I was sitting with two young men—domestic help or restaurant workers—traveling back to their village with two great trunks in tow. They offered me water and some wada pao they’d picked up as a treat in the station. It must have been an extravagance for them, since I knew these kids saved every anna and paisa for their families back home. Yet I couldn’t very well refuse their generosity. I tucked in.

Managing to communicate some details of their situation, they told me they were brothers, heading back home to visit their gao—their village—after almost two years working in Bombay. A third brother would meet them at the Poona station, then they’d all board a different train going north. They said they would take turns sitting up to guard their belongings from thieves, until they arrived in Patna a day or two later. Their father would meet them there with a bullock cart to take them and their trunks the rest of the way.

When the train pulled into Lonavala shortly after two in the morning, I thanked them for their hospitality and wished them a safe journey.

The rain was holding off but threatening. The night was warm, not hot, with a pleasant breeze blowing from the west. In the line of taxis, a few drivers were sleeping on the hoods of their cars, legs folded over knees as if they were lying back and reading. I knocked on the fender of the first taxi in the queue, gently at first, then a bit more insistently to wake him. The driver rolled off the car and climbed inside. I got in the back and told him where to go. To a little hotel about a kilometer from Sushmita’s bungalow.

The rain began to fall as we drove. The driver left me on the side of the road, in front of the hotel, and I watched him chug off.

Once I was alone, I made for the bungalow, walking the rest of the way in the rain. No umbrella, no coat. I prayed she’d be there, or I was in for a cold, wet night.

I hadn’t miscalculated. The white Mercedes was parked in its usual spot. At a quarter to three, shoes waterlogged and clothes soaked to the skin, I stepped up to the door and knocked.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The door cracked open and I slipped inside. She threw herself against me, kissing me as I held her tight.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” she said breathless in my ear.

I told her I’d almost missed her message, but eventually the penny dropped.

“No one followed you? What about the taxi?”

“He left me outside a small hotel. I walked the last kilometer. No one saw me.”