Ajay takes the overnight train and arrives in Delhi early next morning. He ignores the lighthearted joking of the guards, goes straight to his room, locks the door. He feels, even in the silence there, that he isn’t safe, that Vicky is watching him. Removing his gun from the bag, he remembers Vicky’s parting words. “You are who you are, the past is gone. It’s the present you must master now.” He removes the money from his duffel, locks it away. He removes the crumpled, crusty, bloodstained suit from the bottom of his bag.
He had a chance, he thinks, in his life, to be a simple man. A good man.
Now he’s a Wadia man.
He reports to Sunny at noon.
“You’re late,” Sunny says, already nursing a whisky.
“Sorry, sir.”
“I told you. I needed you.”
“Yes, sir.”
He starts to clear empty glasses, takes them toward the kitchen.
“Well?” Sunny says.
Ajay pauses.
“Sir?”
“Did you find your mother?”
* * *
—
He tries to sleep that afternoon, but he cannot. He goes to the local gym instead to lift weights. The strain, the extinction, that comes from the dead lift is a welcome for him. But when he drops the bar, when he can hold it no longer, a hand comes down on his shoulder, and he reacts violently, turns and grabs his attacker by the throat. It’s only Pankaj, one of his gym friends. “Brother, it’s me,” Pankaj cries, stricken, then looks into Ajay’s scratched face and is afraid.
“What happened to you?” Pankaj says.
* * *
—
He returns to duty at six p.m., makes Sunny an old-fashioned. Sunny retreats to his bedroom with the glass along with the bottle of whisky and slams the door. Gautam Rathore arrives at eight, breezing past Ajay, planting himself on the sofa, flicking through magazines, calling for a bottle of whisky himself.
He nods toward Sunny’s bedroom.
“Does he have his bitch in there?”
Ajay brings Gautam his bottle along with ice and soda.
“He’s alone.”
“Well tell him to get out here! Chop-chop.”
Ajay knocks once, discreetly, and waits. Nothing.
“What’s he doing in there!?” Gautam drawls.
Still nothing.
“Sir,” Ajay says, “Gautam is here.”
Sunny emerges, sluggish with thought.
“Leave us alone awhile,” he says. “I’ll call when I need you.”
Ajay returns to his room.
Two hours later Sunny calls. Ajay is to prepare a car. No drivers. Just him.
He gets up from his bed, dresses with his Glock under his jacket, and heads to the garage, where he takes the keys for the Toyota Highlander. He signs for it without a word, climbs inside, starts the engine. Then pulls it out beyond the gates and waits beside the Mercedes belonging to Gautam Rathore.
RAJASTHAN
THE DESPICABLE GAUTAM RATHORE
(Sixteen Hours Later)
1.
Gautam wakes.
With no idea where he is, no idea how he even got here.
Lying on his back, he stares vacantly at the dust motes floating in a sunbeam.
Like a lizard he blinks.
The film of consciousness breaks.
Then the pain begins.
The throbbing of his swollen brain within that proud regal skull.
These moments aren’t uncommon.
If anything, he’s made a sport of them.
But today something is different, there’s something very wrong with this picture today.
* * *
—
He’s the son of wealth.
But not like Sunny Wadia.
His wealth is ancient, storied.
Asset rich, cash poor.
Most wouldn’t know it; appearances are deceptive, and he’s a magician by blood, the firstborn son of the Rathores of Bastragarh, famed for their jewel-encrusted slippers and tiger hunts. Rulers, one way or another, of a vast swath of Madhya Pradesh.
But he is obliterating himself.
Turning himself inside out.
Turning himself away.
* * *
—
He despises Sunny Wadia.
But he was with him last night.
Wasn’t he?
So what is he doing here?
* * *
—
He tries to see into the fog, the black hole of his mind’s eye.
Deep inside there’s nothing.
No, wait, a flash of white.
A face rising up.
Oh God, a girl dressed in rags.
Imploring.
Her eyes wide.
Widening.
Hand reaching out.
How vulgar, that can’t be right.
He shudders, recoils.
She’s engulfed in blinding light.
Silence in the room.
It’s all so majestically serene.
The scent of luxury.
I’m OK.
I’m OK.
* * *
—
He was with Sunny last night.
Bleeding him dry, ho hum.
And then?
Think, brain.
It was more than that. Sunny had something grand to say.
He recalls arriving at the club.
Swaggering inside.
Behind the velvet curtain.
It was literally velvet. He entered the VIP room with his perpetual smirk on his face. And then?
Gautam’s eyes fall on the naked laterite walls, the antique Rajasthani screen. The stillness in this place. It’s so bright outside.
He loses his train of thought.
Where are you now, again?
Why are you here?
Do you know this room?
Men like him usually do.
He finds he does.
It’s the Jasmine Villa of the Mahuagarh Fort Palace Hotel.
Yes, that’s right.
Old Adiraj’s place.
Two hundred kilometers from Delhi in the desert of Rajasthan.
What the hell are you doing here?
Technically, you’re banned from the property. After that incident with the zip line and the Emirati’s Pomeranian.
The room gives nothing away. Nothing says “blackout bender” like a room with no object out of place. No sign of another guest. No clothing strewn over the backs of chairs. No cigarette burns, no overflowing ashtrays, no broken glass, no empty bottles on the floor. No blood. It must all have happened somewhere else.
All he remembers is that he was with Sunny.
It must have been one hell of a night!
He checks to see if he’s soiled himself; it’s a coin toss on mornings like this.
But no! Clean as a pig’s whistle.
God, and small mercies, eh.
Yet he is wearing someone else’s pajamas: red pin-striped, a little too small.
And in the back of his throat, the leaky faucet of postcocaine drip.
But that’s par for the course.
He scans the room for his wallet and keys.
For anything.
Nothing.
The plot thickens.
Ho hum.
He peels back the sheets, swings his legs to the terra-cotta floor.
God, the pain!
It’s like he’s fallen off, then been kicked by a horse.
He stumbles into the bathroom in a fit of coughs, doubles over, clears his throat, spits rust in the porcelain.
And rises to the mirror.
Dear God.
He daren’t move.
A wild animal stares back at him.
A dictator, pulled from the rubble, ready for the gallows.
Two hideous black eyes, an equine nose fully taped.
He raises his hand to it.
Must have been one hell of a night.
* * *
—
“Wine,” he croaks down the phone, cradles the receiver, straps the toweling robe across his chest, haughtily clears his throat.
“Yes, sir?”
“It’s an emergency.”