She dropped her robe, lifted the sheet, and slipped into the bed with me. Pressing her warm body to mine, she kissed me, running her hands through my hair as she did. I wasn’t about to ask her a third time what she was doing in my room.

“Are you crazy coming here?” I asked breathlessly in her ear a while later. “What if he wakes up and finds you gone?”

“We sleep in different rooms,” she said, her upper lip glistening with perspiration. “And he took a sleeping draught.”

“What about the servants?”

“They don’t sleep here. They have their own rooms behind the old carriage house.”

“Still …”

She put a finger to my lips to silence me, then replaced it with a kiss. And just like that, we began all over again.

SUNDAY, JULY 13, 1975, 7:27 A.M.

I woke up early and stepped out for a run Sunday morning. I covered five miles or so, exploring Koregaon Park’s picturesque lanes and North Main Road. As I went, I replayed in my head the passionate night I’d spent with Sushmita. The surprise of it, coupled with the danger we’d taken, only made it that much more delicious. And unforgettable.

I had my bath, dressed, then, around half past ten, slunk into the drawing room, where I hoped I’d be able to maintain my poker face.

“Danny Boy, come join us,” said Willy. He was sitting on the divan with a tall glass of something cool. Across from him on a hanging swing chair suspended from the ceiling sat a large obese man in a Western shirt and pants. Sushmita was nowhere in sight. “I want to introduce you to my business associate, Chhotu.”

“Don’t get up,” I said, once I’d noticed him struggling to free himself from the chair. “I’m Dan. Danny.”

Chhotu offered a broad smile, showing a set of brilliant white teeth. “Pleased to meet you, Dan,” he said in the plummiest British accent I’d ever heard. There were minute traces of his Indian origins in his exaggerated speech, but the overall impression he gave was of George Sanders, slimy but well spoken.

“Chhotu is passing through Poona on business,” said Willy. “Arrived on the morning train from Calcutta.”

I sat on the other end of the divan. “That’s a long ride. No flights available?”

“I’m too fat for airplane seats,” he said. I must have appeared taken aback, because he added that he was only taking the piss out of me. He spoke deliberately, with great attention to his pronunciation, which made expressions like “taking the piss” all the more jarring to my American ear.

Willy slapped his knee and laughed. “Do you know that Chhotu’s real name is Debajyoti? Debajyoti Goswami. A beautiful name. And yet he’s known as Chhotu.”

“I don’t understand.”