do?” Katy asked.
We’d only sprinted a few yards, but my heart was thumping like I'd run the hundred-meter dash. I looked around me. This wasn’t the best hiding spot, but the men couldn’t walk in without others noticing. For now.
“We can stay here until they get tired of looking.”
Katy didn’t look convinced.
“I’ve done this before—outwaited Ashok, I mean.”
“This is your plan?”
“Do you have a better one?”
She shook her head.
I pulled a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and wiped the floor nearest the handicapped stall. I plunked down my backpack and sat on my bag. Katy watched me, threw down her suitcase next to mine, sat on it with a thump and put her chin on her hands.
Every fifteen minutes, I snuck toward the washroom door to see if the coast was clear. After an hour, Jose and Dick disappeared, maybe to haunt another part of the airport, leaving Ashok to keep vigil at the main departure area.
He was sitting on his haunches on the floor at the back, with a mobile phone in his hands. Though he couldn’t speak, all he had to do was dial a number when he spotted us and the others would be after us in a flash.
“Do you think they saw us?” Katy asked.
“Don’t think so,” I said. “Dick and Jose wouldn’t leave him alone like that if they knew we’re in here.”
“He can’t sit like that forever,” Katy said.
“Oh, trust me, he can wait for a long time.”
“What if they’re still here tomorrow morning?”
“We’ll think of something,” I said, settling on my bag.
We sat silently for a few minutes.
“You know what?” Katy said, studying the ceiling with a distant look on her face, “I’ve lived in the same place…in the same country, the same city, the same neighborhood all my life. This is my home.”
“Home?” I whispered, realizing I didn’t know what that word meant. By then, I’d lived on three continents, in as many countries, and with as many families. I had no idea where home was anymore.
“I’m giving it all up and coming on this crazy trip halfway around the world with you,” Katy was saying.
“Well, he did one good thing.”
“Who?”
“Jos—” I caught myself. “I mean, that guy….”
“Him?” Katy’s faced flushed red. “You mean that mean, lying bastard?”
She’s being generous, I thought. “What I meant to say was,” I said quickly, “it’s a good thing you got your passport. Otherwise, we'd have had to think of something else.”
“Where’d we go, then? The North Pole to see Santa Claus? Since Mom died, I don’t have anyone to go to.”
“Me neither—just you and my cousin Preeti.”
“You can’t wait to see her, eh?”
I nodded.
“What are we going to do when we get there?”
“We'll figure something out,” I said. “Maybe we'll get our own place, the three of us.”
“In Goa?”
“Or Tanzania,” I said. That’s my home, I thought. My home was where my parents lay buried and where I had to return, eventually.
A glint came to Katy’s eyes. “Hey, maybe we can start a business and charge money to give a good whopping to men who treat their girlfriends bad.”
“That’d be illegal but fun.”
“A good whopping to their cars then. I’ve got experience on that front now.”
“Still illegal,” I said. “But I bet we’d make a ton of money.”
“We could get some cool uniforms, you know, like Wonder Woman.”
“With red heels.”
“And ankle bracelets. I want one like yours.”
“Preeti gave this to me before I left. I’ll ask her where she got it.”
Seconds became minutes and minutes became hours. Katy and I had all the time in the world now, to chitchat about the past and our imagined future.
Women came into the stalls and left. After a while, we began to see a pattern. There was a time when most flights departed, bringing in a rush of women desperate for a last-minute pee break before they got on the plane. Some women marched in, did their job, and left. Others stayed for fifteen minutes, brushing their teeth, washing their faces, grooming their hair, touching up their makeup. Most ignored us in the corner. One old lady asked if we were okay. A few glared at us, especially during those packed times, when there was little space for the lineup.
We settled against the wall, tired and hungry, but safe for the moment.
Sometime after midnight, Katy drifted off to sleep. I was exhausted too but couldn’t sleep. My brain kept spinning, thinking of the hair-brained schemes those men might try to get inside the women’s washroom.
They could barrel their way in with guns or they could slip in disguised as cleaners or airport officials. After that last thought, any woman in a uniform, from cleaners to stewards to pilots who happened to stroll in through the doors, looked highly suspicious to me.
I kept a sharp eye open all night.