She led me straight to the bedroom. There was no light at all. Not even a candle or a diya. Everything was dark. I resisted all temptation to sleep. Sushmita pressed against me as if she never wanted to let me go. We lay together that way for hours, for the rest of the night.

In the morning, light streamed through the window from the east. She rose and pulled the curtain closed, shrouding the room in darkness once again. The world was gone. We slept hard. We slept late, neither of us wanting to leave our shelter, anonymous and invisible once again.

“When do you need to go back to Bombay?” she asked as we nibbled on a bag of sev—a kind of thin crispy fried-noodle snack. It’s customary to eat it with chaat, bhel, pani puri, or something similar. It was the only thing Sushmita had brought with her from Poona, so it was our feast.

“My boss is in Goa until Sunday night. I’m a free man until Monday morning.”

“We can get into a lot of trouble by then.”

“We’ll need to get some food,” I said, pouring some sev into my right hand and chucking it back into my mouth.

“Let’s always remember sev and this place,” she said, smiling as she crunched away.

“I’ll never think of anyplace but here when I eat sev. Scout’s honor.” I gave her the three-finger salute.

When we finally decided we’d slept enough, we got up and moved to the drawing room. There, still in our one pair of pajamas—I wore the bottom and she the top—we lay on the daybed and lazed for another couple of hours.

We avoided talking about Willy. I was happy to put off thoughts of him for several reasons, mainly because Harlan and Ranjit were itching for an answer. Was I actually considering their proposal?

I imagined Ranjit wondering what had happened to me. I’d gone to a party in the penthouse and never returned. Maybe he’d worry that Bikas had found me. I didn’t care. No one knew where I was. No one but Sushmita, and she wasn’t telling.

That afternoon—no idea what time it was—Sush took the car and went to buy some supplies for the next two or three days. She reminded me that I couldn’t go with her; an Indian woman with a gora would attract attention we didn’t need. So I waited, like a prisoner, as a long time passed. I felt like one of those dogs whose life stops when his owner is out.

But she returned, amply provisioned for the duration. Now we had no reason to leave the bungalow until the eleventh hour on Sunday. And then the rain began to pour down as a reminder that inside was our only option anyway.