Free Tulip Season by Bharti Kirchner

more than two thousand disappearance cases every year.” Yoshihama shut his notebook, rose, drew a business card from his breast pocket, and offered it to Mitra, brushing against her hand. “Please call me right away if Ms. Sinha gets in touch with you.”
    He gave her a warm handshake. At the door, with a strong motion of his wrist, he twisted the slightly loose knob. Before shecould help him, he yanked the door open, again caressing her hand. Usually, her visitors had problems with this door. Not him.
    Their gazes, two appraising pairs, met. With a nod of assurance, he turned and descended the front steps, pausing a moment to examine the pink flowering cherry tree on her parking strip. He touched a branch—leafy, dark brown and reaching up to meet the sunlight—and his expression turned tender. Did he have a cherry tree of his own? He walked a few steps, glanced back at her, waved, ducked into his black SUV, and drove off.
    Mitra sighed. Although she could see that the police were doing what they could, in her heart she felt as though their attitude was rather casual. She didn't, however, write Yoshihama off completely. They'd made a connection of sorts and that might help speed things up.
    She wandered into the kitchen, opened and closed the cupboard, rearranged items in the refrigerator, and filled the tea kettle with water. With a cup of black tea and a slice of toast, she sat at the table. Bananas protruded from a sunny ceramic bowl within arm's reach. She fiddled with her iPod.
    As she grappled with various possibilities in her mind, the tea tempered to lukewarm, toast became dense, and bananas remained untouched. She stared at the large “Trees are not trivial” poster on the sea blue wall. Mitra's mother had sent that poster from Kolkata on her last birthday. In it, a sari-clad Indian woman lowered her head in respect before a gigantic leafy tree.
    And that made her recall an incident involving Kareena's mother. Mitra and Kareena had been hanging out on her back deck one weekend, when Kareena's cellphone sang out. It was impolite to eavesdrop and so Mitra walked over to the evergreen kalmia shrub and pretended to ignore the conversation.
    “Stop yelling,” she heard Kareena imploring. “Stop it, Ma.”
    Kareena hung up, visibly shaken, her mouth slack and the sparkle in her eyes reduced to a dull sheen. Mitra walked back to join her.
    In a small raspy voice, Kareena said, “That was my mother.”
    “Is everything okay?” Mitra asked.
    “Oh, she's being the usual drama queen. She still thinks her life is like one of those Bollywood movies she acted in a zillion years ago.”
    Taking a sip of her lukewarm tea, Mitra wondered if that long-ago afternoon could shed new light about her sister and whether she should have remembered to mention it to Yoshihama.
    Mitra had seen how a catchy song from a movie, a dance scene, a dream sequence, but most of all a dashing actor would keep Kareena's heart and mind soaring. Had she gotten that passion for Bollywood films from her mother? Mitra remembered a particular incident that took place about two-and-a-half years ago. On that day, she'd come down with a cold and stayed in bed.
    As the evening fell, Kareena turned up at Mitra's doorstep, a soup tureen on her hand. They slurped the rasam, what Kareena called, “the Mumbai version of mother's chicken soup,” and munched on boat-shaped chamcham sweets, which she'd toted back from a recent trip to India. Afterwards, they'd pored over the garishly colored pages of an issue of Film Dunya , a fantasy rag from Mumbai.
    “Look at this lehenga ,” Kareena said, pointing to a woman's red-and-purple bare-midriff costume.
    “I wouldn't wear it myself, but—”
    “Look at him. Isn't he gorgeous?”
    Different tastes for different folks. Despite the closeness she felt for Kareena, Mitra realized their tastes were galaxies apart.
    Finally, Kareena popped in a DVD in the player, a “cop romp,” as she described it. For the