Ranjit, who still suffered occasional attacks of guilt for having neglected the Fermat problem, wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He looked to Gamini for help, but actually the expression on Gamini’s face was itself a little like guilt. “Listen, Ranj,” he began, his tone even more remorseful than his face, “I’d better tell you the bad news right away. When I wrote you, I was hoping you and I would have at least a couple of days together.” He shook his head. “Won’t happen. My dad’s got both of us booked up solid for every day, starting tomorrow. Family, you know.”
Ranjit did know, remembering those days before Gamini left for London. He let his disappointment show on his face. “I’ve got a week, car and all.”
Gamini gave him a rebellious shrug. “Can’t be helped. He even wanted me for dinner tonight, but I told him positively no.” He studied Ranjit for a moment, then grinned. “But, damn, I’m happy to see you! Give us a hug!”
That Ranjit was willing to do, first so as not to embarrass Gamini in front of the girls, then, as Gamini’s lean, hot body pressed against his own, with a return of real affection. “Anyway,” Gamini said, “you haven’t even had a drink yet. Pru, take care of that for me, will you?”
Aware that both girls had been studying something or other artistic, Ranjit tried conversation. “So you want to be an artist?” he asked Maggie.
She gave him an incredulous look. “What, and starve to death? No way! I’m pretty sure that what I’ll be doing is teaching art in some community college near Trenton, New Jersey, where my folks live. Or wherever my husband’s job is, when I have a husband.”
The blonde, Pru, spoke up. “Oh, I’d love to be an artist, Ranjit. I won’t make it, though. I have no artistic talent at all, and I don’t want to go back to the family in Shaker Heights. What I’m hoping for is a job as auctioneer at someplace like Sotheby’s. Good money, interesting people to work with, and I’d be around art even if I wasn’t creating any.”
Maggie handed Ranjit his arrack and Coke, laughing. “Fat chance,” she said.
Pru reached around Gamini’s legs with one of her own and kicked her. “Pig,” she said. “I don’t mean right away. You start out as an intern, and maybe the first thing they give you to do is get the numbers from the bid paddles that people at the back of the room are holding up—you know, where the actual auctioneer won’t be looking. Ranjit? Don’t you like arrack and Coke?”
Ranjit didn’t have a good answer to that. Actually, he had liked it pretty well when he and Gamini had been exploring Colombo but hadn’t had any of that particular drink since Gamini had left. But when he tasted it, it went down pretty agreeably. So did the next one.
Although the evening wasn’t what Ranjit had expected, it wasn’t turning out badly at all. At some point the girl named Pru had detached herself from Gamini and settled in next to Ranjit himself. He immediately noticed three things about her. She was warm, she was soft, and she smelled quite nice. Oh, not as nice as Myra de Soyza, or perhaps even as nice—in a quite different way, of course—as Mevrouw Beatrix Vorhulst, but still quite pleasing.
Ranjit not being a fool, he was quite aware that the way women smelled was primarily an artifact purchasable at any pharmacy. No matter. It was still quite pleasing, and Pru had other virtues as well, which included feeling good against his arm and, quite often, saying amusing things. Taken all in all, Ranjit decided that he was having quite a good time.
But as the evening wore on, he was aware that he had some unanswered questions in his mind. When the two girls went off to the powder room, he had a chance to approach some of the questions. As a beginning he asked Gamini if he had seen much of them in London. Gamini looked surprised. “Never set eyes on either one of them until they turned up on the plane from Dubai and we got to talking.”
“Oh, I see,” Ranjit said, although he wasn’t sure he did. For clarification he asked, “What about your friend Madge?”
Gamini gave him a long and amused look. “You know what your problem is, Ranjit? You worry too much. Madge is in Barcelona, I guess with whoever it is that sends her texts every other hour. Have another drink.”
Ranjit did. In fact they both did, and so did the two girls when they returned. It wasn’t quite the same as before, however. Ranjit’s drink sat unfinished before him, and so did most of the others. And then Maggie whispered something in Gamini’s ear. “Oh, all right,” Gamini said to her; and then to Ranjit he said, “I’m afraid it’s about that time. It’s been good seeing you again, but my father and I have to take off for Grandma’s first thing in the morning. So we’re going to pack it in.” He stood up, smiling. “Give us a hug, will you?”
Ranjit obliged, and got one from Maggie as well. “By the way,” Gamini added as they turned to go, “don’t worry about the check. It all goes on my father’s tab. Come on, sweets.” And as he and Maggie threaded their way between tables to the door, Ranjit understood what the plural pronoun had implied.
And there Ranjit was, just him and the girl named Pru.
He lacked experience to tell him what was expected of him under these circumstances. He had, however, seen enough American films to get a clue. “Would you like another drink?” he said politely.
She shook her head, grinning. She nodded at the nearly full glass in front of her. “I’ve barely wounded the last one. Anyway, I think another drink would be pretty superfluous, don’t you?”
He did, but he was running out of ideas for the next step. In the films, at this point the man might ask the woman if she would care to dance. That wasn’t an option here; no dancing was going on in this hotel bar, and anyway Ranjit didn’t know how.
Pru saved him. “It’s been a very nice evening, Ranjit Subramanian,” she told him, “but I want to get up and do some sightseeing tomorrow. Do you think the waiter can get me a taxi?”
Ranjit was surprised. “You aren’t in this hotel?”
“Booked the accommodation before we left London, and we took what they gave us. It’s only about a five-minute ride away.”
At that point Ranjit knew what to do, and did. Pru was glad to be given a ride in the temple’s van—even if Ranjit was a little drunk behind the wheel—and she was interested to hear about Ranjit’s father’s position in the temple, along with a sketchy outline of the long and colorful history of Tiru Koneswaram. Enough so that she invited him in to sober up with a cup of coffee when they got to her hotel.
The travel agency in London had given the girls a young people’s hotel, with a lot of young people making the lobby a bit too noisy for a conversation, so Pru invited Ranjit up to her room. They talked, sitting companionably close, and propinquity worked its magic. Within an hour Ranjit had lost his virginity, or at least his cross-gender virginity. He enjoyed it very much. So did Pru, enough so that they did it twice more before they finally got to sleep.
The sun was high and hot when the sound of a key in the lock woke them. It was Maggie, and she did not seem surprised to find both Ranjit and Pru in one of the room’s twin beds. Gamini? Oh, he was long gone, had jumped out of the bed and into his clothes when reception called to say that his father was waiting for him in the lobby. “And anyway,” Maggie said, giving Pru an inquiring look, “we’re supposed to be taken to lunch by your life-drawing instructor’s cousin at the embassy, and it’s a quarter after ten.”
Ranjit, who was getting into his clothes as fast as he could, took that for an exit cue. What he wasn’t sure of was how to take leave of Pru, and this time she was not helpful. She did give him a hearty good-bye kiss. But when he tentatively suggested that if they wanted sightseeing he was available, she couldn’t see a way of fitting him into their other obligations that day, or any other day, for that matter.