I stand in front of the clinic for a minute. One of the prostitutes—she looks no older than thirteen—starts to walk toward me and I can’t stand the thought that she thinks I’m a client, so I shove open the door to the clinic. The door swings open, right onto an old woman crouched just inside. There are people everywhere, with homemade bandages, and listless babies, napping on pallets on the floor. They’re camped all up the cement stairs and all around the waiting room, giving new meaning to the term.
“Are you Willem?” From behind the glass partition a no-nonsense Indian woman in a lab coat is looking at me. Two seconds later, she opens the door to the waiting room. I feel all the eyes turn to me. The woman says something in Hindi or Marathi and there is much silent nodding, giving new meaning to the term patient, too.
“I’m Doctor Gupta,” she says, her voice brisk, efficient but warm. “I work with your mother. Let me go find her. Would you like some tea?”
“No thank you.” I have the sickening feeling that everyone else is in on a joke but me.
“Good, good. Wait here.”
She leads me to a small windowless room with a ripped gurney, and a rush of memory overtakes me. The last time I was in a hospital: Paris. The time before that: Amsterdam. Yael had called me at my dorm, very early that morning, telling me to come. Bram was sick.
I couldn’t understand the urgency. I’d seen him not a week before. He’d been a little off his game, a sore throat, but Yael was tending to him with her usual teas and tinctures. I had an exam that day. I asked if I could come after.
>“Safer to assume it’ll take double,” Mukesh says. “I’ll see what I can do.”
We hang up and I pick up my script. Faruk has written English translations above the Hindi and someone has made me a tape recording of the Hindi. I spend the afternoon repeating the lines.
When I’m done, I pace the room for a bit. It’s all modern and posh, with a bathtub and a shower and a wide double bed. I haven’t slept somewhere this nice in ages, and it’s a little too quiet, a little too pristine. I sit on the bed, watch Hindi TV just to have some company. I order dinner in my room. That night when I go to bed, I find I can’t sleep. The bed is too soft, too big, after so many years of sleeping on trains, in cars, on bunkbeds, sofas, futons, Ana Lucia’s cramped bed. Now I’m like one of those rescued shipwrecked men who, once rescued and back in civilization, can only sleep on the floor.
Friday I wake up and practice my lines again. The shoot doesn’t start for three more days, and they stretch in front of me, endlessly, like the gray blue sea out my window. When my phone rings, I am embarrassed by my relief.
“Willem, Mukesh here. I have news about your flights.”
“Great.”
“So soonest I can get you out is April.” He tells me some dates.
“What? Why so long?”
“What can I say? All the flights are booked until then. Easter.”
Easter? In a Hindu/Muslim country? I sigh. “You’re sure there’s nothing sooner? I don’t mind paying a bit extra.”
“Nothing to be done. I did the best I could.” He sounds a bit insulted when he says the last bit.
“What about booking me a new flight?”
“Really, Willem, it is only a matter of weeks, and flights are expensive this time of year, and also full.” His voice has gone scolding. “It is just a few extra days.”
“Can you keep looking? See if any seats open up?”
“Certainly! Will do.”
I hang up and try to fight off the sense of impending doom. I’d thought the film would keep me here a few extra days, all of them in a hotel. Now I’m stuck. I remind myself that I don’t need to stay in Mumbai past the shoot. Nash and Tasha and Jules are going to Goa for a few days if they can cobble the cash together. Maybe I’ll go with them. Maybe I’ll even pay.
I send Jules a text: Is Goa still a go?
She texts back: Only if I don’t kill N&T. Last night unbearably loud. You are a traitor for deserting.
I look around my hotel room where last night it was unbearably quiet. I take a shot of the view from the balcony and send it to Jules. It’s quiet here. And there’s room for two if you want to desert, I write.
I like dessert, she texts back. Tell me where you are.
A few hours later, there’s a knock at the door. I open it and Jules comes in. She admires the view and hops on the bed. She picks up the script from the coffee table.
“Want to run lines?” I ask. “There’s English translations.”
She smiles. “Sure.”