I arrived at Dr. Kathuria’s clinic with a plan: if it looked filthy, I would turn around.
The sign on the door said “Dentist.”
My brother opened the door and went to the reception desk. The woman behind it slid a clipboard toward him. He filled it out, then handed it to me.
“I have an appointment.”
She nodded for me to find a chair.
~
When they called my name. In the back, the hygienist fastened a paper bib around my neck and leaned over me.
Her face shield fogged as she spoke.
“Root canal.”
I gripped the armrests.
The drill whined. The smell of heated tooth rose through my nose. I stared at a stain on the ceiling tile while she worked and the assistant passed her tools.
When she sat me up, someone wrote the total on a slip of paper.
5500
I squinted.
“What is this? Dollars?”
She scratched it out and wrote another number in its place.
$112
I unzipped my money belt.
My brother met me in the waiting room after—the book he’d brought with him looked half-finished.
“Come back tomorrow,” the dentist said as we left.
“We still have more work to do.”
~
The next morning, I left the apartment alone.
At the main road, I took the route my brother had shown me: down to the station, onto the metro, then up into the noise on the other side. I repeated the clinic’s name as I walked.
I arrived on time.
When I left, hours later, I took the metro back to Mukherjee Nagar. I followed the signs to an exit and came up onto a street I didn’t recognize.
Then the power cut.
I stopped at the intersection and turned around. The shops were dark. I couldn’t make out the street signs.
A bicycle rickshaw rolled past. I waved him down.
“Mukherjee Nagar?”
He nodded. I climbed in.
The rickshaw rattled down the road. The driver pushed harder on the pedals.
A dry crack.
The right pedal snapped off. The driver lurched, caught himself, and jumped down. He held up the broken pedal and shouted at me.
I pointed down the road, then at the pedal.
He shook his head and held out his hand.
I gave him half the fare.
He stared at the money. His voice rose. He stepped closer.
I walked away. He followed, shouting, the broken pedal still raised.
I quickened my pace.
I turned and shoved the rest of the money at him. Then I ran. My boots slapped the road. Coins scattered behind me.
I kept going.
~
The buildings began to look familiar.
“There!”
My brother’s building. A delivery man was arriving on a bicycle, plastic zipper bags swinging from his handlebars.
Hot-and-sour soup.
The smell rose through the marble stairwell, vinegar and chili and something sweet.
My brother opened the door. The delivery man set the bags on the table and left.
“Hungry?”