She squeezes her eyes tightly shut not to let the tears fall. “That day, that moment, if I could have that time back.”

The morning of September 22 started out innocuously enough. Yes, Javed was crying at the top of his newborn lungs, wanting his early feeding. However, that was normal for a two-month baby. She’d fed him, then walked him up and down the tiny apartment, rubbing his back so he’d burp, all the while practicing aloud the words of the scene for the movie she was auditioning for later in the day. She’d been so excited when her agent had called with the opportunity—so few and far between these days ever since she’d had baby Javed. Ninety seconds was all it took to make him, and it was going to take a lifetime to raise him.

In this business, you had to be seen at every premiere in Hollywood, every audition in town if you wanted to be called to the next screen-test. However, with Javed being so little, she hadn’t been able to make it to any of the new gallery launches or restaurant openings she’d been invited to last month. She’d given up hope of getting another audition until the phone call two days ago from her agent.

“Mira Nair is in town and casting for a new movie. It’s supposed to be the next big thing after her last hit ‘Monsoon Wedding’. She knew your mom in her acting days. She recognized your last name, and you’re one of the sixteen hopefuls selected for this audition. Be on time. She abhors unpunctuality.” Click. Raj Trivedi, venerable Talent Agent, known to sniff out a star-in-the-making amid the busloads of bright, shining young things arriving in Hollywood every day had hung up on her.

She propped Javed in his swing set while she brewed herself a cup of Darjeeling Masala chai with ginger and honey just like Balwant Singh, her mother’s personal assistant had taught her to do years ago.

Where’s mom? she fretted, her brow furrowed. She took a deep om breath, pulling air into her hungry lungs. Ma had promised to be here. She knows how important this opportunity is to me. I may never get it again.

“Mom, you know how limited the roles are for brown people, “ she’d said in a panicky telephone call to her mother yesterday night. “You have to watch Javed, please Mom. Just for a few hours. I’ve called every babysitter in town, and they’re all booked or away to Tahiti to Timbucktoo.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll be there, darling,” her mom had promised in a throaty Dunhill voice, sounding as if she’d knocked back two gin and tonics already. “Don’t be such a nag, Jasmine darling. It’s just not a good look on you.” A loud exasperated click of her tongue and she was gone.

The morning sun glinting through the window speared Jasmine’s fingernails that she had chewed down to a fine nub. Javed was crying furiously again even though she had tried walking and trotting and rocking and singing and whistling and scolding and coaxing and caressing and cooing to him.

Her phone emitted a loud ping, the alert of an incoming text message. “Woke up with a case of the sniffles, darling. So sorry. I wouldn’t want to give Javed my nasty cold cooties. Can’t watch him today.”

Jasmine groaned audibly and held her head in her hands, while Javed cried and cried lustily. “Waah, waah, waah.” Why did she ever think Ma was going to come?

Shhshhh baby, she stroked Javed’s soft head as she balanced on one foot, then the other, thinking, planning, plotting. She headed outside with purposeful strides, strapped Javed into the car seat and thrust a formula bottle between his pink infant lips.

“Come on Javed. Let’s move it. You and I need this job, baby boy. Remember what he said, Mira Nair hates unpunctual people.”

Twenty minutes of mad swerving and avoiding car crashes on Interstate 405, and she arrived at the metal mesh gates of Universal Studios. As she rolled down the window to ask the security guard for directions to Mira Nair’s office, she could hear Javed suckling contentedly on the bottle in the backseat.

“Good baby,” she crooned, glad for a moment’s peace as she navigated her way between celebrity trailers and movie sets. She found a tight parking spot between a silver Toyota Camry and a Real Housewives make-up trailer. It would have to do. She was already behind five minutes, and she still had to find the internationally acclaimed movie director’s office. Like Alice in Wonderland’s white rabbit, she was late, late, late.

She climbed out of the driver’s seat and yanked open the passenger door of the minivan to find Javed blissfully, contentedly asleep, his mouth puckered into a perfect rosebud.

Could she? Would she dare?

It was a split moment’s decision. She gently shut the door on her beautiful baby boy. She knew it wouldn’t take more than ten minutes, fifteen minutes, tops. Mira Nair was known in the industry for her efficiency. She’d be back from the audition before he woke. She knew when he finally fell asleep like this, he slept for hours.

Jasmine slides her shuddering body down the grimy concrete block wall and sits down heavily on the one metal cot with its gray woolen blanket. The light of the waxing moon shining through the barred window rests on her birds’ nest of tangled hair. The jail cell reeks of the smell of urine, fear and vermin droppings. In her mind’s eye she can see Javed’s pink mouth, his dense black lashes resting on his chubby, red-apples cheeks.

“Bhagwan in Heaven, let me turn back the clock one last time,” she screams into the darkness.