The following Saturday, Mr. Chowdhary, dressed in a gray, sharkskin suit, a misplaced relic from the late fifties, escorted his wife and his family off to church. An hour later, they returned with a crowd of several dozen relatives. The women, many dressed in traditional Indian clothes, set up a buffet on aluminum tables around the concrete patio. It was off-season and the few guests registered at the motel had little use for the frigid pool.
An hour passed. A coarse-looking man - extremely fat and drunk - wandered into the lobby and came directly to the front desk. Placing his drink on the counter, he smiled piggishly. “Do you know who I am?” He said with exaggerated self-importance.
“One of the guests at the christening,” I said stupidly.
The man howled as though it was the funniest thing imaginable. “Yes, one of the guests!” He looked at his glass and, seeing that it was empty, rushed off. A minute later, he was back with a fresh drink in either hand. “Where were we?”
“We weren't anywhere,” I said making no effort to mask my discomfort.
The fat man shook his double chin and managed an inhospitable grin. Smelling of body odor and sloe gin, he leaned over the counter an inch from my face. “Tell me, how much profit does this shit-hole produce in a year?” His eyes were suddenly clear, limpid.
“Are you planning to buy the motel?” Before the words had left my lips, I realized the impropriety of the remark.
Not that it made a difference. Again, the fat man threw his shoulders back and laughed wildly. He took a swig, draining the frothy, pink liquid almost to the bottom of the glass and smiled scornfully. “Not anytime soon.”
Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a thick wad of money. Peeling the topmost bill off the pile, he waved a hundred dollar bill in front of my nose. “Everyone wants to be rich, but the more they whore after mammon, the further it eludes their grasp.” The fat man staggered around the room clutching vainly at the air - his monstrous flesh heaving with oceanic force - in a parody of his own words. “They don’t understand the relationship between character and wealth, the businessman’s carnal instincts and the financial bottom line.” He spun around on his heels and almost toppled over. “You'd like to be rich, wouldn't you?”
“Comfortable,” I replied warily.
“Then you’ll die a pauper!” He shouted with an air of finality. “Poor as your ne’er-do-well employer!”
The fat man held the drink six inches above his head and let the remaining drops dribble off the lip of the glass onto his protruding tongue. Wiping his mouth with the back of a hand he said, “You don't like me, do you?” The tone was more playful than angry which made the remark all the more confusing. “You're a goddamn damn bigot. You hate dark-skinned people and think you're better—”
“Sukamar, what are you doing in there?” A large-boned woman, every bit as imposing as the drunken man, lurched into the room and began hauling him away. “Come back to the party immediately!”
The fat man tore free of the woman just long enough to retrieve his second drink. “Yes,” he whispered in a lethal monotone, “you are a lily-white, Anglo-Saxon bigot!”
After he was gone, I sat down and tried to collect my nerves. An hour later, the party was winding down. Most of the guests, including the drunken fat man and his wife, had left, and the women were cleaning up. Mrs. Chowdhary, dressed in a sari, entered. She was carrying a large dish. “A sampling of Indian foods for our favorite night clerk!”
“Your only night clerk,” I noted.
“What should we have done if you hadn't filled in today? My poor husband would have been forced to work, and the blessed event would have been ruined. We owe you a debt of gratitude!” She pressed my hand passionately. “These,” she gestured toward the center of the plate, “are pastries. You ought to save them for last.”
Three weeks passed and I saw nothing of Terry. One evening shortly after eight, she entered the lobby. Removing the receiver from the phone, she flipped the ‘no vacancy’ sign on and said, “Come with me.”
“And leave the motel unattended?”
“What will happen if you do?” she said acidly. “The sky fall down… the universe come to an end?” The sun had gone down and only a small sliver of moon lit the ground. She lead the way to the back of the building where a pile of rubbish, building materials from a recent project, had been thrown in a heap. Terry fingered a cracked cinder block. In the murky gloom, I noted a scattering of cedar shingles, several windows with broken glass, random lengths of oak flooring and a metal shower stall.
“What are we looking for?”
No reply. She sifted through some framing lumber - odds and ends - and struggled to lift a slab of sheet rock. The board broke apart splattering her blouse with soggy gypsum. “Over here!” She was trying unsuccessfully to dislodge a 16-inch, split-rib cement block from the debris.
I grabbed the 40 pound block with both hands, lifting straight up, and hurled it onto the soft grass. “What's this all about?”
Terry climbed down from the pile and escaped into the darkness. I could hear the muffled patter of feet racing frantically back and forth across the length of the yard. She tripped and fell down, got up and hurried off in a new direction. Finally she returned with a rusted wheelbarrow. “Put the block in here and come with me.”
She led the way around to the front of the building, past the office in the direction of the street. In the gutter near the entrance to the Bay View Motel was a brown and white tabby, its hind legs crushed. The cat's eyes were closed but its chest was heaving fitfully. Blood mixed with urine coated the pavement. Bracing her legs against the side of the wheelbarrow, Terry tried to lift the cement block but it wouldn't budge. Only now did she turn to me, her face weighed down with a terrible misery.
“I'll do it.” Lifting the block, I held it chest high over the cat's skull. “I can't see a thing.”
Terry put her hand on my shoulder and sighted straight down through the rectangular hole in the center of the block. “Bit more to the right,” she said. I repositioned the block. “Higher.” My arms ached; I felt sick to my stomach. “Let go!” I dropped the block and promptly threw up all over myself.
On impact, the block split in two. Terry pulled the pieces away, dragging them back onto the sidewalk. The cat was dead. Back in the lobby I washed up as best I could, turned the “no vacancy' sign off and placed the phone back on the cradle. Half an hour later, Terry reappeared. “I put the wheelbarrow away,” she said in a dry, gravelly voice.
“And the cat?”
“Yes, that too.” I didn't bother to ask what she had done with the remains. “Thanks for your helpfulness.” She went away.
Attila the Hun. I remembered what Mr. Chowdhary had said about his youngest daughter. Yes, there was something 'Hunlike' in the way she savaged the pile of building materials and rushed about the darkened yard. Would her namesake, Saint Theresa, have been up to the task? Could the eremitic Little Flower of Jesus have ended the cat's mortal anguish? When my shift ended, I went back to the spot where the animal died. The cat and the broken block were gone, the blood and urine washed away with a garden hose.
One Sunday in July, I was finishing up the paperwork before going off duty. Wearing a tan dress with off-white pumps, Terry entered the lobby. A pearl comb clung to the left side of her straight, black hair. Her expression, as always, was remote, impenetrable. “My father will be down to relieve you. He is getting dressed now.”
“No hurry.” I glanced at her briefly. Even dressed nicely, there was something coarse, dissatisfying about her. Of late, I had begun having X-rated, sexual fantasies about this outlandish Indian with her dour disposition and eating disorder. But that was all. Even if I had a crush on her - which I didn't - romance would have been out of the question. I'd been that route often enough to recognize the symptoms: the perpetual sighing and palpitations; the blurring of etheric boundaries so you no longer knew where the lover left off and the beloved began. No, it
was none of that bathetic mush. “Why are you all dressed up?” I asked.
“I'm going to church. The eight o'clock Mass.”
“Would you like some company?”
“I didn't know you were Catholic.”
“After a fashion,” I hedged. Actually, I hadn't been to church in over a year but saw no need to share that minor detail.
“Yes, I don't care.”
“Didn't ask if you cared,” I said with mild irritation. “Only if you’d like me to join you.”
The corners of her lips turned up in a wan smile. “As you like.”
“But what do you like?”
Tucking his white shirt into his pants, Mr. Chowdhary appeared in the doorway. “Yes,” Terry said, “I would like you to come with me.”
Saint Marks was located three blocks east in the direction of the harbor. As we neared the church, Terry said, “If my father gets irritable and makes a fuss, you shouldn't take it personal.” I might as well have been walking on the opposite side of the street, the way she kept her dark eyes straight ahead. “Whenever business falls off for a day or two, he thinks it’s a dreadful omen.”
“Like yesterday.” The previous night there had been only two lodgers and Mr. Chowdhary stormed around the lobby short-tempered and sullen.
“The motel produces little profit but we always manage to muddle through.” Terry went up the front steps and into the church. Locating a seat near the rear, she knelt in prayer. The pearl comb caught the soft, variegated light from the stained glass windows, flinging it back in a miniature spray of colors. Lips moving silently and head bowed, she resembled an ancient Hindu goddess from the Bhagavad-Gita. Finished with her prayers, Terry crossed herself, removed her rosary beads from a small, leather pouch and sat back in the pew. The service moved along at a brisk pace.
“Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us. Grant us peace.” During Communion, Terry held her hands clasped just under her chin; head bowed, she followed the line of parishioners back to the pew. Again she knelt down and became lost in prayer.
“Thanks for coming.” We were standing outside on the sidewalk. The reverential glow of the religious zealot had evaporated. With a peremptory nod, she turned and sauntered off, her ample hips swaying energetically from side to side, in the direction of the Bay View Motel.