* * *
—
That’s when she saw him.
Sunny.
Standing stiff in the lobby in a boxy navy suit and gray tie, his face fixed in pensive solemnity. He was playing with his BlackBerry. Her pulse quickened and her stomach dropped.
“Ah,” Dinesh said, “my dining partner.”
Sunny looked up with the same poker face from Khan Market, glanced at Dinesh, at her, back down at his phone.
She felt a wave of nausea. And anger.
“Neda Kapur,” Dinesh Singh said, “this is Sunny Wadia.”
Sunny didn’t look up.
“Neda is a journalist,” Dinesh said.
“Good for her,” Sunny replied. “Shall we?”
Dinesh squeezed Sunny on the shoulder. “My friend here is shy.”
“And shyness makes him rude, which is an unfortunate trait.”
“Our table’s waiting,” Sunny said.
“He seems to have woken on the worst side of the bed. But please, do get in touch. Arrange that trip. And if you need anything, anything at all, just call me.”
“Thank you.”
“Now forgive me,” Dinesh said, as Sunny turned away, “but I have to ask, what will you write?”
“Don’t worry,” she said, glancing at Sunny, “standard boilerplate.” She looked back to Dinesh and smiled. “There’s no reason to make an enemy of you. Yet.”
He laughed. “I look forward to your call.”
And he was gone, leading Sunny away. She watched them gliding toward the hotel’s Japanese restaurant, waiting for either one of them to look back. Neither did.
* * *
—
What had she expected from Sunny? Civility at least? It felt cruel, the way he’d spoken. Though some part of her took heart from this—he cared enough. She walked outside the front doors, past the metal detectors, and lit a cigarette. She found her valet ticket, handed it over, and waited for her car. The cigarette was almost finished when her Maruti came creaking and chugging up the driveway and she thought of Sunny’s words, how she can waltz in anywhere, but with the knowledge of that now pointed out to her, she became self-conscious, she felt ashamed.
* * *
—
Just as she was about to get into her car she heard a voice behind her.
“Ms. Kapur?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Amit.” He issued an ingratiating smile. In his outstretched hand was a hotel key card wallet. “Mr. Wadia wishes to inform you he’ll be late for your meeting.”
“Our meeting?”
“In his suite.”
She covered her surprise.
“How late?”
“No longer than an hour.”
“An hour?”
She made a show of anger, but secretly she was thrilled. “That’s difficult for me, Amit.” She took the card. “But I’ll manage. Which number?”
“Eight hundred.”
Amit ordered the valet to return her car and swept her toward the lobby. “I’ll escort you inside.” She was waved through the metal detectors. “Mr. Wadia told me to tell you to make yourself at home.”
He led her across the lobby toward a waiting elevator.
She strained her neck to look inside the restaurant.
“If you’d like something else, I’m more than happy to help. This is my card, my personal number, call me anytime.”
“Thank you, Amit,” she said as she took his card and stepped into the elevator.
“Mr. Wadia’s Business Suite,” Amit said to the operator.
As they ascended, she was glad for the drabness of her work clothes, and the alibi they offered against the accusations in the operator’s eyes.
* * *
—
The key card clicked open to suite 800, it was adorned with the usual luxurious anonymity, mosaic marble, a mahogany writing desk, a spacious living area, an office, a bedroom off to the side. There was none of the standard paraphernalia of hospitality though, no complimentary fruit basket, no wine bottle with a “personalized” note; the suite had been lived in, it was tense with Sunny’s presence. Books, magazines. The writing desk in the corner spilling over with work, books on urban planning and history, architectural blueprints, logo designs. She leafed through the various sheets: the precise layout of a three-story mall, a pencil sketch of an elegant low-rise building sweeping across a hillside. Another showed a large, squat, modernist art gallery on a wide, reed-banked river, a sanitized, beautified version of the Yamuna. Below it, an architect’s rendering of a riverbank full of smiling modern Indians, eating ice cream, holding hands, while corporate buildings and trams loomed in the background. There was an open notebook to the side, pencil set crosswise, but the handwriting, a mixture of Hindi and English, was utterly indecipherable.