A Strange Customer
- A customer comes in with pale skin and Lakshmi realizes that he is American.
- Even though he tries to engage Lakshmi in conversation in her native language (he asks her name and her age), she doesn't speak.
- In the bedroom Lakshmi shares, the man asks if Lakshmi is being kept against her will, and she thinks that she lost her will long ago.
- The man asks if Lakshmi wants to leave, and she shakes her head no because she remembers Anita's story about Americans.
- The man says that he can take her to a place that she doesn't have to be with men; Lakshmi pretends that she doesn't understand.
- So instead the man gives her a small white card with some American words and a bird in flight on it.