—
The elevator opened to a windowless corridor with wallpaper like green gemstones and a dirty marble floor. At the third room on the right, number 406, Ajay knocked three times, equally spaced, coded. She felt a surge of rage and began pounding on the door. Another door in the corridor jerked open and a paunchy man in undershirt and pants came out to scratch his ear and stare. A moment later the door to room 406 was thrown open, and there was Sunny, haunted and puffy and disheveled. He looked down the corridor at the man. Looked to Ajay. “Deal with him.” Then he grabbed Neda by the wrist, pulled her inside, and slammed the door.
* * *
—
She almost fell onto the floor. “Hey! What the fuck?!”
The room was small, stuffy. Fluorescent lights gave it a sickly hue. There was a single bed with pillows in the shape of hearts, a synthetic bedspread with lace trills, a table at the side with a flask of water, a pack of cigarettes, a tumbler, and a plastic bottle of cheap liquor. A decrepit AC unit rattled in the wall. She got up ready to confront him, but then she saw his face. How ashen and pathetic, how diminished he looked. He grabbed her by the arms.
“What happened?”
A new kind of fear seeped into the anger and shock she already felt.
“They were trying to kill me.” She stood rigid, her mind trapped in the memory of violence. “But Ajay . . .” She went on. “He hurt them. Oh God, he really hurt them.” She frowned and looked up in a kind of concussed wonder. “But what was he doing there?”
“Are you fucking serious?” he replied.
His incredulous tone brought her back to the room. She pulled herself out of his grip, paced the floor. “Yes, I’m serious. What was he doing there, what are you doing here, where the fuck have you been!? What the FUCK is going on? I came to see you. You called me!” She froze, held her hands to her head. “You didn’t call me. It wasn’t you, was it? Oh God, I’m so stupid.”
“Who called you?”
“But fuck you, Sunny. You vanished. You just vanished on me.”
He approached, tried to corner her. “It’s very important you answer me. Who called you?”
She was shivering. “I want to go home.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing, forget I ever met you. Seriously!”
“You can’t just go home.”
“I can go where I want!”
“You have to tell me who called you.”
“I DON’T KNOW! All right? I DON’T KNOW. I’m so fucking stupid. What’s wrong with me?”
Tears started welling in her eyes. The adrenaline was wearing off, shock was fast approaching. She needed something from him, but there was nothing he could give, not like this.
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered, as she slipped past, sat on the side of the bed. She took one of his cigarettes from the bedside, lit it with shaking hands. The act of smoking soothed her. She examined the liquor bottle, held it up to the light. “You’re really living it up.”
He watched her motionless from the other side of the room.
“Someone called you out to the office,” he said. “What did he say?”
She opened the bottle and took a swig and recoiled at the harshness, then she closed her eyes.
“He said you wanted to see me.”
“Why?”
“How the fuck should I know. Because you cared about me?”
“No, why would he say this? Why would he call you out there?”
She gritted her teeth in frustration. “I don’t know. You weren’t there. It got late. I came back. Sunny, who were these guys out there who attacked me?”
“I don’t know, they were just some guys.”
“Are you serious? They were just some guys and Ajay just happened to be passing by and you just happened to be in this hotel. Yeah? I’m supposed to believe this? Fuck. They were going to kill me. Or worse.”
“No one was going to kill you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Scare you, maybe.”
“Maybe? Well guess what? I was scared.” She took a deep breath. “God, Ajay was so . . .” She frowned. “If you didn’t call me, why was he following me?”
“Because you were at the office! I have people there. They said you were at the office. I sent Ajay out to keep an eye on you.”
“Fuck you, Sunny.”
* * *
—
They talked at cross purposes awhile, over and over, each one giving the side of a story that made no sense, that went in circles. She was there because she’d been called. Ajay was following her because she was there. She wouldn’t say that she’d been spying on the mansion, that she’d been seen by the same goon she’d encountered out in the resettlement plots. She refused to give this away. But slowly it made sense in her mind. They were screwing with her, sending her a warning, or maybe trying to get rid of her entirely. She thought about the goons surrounding her car, their bloodthirsty faces. Her mind went into terrible what-ifs, she saw herself being dragged out into the road, screaming, helpless, lost, and she knew she was going too far into something she hadn’t bargained for. And Sunny, in this room, what the hell was that about? That was another story.
* * *
—
“Seriously, Sunny. Where the fuck have you been? The last thing I saw of you was your father kicking you into that pool. It was a nightmare. A nightmare. And you abandoned me.”
He was sitting on the edge of the bed now. She could see him in profile.
“I had no choice.”
“You could have made one call.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I think I do. I understand them, I understand you.”
“I didn’t want to put you in danger.”
She laughed bitterly.
“If I’m in danger it’s because I came looking for you.”
He turned to face her. “It’s all gone to shit.”
“Yeah? Whose fault is that?”
“It’s mine,” he said.
“My God, you’re fucked up.”
“Why? I should never have put that ad out. I was being weak.”
“You were being human,” she said. “But yeah, maybe you shouldn’t have done it. Maybe we shouldn’t have done a lot of things.” She shook her head slowly. “It’s such a mess. I don’t want this violence. I don’t want to be involved in this. I just want . . .”
“I miss you,” he said.
“Oh, fuck off.”
“I do.”
He reached his hand out to her.
She held it.
“You really, really look like shit,” she said. “What are you even doing here?”
“I don’t know. Give me a drink.”
She handed him the bottle, he took a swig, and she lay on the bed and he pulled himself up alongside her, and they were both on their backs looking at the ceiling.
“Sunny, what he did to you at the villa, in the pool . . . that’s not normal. Fathers shouldn’t do that to their sons.”
“You live in a different world.”
“Maybe. Maybe I don’t anymore.”