It was not until a few years later that he heard from a schoolyard acquaintance, Ranga, that not only was the story an Aesop’s fable, but that his mother also had changed it in an odd way.
“There are not two crows in the story,” Ranga said, raising his hands in the air, palms up, as if each one were a crow. “There is only one crow, and he figures out the puzzle for himself.” He brought his palms together, bowed as if he were a servant, then erupted in laughter.
Harit was hurt that his mother had changed the story, especially because he couldn’t understand why she had made the change at all. Why put another crow in the tale, especially when its story was so tragic?
*
By the time Harit got to work that morning, it was ten o’clock. He had never been late to work before, and he didn’t know what to do. Most mornings, he arrived at five minutes before eight, clocked in at his register, then waited in the break room for his coworkers to show up. It was a drab space, with a quartet of buzzing appliances—a vending machine of candy bars, a watercooler, an off-white refrigerator, and a tea-and-coffee machine that spat liquid into fragile paper cups. A collection of plastic chairs and round tables, scattered by day’s end, was always set right by the janitor come morning, and Harit loved having this order to himself. (Having once been a janitor, he appreciated this dearly.) Since he hated the tea that the machine in the break room made, he brought Taj Mahal tea bags and simply pressed the HOT WATER button to make his own brew. He toasted Mr. Harriman’s portrait—his sole companion—and drank up the tea and silence.
By eight-thirty, the fifteen or so salespeople of the morning shift would gather and loiter with their coffees, bagels, stinky fast-food breakfasts, and gossip. Since the store was such a beloved establishment, the majority of the employees had been working there for years. Most of them were women who smelled sweet and wore dresses as puffy as their hair. It wasn’t that they were mean to Harit, but except for a smile in passing or an odd question about his ethnicity (“When do you plan to move back?” “In India, do you drink eight glasses of tea a day instead of water?”), they rarely engaged him directly in conversation. One of them, Ruby, was in her seventies, and Harit originally attributed her reticence to old age; but one afternoon, when he asked her if the store was closed on New Year’s Day, she looked up from folding a blouse and said, “I’m busy.” Her voice, which had always been warbly, was resolute in its judgment of foreign people.
For the most part, they left the socializing to Teddy. His status as Harit’s companion in Men’s Furnishings made him the obvious standin for a conversation partner, and there was an unspoken relief that no one else had to handle Harit. With Teddy around, a greeting, a question, a discussion involving Harit was replaced with a head nod. That was good enough for his coworkers, and truthfully, that was good enough for Harit.
On Monday mornings, Mr. Harriman came into the break room and gave them a short speech—which things on sale were particularly desirable, or whose morale was highest and therefore most exemplary. Then he would say good-bye and give the floor to Stella, who would read off a list of employees who had sold “instant credit cards”—Harriman’s charge cards that gave preferred customers discounts on merchandise. Every time you rang someone up, you had to ask the customer if he or she wanted to “open an instant credit”—a carefully monitored Harriman stipulation. People had been fired for failing to pop the question within earshot of Mr. Harriman—or so the word went. Marla Palmer, a woman in her fifties who was the acknowledged star of cosmetics, held the record for the most instant credits ever opened—well over a hundred—and hers was always the first name called. Every week—every single week—she turned on one heel when her name rang out, then bent in a curtsy and screwed her heavily rouged face into a “surprised” grin. Harit rarely hated people, but he absolutely loathed her. He preferred Ruby’s type of obvious dislike to this put-on humility.
Or maybe it was the fact that he had never opened an instant credit. Not one. After two months at the store, Mr. Harriman pulled him aside and said that he no longer had to ask people to open them. “Teddy has done such a stand-up job opening ICs”—a handy store abbreviation—“that it would be overkill to have both of you asking.” Harit wanted to point out how only one of them ever helped a customer at a time, so how could Teddy ask one of Harit’s customers to open an IC? But Harit picked up on the motive behind Mr. Harriman’s leniency and knew that he was being given a break.
Today was a Friday, though, and there was no meeting on Fridays. These mornings were usually boisterous, since everyone had to discuss their plans for the weekend, and Teddy often brought in doughnuts for everyone. This morning, by habit, Harit went to the register to clock in, then realized that he probably should not be seen until he knew how upset Mr. Harriman was at his tardiness. He took a look around to see if he could spot Teddy. Sure enough, he was busy helping a woman pull a red canvas suitcase from a high shelf. In the midst of tilting the suitcase to show the customer an extra pocket, Teddy caught Harit’s eye and nodded, as if to say, “I’ll be right there.” Harit went into the storeroom to flick through stacks of shirts and shake shiny boxes of dress shoes. Even though he and Teddy didn’t get to sell these objects—seeing as shirts and shoes belonged to Men’s and not Men’s Furnishings—they were still tasked with taking inventory of them.
“Well, well, if it ain’t Mr. Fashionably Late—literally!” Teddy said.
“I am so sorry, Teddy. I have never been late before. Is Mr. Harriman angry?”
“Dear, calm down. Calm down. Harriman is just fine. I told him that your power was out this morning and that you were waiting for the electric company. I could have also told him that you don’t have a cell phone, but I figured that he could do without that piece of information, honey.” Teddy called Harit “honey” so much that Harit had started to wonder if Teddy simply couldn’t pronounce his name. “He just said that he would dock you one emergency day.”
They had five emergency days in a year without monetary punishment. After five days, you had to pay fifty dollars for each day missed. Harit was not particularly happy to have lost one of his days, but he had taken only two days off work since beginning at Harriman’s, and those had been because of Swati.