Anuradha Roy - Sleeping On Jupiter

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.”

She pulled a cigarette out after some moments of struggle with the packet. She reached for his lighter. Her lips circled the cigarette in a pout. She had tucked her feet under herself as always, and turned the chair into a shell in which she fitted securely.

He lay with his arms cradling his head. “I’m going to enjoy this,” he said. She looked so unlike herself with that cigarette, he could not take his eyes off her. He relaxed into his pillows, as if lying back to watch a movie. So what if he normally didn’t like people in his room. This was worth the price.

She exhaled through her nostrils. “I’m fagged out. So hot. And it took forever coming back. Do you know whom I met? The fat old lady from my train. I dropped her off at the big temple. She was hell-bent on dragging me in too, but I managed to give her the slip.”

His throat felt very dry. His skin had a crawling itchy feeling. He recited, “When Nomi has a smoke, It is a fucking joke,” as if to himself. “A pome.” It wasn’t such a bad rhyme, he thought, it did actually rhyme. He opened his mouth to repeat it, but his poem had set something off in her again. “Do you know how dangerous it was to leave me out there? Even that temple guide said so. An albino monk with long hair was following me half the time. I thought he was going to attack me.”

“An albino monk. An albino. .” He began laughing, first a giggle, then another, then a helpless guffaw. “You’re wild, you know that? I bet you’re writing a novel. ‘The Gooroo and his Slave Girls’. Who’s Piku, tell me that? Raunchy stuff on your laptop, man!” There was something unbelievably erotic about her indignation, that cigarette in her mouth, kurta slipping off her shoulder again.

She got up, looking for a place to stub her cigarette. He pointed through his laughter. “The ashtray’s right there, in front of you. See? On the table?”

“You’ve been snooping around my computer,” she said, crushing the cigarette. She was stammering, her voice had a tremor. “You abandon me in the middle of nowhere, you don’t give a shit how I’ll get back, you don’t answer your phone, and now you’re being a smart ass.”

Her words turned his blood to acid. He sprang up off the bed. “I’m not your fucking bodyguard. I’ve had enough too.” A vein in his forehead throbbed. His face was hot. His ears rang. He lunged for her before she could move and grabbed one of her arms. It was thin and bony. He could break it in two as if it were one of his cigarettes, a limp tube of paper filled with shreds of leaves. He gripped her arm harder, pulling her towards the door. He’d fling her out of his room and never see her again.

“Hey, let go! That hurts!”

Her voice was far too loud. He needed to stop that voice.

She shook her arm, trying to free herself and her kurta started slipping further off her shoulders. Something caught his eye. He loosened his grip, his voice dropped abruptly to a whisper. “There is one thing I need to check — about that spot on your right shoulder — that mole — is it —”

“Get some sleep, Suraj.” Her fingers were at work, prising off his. “I’ll see you in the morning. We’re here to work, you’re supposed to do what I need done. I’m out of here. Breakfast at eight tomorrow. Where’s my laptop?” Her voice wasn’t trembling any longer, it was a curt, superior voice. And her unidentifiable accent was starting to get on his nerves. He wanted to chuck her out of his room, not hear that voice any more, but that shoulder — that hacked-off sleeve, he could focus on little else — that sleeve had come off entirely — and now, somehow, his hands had torn most of the other one away too. He did not know how or why her kurta ripped. He hadn’t pulled on it, she had moved away too quickly. And then — how did they end up in the shower? They were both in the cubicle, he had turned the water on full — jets of water. He held her under it, the water made her braids stick to her skull. He was rubbing shower gel all over her, but she was wriggling free, slippery with soap, just would not hold still even when he shook her and slapped her. And then she slipped from his hands — she slipped out of them, fell against the cubicle door, which swung open and she was flung out with it. She slammed down full length on the hard, shining floor. He giggled. “Hey, that is bad, shit, man!” Her legs were splayed, and she was looking upwards at the sink.