“At least,” she went on, “I now know what your uncle did in Kushinagar.” She raised her eyebrows. “Local politics, right?”
“I used to love him so much. He always had good stories.” He let out a long sigh, was about to speak but held back.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“No,” she gently coaxed him, “what were you going to say?”
But he wouldn’t go on down that path.
“The chutiya Dean should have taken the money,” he said.
She shifted her lips into a joyless smile.
“He would never have taken it.”
Sunny couldn’t hide his irritation. “Ten crore rupees was more than enough.”
Damn. Ten crore rupees. Enough to buy a whole new life.
“Your father ruined his career,” she said. “Do you understand that?”
“It’s all part of the game. He knew the risks.”
“Do you even hear yourself? Do you know what kind of asshole you sound like? Seriously, Sunny. Why am I here? What did you bring me down for?”
“To tell you I’m done.”
“Done what?”
“With all of it.”
“Specific, Sunny. Be specific.”
“You told me. I didn’t have to take it. I could just walk away.”
“Yeah . . .”
“I’m walking away.”
“From?”
“Him, his money, his pressure on my head, his violence, his way of doing things. All my dreams are bullshit anyway. You saw what your journalist said about me. I’m tired. I’m stuck between the shit my father does and the things I can’t do.”
“What will you do?”
He closed his eyes.
“I’m tired,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything. Tomorrow. I have a room here for us for tonight. We have to leave early in the morning.”
“Why?”
“We’re going somewhere,” he said. “A place I can talk. Where no one will find us. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
* * *
—
The room on the fourth floor was charming in a faded, musty way, jammed full of old-fashioned Portuguese furniture and fittings. She showered in the white light of the bathroom while she left him standing on the balcony smoking. She had questions. So many questions. She was desperate to hear him talk, but he was lying facedown on the bed when she came out, already sleeping, still wearing his shoes. She guessed he’d been saving all his energy for her arrival, for the news, and now he’d delivered it, he’d collapsed. She removed his shoes and socks, turned off the lights, threw down her towel, and lay next to him, pulling the blanket up tight. The city shimmered in the streetlights. It was near silent outside. The occasional bark of a dog, the buzz of a scooter on the road. He stirred. He mumbled without opening his eyes. “It’s my birthday the day after, on the sixteenth.”
* * *
—
Next thing she knew it was five thirty in the morning and he was up, boiling water in the small kettle in the faint light of the bedside lamp, pouring sachets of instant coffee into the chipped mugs on the dresser.
“What’s going on?” At first she didn’t remember where she was, what Sunny was doing in her room.
“We’re leaving in half an hour.”
“No.” She pulled the covers up. “I want to sleep.”
He poured the hot water, added a sachet of sugar, stirred it, and held one of the coffees under her nose. “Wake up.”
He had a Polaroid camera on the table. He took a photo of her with the flash.
“It’s cold,” she said. “I want to sleep.”
She watched him shaking the photo out. “I bet I look hideous.”
He added a shot of Old Monk to his coffee.
“Hey! Pour me one too.”
* * *
—
She could almost pretend it was normal. They were downstairs at ten past six. The morning was growing in the sky—strokes of amber among the lilac, the outlines of fast-moving clouds. Sunny handed the key to the receptionist, settled the bill.
Out in the street, Ajay was waiting, standing next to a Royal Enfield Bullet 500, holding her winter coat under his arm, along with a thick blue shawl and a helmet. She wore the coat, wrapped herself in the shawl. He passed the helmet to Sunny. The keys were in the ignition. Sunny climbed on, checked the amp meter, kick-started the bike.
“Get on.”
She climbed on the back.
Sunny turned to Ajay and shouted over the engine. “Two days. We’ll be back in two days. I’ll call you. If anyone calls for me, you know what to say.”
* * *
—
They cut through the narrow city streets in the dawn, past sleeping households and cats darting across empty roads. They were chased by a pack of barking dogs on the riverside, out of the city onto the highway south, toward the airport. She wrapped her hands around his waist, pressed her cheek to his shoulder as they picked up speed and the guttural chop of the engine turned into a high, smooth crescendo. He gunned the throttle harder, and she saw mist hanging over the paddy fields, and there was nothing so beautiful as the roar of the Enfield on that empty road. An hour passed. An hour of nothing. Palm groves, whitewashed chapels, ripe pools of mosquito swarms and resting buffalo, the first sun bursting over the horizon, dazzling her, spilling golden over everything. They roared over the airport plateau, descended toward the city of Margao. Life was beginning to stir, traffic trickling through the lanes, cafés opening for breakfast, seniors exercising in the parks. They crossed over the train tracks, pulled out of the city and onto the highway again. A short while later he broke away, turned toward the coast, down small roads of dusty churches and football fields, weaving through villages where schoolgirls in pigtails walked arm in arm and hungry cats and housewives waited for the fishmonger’s horn. Sunny removed his helmet, handed it back to her as they entered a hamlet crowded with palms and crows, and suddenly there was a beach, visible only for a second, glorious, before they veered toward the jungle and began to rise. For the next half hour they climbed inside the hills of the Canacona coast, straining around corners, up and down. She removed the shawl, the coat, held them over her lap with the helmet, soaking in the hot wind, closing her eyes and giving herself over to the sweep of the road. She was happy in being lost. They crested a hill. Suddenly he cut the engine and there was silence. The bike slowed, then picked up speed again. She opened her eyes. The jungle spread for many miles around, and ahead the sea, shimmering in the distance, with a handful of rocky islands around the headland, waves crashing into their many coves, spray refracted by the sun. Gravity carried the bike downhill, runaway, the squeak of the suspension felt precarious without the torque of the engine, and she understood in that moment how the sources of strength are illusory.
* * *
—