Follows Sunny inside.
No one there, no guards to stop him.
Inside. Silent and cool. Two sets of marble stairs curving either side of the enormous hall, in which an exquisite thirty-meter Persian rug stretched toward an ornamental pool. On the wall, a portrait of Bunty fifteen feet tall. In the distance, a few servants walking back and forth.
Ajay follows his instincts. Half-remembered memories of blueprints, plans. Heads up the right-hand staircase to a mezzanine floor, turns right again and pushes open a leather-paneled door.
Before him, a maze of corridors. All empty, cool, echoing, hung with artworks. He walks slowly, silently pressing the marble with his feet, expecting to be stopped anytime, not caring either way. He passes door after closed door, hears the displaced sound of laughter. He walks past a snooker room. Another full of arcade games and pinball machines. Empty, unused. But the laughter grows.
He finds its source.
An industrial kitchen with three chefs inside. One of them is miming a story. Someone running away. They keep laughing and look up at a video screen in the corner of the room. Then they see Ajay and stop. He stands in the door, but he doesn’t see them. He’s staring at a jar of fig jam, a hunk of Parma ham, a slab of cheddar cheese.
He remembers that combination.
One of Sunny’s favorite sandwiches.
Only, the ham is cut too thin, they should be using Gruyère for cheese.
He steps in and they look at him, startled. This strange, almost familiar uniform, this drawn and weathered face. “Who are you? What do you want?”
A mild alarm.
He doesn’t answer.
He only walks to the sink, pulls back his sleeves, washes his hands.
Says, “You’re making it wrong.”
* * *
—
Refreshed from a nap, a joint, and a dab of speed, Eli dresses in a fresh floral-print shirt. He’s looking forward to the reception tonight; he’s decided something important, something liberating. In the morning he’ll resign. This shit has gone on too long. His babysitting days are done.
Time to go to the kitchen and grab a beer.
* * *
—
The first thing he sees are the chefs.
Standing horrified, agape.
Then the man at the counter destroying the slices of bread.
Swiping them back and forth with the butter knife until they fall apart.
Then the ham cut roughly.
Slapped onto the bread with furious hands.
Hands that smother the bread.
Hands that pause, clench into fists, raise the plate in the air and bring it down.
Shattered plate on the countertop.
Silence.
“Go wait outside,” Eli says to the chefs. “Now.”
“Ajay?”
Eli holds his hand out slow, as if Ajay were a lost animal returned from the wild.
“Remember me? It’s Eli. Your friend.”
He watches Ajay take a long deep breath.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Eli says. “This isn’t the place for you. But I understand. I get it. They did you wrong. Why don’t you and me we take a walk. Go outside. Sit on the roof maybe. So long as you don’t push me off. Are you listening to me?”
“Where is he?” Ajay says.
Eli wags his finger. “That’s not your problem anymore.”
“Where?”
“Ajay, do I need worry about you?”
Ajay turns to look at him, and in turning his eye passes up to the TV screen.
And there he is: Sunny Wadia. Walking down the corridor, gliding into his bedroom. Without warning, Ajay is off, toward the kitchen door, and Eli is surprised to find himself backing away, letting Ajay pass. The chefs outside grow in alarm. “Find Tinu,” Eli says. “Now.”
* * *
—
“You have to tell me,” Eli says, overtaking him, walking backward while Ajay searches single-mindedly for Sunny’s room, “are you doing something crazy? If you do something crazy . . .” He doesn’t finish his words.
Ajay keeps marching.
“Maybe you want to kill him. Really I don’t blame you. I want to kill him myself sometimes.”
Looking left and right.
Turning into the corridor.
Seeing the door.
Eli puts his hand out. “I know what they do to you,” he says. “I know what they do. And is not right.”
Ajay comes to a halt.
Eli stands between him and the door.
He drops the smile from his face.
Adopts a fighting stance.
“Let him in,” Sunny says from the door.
4.
In the guesthouse, Farah wastes no time getting her people settled in.
Strides around barking orders at servants and family alike, commandeering the Wadia staff with such natural authority they fall not only in line but in love.