Out of Order (12 page)

“I saw it,” Narvin said. “So did Attar, way up in Jaipur. In a city of sixteen million the odds probably aren’t as long as you’d wish. Then you add in the reward….”

Jason swallowed hard. “What do you think I should do?”

“If I were you,” Narvin said, running the wireless mouse across the desktop, clicking on the small box that closed the screen, “I’d watch my back.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Unfortunately my research has been focused on the effects of advanced transportation methods on traditional market patterns,” Rachel told the two men sitting on the bench seat across from their own. “But Dr. Talley here is the economics expert.”

The two men looked over at Jason, who squinted out from under the sweat-soaked towel that balanced on his head. He forced a weak smile before closing his eyes, the sweat burning as it seeped under his lashes.

It was sometime after midnight and most of the other benches in the second-class rail car had been converted into beds, thin blue curtains offering a limited degree of privacy and darkness. Unlike the first-class car, where the compartments consisted of two bench seats that opened to create a pair of bunk beds, Indian Rail engineers managed to squeeze in a third pair of beds that hung two feet from the car’s ceiling, suspended by thin chains wrapped in the same blue vinyl that covered the seats. Without checking their seat assignments Jason knew that that was where they would be spending the night.

“I’m afraid your friend doesn’t look well,” one of the berth’s other passengers said to Rachel, who turned sideways to see for herself. Jason pried open an eyelid and watched as she did a quick assessment. She noticed the dark sweat stains on his collar and the waxy sheen on his cheeks, but the light in the alcove was too dim for her to see the glazed look in his eyes. He was surprised that she didn’t notice that his left arm, which was right in front of her, was on fire, the stitches straining to contain what had to be molten lava that churned just under his skin.

After his chat with Narvin, Jason had lost interest in lounging by the pool and spent the rest of the evening packing and repacking the sari among his freshly laundered clothes. The banner-waving dance number in the movie had forced him to see the sari for what it really was, an elaborate scheme to smuggle computer secrets out of the U.S.

He had spread all six yards of the sari out on the king-sized bed in his room, the patternless portion trailing across the floor. The embroidery was limited to a yard-long section of the fabric, and Jason had noticed that for most women, this was the part of the sari that was draped over the left shoulder to hang at waist level. The pattern was far more intricate than he had recalled, with strand-thin lines jutting back and forth, all right angles in Etch-A-Sketch patterns. At random points the lines doubled back or stopped or shot across the fabric. Gold wire knots appeared sprinkled atop the silver embroidery, and here and there glass beads were worked in with asymmetrical care.

It would be easy to mistake the complex design for the traditional needlework that appeared on the more elaborate saris he had seen, easy to bring it out through customs without a single question asked. An Indian guy with a sari for his mother. What else could it be?

He knew what he was looking at, but he still didn’t know what it meant.

By the time Rachel came back from her shopping trip—hands filled with tiny bags of who knew what—Jason had finished with his packing. Head pounding, he slumped in a deep chair in the sitting room, his appetite gone and a queasy feeling settling in his stomach, certain it had nothing to do with his arm and everything to do with Narvin’s warnings. He perked up for the goodbye at Narvin’s front door but felt weak as the driver raced them back to Victoria Terminus. Inside the station, Rachel had left him propped up against a neo-gothic stone arch as she scurried about the tracks, taking pictures and gawking at grimy diesel engines caked with black grease and dirt. He guzzled down bottles of water but it took three cups of masala chai, served steamy hot in red clay cups, to quell the nausea. His arm was stiff and he was sure he heard it creak as they carried their bags aboard the second-class car of the Konkan Kanya Express that would run through the night to the seaside resort city of Goa.

It was more crowded here than it had been in first class but, even with his head swimming, Jason sensed that there was a camaraderie here that had been missing in the more expensive car. People laughed more, made room for each other in the tight passageway, treated strangers to more cups of tea or instant coffee. White-jacketed vendors squeezed past travelers crowding the aisle, stretching their legs before retiring for the evening. He smiled and nodded as people introduced themselves, but left the conversations to Rachel, who spun tales of foundation grants and doctoral theses.

It took five minutes and the help of his compartment mates for Jason to climb onto the shelf that was his assigned berth. A dim light burned in the passageway and in the half-darkness Jason could see Rachel in her bunk, her eyes wide as she chewed on her lower lip.

“We need a plan,” he thought he whispered.

“Shhh. It’s okay. You don’t have to yell, I can hear you fine.” She held her hand out across the compartment. He wanted to reach out to her, to touch her, hold her hand, maybe tell her the things he’d wanted to tell her for days, but the hot lava shot up his arm and his elbow refused to unbend.

“We need a plan,” he said again, not sure if he had heard the words himself.

Rachel leaned out of her bunk, her fingers brushing his cheek. “How you feeling?”

“We don’t have a plan. We gotta have a plan.”

He watched as Rachel sniffed and rubbed her eyes, the dust probably getting to her, he thought. “I’ve never had a plan and things have always worked out,” she said.

“You need a plan. Always have a plan. Plans are….” He paused and waited for the words to catch up. “Plans keep you from doing stupid things.”

From the bunk below he could hear the nasal snoring of a heavy sleeper, and down the passageway a tea vendor made one last silent pass. Rachel touched his cheek again, her fingers so cold he wanted to hold them to his lips to warm them. She drew her arm back and pushed her palms against her eyes.

“Sorry,” he heard her say, the words falling between the rhythmic clacks of the tracks.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “All ’cause of a damn sari.” He patted his backpack and pulled the makeshift pillow tight against his head.

Chapter Fifteen

Keeping his eyes closed behind his sunglasses, Jason felt around in his backpack until he found the plastic tube. He flipped open the top with his thumb and poured the sun block directly on his nose, rubbing it in with his fingers before snapping the container shut. He wiped the excess off on the back of his neck then patted his hand dry on the soft cotton bandage that covered his left forearm. Behind him, just above the sound of the waves, Bob Marley sang about redemption.

He tanned easily, a genetic flaw that meant he ended up spending more time in the sun than he really should. After three days on the beach, one and a half if you only counted the time he could remember, he had the dark tan of a winter-long German tourist. His arm still ached, but not as much as the spot where they had jammed in the needle, his knees tended to buckle a bit when he stood up and he needed a shave, but as he sat in the rented beach chair, his feet buried in the sand and a half-gallon jug of pineapple juice at his side, he knew he hadn’t felt this good in months.

He cracked open an eyelid, checking to make sure the view had stayed the same. Ahead of him, twenty yards of open beach ended where the low waves petered out at the shore. To his left, over the heads of the vacationers lined up in rented beach chairs, he could just make out a double-trunked palm tree that angled towards the sea. To his right and a few feet behind, a row of dark-haired European women sat topless reading paperbacks, their pointed breasts baking in the equatorial sun. Except for the cows that wore garlands of marigolds and lounged like royalty under the largest umbrellas, it could be a resort beach anywhere in the world.

Out in the water, too far out really, Rachel rode the waves on a Styrofoam boogie-board.

He closed his eyes again and tried to piece together the last hundred hours of his life. There were things he remembered with a clarity that frightened him—the early morning auto-rickshaw ride from the station to the beachfront hotel, the sight of his arm when Rachel removed the bandage, the wide-eyed look the little boy gave him when he collapsed on the roadside, the bat that fluttered against the window screen late at night, the tall blonde woman, her hair in fat dreadlocks, who came in to use their shower, toweling off at the end of his bed, knowing that he was watching.

And there were things he half remembered, images pulled from a dream that may never have happened. A bus ride somewhere, the passengers all staring at him, the smell of marijuana in a dark room, thick accents and Rachel giggling, another ride, this one flat on his back, Rachel again, shouting now, I’m telling you I’m a doctor, more rides, Rachel holding a sari up to the sun that slanted through an open window, tinting her face red, then on a cell phone, looking at him, cupping her hand over the mouthpiece as she spoke, the hot flashes and tearing off his clothes, the ice-cold sweats, shaking the covers off, Rachel crawling up tight behind him, her naked body warm against his, that magical moment when the sweating stopped and his muscles unwound and he felt himself drifting off to sleep, Rachel’s face next to his, wet with tears.

And there were things he’d never forget. Like how they made love that morning as the sun broke over the horizon.

He took a long swig of the pineapple juice, crushed fresh at the reggae bar behind him. His strength was rushing back and he felt that convalescent’s urge to get out and do something. Rachel hadn’t mentioned any plans as they walked down the beach, hadn’t really said much at all before grabbing a rental board and heading out to the Arabian Sea. It had been a while since he had shared his bed with a woman, if only for an hour, but Jason recognized the sullen silences and the way Rachel avoided looking at him when she spoke. Guys weren’t allowed to feel guilty the next morning, a biological nonchalance that helped populate the planet, but women were…different. He hadn’t had a long-term relationship since his teens but he worked in an office of chatty women and had seen enough episodes of
Friends
to have an idea what was going on in her head. Either she wanted to be held and told how special she was and that he wanted to stay by her side forever or she wanted to be left the hell alone, it was just sex and the last thing she needed was for him to get all clingy.

The hard part was guessing which one.

He opened his eyes to see Rachel walking out of the surf, shaking the water out of her ears. She wore a black bikini she had bought on her shopping expedition in Mumbai, all strings and small patches of fabric. She walked with the easy athletic grace of a gymnast and Jason knew that every guy on the beach was watching her approach. The beat picked up behind him and after a couple of measures Toots and the Maytals sang about true love being hard to find.

“How was your swim?” Jason asked as she stood next to his chair, seawater dripping off her hair and into his pineapple juice.

Rachel picked up her towel and wiped her face dry before wrapping it around her waist, the men at the bar turning back around to watch the post-goal celebration on the bar’s TV. “We’re gonna need to get moving if we’re going to catch the train to Mangalore. It’s going to take us a half hour to get to the station and I have to make a stop along the way.” She looked over his shoulder at a bare patch of sand as she spoke.

So it was going to be like that, he thought. “Another night train? You’re going to miss all the scenery.”

“I hope you didn’t get anything from the bar.” She shifted the towel and rolled down the edge of her bikini bottoms to reveal a tiny pocket, pulling out a soggy hundred-rupee note. “We’re going to need this to eat on the train.”

“Why are you in such a rush to go?” Jason said, patting the open seat next to him. “This is beautiful. It’s like we’re not even in India.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes before looking at him for the first time since they had made love. “One, we’re low on cash. It’s a resort town so all the prices are higher and we can’t afford to stay here another night. Two, I have to meet someone in Mangalore tomorrow. Three, you made me promise I’d get you to Bangalore on time so you can catch your precious flight back to the States. Four….”

“When did I say
that
?” Jason said, careful to keep a laugh in his voice.

Rachel kept her eyes fixed on his sunglasses. “The other night. You said a lot of things.”

“Really? Like what?” He tilted his sunglasses back and gave her his best smile.

“Come on,” she said, pulling her Blue Jays cap tight on her head, “we’re going to be late.”

***

Twenty minutes later they sat in the back of a full-sized cab, looking out opposite windows. Plots of farmland jutted up against dense tropical forests and roadside waterfalls cascaded down the moss-covered rocks. The landscape leveled off and there were more farms and more wandering cows. The driver slowed and turned off the main road, taking them down a winding, rutted trail, the highway disappearing behind stands of palms and broad-leafed ferns.

Jason was surprised when Rachel climbed into the cab that had pulled up near the hotel, ignoring the offers from a dozen cut-rate auto-rickshaw drivers. He didn’t hear her tell the driver where to go and noticed the driver never dropped the metal arm of his taxi meter, a blatant notice that he was planning on overcharging them.

Other than a few grunts about luggage and room keys, they hadn’t spoken since the beach.

The cab bottomed out every fifty yards on the dirt road but the driver kept up the same dust-raising speed. Ahead, a rundown farmhouse—sun-baked red brick with a corrugated tin roof—rose into view and he noticed Rachel shifting in her seat as they got closer.

“Listen,” she said, turning to face him, her hand light on his arm. “Don’t say anything when we get inside. No matter what. And don’t freak out on me. Promise?”

“What’s this about….”

“Just promise me this. Nobody’s gonna get hurt. It’s gonna be all right. I swear I’ll get you on that train and you’ll be in Bangalore before you know it. Now promise me.”

“What’s going on? I think….”

She looked into his eyes and he saw they were soft and sad. “Jason. Please.”

He sighed as the cab pulled up in front of the shack, the dust cloud enveloping the car as it rocked to a halt. “All right,” he said and he saw the corners of her mouth twitch upward.

The driver kept his seat as they climbed out of the car. The farmhouse sat in a field of crops—something tall and bushy and green—the field bordered by a wall of palm trees and rainforest. His backpack hanging off his shoulder, the pink Hello Kitty strap even brighter in the sun, he walked around the front of the cab to join Rachel. She slung on her backpack and gripped the straps in front of her chest. He heard her take a deep breath before she stepped onto the path that led to the house.

Jason had thought the building was abandoned, a farmer forced off his land by high debt or bad luck, but as they got closer he saw homemade rakes and hoes propped against the crumbly wall, and a new plastic cooler sat on a wood bench near the door. Inside he could hear the faint strains of music, sounding much like the big blueprint-banner waving dance number he remembered from Yashila’s debut movie. He could also hear the deep rumble of men’s voices and a hacking smoker’s cough.

“Remember,” Rachel said, stopping at the door, “don’t say a thing,” the look in her eyes underlining every word. She reached out a knuckle but before she could knock the door was pulled open.

“Grab a Pepsi if you want one,” a voice shouted out from the darkness. “In the cooler.”

“What? No beer?” Rachel said, standing taller than Jason remembered as she swaggered into the room. She swung off her backpack and tossed her hair around in the same move. “Hold this,” she said, flipping the light bag to Jason, then turned to face the four men who sat around the table.

Two of the men were Indian. Small and wiry, they grinned blinding white grins at Rachel, their dark skin and black hair intensifying the effect. They wore tee shirts tucked into dress pants and brown leather sandals on their brown, leathery feet. The other two men wore their dirty blonde hair short but were in need of a trim, the younger one sporting a weak beard that was more red than blonde. He kept his lips tight together as he smiled, sitting shirtless in the dark room.

At the head of the table the older man balanced a cigarette on his lower lip but still managed to give them a welcoming smile. His shirt was unbuttoned and he wore the white sleeves rolled loosely on his forearms. A black string dangled a small gold cross around his neck.

“I heard it is offensive not to offer a Canadian a beer,” the man said to Rachel, “but you’ll have to make do with what we have, I’m afraid.” There was a halting rhythm to his words, and his accent and sky-blue eyes reminded Jason of a Nordic hockey player. “Is this your brother?”

Rachel chuckled, a sound that surprised Jason. “No. He’s just some guy. You want to get this over or what?” She walked up to the table and pulled out the last empty chair with her foot. It was then that Jason noticed the two men who sat on the bed behind him, pistols held across their laps.

The older man looked at Rachel, leaning back in his chair as he drew on his cigarette. Despite the tin roof it was cool, the open windows channeling a breeze through the room. The man blew out a plume of smoke and it drifted into the face of his shirtless companion, who coughed into his hand. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, turned and yelled something over his shoulder, Hindi with a Swedish cadence. A door opened in a dark corner and a chocolate-skinned Indian brought out a cardboard box big enough to store the cooler. He set it down on the table and the older man stood up and opened the flaps.

“A man will meet you in Bangalore. He will say his name is Sarosh Mehta and offer you a cab to the gardens at Lal Bagh.” The man looked up from the box. “What do you have to carry this in?”

Rachel half-turned to Jason. “Take everything out of my backpack and put it in yours. Leave the towel out.”

Jason paused for a moment, then, sensing her impatience, he stooped down and unzipped their backpacks. He noticed that half of her clothes and her thick guidebook were missing.

“You ride in the cab until he pulls over,” the man said. “Get out and leave your bag.”

“Then what?” Rachel said.

The man shrugged and stuck the cigarette back in his mouth. “As you wish.”

Jason was checking the last side pouch when he looked up to see the man lift two flour bag-size packages from the box. Wrapped in tan packing tape, the packages bulged unevenly, thudding on the wooden table as he set them down. Rachel turned again to Jason, snapping her fingers for the bag, which he tossed to her without standing, his hands blindly stuffing toothpaste and underwear into his full backpack.

Rachel stood up and set the empty bag on the table. “So that’s it?”

“It’s enough,” the man said, which made his companion laugh and the other men smile.

“I know you are not a stupid woman,” the man said as Rachel placed the packages in her backpack, “but people sometimes do stupid things. There will be a man on the train, maybe two. They will watch to be sure that you are not tempted.”

Rachel shook her head as she shifted the tan bags in the backpack, stepping back to pick up the towel from the floor. “You don’t have to worry.” She stuffed the towel in around the packages and zippered the bag shut.

“But I must worry. You are a determined woman,” the man said to Rachel. “A strong woman. A resourceful woman.” He waited until she looked up at him before continuing. “A
passionate
woman.”

The men at the table exchanged dark grins, the shirtless European displaying a row of chipped and tobacco-stained teeth. The way they looked at him as he crouched on the floor made Jason’s chest tighten, and he could feel his face grow hot.

“Really? That’s sweet, thanks,” Rachel said, her voice carefree and light. “By the way, I’m also one hell of an actress.”

The older man’s smile held for a moment before leveling out, the men in the room, heads bowed, smirking in the darkness. “Do not fuck this up,” the man said and flicked his fingers towards the door.