“You’re sick.”
He just stares and smiles.
“There’s something wrong in your head,” she goes on. “What I have to do, that’s business. But why do it to her?”
“I didn’t know you were such a dyke,” he says.
“You don’t know me at all. You know she’s never going to speak to me again.”
“What do I care?”
“No mames, güey.” She pulls her dress on, gathers her panties and bra in her hand, heads to the door. “I’ve never met someone as sick as you.”
“Fucking rug muncher,” he says.
“Chinga tu madre! Suck my dick!”
“Suck mine,” he replies.
She throws open the door.
“No, really,” he says, in a cold distant voice. “Suck my dick or I shut your restaurant down, then I throw you out of that apartment and get your visa revoked.”
She freezes at the door. “You can’t do that.”
“You know I can.”
She turns to face him. “Why would you?”
“My cock’s not good enough, is that it?”
“Why are you doing this?” she whispers.
“Because you’re a whore.”
“You can’t do this to people.” She shakes her head. Then walks out the door.
* * *
—
Eli is perched on the metal counter in the staff kitchen sipping a Nescafé when he sees Teresa fleeing on the CCTV screen that hangs in the corner. He rotates his aching pellet-ridden shoulder, where the brunt of the shotgun blast was felt, and mutters to himself. “Fucking Sunny Wadia.” He turns to the chefs. “You see nothing, OK!”
Sunny’s bedroom door has been a source of great entertainment for the chefs in recent months. Eli has observed how they glance toward the monitor reflexively while they work. Another screen, in the other corner, is trained on the entrance to the ballroom, but that doesn’t distract them at all. Sunny’s bedroom is where the magic happens.
Now this morning they’re rewarded by the sight of a half-naked foreign girl running away.
They grin at one another in reflected glory.
“Savages,” Eli says.
He jumps down from the counter, winces at the remnants of pain. The broken collarbone, the collapsed lung.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” the doctor had said.
He hadn’t felt lucky, waking in that hospital, not knowing if Sunny was dead, having to explain himself to the family, feigning amnesia for a while. He hadn’t considered himself lucky until he heard Sunny was recovered alive. Until he managed to retrieve the file from the hidden compartment in his car.
Still, he’d been in the doghouse for a while. He’d expected to be fired. He’d thought about quitting too. But he discovered he couldn’t leave Sunny behind. He needed to see this thing through.
Oh shit.
On the screen: Maria marching away.
It takes forty-two seconds to reach Sunny’s room. Sixty measured steps. Eli counts each one, hands clasped behind his back. He passes the girl on the twenty-seventh, nods to her respectfully as she wipes her eyes, and when he reaches the door he draws a breath, covers his own eyes, peeks through the fingers. “Knock, knock,” he calls, “safe to come in?”
He waits to be screamed at.
When no sound materializes, he pushes the door open a little. Tries to make light of it all. “Sunny Wadia, last night of freedom, feeling like lion? Yes?”
But inside he sees Sunny on the edge of the bed, a rolled-up note shoved into his nose and a line of blue powder resting on a small mirror below.
“Oh no, my friend!” Eli rushes forward. “This is not normal.”
By the time he reaches Sunny, the blue line has been vacuumed.
“What is this? You snort Xanax now? You are crazy.” Eli snatches the mirror as Sunny slumps back and closes his eyes. “How much you take?”
Eli searches Sunny’s robe pockets for the pack. “You’re sweating tequila, baba! Why like this? Do I need get flumazenil?”
“Flumazenil,” Sunny slurs.
“You go to temple in three hours.”
“Gurdwara . . .”
“Temple, Gurdwara. Whatever. God is looking at you. Papa looking at me.”
“Leave me. . . .”
“Come. We take cold shower.”
He hauls Sunny’s mass toward the bathroom.
Heaves him into the shower cubicle.
Turns the jets on cold.
* * *
—
Eli doesn’t flinch at Sunny’s drug-fueled nakedness, his rolls of fat, his fresh scars. He removes his own wallet and phone, gets into the shower fully dressed after him. Grabs the soap and begins to scrub.