Natwar pedals back to the main square, past the monks and the nuns and the travelers and the tourists and the locals, past food stands where chefs are busy at their grills and flower sellers are stringing marigolds into necklaces. He takes another narrow dirt road and winds up another steep slope. Fifteen minutes later, he pulls up the drive that has led them to Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise, its sign neat and demure, and places his sandaled feet into the dirt. “I am thinking that this one might be just right for you.”
She feels like Goldilocks, walking across the sandy path and up the wooden stairs. The walls of the lobby are covered in loose panels of cloth, alternating strips of vibrant Indian red and the sunny yellow of those perky marigolds she saw in the hands of the flower sellers. To the left is a comfortable sitting area, and beyond the sitting area, an enormous window that looks onto a dense stand of trees, dark-brown and lighter-brown trunks, leaves in all shades of green. The place feels relaxed and comfortable and something smells good. Lit incense on a wooden table in the sitting area, its perfume subtle and soothing. A handsome young man, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, stands at the long, low teak reception desk, smiling at Joan.
“Hello,” Joan says, “Do you have a room available?”
“Of course, madam. A lovely room. Would you like to see it?”
“No need,” Joan says. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
She walks out of the hotel, down the dirt path she now notices is bordered by small white, yellow, and pink flowers, to Natwar on his bicycle with the rickshaw behind him.
“Yes,” Natwar says. “Sometimes it is the sixth place that is the charm. It is what I always say.”
Joan laughs and the freedom she hears within her own voice surprises her. She has not laughed since the night at the Sumners’, the night before she discovered Daniel’s theft, when Martin and Larry Sumner told stories about hospital politics, and she wonders whether it is today or yesterday in Rhome.
Natwar walks her bags into the lobby, and then the two of them are out in front of the hotel, beyond the stairs, and Joan says, “I forgot to ask how much for your good services.”
“I never say a price. The client always decides.”
At the Delhi train station, Joan exchanged dollars for a thick wad of rupees. The exchange rate on the board read 1 US dollar equaled 30.153 in rupees, so that means the dollar is worth more than the rupee, she thinks. Is that right? She fingers the pastel bills, Gandhi’s face in her hands. The denominations are confusing and she has no idea if Natwar’s trip should cost ten dollars or a hundred.
“Natwar, I would like to give you fifty American dollars, but I’m not sure what that looks like in your money.”
“Thank you,” he says, “I accept,” and extracts several bills from her stack and counts them out to Joan. She realizes she might be hugely overpaying.
“One thousand five hundred and seven rupees is equal to fifty American dollars,” Natwar says. He pockets the fare and then, surprisingly, he wraps Joan in his skinny brown arms.
“Blessings for you, my dear friend.”
Joan closes her eyes and bows her head. Three people now have cared about her or done right by her since she left home: Vita Brodkey, the big man, and Natwar.
She is not aware when Natwar’s arms release her, but when she opens her eyes, the rickshaw driver and his rickshaw are gone, a puff of dirt just settling back to the ground.
*
At the low reception desk, the young man says, “You are most welcome here at Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise. We are so happy to have you. From where have you arrived?”
“The US,” Joan says, and wonders if she should have said America. So she says, “America.”
“I thought so. I am familiar with America from living there for two years. I have been back here for eight months,” he says.
“Did you like it?”
“Yes, to some degree, but I returned home as soon as I could, wanting to be of aid to my grandparents who own this lovely multiperson abode. But I should not be so personal. My apologies. For how long will you grace us?”
“Three weeks, I think,” and Joan sees his eyes beam with innocent pleasure.
“How excellent,” and he holds up a key. “For your room. And just so you know, we are completely hooked in. Wi-Fi and cell service and all the small benefits of home.”
He insists on carrying her suitcase and her carryall and Joan follows behind. He looks back and says, “We have many guests right now, but I had this sense that I ought to save our best room, and I am glad that I did.”
She thinks he must say this to every traveler, about sensing their arrival, saving the best room just for them.
“A correction. I saved for you, though I only sensed you were coming, our very best pine suite.”
Suite makes Joan think of Vita Brodkey’s three gold suitcases. Pine she translates into pining, and she thinks that whatever kind of room this young man is going to give her, his best or his worst, somehow he knows she needs a place in which to pine over her losses.
At the end of the corridor, he keys the lock, opens the door, sets her bags inside, and steps out of the way.
“Breakfast will be outside your door every morning. I shall leave you now. But you can always ask me for anything. Call me up on the phone. Come find me. Yell from your door. Anything I can do for you, I will endeavor to do. I am Kartar and you have my word,” he says, and Joan thinks how she once had a son whose word she would never have doubted.
*
It is indeed a pine suite. Pine bed frame, pine dresser, pine desk and chair, pine armchair, pine floors, and she laughs. A second laugh since arriving in Dharamshala, and when it sprints up a register, she knows she has kept herself sewn together for quite a long time and now the stitches are starting to tear.
Kartar called this cozy room a suite. It is a fraction of the size of the suites she and Martin have stayed in during their family vacations on island resorts, smaller than the rooms she was given as a young writer on her book tours, when she expected garrets. Still, it has all she needs. A thick double bed with an Indian-red coverlet. Sheer marigold-yellow curtains. A desk and chair. An armchair. An ample pine closet. A spacious bathroom with a deep tub set within a slatted pine box. Outlets ready for the adapters she remembered to take from Martin’s drawer filled with such travel items.
She feels the need to settle in fast, to make this pine suite her own in an instant. Suitcase opened and clothes hung in the pine closet, folded into the pine drawers. Toiletries on the bathroom counter. Laptop, ream of paper, pens, pads pulled out of her carryall and set on the desk, then she dumps everything else in the bag onto the bed. A Butterfinger falls out, slipped in by Martin, an offering of a sort, and she rips it open, shoves half of it into her mouth, crunches away.