I SPENT ALL Monday and Tuesday waiting for calls from Charlie or Chrystie or some repercussions from Friday night’s near-fight with Monsieur Donneaux. None came. Nurse Donna told me Charlie had flown off on embassy business and wouldn’t be back until late Tuesday or Wednesday in time for his Thanksgiving Day dinners. There were numerous dinners, private and official, and now for sure I would not attend any of them.
The call I wanted was from Holika. I couldn’t call her. It didn’t come. What I did receive was a handwritten, hand-delivered note from Cécile Donneaux.
Dear Mr. Downs,
I am writing to apologize for the behavior of my husband, Olivier, on Friday of last week. It was most unfortunate that he did not speak with me before he talked to you. I can only say that we will not break your confidence, or approach you about this subject again.
I hope you will forgive him. I hope we see you again at temple.
Sincerely,
Cécile Donneaux
Embarrassed by the whole conflagration, I called and left a brief message on the machine. It didn’t matter anyway. It was only a matter of time before the press would find me.
Then, just after five on Tuesday, the phone rang. It was Matt. The operator knew he was safe to pass through to me.
His voice spit out in his usual fast pace even at 7:30 a.m. New York time. “Yo, bro, listen, I got an idea for us to take advantage of your situation in India.”
“Matt, I’m not in the mood.”
“C’mon. Play along. Money is good and this is about money. Now, what does India have more of than almost any other country?”
“OK, Socrates, I give up. What?”
“Over … one … billion.…”
“People.”
“Exactly.”
“And people die. And what do American medical schools and research hospitals have a dire shortage of?”
“Corpses to do experiments?”
“Smarter and smarter. Dead bodies, man, that’s the ticket. You think you could start researching this so when I come visit …”
“You are one sick motherfucker.”
“No, I am a committed capo-nihilist looking to make megabucks. I’m too old for computers and too thick anyway, so I’m just hustling to make my nut to retire in style. Hey, what’s the U.S. got more of than any other country? I’ll answer for ya. Lawyers.”
Not one month after Castor was buried, the parents of Bobby Skirpan, the leader of the kids who murdered my son, filed a civil lawsuit against St. Vincent’s Hospital and me. They claimed that I had neglected their son in favor of Castor and the sons and daughters of those their son had murdered in cold blood.
It was a depraved fantasy. That day I didn’t know his name, much less that he was a killer and racist, when I ordered each person to be taken care of in the order I thought best.
My lawyers (Oy, I hate that phrase), I mean the lawyers of the hospital, asked for a summary dismissal.
“Neil, dismissal denied. They asked for an extension and the judge gave it to them. They already asked to depose you.”
“Man, can’t they … this is sick.”
“Your lawyer guys will be calling you soon. There’s another one gonna handle this now.”
I’d dealt with four different lawyers already. Although Matt urged me to hire my own lawyers, I’d decided to let the hospital lawyers represent me for now.
“Matt, gimme the numbers.”
“They said fifty-fifty chance of success. With the lawyer discount, you’re fucked.”
In Matt’s Discount Theory, lawyers had the least credibility of anyone except politicians with law degrees. You could only believe 0.5 percent of what they said.
We made plans to speak soon, and I hung up the phone. A little later, as I was going over some paperwork, Holika, unannounced, knocked on my door and waltzed in with her hair up, dressed in a one-piece cotton gray sleeveless dress, with a dark-red cashmere shawl wrapped around her brown shoulders. Until I saw Indian women in shawls, I always associated shawls with Russian babushkas slumped over a stove in a dark kitchen. Holika wore her shawl like a cape; a weapon of the toreador taunting her bull. “Charlie told me you were usually done by now.”
“He’s back?”
“Yes, just this afternoon. I took tea with Chrystie, the British ambassador’s wife and the third and youngest Mrs. Hal Burden.” She waited a beat before she tweaked me. “You Americans have invented a new form of legal polygamy for men.” She curled her nose and giggled. “I felt the inspiration that you would be most pleased to see me.”
“Most pleased since I just had an awful day. Please don’t say I look it.”
The phone rang again. The operator said it was another long-distance call from the States. She thought it was the lawyers. She put them through.
Holika sat in the chair in front of my desk.
“I gotta deal with this.”
She smiled, “No problem. Take your time. I am not going anywhere else tonight.”
I heard the phone click. “Hello, you there?”
“Please hold for Bunny Lemaster.”
“Who?” This was a familiar name, but no one I’d spoken to before.
“Neil, this is Bunny Lemaster of DWI—Distinguished Writers International—once a screenwriters and authors agency and now the largest arts entertainment agency in the world calling from our New York office.” The voice, craggy and assertive, sounded lousy, laden with cigarette smoke and breath spray. Suddenly, dingdong, I remembered why the name sounded familiar. The tabloid media and the New York Times tabbed Bunny Lemaster as the most powerful agent in the “entertainment arts.” Lemaster’s name, when attached to a “project”—books, movies, TV programs, you name it—made the project golden.
Two books and at least one TV movie were in development about the killings. Sarah and I decided to let people do or say whatever they wanted. We’d never participate in such farces. Others had tried to talk to me through friends, the hospital, but no one had found me in India.
“Listen, some people may cower or celebrate at your call. I am not …”
“Please, Neil, let us not make rash decisions in haste,” Lemaster coolly interrupted me with the pitch already in place and shifted into a speaking voice, not sophisticated and haughty, but with the street-corner charm of the local Queens drug dealer. “I am not so crass as everyone says, and don’t be in such a rush to brush me off. Wait until you hear who I have sitting here, the Oscar-winning actor Fred Henry and Emmy award-winning writer Ally Sendar and they want to do a project on how America now thrives so vicariously through the tragedies of others and you handled the terror with such savoir faire.”
“Savoir fare-well,” I sighed, and put down the phone.
Holika circled to the back of my desk, stood behind me and rubbed my temples. “About your son?” I nodded as her small hands gently caressed my head and then she leaned over and whispered, “Come, we must go to some place quiet. Safe without a phone to disturb you.”
Safe, yes safe. How I needed to hear those words.
Holika rubbed my temples for another minute before she stopped, picked up the phone, and started dialing. “I’m calling the Taj Palace Hotel.” She handed me the receiver. “Get a room. If it is booked, tell them you are calling at the behest of Charlie and Chrystie. There’s always a saved room.”
I did as she asked, and then she gave me more instructions. I told Chandon to take the car home and gave him and Vishnu the night off. I’d take a taxi to the hotel. Holika had given her driver the night off as well.
“Do you always think so fast or did you have all this planned?” I asked.
“I think fast and sometimes act fast and sometimes slow and … Do not jump to any conclusions. I will see you in an hour or so. Order something festive.”
I took a taxi, checked into a fine room, and ordered champagne and smoked salmon. I hadn’t had salmon since I’d landed in India.
When she arrived around 7:30 and before I opened the bottle, she made a call on her cell phone. “Uncle, it is me, I will not be coming tonight. Preeya is feeling down so I am going to stay with her for awhile.”
Holika lived in the duality between ancient traditions and the unstoppable rush to modernity. Like so many Indian families, in the villages and the cities, all the generations lived together in one home. “Home” meant one of the houses in the Ashoka Road compound owned by Uncle Vijay, the patriarch of the family. Holika’s father, mother, brother, and younger sister lived in the second largest house.
She said goodbye and clicked off the phone. “These days my Uncle starts drinking every night around seven and soon he forgets everything. By tomorrow, he will not remember I did not come. And Preeya, who is a trusted friend whom you must meet some time, knows how to back me up and I will see her tomorrow. We are working on something together.”
“What?”
“Something we do for India and women’s rights,” she said perfunctorily, and kicked off her shoes and curled up on the comfy blue velvet love seat and its three oversized silk pillows. I opened the champagne and poured us each a glass. “Come, sit.” She patted the love seat and I sat down. Her head rested on the pillows and her legs relaxed over my lap. We toasted wordlessly. I caressed her bare legs with my left hand. She sat up a bit and I thought that was a sign to stop. She moved her legs as if I should continue. “Please, it feels good. But you must tell me about your son.” She wasn’t prying or being voyeuristic. She wanted to understand.
“What do you know?”
“Does it matter? Only what the papers and magazines wrote. I do not care about that. Just talk to me.”
“It won’t be very amusing.”
“You have amused me before and I am sure you will again.”
For the first time since he had died, I spoke of Castor.
“I feel his missing presence every day. All the time. Even before, waiting for you, I turned on the TV to ESPN—I used to joke with Castor that it should be called the Extra Sensory Perception Network because they had the results so fast—they were advertising their Thanksgiving pre-game show for the football doubleheader. I had to turn it off. Every year I tried to get off work on Thanksgiving so we could watch together. The Lions and then the Cowboys.” It didn’t matter that football was as foreign to her as cricket was to me. I rambled on and on. Not making much sense, but that day I realized it was the future that I had lost and missed as much as the past. I could live in the images of what was. I could only imagine the images of what was not, never to be. Sarah and I would never see Castor get Bar Mitzvahed, graduate high school, run off to college as we held our nerves in check in fear for his safety, console him after his heart got broken, get married, make crummy life decisions, go off to travel abroad by himself. Never see him have children. I would miss so many little pleasures and torments of life. I would never again think, I am the proud father of Castor Downs.
Finally, tired and tipsy and teary-eyed, I ran out of confessional gas.
“I have never loved anyone as much as you love Castor and Sarah.”
“Sarah? I hardly mentioned her.”
“You did not say her name once, but she is everywhere by her absence. It is almost as if you are mourning for her, too, but she is not dead. You do not have to pretend that for me.”
I remembered that self-assured and unreadable smile I first saw in my office when we were introduced, unaware of what she hid behind it. That night the smile became less inscrutable and filled with compassionate wisdom.
“And what is that? And what of you?”
“There will be time for me.” She squirmed around in the love seat and placed her head on my lap. Her eyes now glinting, sucking out my sadness, then I bent over and kissed her and I lost myself in her mouth, her hair. When we came up for air, she sat up.
“Are you prepared?”
I was dumbfounded and for a second, unsure of what she meant. Her swirling tongue reached out of her mouth to her upper lip, and her eyes waited, giggled at me. It had been years since I needed to worry about that question. “No,” I said numbly.
“Men,” she spit out the word and shook her head, “you are the same all over.”