school. He was and always had been a

lonely soul, bonding with nothing and no one, treating the other Boston orphans with the

same indifferent derision he imagined the whole world showed him. From the time his

mother had left him at the orphanage, he had never felt loved. The nuns cared for him as

they did the other boys—he was fed and clothed and taught his letters and numbers and

prayers—but there was no love in it, and no kind words. The other boys, whether they

sensed something different within him, or merely saw his gangly frame, his taped-up

glasses, and judged him different without, offered him no mercy. As soon as he was old

enough for fighting they were upon him, and every day the nuns found him and other boys

with bloodied lips and knuckles stained blue and purple, and would make them kneel in

pools of dry rice and beg forgiveness. Alan still bore those scars on his shins until the day

of his execution, and he thought that he would carry his hatred of that place in his heart

forever. Later, he would learn to let go, and to love the people he had so long reviled. But

when he came to California as a teenager in 1968, he felt nothing but contempt for living

humans, with scarce few exceptions.

One of those exceptions was Satish Venkatesan. A few blocks from the mortuary,

roughly equidistant to his apartment, an old Indian man named Satish Venkatesan

managed a small Indian restaurant with a name Alan could not pronounce. It was largely a

labor of love; Venkatesan had few customers and out of all that Alan Tillman had ever seen,

he was the only one who was not Indian. Tillman was a patron of love, for when he had just

moved to California from Boston in the late summer of 1968 and spent the last of his

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money on his apartment and textbooks to attend the university, it was Venkatesan who had

found him ransacking his pockets for the last of his change in the hope of buying a few

apples and a loaf of bread from a street vendor. The old man had taken his arm, and, not

seeming to hear a single word of Tillman’s protests, had led him back to the restaurant,

where he set before him chapatti, tea, and a plate of sambar and steamed rice, and refused

to let him leave until he had eaten.

“You students,” he had laughed, leaning on Alan’s table, a cigarette dangling from the

corner of his sagging mouth like the end of a twisted gutter. “You’d all starve to death for

your books, and then what would you learn?” Tillman asked how Venkatesan knew he was

a student, and the old man laughed, blowing smoke in his face. “Everyone here under the

age of thirty is a student,” he said, taking a long drag on the wilting cigarette. “And each

one of them starving in his own way.” When Alan had eaten enough to content his worries,

Venkatesan had brought him a lassi and made him promise to come back the next time he

was hungry.

For that first semester of his undergraduate studies, Alan Tillman had eaten one free

meal a day at the restaurant, and it was the only meal he ate. He never told Venkatesan

this, but he was sure the old man knew, for he would always send him home with more

food than he had ordered whether he had had leftovers or not. Often, Alan would volunteer

to help him with the upkeep of the place; he was no cook, but he could clean and wash

dishes, and Venkatesan, amused at what he called his American inability to accept charity,

allowed him to do so. Often though, they sat together in the restaurant, smoking and

playing chess while Venkatesan talked of his homeland and Tillman listened, reflecting on

what he considered the inadequacies of his life. Venkatesan, he learned, was a widower;

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after losing all seven of their children to upheaval, discord, and war, Satish and Pragya

Venkatesan moved to America and founded the restaurant. It was his wife’s dream, he said,

to have a large family and to feed them all in jovial gatherings; their restaurant had begun

as a consolation prize. But scarcely a year after its founding, Pragya Venkatesan passed

away, leaving her husband to tend to their dream alone. Alan Tillman wondered

sometimes, what it might have been like to have been born the child of Satish and Pragya

Venkatesan, to have parents who had always wanted him, and would have cared for him.

He wondered if he would know then what it was to be human.

Alan Tillman, who would not be Dr. Tillman for another three years and who would

not be known for the horrific murders of which he was convicted for another three

decades, was first introduced to Enakshi Prasad in of early spring, when the trees that lined

the streets were just beginning to green again, offering sweet fresh buds and translucent

new leaves up like offerings to the easy breeze. It was the end of his first year of medical

school, and every day he rode the cable car from UCSF’s medical school, walked, and took a

bus across the bridge to reach his small apartment in Berkeley. He had received full tuition

from a combination of institution and state funds, but had no family from which to draw

support; he worked nights in a mortuary to make ends meet, an occupation which almost

certainly contributed to later accusations. But Alan Tillman found the solitude of the work

welcoming. As he massaged stiff muscles free of rigor mortis and tucked eyecaps under

lids, the scent of formaldehyde pervading the chilled, sterile air, he often wondered if this

was not the type of work for which he was meant. When he entered college he had chosen

at once to go into psychiatry, for he desired nothing more than to unravel the mysteries of

his own turbulent mind, the machinations of which eluded him. But he had learned, to his

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dismay, that the majority of working psychiatrists catered to the neuroses of their patients,

and he had little patience for the melancholy melodramas of his fellow man. Enakshi, of

course, would be the one who awakened in him a sense of benevolence, a desire to help the

swarming masses that teemed in the terrors of their own minds. For if one could be a

beacon of light in that cerebral darkness, should one not shine for all of humanity?

In the years of his undergraduate studies, before Alan Tillman found his mortuary

job, he spent every free moment he had with Venkatesan. Alan had never had a

grandfather, having been abandoned at an early age by an older mother who had no wish

to care for a surprise late-life child, but he imagined that Venkatesan might be a close

approximation. To pay his rent, he worked at the university bookstore, but the hours were

never enough to cover the meager expenses he allowed himself, and though it hurt his

pride he was grateful for the old man’s goodwill. For his part, Venkatesan treated Tillman

like a son. He encouraged his studies, and Tillman did all of his homework and studying at

his small table at the back of the restaurant. Around him, the other patrons would whisper

in Tamil and Hindi, casting curious eyes over his table, but he paid them little mind.

Venkatesan had taught him a bit of Tamil, but Alan could grasp little of it, and he dared not

talk to them. The only other worker at the restaurant was a quiet teenage boy Tillman

knew only as Pran, who took orders and brought out food and did not appear to speak

English. He scurried from table to table, never making eye contact with anyone or speaking

a stray word, not even to Venkatesan.

The restaurant was a dim, smoky establishment, with an unwelcoming atmosphere

that may have explained its lack of customers. The windows were shuttered and the

shutter-paint was peeling, the yellowed walls were dingy with cigarette smoke, and almost

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every customer blew new blooms into the air. Despite this, Venkatesan kept it fastidiously

free of mice and roaches, and never smoked in the kitchen, and so the restaurant

maintained one of the highest health inspection grades on the block. Every day for almost

six years, Alan Tillman ate lunch there. In his first year of medical school when he landed

his job at the mortuary and no longer had to eke out a living as a cashier, he even began to

pay for his meals. This was a constant source of amusement to old Venkatesan, who would

have been completely happy to feed him free of charge forever. But Tillman insisted he pay

for his meals, and the old man could not dissuade him. The food was homey, solid, but

Venkatesan refused to Americanize, which likely contributed to the restaurant’s meager

customer base. Still, the old man never seemed bothered by his lack of business success; he

had a quick, gap-toothed smile and a flurry of kind words for everyone who came through

the door. For years afterward, the loss of him would keep Alan awake at night, for it was

the first loss of his life which truly left him with any feeling of emptiness, if not regret.

On the day he saw Enakshi Prasad chasing her lost umbrella down the windswept

San Francisco street, he had just left the restaurant and come back across the bridge for his

evening Histology lecture. When he rounded the corner of the building he saw her standing

still for one ephemeral moment in which his breathing stopped and his heart picked up the

slack. She was tall and slender, only faintly curved in her figure, and she was gazing out

across the street. Her skin was deep burnt caramel in color and he imagined it must surely

smell as sweet; her silken sable hair fell not quite to her waist. From her distance and angle

he could not see her face, but he was certain it must be the very visage of perfection. Alan

Tillman had never before been in love, never had more than a passing curiosity about the

opposite sex, but in that moment the whole world fell away beneath his feet and he felt

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himself falling, buffeted helplessly by the force of a sudden surge of longing, no more in

control of himself than was Enakshi’s umbrella when the wind snapped it from her dainty

hand. As she took off down the street in pursuit, the cloud of her hair in her wake, Alan

lunged to chase her, for he was stricken by the fierce and terrible fear that he would never

again see her in his life. He did not know what he would do if he caught her, as no tame

domestic creature knows what to do when faced with the heart of the wild, but like an alley

mutt with its eye on a Mercedes, he chased.

Perhaps if he had caught her then, their entire lives would have been different, as

each slight change in the machination of the universe so vast might spawn an entirely

different future. But he had taken only two strides when his classmate, Daniel Burke,

emerged from the building to greet him. Alan greeted him hurriedly, his heart sprinting

along the sidewalk, but by the time he had pushed Burke aside and looked beyond him, the

loveliest woman in the world had crossed the street with her umbrella and was lost to him

forever.

“What’s your problem, Tillman?” Burke snapped as he straightened a jacket that was

no doubt offensive. Tillman did not answer him, only gazed with longing eyes at a street

that now seemed so empty a whisper would fill it. “Come on.” Burke clapped Alan’s

shoulder. “We’re gonna be late.”

For days Alan Tillman languished in a despair he had never before known and

would never feel again, not even during those long prison nights bereft of his wife. In class

he was an automaton, taking notes he did not hear in a language he could no longer read,

for the world had ceased to be a series of parts that made sense. Before, he had taken for

granted the idea that the universe was a well-oiled machine, each cog turning in its place,

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each gear fitting seamlessly into the next. He had gone to medical school because he

wanted to be a psychiatrist. He wanted to be a psychiatrist to understand the human mind.

He wanted to understand the human mind so that he might better understand himself,

because he feared that he was different from every other instance of humanity that had

ever walked the earth. He feared he was different because his mother had never loved

him—because, at forty and with two children almost grown, she had not wanted a needy

mewling baby—and because no one else had ever loved him enough to take him from the

care of the state. Everything happened because something had happened before. But the

well-oiled machine of his universe had turned out to be nothing but a box of spare parts,

which the girl with the umbrella had taken and turned on its head, scattering each piece in

the room of his understanding and leaving him in darkness to fit them together again.

It was nearly a week before he returned to the restaurant. At first glance it seemed

that nothing had changed, but there was an almost imperceptible difference in the air, a

subtle hint of sweet perfume among the smoke. Alan Tillman settled at his regular table in

the back and pulled out his books to study. He knew that Venkatesan had seen him come

in, and would be around when he was able to greet him and bring him his lunch. But a few

moments later, he was greeted by an unfamiliar voice.

“May I help you, Sir?”

Alan Tillman looked up from his biochemistry textbook and beheld the face of God.

He knew, though he had not before seen her face, that this was the girl he had

thought lost forever to the hateful timing of Daniel Burke. Her hair was bound up in a thick

braid that fell down her slender back, and she wore a bright blue sari embroidered in gold.

Now that he could see her face, Alan Tillman knew beyond any shade of doubt that she was

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as perfect as he had imagined. Her eyebrows were beautifully arched like the wings of a

soaring eagle, but where they would have met above her elegant nose there was a small,

perfectly round dot of deep maroon. Below her lovely eyebrows were her large, luminous

eyes, as deep and verdant as he imagined all the jungles of India must be, framed by

fanning dark lashes. Her full lips curved in something that was not quite a smile. And she

waited patiently, clutching a pen and a notepad, for him to speak.

Alan Tillman was, by all accounts, a charming man, a handsome man. He was dark

of hair and eye, clean shaven and soft-spoken, with eyebrows that bent in concern for

everyone with whom he spoke. He knew exactly how to wear that kind smile, and those

concerned eyebrows, for he practiced often in the mirror exactly how to bend them. His

professors praised his charisma, and several encouraged him to go into internal medicine,

telling him how comforting his bedside manner would be to his patients. In classes he

explained his ideas eloquently and thoroughly, and had been invited on several occasions

to lecture undergraduate halls. But now, sitting before the girl he undeniably loved more

than anything in the world, with a passionate infatuation he knew was mere projection—a

mix of lust and idealism, for surely she could not be the woman his heart imagined her to

be—all that Alan Tillman had ever wanted to say fled his lips, and it was as though he was

new to language, having lived his whole life without ever hearing a spoken word.

Venkatesan was the one to rescue Tillman from silence. “Alan!” he called from

across the restaurant, waving and bustling over with a plate of uttapam and a bowl of

sambar and rice, which he set down before him. “I was beginning to think something had

happened to you!” he exclaimed, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

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Alan smiled, taking his eyes from the girl only by sheer force of will and turning to

the old man. “No, I’m fine,” he assured him, watching the way Venkatesan’s hand squeezed

the girl’s shoulder. “I’ve been working overtime.”

“Ah!” Venkatesan nodded, and said something in Tamil to the girl, who nodded and

turned away, walking back to the kitchen. Her sari swished in her wake and Alan wished a

thousand curses on the old man as he slid into the chair across from him at the table. “Tell

me, Alan, how are your studies?” He nodded to the biochemistry book, which Alan had set

aside. Tillman assured him that they were well. He wanted to ask the old man who the girl

was, but he knew that in Indian culture women were often seen as coveted treasures, kept

guarded and secret from the rest of the world. Once or twice a week he saw a woman in

Memsahib who kept her face veiled in a way that made Tillman think of the burqas he knew

some Middle Eastern women wore. So he picked up his fork and ate his food with half a

heart, not tasting it, hoping a steady mastication might spare him further conversation.

A few minutes later, the girl returned with a tray bearing a teapot and two cups. She

set one before each man and filled them gracefully, not spilling a drop, with deep orange,

spice-scented tea. Venkatesan smiled kindly at her. “Alan,” he said, “this is my niece,

Enakshi Prasad.” Alan’s heart swelled at the name, for he felt as though he had heard a

name that had been a part of him all his life, as though each time his heart beat it had truly

been whispering Enakshi, Enakshi, Enakshi. He smiled at the girl as she poured his tea and

she in turn favored him with a shy smile of her own. Their eyes met, and Alan Tillman was

struck once more by their vibrance, and looking into them he felt as though he had fallen

into a lush forest such as had once covered the earth of a thousand years past, until she

blushed a dusky rose at his gaze and lowered her eyes.

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“She has come to America,” Venkatesan continued, “so that I might arrange a

marriage for her.”

At those words both their hearts sank as one, for though Enakshi Prasad had long

known of her uncle’s intentions to wed her to some respectable Indian man living there in

California, she had not realized until the moment her eyes found Alan Tillman that by

marrying anyone else she would not for the rest of her life be truly living. Their eyes met

again, and hers were pleading, and in Alan’s depthless eyes she thought for a moment she

saw the same longing of which she had just felt the first stab. Then Alan cleared his throat

and turned away, and forced a smile at Venkatesan.

“I’m sure you won’t have any trouble,” he assured the old man, for what else could

he say? Surely Venkatesan would never understand how his heart was dying in his chest.

He longed to throw himself at the old man’s feet, to beg him for his niece’s hand, but he

knew that he was not Indian, would never be Indian, and would therefore never be worthy

of Enakshi. In an instant he saw the men who leapt from the Golden Gate bridge, who

hurled themselves into the void because their lives were just too much to bear, and he

wondered how many did it for the hopeless love of a woman. “She’s very beautiful.” Here

Alan favored her with a smile and Enakshi’s heart swelled with hope for the briefest flash of

time in which she imagined she was the center of his universe. Another unseemly blush

covered her cheeks and this time she turned away, lest her uncle see it and guess her heart.

The old man snorted and waved her off, and though she turned and hurried away from the

table where the man she loved—why did he have to be white?—she was not far enough

away that her heart was not torn by her uncle’s next words.

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“Beauty is nothing,” the old man sighed. “Any man who married her would be giving

up his immortality, if her womb is as dead as her sisters’ were.”

Enakshi thought the whole restaurant must have heard her pained cry as she fled to

the kitchen, but no one looked up. All the colors of the restaurant and its patrons bled

together as tears filled her eyes. How cold a man was Satish Venkatesan! She had just

barely met the only man she would ever love, and now she must be as hideous to him as

she was to all of Tamil Nadu, for the rumors of her family’s cursed women followed her

wherever she tread, like a cloud of whispering dust about her feet. Enakshi Prasad had

once had two sisters: Kanta and Anuja. Anuja, the middle sister, had married a wealthy

business in Madras, and Kanta, the oldest, had wed a landowner with family ties to their

small hometown. Both had been deemed barren after their marriages had failed to

produce children. Anuja’s businessman husband had taken a second wife, and though she

had at first resented the other woman, Anuja now loved her son as her own. But Kanta’s

husband had killed her. Now he paraded his new wife and children in the streets, strutting

and whooping like a bloated peacock, and every night Enakshi wept for her sister, and

prayed that the man who had killed her would be dragged living to the crematorium and

set afire. As the youngest sister living under the shadow of such rumors, her only hope was

to find a husband living in America, who had never heard of her or her predicament, and

ensnare him in a marriage before he was the wiser. The thought was bitter in her mouth.

But so quickly had she fled and so enraptured was she in her own grief that she did not

overhear Alan Tillman’s response to her uncle’s derision.

“I’ll marry her.” The words slipped from Alan’s lips as his tongue leapt in vain to

catch them. For one long, horrible moment there was silence between them, and in the

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stillness Alan Tillman could hear nothing but his heartbeat, was acutely aware of the

sluggish smoke drifting through the stale air. Then Venkatesan erupted, howling with such

laughter that the plates before them seemed to shake. Alan could have sworn that the

lights even flickered, but perhaps the old building only had some faulty wiring.

“You!” the old man hooted, slapping the table with his palm. “You can’t marry her!

You’re white!”

Alan Tillman’s brows found each other above his nose as he sought a leg to stand on.

He had known, of course, that Venkatesan would say this—when people came to America

they clung to nothing as fiercely as the culture of their home. He knew that his desperate,

foolish love would make no impression on a man seeking a solid arrangement. “What

about what she wants?” he sputtered finally, hating the weakness of his words.

“What she wants!” Venkatesan howled. “What she wants is a good husband! Even if

you were Indian, you’re a child! You can barely take care of yourself. You could hardly

afford to feed yourself for years. I might as well marry her to Pran!” The old man’s gaze

bored through him, and Alan cringed, his hands balling into fists. He wondered if

Venkatesan would ever look at him and see anyone beyond the starving student ravaging

his pockets for loose change. “How can you expect to take care of a wife?” In that moment

Alan loathed Venkatesan with a fury that threatened to burn out his throat, but he slumped

in defeat and swallowed his rage, prodding his meal with a fork. He had no argument, and

that knowledge filled him with a despair so heavy he thought he might be able to sink into

the fathomless embrace of the bay and never be seen again once the bubbles of his last

breath died. Venkatesan’s hand settled on his shoulder, and Alan Tillman looked up into

the old man’s eyes. “Believe me, Alan,” he said. “I was a young man once. I know all too

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well the despair of an unattainable fancy. But I must think of Enakshi’s future. She needs a

husband to care for her.” Alan nodded his assent but said nothing, thinking of the liberated

women of UCSF and Berkeley who would rage at such an assertion; but he thought too of

Venkatesan, who had lost his wife and all his children, and had only his one niece to care

for, and how he worried for her like a parent. And though it wounded him to know he

would never have Enakshi, he was grateful that she had someone to care for her the way no

one had ever cared for him. But still, the idea of her wed to another filled him with

revulsion. He cast his eyes about the dim, smoke-clouded room, looking at all the old,

greasy, well-established Indian men with their hair falling out and their teeth half-rotten,

their lungs filled with tar and their arteries clogged with plaque. He tried not to imagine

their arms around Enakshi, their grotesque hands fondling her while she wept. Was this

the sort of man her uncle wanted for her? Alan could take no more. He felt queasy.

Standing, he vowed never to eat there again in his heart, but only excused himself aloud.

Even if it meant he would never see her, at least he would not have to imagine her in the

arms of such an unworthy man.

“Wait.” Venkatesan reached to catch his arm. “Before you go, I would ask a favor of

you.” When Alan turned back, he smiled. “Enakshi has it in her head that she would like to

take some courses at your university. I am indulging this whim, but I would appreciate it if

you, as my friend, would keep your eyes on her, and protect her from ravenous young

American men.” How could Alan do anything but agree? He quashed his cigarette and left

the table.

Outside, the rain was beating down anew, and Alan Tillman realized he did not have

an umbrella. He thought again of Enakshi tearing down the street, her hair whipping like a

15

banner, and he swallowed the rising lump of his throat and began to walk home in the rain.

As he passed the alleyway, he realized he was not alone in his despair. Peering down past

the trash bins that teemed with rotting, cast-aside Indian fare, he saw Enakshi Prasad,

wrapped up in her bright blue sari like a bursting bloom against the gray squalor of the

alley, weeping with her face in her hands. Alan Tillman’s heart surged with the brief,

foolish hope that it was for him she wept. But as he followed that foolish heart down the

alleyway toward her, he realized that it must have been her uncle’s callous comments

which drove her to tears. He paused by the dumpster, mere feet from her, though she did

not seem to notice his presence. Once again all the words he wished to say to her tangled in

his throat, and Alan Tillman could only stare until the dam broke and he was forced to lay

bare before her his soul and all its inner torments.

“My mother never loved me,” he told her, and Enakshi’s head snapped up as she

gasped, for she had not realized she was not at that moment all alone in the world. She saw

Alan watching her, his deep brown eyes raw with the reopening of an old wound. “I mean,

she had two other children, and she chose to give me up.” He took a deep, shuddering

breath and wondered if she might mistake his own tears for rain on his face—he was not so

lucky.

“You grew up in an orphanage?” Enakshi asked, wiping her cheeks and trying to

suppress the flutter of her heart as Alan stepped closer.

“I did. There were so many of us, Enakshi.” He swallowed that treacherous lump

once more. “So many children who no one wanted.” Here he paused, unsure if he might

overstep his place, but her verdant eyes watched him with such an intense need that he

could not help by plow on. “You don’t have to bear children to be a mother.”

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Enakshi Prasad trembled in the rain; though she told herself she was only cold, she

wanted to believe him, wanted to take this moment of kindness and accept that he loved

her with the same hopelessness that she loved him. She was a lone moth caught in the rain,

struggling to reach the sky even as the water weighted her wings. Of course, he loved her

just as hopelessly, and in that moment they were like two lanterns in the blackness, each

casting a fading beam of light in a vain search for the other, for in this moment they would

not find what they sought. For Enakshi did not know, could not know, how much Alan

Tillman loved her, and she could not bear the ignorant kindness of his words. “What would

you know about it?” she asked as she turned her back to him, and Alan faltered, his tongue

flailing for purchase amid the mire of his emotions. “You’ll never be a mother.” She opened

the alleyway door and slipped back to the oppressive heat of the kitchen, and once again

Alan Tillman felt that she had walked out of his life forever. Even years later, when she

truly did, he would not be prepared for the pain.

For days Enakshi Prasad confined herself to her room, weeping, and though Satish

Venkatesan would stand outside her door and shout himself hoarse and purple, she would

not relinquish the cause of her grief. On the fourth day Venkatesan decided he did not care

why women wept, for he supposed they may not know themselves. On the fifth day he

returned to the business of finding her a suitable husband, one who, he hoped, might be

able to brighten her mood. Little did he know there was nothing that would so easily snuff

out any brightness forever. Between rejecting men with bad tempers, men with bad backs,

men who did not own their own homes, or who were too fat or too old for his niece,

Venkatesan worried for Alan Tillman, who thus far was keeping his vow never to return.

Venkatesan never suspected that Enakshi was the cause of his disappearance, for he was

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ignorant of their first chance meeting in the rain, and scoffed at Alan’s offer of marriage as

nothing more than fleeting boyish fancy. So it came to pass that one evening a few weeks

later he sent Enakshi to Alan Tillman’s apartment with a covered plate of food.

“At least do something useful with yourself,” he said as he waved her off. “Your

tears are no good here.”

Enakshi Prasad had wanted to slap him, but because it was Alan Tillman, the tall,

dark-eyed, enigmatic love of her life, she suffered Satish Venkatesan’s verbal jibes and

ducked out of the restaurant with the tray of food. The day was clear and bright, and the

weather was warm, and Enakshi practically floated down the street as she walked the few

blocks to Alan Tillman’s apartment. She could hardly believe her uncle was sending her out

alone; in India it would be unheard of for a respectable, unmarried young woman to visit

the home of a man alone. She imagined that her stiff, traditional prospective suitors would

hear of this, and would laugh when Satish Venkatesan asked them to make her their bride.

Perhaps then she might catch Alan Tillman’s eye. As she walked she dreamt of this;

imagined him holding her in his arms, holding her umbrella as they walked together in the

rain. She remembered him the last time she had seen him, standing in the rain-slick

alleyway with tears in his eyes, and she wished that she had had the courage to pull him

close, to stroke his hair and assure him that everything was alright, that even if his mother

had never loved him, she loved him so desperately that it might burn her from the inside

out.

But she had been cruel to him. He had tried to be kind to her, had offered her words

he surely meant to be comforting, and she had spurned them. Had she, in doing so, turned

him away forever? The thought tightened like a fist around her heart as she entered his

18

apartment building and climbed the stairs. He had not known how he had hurt her—

though Enakshi knew she might still be a mother through adopting some other woman’s

child, the thought that she would never carry one, would never feel that life growing within

her, would never have a child with her eyes or her fingers or her smile—or Alan’s smile,

she thought, unbidden—was enough to harden her heart to all the motherless children of

the world, even leading her to turn cruel words on the one she loved the most. She hoped

that Alan Tillman would not begrudge her, and would one day come to love her as she

loved him. She could not, of course, know how he already did.

Drawing in all the breath she could, she knocked on Alan Tillman’s door. To her

own ears the sound was paltry and frail, and she was sure that he had not heard. But as she

raised her hand to knock once more, balancing the tray of food against her arm, there was a

shuffling from inside the apartment, and the scratching of the latch and the lock, and the

door opened, and Enakshi Prasad stood closer to Alan Tillman than she had ever been.

He was fresh from the shower. His uncombed hair, black with the water, stuck out

at all angles from his head. He wore a long robe of dark blue, and Enakshi was almost face

to face with the damp triangle of his fair chest where the robe came together. The cool

aroma of his aftershave coiled in the air between them, tickling her nose. She flushed,

hoping he would not notice in the darkness of her face, and stepped back, looking up at

him. He was not wearing his glasses, and his dark eyes were wide with a surprise that

could not conceal something deeper, and she imagined her loss haunted him. His face

seemed hollow, different somehow, and Enakshi realized he was thinner. It seemed as

though he had not eaten a solid meal since the last time she had seen him. Enakshi set her

19

lips in a firm line and resolved that she would see him fed, and she would keep bringing

him food whether her uncle asked her to or not.

“Enakshi,” Alan Tillman breathed, and his heart leapt in his chest. He could scarcely

believe what he now saw. The vision of all his dreams made flesh, Enakshi Prasad now

stood before him, alone, bearing a covered tray in her arms. Alone. They were alone

together. Even Alan’s mind was speechless, but that knowledge echoed in the emptiness. If

only she had arrived the night before, they may never have suffered in their lives. Alan

Tillman swallowed and hoped that she would not know him for what he was, and he

stepped back. “Come in.”

She stepped past him into the living room, and the silken brush of her sari against

his arm sent chills all through him. He shut the door as she found her way to his kitchen

and placed the tray on the counter. “I brought you some sambar and rice with chapatti,”

she called. “And some kebabs.” Without waiting for his reply, she scoured his cabinets and

found plates. Alan Tillman stood in the doorway of his kitchen, admiring the fluid grace

with which she worked, the way her sari fluttered in her wake like the plumage of a

magnificent bird. Before he had realized she found his tea, and set a pot of water on the

stove to boil. She brought plates to the card table he had in lieu of a dining table, and set

down one for each of them, and arranged all the food on serving trays.

“Eat,” she commanded. “I’ll bring you tea.”

Alan Tillman wanted to wait for her, but the aroma of the food and his own

starvation set him so to salivation that it overcame his desire, and by the time Enakshi

returned and poured tea for the both of them, he had devoured two kebabs and was

working his way through a plate of sambar and rice. She smiled at him and for a moment

20

his heart stopped, and he realized how barbarous he must look, and how disgusted she

must be with him. But she only sipped her tea. “I’ve been worried about you,” she said, and

Alan’s heart fluttered. He took a long drink of his own tea to clear his throat.

“I’ve worried about you,” he said, as Enakshi served herself a kebab and some rice.

“I’m sorry I upset you. It’s the last thing in the world I wanted to do.” His voice was heavy

with sincerity, and when Enakshi looked into his eyes, she saw that sincerity reflected.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “You didn’t know.”

“And I mean,” Alan knew he should stop talking, he should not plow onward into

such delicate territory, but he so badly wanted to make Enakshi’s entire world beautiful

that he could not help himself, “there’s no guarantee you’re sterile. Just because your

sisters were.” When her elegant brows furrowed in confusion, he stumbled on. “I’m a

medical student. They have tests for that, nowadays.”

He opened his mouth to say more, but Enakshi held up her hand, and he was

momentarily enraptured by her long, tapered fingers. “Thank you,” she said, “but I’d rather

not talk about it.”

Alan Tillman looked down at his plate. “I understand.” He smiled. “Thank you for

the food.”

Enakshi smiled, blushing faintly. “You’re welcome.” She knew that she should not

be here, sharing this meal with the man she loved. She knew that Satish Venkatesan had

intended for her to deliver the food and leave Alan, but she could not bear to. The lonely

hunger in his eyes was so vast she imagined that if there had been men on the moon at that

moment in 1972, they could have seen his longing. He needed her; needed someone to care

for him, needed company. Even if she did not know his troubles, and even if he would

21

never need her in the way Enakshi so desperately wanted him to need her, she would take

care of him.

Alan Tillman could think of nothing he wanted more than to keep Enakshi there

with him forever. But every time he made to speak, the words careened together in his

throat—what could he say to her, to beg her to deny her culture? He feared that Satish

Venkatesan had been right, he could barely take care of himself, how could he ever hope to

take care of her? And, added a little voice that gouged the back of his skull, Enakshi was the

most perfect creature to ever walk the earth—Alan scoffed at the idea that man was

created in God’s image, but thought perhaps Enakshi might be the earthly visage of a Hindi

goddess—did she not deserve better than a feckless creature who could not negotiate the

darkness in his own soul? He vowed, then, to send her away, to never see her again. They

would both be happier that way, or at least in his misery he could take some small joy in

the hope that she was leading a life worthy of her wonder. He imagined her in the future,

resplendent and happy, and he knew that the greatest gift he could give her was a life

where she never knew of his adoration. But in the end, of course, he could do nothing but

confess.

He helped Enakshi clear away the plates in a mechanical daze, and as they washed

the dishes together, something that brought her no end of chagrined amusement, his hands

were numb in the water, his body colder than the stiff corpses on the mortuary table where

he worked. No matter how much he knew that he had best never see her again, the thought

of letting her slip with through his fingers when she was now so close stilled his lungs in his

chest. After they had cleaned and Enakshi had dried her serving dish, she folded the dish

towel three times, making sure the corners and edges aligned perfectly, and Alan’s heart

22

thumped against his ribcage. It seemed nearly as though she were stalling—could she

perhaps feel for him the way he felt for her? Alan realized it was foolish; and when he

looked at the home she had to return to—a smoky restaurant full of greasy men and a

callous uncle who cut her down at every turn—he did understand why she was in no rush

to return.

“Thank you,” he stammered, avoiding her depthless green eyes lest he loose himself.

“Dinner was lovely.”

She smiled, her lips forming a perfect gentle curve, parting just so to reveal a peek of

her white teeth. “It was my pleasure, “ she said. “I was glad to keep you company, Mr.

Tillman.”

Alan Tillman flushed faintly. “Just Alan.”

“Alan, then.” Her smile faded, and Alan could not read the passing shadow of

expression that waxed and waned over her face in a heartbeat. “Will you see me out?”

As he walked her to the door there seemed to be no sound in the apartment but the

whisper of Enakshi Prasad’s silken sari and the pounding of Alan Tillman’s heart. At the

door they paused and bid one another farewell, and for a moment their eyes met, and all

the longing felt by the ebb and flow of humanity throughout its swirling history passed

between them. Then Enakshi raised her hand to the knob and twisted it, preparing to open

the door and walk out of Alan Tillman’s life forever, once again. This time, it had to be the

last.

“I love you.” The words burst out as she opened the door, and Alan could no more

contain them than he could contain the whisper of her name in his heartbeat. And when

23

they passed, silence hung between them like a slack sail; Enakshi half-turned to face him,

her verdant eyes fluttering wide.

“What?” Her breathy gasp barely broke that silence. Alan stepped closer, reached

out and took her by the arms. She shut the door and they stood there, staring at one

another, mouths parted but yet too tremulous to break the silence.

“I love you,” Alan repeated. The words forced against his lips like water against a

dam, and he started to tell her how she was the most resplendent woman he had ever seen,

how he felt that just by looking upon her face he was richer than any living man. But she

raised her hand and pressed two silken, perfect fingertips to his lips, and he wondered how

it was that her skin was even softer than her sari.

“Shh,” she told him. And then she leaned up on her toes and pressed her lips to his,

and Alan Tillman felt himself enveloped in the embrace of his goddess. Alan could not say

exactly how or why it happened, any more than he could have explained precisely how

growing flowers knew to reach toward the sunlight, or why the kiss of wind could urge a

spark to flame. He might have had a better chance of explaining how the flesh of the first

bursting stars came together to create the solar system, the earth, the first creatures to

swim its waters or walk its lands, and how those creatures led, generation through

generation and through sweeping earthly changes, through shifting continents and

crumbling empires, to the births of himself and Enakshi a world apart, and how they had

come to know one another in the staggering, uncertain miracle of human existence, than he

would have had of explaining why she kissed him. But she did. A kiss, and both their lives

changed irreparably and forever.