He read the death certificate again. His own name, her signature, tomorrow's date, a cause of death for a condition his medical file explicitly showed he did not have.
"What do I do?" he said.
"Don't go to the assessment tomorrow. Don't go to Kalyani. Go somewhere they won't look for you immediately — do you have family outside the city?"
"My mother is in Latur."
"Go to Latur. Tonight if you can." She took out an envelope. Three thousand rupees. "For the bus."
He looked at the money. At her. "You're going to be in trouble for this."
"Yes. Probably."
"What are you going to do?"
She thought about Sunita, waiting for Thursday. She thought about the files on her laptop. She thought about one hundred and nine people.
"I'm going to burn it down," she said. It came out very simply, which was how she knew she meant it.
He nodded slowly. Then he began, quietly, to wake the people sleeping on the mats — packing the padlocked box and the folder of papers with the practiced speed of someone who had learned that when you had to move, you moved.
She left him to it and went back down the stairs into the Mumbai night.
By morning, her window was approximately six hours shorter.
