The next evening less than an hour into my shift, a man and a woman entered the lobby and requested a room for the night. The man smelled of liquor and was so fat that his belt buckle had turned completely upside down to accommodate the excess flesh. His necktie hung limply to one side. The woman, a tall brunette dressed like a high school cheerleader minus the pompoms, I recognized immediately. She had registered earlier in the week with a much younger fellow. “We’d like a room for the night,” the man said.
I paused for a fraction of a second, just long enough to consider options. “We don’t rent to prostitutes. Go away.”
Turning the color of a well-cooked, Maine lobster, the man with the pendulous gut began sweating profusely; he spun around unsteadily and staggered toward the screen door.
“Shit!” The woman in the cheer leader’s outfit muttered, trailing after him. “Goddamn shit!”
Around seven o’clock, the phone rang. “Have you eaten?” Mrs. Chowdhary was on the other end of the line. I told her I was ordering pizza. “No need. We just finished supper and so much curried chicken is left over.” There was a slight pause. “You do like curried chicken, don't you?” I said that I did. “I’ll fix you a plate.” She hung up the phone.
A few minutes passed and Terry entered with a dish wrapped in aluminum foil. Her straight, black hair, which normally cascaded down her neck almost to the small of her back, was tied in a tight bun. She wore jeans and a University of California sweat shirt with cutoff sleeves. Peeling back the foil, an aromatic steam rose up from the dish. “There’s white wine and scallions in the sauce; curry powder and pineapple chunks, too.” I mixed some white Basmati rice with the sweetly pungent sauce.
“Since the unfortunate incident at the wake, my father won’t talk to me,” she said petulantly. “And when I enter the room, my mother sighs and looks away. I've become a pariah in my own home.”
I fished a plastic fork from the drawer. “Please, help yourself.”
She stabbed at a sliver of chicken, twirling it methodically in the sauce, and we ate from the same dish. “A young priest at the wake said so many flattering things about the deceased, I wanted to vomit!”
“It’s just a eulogy,” I said weakly. “I’m sure wonderful sentiments were expressed at Joseph Stalin’s funeral, too.” I tapped her lightly on the forearm. “Did your father ever mention a trip to Ahmadabad?”
“Ahmadabad? That's in the state of Gujarat. No, he never spoke of such a trip.”
“He went with your grandfather to see Gandhi.”
“If my father had mentioned such a thing, I would have remembered.”
“A prostitute came to the motel earlier this afternoon.” I told her what happened.
Terry sat quietly studying the white prongs on her fork. Finally, she reached across the counter, cupped my face in her slender, brown hands, and kissed me with such tenderness my knees buckled and brain went numb. Finished with the kiss, she pressed her hand lightly against my chest, pushing me away at arm's length. “When I enter the room,” she spoke plainly, “your eyes glaze over like some moonstruck character in a Kahlil Gibran poem.”
I could think of nothing to say. The kiss had overwhelmed me - disoriented my tongue, paralyzed my mental faculties. “You hold back,” she continued, “because you're a coward, in the romantic sense. A woman understands these thing; I don't hold it against you.” A dirty brown moth fluttered against the screen door. It thrashed about vainly in search of the domestic warmth and brightness within; after a half dozen passes, it plunged to the ground. “Yes, you are a coward,” she said flatly, “and it's my great misfortune to have fallen in love with a man who won’t say what's in his heart.”
Terry wandered to the far end of the room and brushed a finger over the Hindu goddess' venomous crown. “I never kissed a man like that before,” she said wistfully. “Didn't even know I was capable of such a thing.”
The conversation lapsed. The brown moth returned and ricocheted crazily off the screen a number of times making dry, scraping sounds and sending up a puff of powdery scales. “Do you own a bike?” I asked. Terry shook her head. “Why not?”
Smelling of sandalwood laced with pineapple juice and curry powder, she came back to where I was standing. “What sort of question is that?”
I grabbed her hand which lay on the counter, and she made an effort to pull away, a reflexive gesture, but I held firm. Terry stared dispassionately at her captive fingers, like so many small animals languishing in a snare. Dusk faded to darkness. I reached under the counter and flipped the switch turning the motel’s neon sign on. “This weekend, I’m going to buy you a bike,” I said. “Ten-speed, all terrain. We’ll ride out to the harbor and lunch at one of the dockside restaurants.”
Terry’s eyes clouded over. “Even a cheap bike could run fifty dollars.”
“Consider it an investment in the future.”
“Whose future?”
Thrust and parry. At the core of the sexual sparring, concealed behind the inane banter, lurked a cockeyed logic that caused the moist breath to catch in my throat. Whose future? That of a woman with insatiable appetites and emotional excesses; an erratic creature who blasphemed the dead yet regularly attended Mass and knew all of her devotional prayers by heart. A soul infinitely more dangerous, devious and desirable than the Hindu snake goddess! “Too soon to tell,” I replied, without further elaboration. “Are we on for the weekend?”
Terry undid the bun and shook her fine, dark hair out, a shimmering shower of blackness, onto her bare arms. “Have to check my social calendar,” she replied, collecting the plate and fork. She kissed me lightly on the cheek, brushing the wetness away with her fingertips. “Though I ate the better portion, I’ll tell Mother you were crazy for her curried chicken.”
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