Neema returns with a garment bag. Inside is a suit, freshly pressed, shiny blue, sharkskin. “This is from the actors’ wardrobe, so don’t mess it,” she warns, shoving me into a curtained area to try it on.
The suit fits. When Prateek sees me, he grins. “You look so first-class,” he says, amazed. “Come, walk by Arun. Casual, casual. Oh, yes, he sees. Very good. I think I am almost assured a spot in the credits. To think, one day, I might be like Arun.”
“Dare to dream.”
I’m teasing, but I keep forgetting that Prateek takes everything literally. “Oh, yes. To dream is the ultimate dare, is it not?”
The film set is a faux cocktail lounge, with a grand piano right in the middle. The Indian stars circle the area around the bar, and then deeper into the set mill the fifty or so extras. The majority of them are Indians, but there are about fifteen or twenty Westerners. I go stand next to an Indian in a tux, but he narrows his eyes at me and scoots away.
“They’re such snobs!” a skinny, tan girl in a sparkly blue dress says, laughing. “They won’t talk to us.”
“It’s like reverse colonialism or something,” says a guy with dreadlocks tied back into a band. “Nash,” he says, sticking out a hand.
“Tasha,” says the girl.
“Willem.”
“Willem,” they repeat, dreamily. “You at the ashram?”
“No.”
“Oh. We didn’t think so. We’d have recognized you,” Tasha says. “You’re so tall. Like Jules.”
Nash nods his head. I do too. We all nod at this Jules’s height.
“What brings you to India?” I ask, slipping easily back into Postcard Language.
“We are refugees,” Tasha says. “From the fame-and-celebrity-obsessed materialistic world in the States. We are here to cleanse ourselves.”
“Here?” I gesture to the set.
Nash laughs. “Enlightenment ain’t free. It’s kind of expensive, actually. So we’re here trying to buy some more time. What about you, dude? Why brings you to Bollywoodland?”
“The fame, of course.”
They both laugh. Then Nash asks, “Wanna go get baked? They aren’t doing anything except making us wait.” He pulls out a fat joint. “I wait just as well stoned.”
I shrug. “Why not?”
We sneak off outside where half of the extras seem to be smoking cigarettes in the shade of the overhang. Nash lights up and takes a hit, passes it to Tasha, who takes a long, deep drag and passes it to me. The hash is strong and it’s been a while, so it hits me immediately. We pass the joint around a few more times.
“You’re really . . . tall, Willem,” Tasha says.
“Yes, I think you mentioned that.”
“We really have to introduce him to Jules,” Tasha drawls. “She’s tall. And Canadian.”
“Totally,” Nash says. “Righteous idea.”
The world’s gone a bit washed out, overbright and spinny. “Who’s Jules?” I ask.
“She’s a girl,” Nash answers. “Cute. Ginger hair. She’s at the ashram but she might come out in a day or two. She’s tall. Oh, Tasha already said that. Shit, here comes the assistant director dude. Hide the joint.”
Tasha pinches the joint between her fingers just as a birdlike man comes and looks at us. Even though Tasha is holding the joint, it’s me he focuses on. He takes out his phone and snaps a picture, and then disappears without saying a word.
“Oh. Shit,” Tasha says, giggling. “We got caught.”
“He got caught,” Nash says. “They only took his picture.” He sounds a bit insulted.