* * * * *
A week later, early on a balmy Tuesday afternoon, I leaned on the counter, chatting with Kayin. I knew Mr. Haverstock, the manager, would be gone for at least an hour. Every day at around that time, he would leave, saying he had to inspect the rooms to make sure the employees had done a proper job of cleaning.
“The bloodless fool,” Kayin said as she tallied the hotel ledger. “Everyone on staff knows he is soundly sleeping in one of the vacant rooms. He naps for an hour or more, letting us think he is performing some sort of critical management duty. But we are happy for it. It is at that time we can relax and do what we want. It is not that we are lazybones or finding careless time; it is only that we can get more of our work done without him peeping over our necks every minute.”
“Bloody fool,” I corrected her slang.
“Yes, he is that also,” she said.
Suddenly, she became alert and her commercial smile came back. She looked beyond me, and I knew another guest was coming to the counter from behind me.
“Welcome to the hotel Nadi Myanmar,” Kayin said to the newcomer.
“Hey, sailor,” the guest said. “Goldbricking again and flirting with the lady, I see.”
I recognized the voice. “‘Bout time you got here, Raji.” I turned to face her.
She gave me a hug and kissed my cheek. As I leaned back to look her over, I saw her gaze pass over my shoulder. With a tiny smile, she nodded toward Kayin.
“Oh, I’m sorry...” I started to introduce them, but I could see half of that had already been done. Kayin held Raji with the coldest look I’d ever seen in my life. She then gave me that same hard stare.
“Ahem,” Raji cleared her throat. “Perhaps you forgot to tell her about me, Fuse.”
“Fuse?” Kayin repeated my nickname, and the word dripped with a venom only a woman can inject into a single syllable.
“I told her you were coming,” I said to Raji while I watched Kayin’s eyes. I never knew the color blue could be so very frosty.
Just then, her professional smile returned and she greeted a pair of new guests. While the man and his wife filled out the hotel register, I tried to get her attention.
“Kayin, I need to tell you—”
“Please move to lounge or the restaurant,” Kayin interrupted me icily. “Or to your room to conduct personal business, please, now. I must perform my work.”
The man glanced up at me, then at Kayin, who gave him an almost sweet smile and indicated she wasn’t referring to him.
I took Raji up to my room, which was probably my second mistake of the day, since Kayin still smoldered in the lobby.
“She is very beautiful,” Raji said as I closed the door and put her suitcase on the bed.
“Yes.”
“How well do you know her?”
“Very well.”
“Very?” Raji gave me a quick look and grin.
“Very!”
“Really?” She stood still, staring toward the French windows, as if she were trying to remember something. Finally, she opened her suitcase and picked up a white taffeta dress to shake out the wrinkles. “And you told her about me?”
“Yes, many times.” I took a hanger from the closet and handed it to Raji for her dress. “I told her we went to school together, crossed the ocean together, went to India to see your family...”
“She seemed quite surprised to see me,” Raji said, giving me a puzzled expression.
“Well, maybe I forgot to tell her you were a woman.”
“You forgot?”
I made a helpless gesture.
“Fuse, sometimes I’m surprised you’re able to function on your own without adult supervision.”
“Me, too. What should I do?”
“You, my friend, are a very intelligent man, and at the same time a complete idiot.” She gave me her hangered dress and motioned for me to put it in the closet.
“Yeah, but what can I do now?” I hung her dress on the rod next to my robe.
“Stay here. I don’t want you making any more damage. Are you understanding me?”
“I’ll stay right here until you come back.”
For over two hours, I paced the floor. Exactly twenty-three steps from the front door to the French windows, and twenty-three back to the door. I tried to read a book but couldn’t concentrate. I stood on the balcony, counting the people below. I shaved twice and cut myself three times. I changed my shirt, polished my shoes, then, in my shiny black pointy-toe wingtips, measured the distance between to the French windows a few more times. The twenty-three steps never varied an inch.
Finally, I heard female laughter outside in the hallway, then my door opened. Raji and Kayin came into the room, arm-in-arm, still laughing. Probably about me. I didn’t care—it was a beautiful sound.
Kayin gave me a severe look, then kissed me. “Why,” she asked, “did you not tell me that Raji was a woman?”
“As my best friend,” I indicated Raji, “has told me many times, I’m a blockhead.”
“Yes, you are,” they said together.
Raji took one of the chairs as Kayin and I sat on the couch.
“Have you two been talking about me for the last two and a half hours?” I asked.
“No, silly,” Raji said. “That only took the first five minutes.”
Kayin laughed. “Then we had a good, long talk about India, Burma, and how we should go about kicking the British from both our houses.”
Raji had a wash-up and changed her clothes, then I took the two ladies out for a delightful dinner at a small restaurant overlooking the docks. Near the end of the meal, I poured a little wine in each of their glasses.
“Raji,” I said, “you might have the room to yourself tonight.”
Kayin and Raji looked at each other, then laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“I already have a room for myself,” Raji said. “On the fourth floor of the hotel.”
“We took care of that earlier,” Kayin said, “before we went up to your room.”
* * * * *
On the third night after Raji’s arrival, she and I waited for Kayin to finish her shift at the front desk and join us. Meanwhile, we studied the map of the Irrawaddy River valley and reconsidered our plans to travel to the Chinese border. I wanted to stay on for a while in Mandalay, and Raji understood my feelings but wasn’t sure about what she wanted to do. Traveling on without me really didn’t appeal to her.
“How’s your tennis game?” I asked.
“Tush!” Raji gave me a look and rolled her eyes. “Tennis indeed. Panyas Maidan doesn’t know one end of a racquet from the other. I repeatedly had to take the man by the hand and show him where to stand when serving the ball. Then, last Thursday night, when he took me to the teahouse at Radha Bazaar in Baneeji Street, he let slip, or maybe said on purpose, that the dowry my mother promised him might not be enough. I almost choked on my curry. Then I wanted to choke him, and my mother.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” I said, “your mother