Mr. Chowdhary’s youngest daughter wasn't fat, certainly not by conventional standards. Fat was two hundred pounds on a 5-foot frame. Fat was when a woman walked across a solid oak floor wearing high heels and left a dimpled trail from one side of the room to the other. In her early twenties, Terry Chowdhary was a plumpish woman with a modestly good figure. I had first noticed her working in the main office alongside her father. Or sometimes she tended the bed of flowers - mostly marigolds, petunias and pansies - that her mother had planted near the motel entrance. A prominent, hooked nose did nothing for her aesthetically but was not overly large, certainly not out of proportion with the rest of her features. And she had inherited her father's dark skin tones.
Granted, her face had begun to flesh out, to lose definition and her body was beginning to go slack in certain critical areas - the valleys rising up to meet the peaks, so-to-speak. She hardly ever came by the lobby at night and, on those few occasions, had nothing to say. Most often, she wore a sullen, disinterested expression as though she found the universe too crass for her high-minded sensibilities and was living her life under protest.
One night after I had worked at the motel for several months, Terry wandered into the lobby. “Quiet” she asked in a flat voice. The hooked nose set against the high cheeks lent her a haughty, almost arrogant expression. A thin, silver cross hung from her neck. She lifted her head but did not actually look at me. Rather, her eyes seemed to slide obliquely over my features without touching my face.
“Yes, very quiet. Only three guests. A couple of businessmen and a family touring from New England.” A bunch of large bananas lay in a basket on the counter. Terry took one and placed the peel on a napkin. She stuffed the banana in her mouth and the fruit went down her throat like a garbage disposal. It didn't appear that she even bothered to chew.
“Would you like one?” she asked. “They're quite fresh.”
“No, thank you. I just ate.” She shrugged and began peeling another.
“The guest in room twenty four thought he saw a cockroach, but it was just a dead water bug from the pool. He was still upset so I switched him over to twenty-six.”
“Any prostitutes?” Terry asked. “Sometimes businessmen bring women back to their rooms.” Mr. Chowdhary never mentioned prostitutes. Was this an oversight, I wondered, or did he and his daughter have differing views on the subject? “If that ever happens,” Terry continued without waiting for my response, “give them their money back and tell them to go elsewhere. Prostitutes bring trouble. Trouble brings police.”
“How do I know,” I asked watching her nibble away the top of the second banana, “that the woman in question is a prostitute and not some bimbo with a trashy taste in clothes?”
“The first time she comes to the Bay View Motel with a man, she's his wife. No matter she's wearing stiletto heels and tassels on her breasts.” Terry deposited the peel of the second banana on the napkin. “If she shows up the next night with someone else, she's a prostitute.”
“I'll try to remember that.”
“When they try to check in, I usually say, 'We don't rent to prostitutes. Go away.'”
“Very succinct.”
“No reason to waste words.” Terry slid her hand across the counter and began toying distractedly with the third banana, picking at the topmost portion of the peel with a thumbnail.
“Are you going to eat that one too?”
“Did you want it?”
“No, It's just that I've never seen anyone eat three bananas.”
“I wasn't going to eat it,” Terry said self-consciously and pushed the fruit away. “You've been here a while now,” she said speaking in a harsh, almost accusatory tone. “What are your plans?”
It was the same question her father had posed, though slightly more diplomatically. “I don't know. I haven't decided what I want to do.”
“Well, for what it’s worth,” Terry said with a faint tinge of sarcasm. “I don't know what I want to do with my life either.”
Not that she wasn't attractive in an exotic, fleshy way, but her gruff stoicism was too much! At one point during our conversation, I caught a glimpse of the bronze, multi-limbed snake goddess over Terry's left shoulder and, for a fraction of a second, it seemed as though the motel owner's daughter and her metaphysical counterpart merged into one, all-powerful superwoman. “But you have your work here at the motel.”
“That's not the same thing,” she replied less caustically and went back out into the warm night.
After the New Year, Mr. Chowdhary's older daughter, Bidyut, had a baby. A month later, he came to me and said, “The christening is next Saturday. If you could work the day shift, I'll pay you time and a half.”
“That's not necessary.”
“It's the weekend,” he said with soft-spoken firmness, “and you would be doing me a favor.”
I had an ulterior reason for taking the work: In addition to earning a few extra dollars, Terry might drop by. I had begun to look forward to those rare visits when she sauntered into the lobby unannounced - like some visiting, foreign dignitary - sampling the complimentary fruit and stare at me with her chocolaty brown eyes. She reminded me of a nut - not the psychiatric variety, but the edible seed. A walnut or, more specifically, a Brazil nut - hard as hell on the outside, yet deliciously meaty within. Not that I had any desire to make a play for her. Our present relationship - transparent and uncomplicated - suited me just fine. “Yes, I'll work the day shift.”