She was too tired to barter, so she nodded and tried to focus on why she had come. If she thought of the trip as a trial, a test of sorts, perhaps she could be brave, stay calm. The driver pulled away from the curb and Josie looked out the window. They had driven for about twenty minutes when the lush green surrounding the airport began to change. In the taxi’s headlights, she could make out the mass of electrical lines that twisted and kinked throughout the towering palm trees. There were brightly colored billboards advertising movie starlets and laundry soap and fruit sodas, and Josie held her face close to the open window and tried to read the words as they sped by, but the road was narrow, and when the few trucks and cars that passed came frighteningly close to the taxi, the outside heat and exhaust and dust rushed in through the open window and into her nose and mouth. She could taste the place. It was tangible and animate, and she realized that the only other time she felt so absolutely cradled in space was when Devesh and she played. Then, too, she could literally feel the air press her temples, invade her lungs, squeeze her belly. She felt simultaneously compressed and expanded, and she was filled with something bright and hot and restless.

She opened her mouth and let the air rush deep within her. Before, India had been something foreign and faraway, one corner of Devesh she chose to peek at with a kind of curious apprehension, but now she wondered how she had ever thought she knew him. She had kept herself from him, but she had also kept him from her. The thought made her heart hurt. He would be right in not loving her. She had made a mess of them, and what was the point of hanging on to something this tangled and knotted? Perhaps he had let her go the last time they spoke, or, worse yet, perhaps he was seeing someone else. Her chest ached, and she leaned back against the seat and stared at the statue of Lakshmi until they reached the hotel.

When they arrived, she could smell the ocean before she could see it, and she was surprised at how, if she closed her eyes, she could think herself in Santa Barbara. She exited the cab and looked at the hotel. It was a sand-colored six-story building with rusty metal balconies and wide picture windows, and she craned her head and tried to see the beach beyond it.

“This way,” the driver said. She followed him inside, and he handed her bags to a bellhop in full uniform.

“Madam,” the driver said again.

“Oh, right.” She paid him and walked slowly through the lobby. Everything seemed thick and dark, heavy wood furniture with maroon velvet upholstery, sprawling carpets in deep reds and blues and browns.