Out of the mess of rickshaws and people with shopping bags and laden carts that were being pushed through the crowd, Gouri saw a young woman approach her. The face looked familiar, but she could not place it. The woman — a girl, really — was looking at her. Gouri turned away. She wanted to avoid their eyes meeting.
The girl came towards her, as if she knew Gouri. “Do you remember me? This really is a small place, no? I’m so glad you’re here! My friend abandoned me at the Sun Temple, then I took a bus and then I got a lift on a scooter, but now someone is following me. A monk. . see? Behind that shop with the saris? That one, with the long hair. Haven’t you seen him standing in the sea with his beads? He’s been after me from the first day I came here.”
“Child, a monk will never do you any harm. He is a man of god. Why should he follow you?” The girl looked deranged, what with her matted hair and and her strange clothes.
“Please.” The girl looked at a group of people some distance away, then turned to Gouri again. “I mustn’t look that way, he’ll see me. Just. . if we could leave together from here? Then I’ll be fine. Please?” She put a hand out and Gouri shrank back. “If you’re going in a rickshaw, I’ll share it? Where are you going?”
Her voice was shaking. Gouri could see she was terrified — but for what reason? A monk? Monks were good. They would never touch a hair on a girl’s head. There were any number of monks at the temple: pious, holy, revered.
“I am waiting,” Gouri explained. “I can’t leave.”
“For what? For how long?”
Gouri had to think — for what? For some moments she could not recall what exactly she was waiting for. Then — of course, she remembered — she was waiting for the guide to the Vishnu temple. Vidya and Latika had gone on ahead in a rickshaw. The guide had told her he would take her on his scooter. He had asked her to wait till he brought his scooter from the parking lot, but then he had not come back. She had been waiting quite a while, her tired legs told her that. They felt as if they had been walking all day when all she had done was to rest in the hotel, praying and preparing for this evening’s trip to the temple.
She might as well take a rickshaw with this child, do her a good turn while she was at it. Perhaps the guide couldn’t find her in the crowds. What was the point of worrying about it? Whatever would be would be. They only needed to reach the temple, and then she knew her way about. They would get there right in time for the evening’s prayers and change of flags. That was such a spectacle. Young people loved that kind of thing. She would tell the girl what it all meant.
She waved towards the line of waiting rickshaws with a magisterial finger. A rickshaw broke away from its rank by the road and creaked to a halt next to them. Holding the seat for support, she heaved herself in and beckoned to the girl, who clambered in as well. “To the temple,” Gouri said.
*
At the Indian Made Foreign Liquor shop, the men by the window made way for Latika without being asked, too astonished to catcall or whistle. Latika leaned in at the window, unzipped her handbag, fished out some money and said in an authoritative tone, as if this were an everyday thing and she was buying onions or potatoes: “One small bottle vodka.”
She was stumped when she was asked, “Which brand, Madam? What’s your usual?” The pig-eyed man behind the grill was smirking, he underlined the word Madam when he spoke. He had a hairline moustache over a puffy upper lip and was picking at his teeth with a pin. The other men were sniggering too.
All of a sudden it came to Latika that she would stop colouring her hair. No more chestnut or black, no more visits to Wendy at Sunflower every month. She ran her fingers through her wind-tousled crop. She wanted it to turn grey and white that minute. She looked straight into the man’s piggy eyes, pushed up her glasses, said, “Smirnoff, of course, if you have it.” Her handbag was big enough for the bottle he handed over through the window-grill. He watched her put it away and took her money without another word.
When she and Vidya got back to the place where they had left Gouri, she was nowhere to be seen. She must have wandered off, attracted by some bauble in a shop. Exactly like that morning when she disappeared from the hotel and they found her after an hour of pointless panic, sitting on an upturned boat.
More exasperated than worried, they divided up and went in opposite directions to look for her. Whoever found her would phone the other and then they would take rickshaws back to the hotel. And not let Gouri out of their sight for the rest of the trip.
Neither of them had found her after a quarter of an hour. The street was full of people, and not one of them was Gouri.
*
When Nomi knocked on his glass door and pushed into the room the moment Suraj had opened it a crack, he realised it was quite late. He must have dropped off. She was shouting, “Why did you rush off like that from the Sun Temple? How did you think I’d come back?”
He had gone from horizontal to vertical so abruptly his head spun and he had to hold on to the door. Her voice seemed far too loud. If he tried not to think about it, he felt less dizzy, but he wanted her to stop shrieking. He put his hands to his ears. The sea was rising inside him, a tide of sour, stale liquid.
“Can’t you hear me?”
He could muster up no more than a mumble. “Why didn’t you come to the car? I waited. Then I left — why didn’t — I feel really sick.”
“I couldn’t find the car! I looked everywhere. It wasn’t where we parked it.”
“Had to move — too much sun. Just for shade — only a short distance.” He needed to sit. He sat heavily on the bed. His head hurt. His eyes couldn’t bear the light. He had come back to the hotel a while ago — when? He could no longer remember. Then he had raided the minibar, finished the last of his dope, and fallen asleep. Had he eaten? Maybe a few peanuts.
She stood over him beside the bed, remorseless. “Why weren’t you picking up your fucking phone? How could you do this?”
“My phone was stolen. I left it on the beach when I went for a swim and it was stolen.” He spoke as if each word was a sentence with a full stop after it.
For a while neither of them said anything. She couldn’t very well blame him for a stolen phone, did not know what to blame him for next, he guessed. She threw herself into a chair, said, “At least give me a drink.”
“We ran out last night. Remember?” He pointed to the empty whisky bottle on a table by the bed.
Again, the shrill whining. “So why didn’t you buy some more? You had the car all bloody afternoon!” He felt her petulance stirring that old rage inside him. A voice demanding, “Why do I even have to repair the plugs? Can’t you do one thing around this house?” Shouting, “What do you mean you didn’t get the eggs on the way back? Didn’t I ask you to?” And, “Why the fuck didn’t you pick up the phone?”
“So sorry,” Suraj said, taking care to stay calm. “My service standards appear to have slipped. There is always the mini bar. . don’t think I’ve emptied it.”
“Don’t bother.” She ran her fingers through her hair, tangling it even more than it usually was, as if at a loss over what to do next. She spotted his packet of cigarettes in the circle of light from the table lamp. “O.K., if I can’t have a drink I’m going to have a smoke instead.”