Yes, he is well groomed.
He is well put together.
It shows.
Next to Sunny now, it definitely shows.
* * *
—
“I’m not going to let it go,” Dinesh says. “I want to know what’s going on in that head of yours.”
It’s the next morning.
Monsoon clouds fill the air.
They’re in Dinesh’s Pajero 4×4.
Sunny is smoking a cigarette, staring forward at the road, clammy in his fine white shirt, knees up, feet on the dash, one hand across his gut. In intense negotiations with his own hangover.
Last night, he sat obstinate in the booth. Dinesh’s entourage joined, talked rumor, policy, social justice, election tactics, hip-hop, eventually “the bitches,” and he was a coiled serpent of misery. The hotel bar became increasingly busy beyond the isolation of their room, and Sunny became increasingly withdrawn.
Out in the main section, another drunk man began playing the piano badly, bashing at the keys in what could only be called an act of provocation. Free jazz, Dinesh joked.
But when a tipsy young woman objected in her own brash manner, the man pulled a revolver on her, waved it around the crowd. Then Dinesh was up and out before you knew it, defusing the situation.
Dinesh the Peacemaker.
He disarmed the rowdy in full view of the room, put an arm round his shoulder and led him to the exit, listening to his woes, handing the gun to security, all witnessed by the pack of city journalists, formerly huddled in one corner, drinking hard.
Sunny made the revolver incident his excuse to escape. He slunk upstairs to his suite without a good-bye, opened the bottle of whisky he’d had Eli buy. Drank a good two thirds of it before he passed out cold.
He’d woken to his own screaming at four thirty a.m.
A nightmare. Someone had been pulling him somewhere he didn’t want to go.
Turned out he’d been clasping his own hands, holding them tight above his head, lying on his belly, trying to prize them apart in his sleep. He sat at the side of the bed trying to remember himself, shaking off his fear. He poured a large glass of whisky, slung it back, lit a cigarette, smoked half of it, poured more whisky, knocked that back too, went back to bed and focused on the humming of the AC.
“Nothing’s going on with me,” he says. “Nothing.”
The morning becomes bright with the sun between the clouds scorching the earth, making Sunny’s skin itch, turning the puddles in the road into obnoxious mirrors.
Dinesh looks him up and down dubiously.
“Yeah, right. I mean, you look like shit.”
“That’s because you dragged me out of bed.”
They’re an hour out of Lucknow.
Out in the countryside. The green fields, the bicycles, the buffalo. The life-giving monsoon air streaming through the windows like a fresh current in the ocean over this lush and bountiful land.
Dinesh is dressed casually, in navy APC chinos and a red Loro Piana wool polo shirt with Loro Piana suede moccasins.
He’s saying something.
“What?”
Dinesh shakes his head. “Do you even know who you are?”
They’d called Sunny’s room at seven a.m.
Ringing on and on until he was roused from his sleep.
Reception on the line. Then the phone passed to Dinesh.
He’d been smart enough not to call Sunny on his mobile.
“Hey, listen, bro. I need you to get down here. I want to show you something.”
* * *
—
“How long is this going to take?”
Sunny did not expect to be driving into the countryside. Driving out alone, without guards, without security, without a driver? In UP?
His father would not approve.
There is, as has been impressed upon him, a real and ongoing kidnap threat.
Sunny tosses his cigarette. Lights another cigarette almost immediately.
“Oh why?” Dinesh says. “Is there somewhere you need to be?”
Sunny slips farther down in his seat, closes his eyes entirely, and concentrates on the cigarette between his fingers and on his lips. The very real tangible cigarette and the smoke that goes in and out of his lungs. Is he asleep?
“I like to slip out,” Dinesh says. “Go into the villages and towns. Take the pulse of the common man. You should try it sometime. You might learn something.”
The engine has stopped. The air is moody, pregnant with the monsoon.
They’re in a lane in a scrappy little market town. An oppression of horns, bodies streaming past. The stench of everything. How did they . . . ?
“You were out cold,” Dinesh says. “But you looked so angelic. I thought: just let him sleep.”