“No receipt.” She bites her lip. “Charlie was with me. He didn’t remember it either.”
“Really.” There’s this awkward pause. My heart’s pounding. My head’s back with Charlie, filtering through all the nights, wondering if this happened before or after we met, and when did Charlie get so into drinking? He was never a partier with me. I clench my jaw, hard, to prevent myself from asking. I don’t want to ask. I’m not sure I can handle it on three hours of sleep. Lena’s still staring at the table. She takes a long, slow sip of her lassi and avoids my eyes. Later, I think. For some reason, pity worms its way into my heart. Later, after we’ve gotten some sleep, I’ll ask her all these questions.
But then she looks up, stares me straight in the eyes.
“Six months ago,” she says. “You want to know. It happened six months ago.”
An hour later we’re rolling our bags into the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. I can’t imagine how much this little aspect of our trip is costing, but Lena says in Mumbai—correction, Bombay—you don’t do hostels and there’s nothing in between, so it’s perfectly okay with her that we stay here and not just inquire after my journal like I’d planned. “A few nights won’t kill us,” she says, and I try not to worry about how bad it is to owe people favors. I make a mental note to call my parents as soon as we have access to a phone, since my cell doesn’t work out here. I try not to think about what they’ll say—or the hurt they’ll feel—when I explain the most recent turn of events. The days when I turned to them with everything are starting to seem like a distant memory.
“I could have stayed somewhere else, you know,” I say. I’m looking up the wide spiral staircase at the arched ceilings above. The “old” Taj, they told us when we checked in. This is the wing that wasn’t damaged by the fires in 2011. It feels like a real palace, which is exactly how it’s supposed to feel.
“You could have,” she says, yawning, “but that would be stupid. I’d have paid for this room anyway. I might as well share it.” Again, my chest expands a little. She’s always acting accidentally big-hearted, like none of it’s any big deal.
A quick trip to the front desk turns up nothing, and I have to work hard to conceal my disappointment. “Nothing, ma’am,” is all the concierge tells me when I ask if someone left a leather journal in one of the rooms a few months back. “Are you sure?” Lena presses. “You’re not just, you know, not saying? Because it was my friend’s journal.” She jerks her thumb in my direction and glares, then slides a twenty-dollar bill in the man’s direction. He promises to check with a manager but returns empty-handed. He doesn’t return the twenty.
“No worries,” she says. “We have lots of other stuff we can do here. I just have to think back to who Charlie was friends with out here, and we can Google them or look them up on Facebook or something. And if he had your diary or whatever when he was here, then we’ve narrowed your search for it, at least. He wasn’t that many other places in the months since.”
She’s right, and the realization heartens me. But there’s another reason I forced the issue of going to Bombay, as I’m trying hard to call it now. Something I can’t tell her and probably can’t do anything with anyway. I wish it were just the journal; but my willingness to be here is more than that. Here, I’m closer to the thing that ultimately ruined me and Charlie. I’m closer to all the reasons we fell apart. I can’t tell Lena, so I follow her silently up a set of wide, winding stairs toward our room.
It’s luxurious. The beds are covered in gold bedspreads with elaborately embroidered red patterns. An arched alcove leads to a balcony with an intricately patterned iron guardrail, overlooking the Gateway of India. A silver tea set rests on a broad wooden console, and a crystal chandelier hangs overhead. It’s a stark contrast to the grimy chaos and slums we drove through to get here. Lena’s happy, I can tell. “‘I came in like a wrecking ball,’” she sings under her breath, as she surveys the room. I barely stop myself from rolling my eyes at the truth of it.
“We’ll start tomorrow,” Lena tells me, her voice half muffled from where she’s flopped her thin frame across one of the queen-size beds. “This is just too good.”
“So—is this where you stayed when your parents were teaching you lessons about the less privileged?”
“Fuck you, Aubrey.”
I grin. “I’m getting in the shower.” I’m halfway through the bathroom door before I turn back. I’ve been so guarded with her, but I can’t ignore how generous she’s being.
“Thank you. Really.” I hesitate. I’ve never been very good at opening up. “You’re being very generous.”