“Do you need a doctor?”
“No, I need wine.”
“Wine, sir?”
“Do you wish me to repeat myself indefinitely?”
A pause.
“What kind of wine?”
“The kind that is wet.”
A female voice, more polished, takes the phone.
“Sir, I’m afraid we cannot send alcohol to your room at this time.”
Outrageous.
“Whyever not? I see no good reason.”
“It’s too early, sir.”
“Nonsense. The sun is positively perpendicular. By any civilized metric it is reasonable to expect wine.”
“Sir, I’m very sorry but it’s . . .”
“What? A dry day? Gandhi-ji’s hallowed birthday? Abstinence! What a way to celebrate! No doubt you’ve read what he did with his nieces. Are we all meant to suffer for that man’s dreary austerities, for his dreadful lack of self-control!”
“Sir?”
“Send up a Bloody Mary then! An honest breakfast drink. Whisky in my porridge if need be.”
“Sir, it’s past noon.”
“Are you saying if it were morning I would be indulged?”
“Sir . . .”
“Is Adiraj there?”
“Adiraj Sir?”
“Yes! Adiraj. The gentleman who pilots this static ship. Put him on the phone.”
“Sir, Adiraj Sir is indisposed.”
“Indisposed? Dispose of him then, put him on, or at the least have the decency to call him before I come down there myself! Let’s get to the bottom of this!”
* * *
—
Does he really want that?
What will he find down there?
More dirt.
Always more.
He hangs up, shoves himself off the bed, hobbles to the front window, peers out the shutters with a paranoid eye.
“What the hell am I doing here? And what in God’s name happened last night?”
He sees the terrace, empty.
Swings the door open, steps out.
It’s well past noon. Two, maybe three p.m.
The desert dissolves into a wide blank horizon.
A few tentative steps.
Warm stone underfoot.
He shuffles to the edge, past his private pool, clambers onto the thick wall.
Hands on hips.
He’s high on the far edge of the fort, looking down the sheer face of rock. The wind caressing his gown. Queasy.
His tour guide voice: The Jasmine Villa is typically employed for the discretion of nobility. And the nobility of discretion.
Looking back toward the main fort, so far away.
A deep sense of unease.
There’s no one abroad. Not a soul in the mild winter light.
All gone out for an elephant ride, no doubt.
Bob and Peggy from Kansas City.
Getting the Full Indian.
What price a sniper rifle now!
He mimics the shot.
And there’s that flash again.
Not a muzzle, a girl, and her eyes.
Her hand.
Her mouth.
Christ, I need a drink.
Something to steady the ship.
* * *
—
“I really must insist,” he says into the phone.
“Sir?”
“On something to drink. And if nothing is forthcoming, I will come down there myself. I’m certain I will make a scene. Would you like that? I don’t think you would. For a start, I’m wearing someone else’s clothes.”
“Sir, one second please . . .”
A glacial half minute.
“Hello! Gautam, dear.”
A familiar voice.
“Adiraj!” Gautam winces. “I seem to have woken up in your hotel by mistake.”
“Well now . . .”
“I know I’m technically barred, but really it’s not my fault.”
Adiraj says, “Speak no more.”
Gautam cocks his head, narrows his eyes. “Hold my peace?”
“Yes, dear. Water under the bridge.”
Something’s not right.
Adiraj has never been so accommodating in his life.
“You wouldn’t,” Gautam ventures, “happen to know how I came to be . . . ummm . . . in your abode?”
“By taxi of course, last night, yes, late last night, around midnight in fact. Definitely midnight.”
“Midnight?”
“Why, yes.”
“In a taxi, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Were you forewarned?”
“Well now. It was quite a surprise. Your spirits were high!”
“And you just . . . let me in?”
“Bygones, dear, bygones.”
Gautam scrunches his eyes.
“Was I . . . alone?”
“Oh yes, very much so.”
He’s lying.
“You’re saying I took a taxi from Delhi . . .”
“Quite alone.”
“. . . with the sole intention of coming to your hotel.”
“Quite, quite alone.”
“Alone.”
He’s lying.
“Absolutely.”
“Well, why the hell would I do that?”
“It’s not for me to say.” A sudden flatline in his tone. “I cannot see inside your soul.”
Gautam rubs his head, at a loss.
“I’m wearing someone else’s clothes.”
“Who am I to judge?”
“And my own clothes have been taken away. As has my wallet and my keys and I have no idea where I left my car. I have to say I find it all very strange and your answers are not apothecary at all!”
“Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, please.”
An imperceptible sigh.
“I’ll send something right away.”
* * *
—
Dig deep, Gautam, dear boy, but beware!
Here be monsters.
What do you know?
Whaddayaknow?
You despise Sunny Wadia, but cling to him like a life raft.
Like a Saint Bernard, with his little barrel of brandy giving you succor in the snow.
Sunny, who turned up one afternoon at your apartment flaunting a bottle of rare Japanese hooch!
“Ah,” you said, ever facetious, “you speak the lingo? Zenshin massāji wa ikagadesu ka? Waribiki shimasu!”
Sunny, pretending to look past all the mess, the carnage, the fall from grace, the lurid tales. Sunny, the latest Prince of Delhi, the young stud, the hot ticket in town, turning up with no warning, offering whisky to a man who just . . . didn’t . . . give a damn.
What’s your game?
Gautam took the whisky. Poured himself a glass and swallowed it down.
When was this? Seven or eight months ago? Eight whole months. August 2003 or so? God, your memory is shot to hell.
Has it been eight or seven months since Sunny nudged into your life?
Offering cash, whisky, and what else? You know what.
In exchange for?
Advice? Friendship?
Consultancy fees.
* * *
—
“Consultancy fees?”
“Yes,” Sunny said. He wanted to build hotels. This was his pitch. And Gautam had been in the hotel line, once upon a time, in that brief, bright window of his life when he had neither succumbed to his vices nor exhausted his father’s credit line. Oh, those glory days. A thick head of hair, a virile pout, snipe-hunting calves, and polo thighs. A standard, upper-class addiction to booze. The keys to the kingdom! How had it gone so wrong?
* * *
—
Well, appetites, my darling.
He had a few.
When he was born, he sucked his wet nurses dry. He could never get his fill. Just as well his mother never spilled a drop. It would have been White Russians all the way. And his father? Prasad Singh Rathore. A shrewd man, his only addiction a vice that cleans up its own trace.
Power.
* * *