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 Square. But most of his fellow travelers on either end were people like himself, exhausted but determined, their eyes locked on the floor of the train car.
He had never seen so many kinds of people in his life before he had moved to America. At home, everyone looked the same, or if they looked different, like he did, like Ravi had, everyone had known why. Skin tones varied within a limited spectrum; hair ranged from blue-black to the hennaed red that old men dyed their beards, hoping to look younger but never succeeding.
Here, everyone looked like combinations of people, more colors and shapes and bodies than he had known possible. The irony was that everyone dressed in the same colors, somber blacks and grays, while back at home the monotony of people’s faces had been obscured by the violent rainbow of their clothing, printed cottons as far as the eye could see, swathing women in their saris or draping playfully around them in a salwar kameez. Sometimes a flash of color caught in the corner of his eye, or he saw a Muslim prayer cap, and he thought it might be Ravi, but it never was. They had both brought only Western clothing with them, anyway. Ravi’s mother had promised to keep their kurtas safe for them at home. Satya wished he had burned his instead. He thought about writing her and asking her to do so, but he knew that would raise too many questions. He still hadn’t responded to her letter. So instead he looked for Ravi on trains, and wondered what he was doing, and what he thought of all the different kinds of people who lived in America.
One morning Satya took his normal ride, leaving Brooklyn at six in the morning to arrive just past eight at the agency. No one else ever showed up at this hour, so he sometimes treated himself to a cup of tea from a street vendor who let him have it at half the price, leaning against the building and waiting for Ronnie to let him in. Satya supposed that he could actually leave Brooklyn at a later time, but what was the point of staying in his dingy apartment and listening to his new roommates snore?
Ronnie was particularly late that morning. Satya waited, making his tea last for a full hour until Vikrum arrived, producing his own copy of the building key. Satya found September already quite chilly, although no one around him seemed to share that feeling, as the people passing him by wore short sleeves like it was high summer.
“It’s lucky this isn’t the winter, eh? You would have frozen to death, brother.” Vikrum grinned at Satya with his golden smile.
“It can’t get that cold, can it?” Vikrum only laughed in
