62. The Kowalczyks, part 3.

Sid knew without looking over that Nan was asleep, that she had slipped into exhaustion within moments of curling up under the heavy blankets. The mattress was firm beneath her, firmer than most she had slept on, but the relaxation of her back after all their travel had sent waves of calm through her, and now she slept.

The magazines Ed and Linda Kowalczyk kept next to the chairs in the guest room were out of date. They were a mixture of American and Indian, The Economist and Outlook India and even a Bollywood gossip tabloid mixed in together. Sid had been leafing through the magazines, looking perhaps as though he was searching for a specific article but couldn't remember where he'd seen it (and perhaps he was searching for something in the pages; it was entirely possible). Mostly, though, he was listening.

The air in the house had become suddenly turbulent, as he'd known it would since the first moment he'd noticed Drew and Matt waiting for the flight in Zurich. Sid sat quietly, the magazine still in his lap, but his hands no longer thumbed gently through the pages. Though he was still, he moved, too, in that stillness; he pushed out, felt himself become air.

The second floor was almost silent. Matt had been faking tiredness: he wasn't really fatigued, he just excused himself on a pretext, as he and Drew had agreed previously. He sat in his bed, idly thinking of old school friends he would call tomorrow, and what tomorrow would be like, how he would explain things, whether (a small hope sparked and grew) there would even be anything to explain, maybe there wouldn't. He circled around these thoughts to avoid the deeper, darker well of a thing that had preoccupied him ever since he had gone to meet Drew in Chicago, before they went to catch their flight to Zurich and then to Delhi.

A wave of nausea returned to Matt from those moments, along with a memory of the smell of coffee--a memory of sitting with Drew, who had tears in his eyes and was talking quickly, and wouldn't stop talking, and there they sat in that coffee shop, while people swirled in and out of the place, for hours, unending hours. With a twinge of shame Matt had watched the door of the coffee shop in case any of his college friends might walk in and see them or hear what they were talking about. That conversation, those hours, felt they had taken place a sleepless month ago, but it hadn't yet been a full day. Matt bit his nails and continued thinking about who he would call tomorrow, and what tomorrow would be like, how he would explain things...

In the next room, Linda was brushing her teeth as she watched herself in the mirror, raising her chin, tightening the skin of her neck, wondering whether it was time she went in for what so many of her friends, the embassy wives, now treated as routine. India had a thriving industry in what was now called medical tourism, plastic surgeons of such skill that men and women from all over the world came to be cut by their delicate, precise instruments into newer, more youthful shapes. The embassy wives, in particular, with their schedules of constant travel, feigned trips home or to some other place, vanishing for a few weeks into secluded "recovery houses" on estates in nearby Gurgaon, only to reappear younger-looking and refreshed.

Linda thought about this every night, and each night she concluded, not yet, maybe next year, or when the boys are done with school. But who am I doing it for? she wondered. As she spat out the minty foam of her toothpaste, rinsing her mouth carefully with bottled water, she glanced at the folds above her eyelid, and wondered what her eyes had looked like ten years ago. She was oblivious to the conversation taking place downstairs, or to her sons' odd demeanor since they'd arrived, which, had it attracted her notice, she might have attributed to the presence of the strangers, Sid and Nan.

What an odd boy Sid was, she thought, then immediately corrected herself. Sid was a young man, just as her sons were young men, getting close to the age she and Ed had been when they got married. What an odd young man, her thoughts went on, as she splashed some cold water on her face, toweled off, and made her way to bed (leaving a single dim lap on, as she always did, on Ed's side). Sid was so handsome. She smiled to herself, a little conspiracy of one, allowing herself to be both a woman old enough to be his mother and also just a woman, and she tried to imagine what Sid's naked body must look like. Sinewy, she decided. Taut, hard, but with skin as soft as powder; pale, clean, symmetrical.

He must smell wonderful, she thought, though she hadn't been close enough to catch his scent. The smell of a young man, a youthful man's body that imitated the form of a young warrior or dancer, before the flesh began to fall toward gravity, and stray hairs of an eyebrow or chest grew long and gray, before the skin grew slack and cool to the touch. She imagined the curve of a lower back, the firmness of a shoulder, the strength of a hand--and those eyes. Warm desire floated her toward sleep.

As he listened indifferently to Linda's thoughts, Sid was also observing what was happening on the floor below, sounds insulated from Linda's ears by the hum of multiple air conditioners and the rhythmic clicking of ceiling fans. Though the conversation on the first floor was quiet, and punctuated by long, awkward pauses, it burned like a beacon in the night: a signal of suffering, conflict, and fear.