Ronnie woke up to the sound of a buzzing phone. He often woke up this way. His life was ruled by buzzing. He received texts from tour guides reporting on the nature of their tours and complaining about the Indian food in Iowa, a state where it was impossible to find decent paneer, and clients alternately praising him and berating him for some new trial or tribulation, and sometimes even his mother informing him of the latest developments in her soap operas, which Ronnie followed religiously without ever seeing a single minute of any of them.
It was five A.M. in Queens, which meant it was two P.M. in Kolkata, just around the time that most people, people of means, at least, took their tea. Ronnie sighed and glanced at the screen, where his suspicions about his caller were confirmed. It was Mrs. Sengupta making another bid to contact him and check, he assumed, on the progress of her tour arrangements.
Ronnie usually placated his clients with a mixture of obsequious flattery, gentle intimidation, and well-placed xenophobic warnings, a cocktail that always left them putty in his soft ring-bedecked hands. But none of those tactics seemed to be working on Mrs. Sengupta, not his soothing tones nor his invocations to trust in fate, destiny, the stars, and his own authority as a World-Class Number One Best Tour Guide. Didn’t she know that he was a busy man?
In the twin bed three feet from Ronnie’s own, Anita snored and snorted in her sleep as if she were laughing at him. Ronnie looked over at her with disgust. Ronnie had felt deeply betrayed by Anita’s refusal to cooperate with his brilliant plan. He should have known better than to ask her. Ronnie watched Anita shift in her sleep, marveling at her ability to fall asleep anywhere and sleep through anything. Here he was tearing what was left of his hair out, tormented by clients, and she simply turned over, enjoying her dreams, in the bed he had paid for, in the apartment he had bought.
He leaned back on his pillow and, unable to sleep, for he was not a good sleeper under the best of conditions, played a game in his mind of counting objects. This often helped him sleep, at least briefly. He had heard that the American equivalent of this was called counting sheep, but attempts to count lamb-based dishes had made him hungry, not tired. It was no use. Once the buzzing began he was up.
Anita slept on. Eventually, if they ever wanted to start a family, as his mother and hers constantly urged them to, he would probably be the one waking up at the baby’s screams as his wife dreamed blissfully. That, more than anything else, held him back from suggesting they start trying. The business was his child, and it was already keeping him up. Why add something else to disturb him?
Walking from the subway later that morning, Ronnie decided that instead of sending a lackey to fetch his monthly supply of maps, which he kept in large supplies for all his guides and clients, he would fetch the things himself. Thinking of lamb, he had hopes that the trip to Manhattan and subsequent diverse lunch options it would entail might clear his head and give him an idea for Mrs. Sengupta’s companion.
He had asked each of his guides for options, but the women they presented, sisters and cousins from their own families, were all either too traditional or too wild for his liking. This companion must be someone who could aid Mrs. Sengupta in her trip, a respectful, intelligent, and interesting person without a personal agenda or an interest in flirting with Satya Roy, the guide. Green as the boy was, this was an easy job in theory, with only one guest to corral and a companion to aid him. Ronnie thought this would be the perfect introduction for Satya to cross-country guiding, a task he wanted to train Satya to do. It was simply unfortunate that as the boy had worked for Ronnie and gotten large helpings of good food and long walks shadowing guides for day-trippers, his emaciated form had started to fill out and Ronnie now had a rather handsome guide on his hands, despite his oily skin and crooked smile. The boy had inspired breathy sighs on the part of the interviewees for companion-hood, good Bangladeshi girls who were supposed to be the perfect companions for Mrs. Sengupta. Instead, their love-struck giggles ruled them all out instantly. If only they had seen him when he had just arrived, thought Ronnie ruefully, all this nonsense could have been avoided.
Ronnie then placed an advertisement on Craigslist, with Anita’s help, but that disaster of emails and calls from most unsuitable candidates was best never thought of again. So now he would visit his friend Mr. Ghazi, the owner of the map store. Then he would think the problem over again in a new environment over a plate of kebabs from a nearby Pakistani deli. What he needed was someone who would have no interest in Satya. Perhaps he was going down the wrong road interviewing Bangladeshi girls? If he found someone white, they would surely have no interest in this Bangla boy, he thought as he boarded the subway.
He was considering his lunch order when he walked into Maps on St. Mark’s and almost tripped over a set of cartographer’s charts from the sixteenth century.
“Ah, I’m sorry, Mr. Munshi! I’ve been meaning to put those away.” Mr. Ghazi cheerfully greeted Ronnie from the other side of his small counter, enjoying a cup of black coffee, his fifth at least. Mr. Ghazi was always meaning to put things away and never doing it. The shop was only in any kind of state for visitors on the days his employee came, a girl Ronnie had spotted once reorganizing travel guides in their small section in the corner. Mr. Ghazi did not approve of selling travel guides because of the ways they chopped maps up into small pieces and isolated them from each other, but he had to admit, travel guides sold well.
“How are you today, Mr. Ghazi?” Ronnie asked politely as Mr. Ghazi disappeared into the back room to retrieve Ronnie’s standing order.
“Very well! Very well. This time of year is quite invigorating, don’t you think?” The weather had just started turning brisk, something Ronnie dreaded.
“Invigorating. That is a word for it, yes.”
Mr. Ghazi smiled. “What can I say, it keeps my brain fresh, being on ice!” He laughed at his own joke, looking up when he realized Ronnie wasn’t joining him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ghazi, I have a trouble on my mind and not ices. It’s very funny, yes, I am just not in a laughing way today.”
As Ronnie explained his problem, he realized that Mr. Ghazi’s expression had changed from displaying the interest of a concerned friend to showing a certain level of calculation, a strange expression for his usually guileless face.
“So there you have it. I need to find her, and soon, or this whole job is kaput. She’s willing to pay double, you see, which is no small amount. And these Bengalis always have so many friends and relatives who they will tell if the trip is not good. Real problem, no?”
Mr. Ghazi looked at Ronnie for a moment and then looked away, his lips moving slightly.
“I might have a solution for you, Mr. Munshi. Of course, it all depends, obviously and completely, but if it works, it might be the best solution for everyone.”
“Everyone?”
The doorbell chimed as the shopgirl entered the small store, smiling.
“Everyone.”
The First Class India USA Destination Vacation Tour Company was housed in an office building in Queens exactly four blocks from the second-to-last stop on the N train, a trip that took Satya two hours each way from Brooklyn. He rode almost the entire length of the N train daily, boarding at Eighteenth Avenue, six stops from the end of the line in Brooklyn. He had, more than once, ridden the train to each of its ends, falling asleep on his way to or from his job and waking up to see the train turning itself around. But this hadn’t bothered him; in fact, he enjoyed these subway rides, watching the entire line in motion and the change in customers from one end of the route to the other. It was the people in the middle who were the most strange to him, loud people who looked too wealthy to be on a subway at all, and gaping tourists whose teeth chattered from the movement of the train from Fourteenth Street to Times