Oddly enough, though, that day with Lulu it didn’t feel anything like falling. It felt like arriving.

• • •

Nawal and I drink our tea and listen to music, talk about upcoming elections in India and upcoming soccer tournaments. The sun blazes through the canopy roof and we go quiet in the heat. No customers come this time of day.

The ringing of my phone disturbs the idyll. It’ll be Mukesh. He is the only one who calls me here. Prateek texts. Yael does neither.

“Willem, is everything tip-top?” he asks

“A-okay,” I say. In Mukesh’s hierarchy, A-okay is one step above tip-top.

“Excellent. Not to worry you but I call with a change in plans. Camel tour is canceled.”

“Canceled? Why?”

“Camels got sick.”

“Sick?”

“Yes, yes, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible, terrible.”

“Can’t we book another one?” The three-night desert camel tour was the one part of his planned itinerary I was actually looking forward to. When I extended my trip a week, I’d asked Mukesh to reschedule the camel trip for me.

“I tried. But unfortunately, next tour I could get you on was not for another week, and if you take that, you miss your flight to Dubai next Monday.”

“Is there a problem?” Nawal asks.

“My camel tour was canceled. The camels are sick.”

“My cousin runs a tour.” Nawal is already picking up his mobile. “I can arrange it for you.”

“Mukesh, I think my friend here can book me on a different tour.”

“Oh, no! Willem. That will be most unacceptable.” His ever-friendly tone goes brusque. Then, in a milder voice he continues: “I already booked your train back to Jaipur tonight, and a flight back to Mumbai tomorrow.”

“Tonight? What’s the rush? I don’t leave for a week.” When I asked Mukesh to extend my Rajasthan trip by a week, I also asked him to book my return flight to Amsterdam for a few days after I am due to get back to Mumbai. I had it all timed out perfectly so I’d only have to see Yael for a couple of days at the tail end. “Maybe I could stay here another few days?”

Mukesh clucks his tongue, which, in his particular argot, is the exact opposite of A-okay. He starts rattling on about flight schedules and change fees and warnings of me being stuck in India unless I come back to Mumbai now, and finally there is nothing to do but give in. “Good, good. I’ll email you the itinerary,” he says.

“My email’s not working right. I got locked out of it and had to reset the password and then a whole bunch of recent messages disappeared,” I say. “Apparently there’s a virus going around.

“Yes, that would be the Jagdish virus.” He tsks again. “You must set up a new account. In the meantime, I will text you your train and flight itinerary.”

I get off the phone with Mukesh and reach into my backpack for my wallet. I count out three thousand rupees, the last price Nawal had dropped to. His face falls.

“I have to leave,” I explain. “This evening.”

Nawal reaches behind the counter for a thick square wrapped up in brown paper. “I set it aside on day one so no one else would get it.” He peels back the paper, showing me the tapestry. “I put a little something extra in it for you.”

We say good-bye. I wish him luck with his marriage. “I don’t need luck; it’s in the stars. You, I think, are the one who needs luck.”

It makes me think of something Kate said when she dropped me off in Mérida. “I’d wish you luck, Willem, but I think you need to stop relying on that.”

I’m not sure which one of them is right.

I pack up my things and then walk to the train station through the late afternoon heat. The city looks golden up the hills, the sand dunes rippling behind it, and it all makes me feel wistful, nostalgic already.

The train gets me into Jaipur at six the next morning. My flight to Mumbai is at ten. I haven’t had a chance to set up a new email, and Mukesh has texted nothing about a ride from the airport. I text Prateek. He hasn’t replied to any of my texts in the last two days. So I try ringing him.

He answers, distracted.

“Prateek, hey it’s Willem.”

“Willem, where are you?”

“On a train. I’ve got your tapestry here.” I rattle the package.

“Oh, good.” For all his manic enthusiasm about this latest venture, he seems oddly blasé.

“Everything okay?”

“Better than okay. Very good. My cousin Rahul, he is sick with influenza.”

“That’s terrible. Is he okay?”

“Fine. Fine. But bed rest for him,” Prateek says cheerfully. “I am helping him out.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “With the movies.”

“The movies?”

“Yes! I find the goreh to act in the movies. If I can get ten, they will put my name in the credits. Assistant to assistant director of casting.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he says formally. “But only if I find four more. Tomorrow, I return to Salvation Army and maybe to the airport.”

“Actually, if you’re coming to the airport, that’s perfect. I need a ride.”

“You return on Saturday, I thought.”

“Change of plans. I’m coming back tomorrow now.”

There’s a silence, during which Prateek and I have the same idea. “Do you want to be in?” he asks at the same time I offer, “Would you want me to be in . . . ?”

The line echoes with our laughter. I give him my flight information and hang up. Outside, the sun is setting; a bright flame behind the train, and darkness in front of us. A short while later, it’s all dark.

Mukesh has booked me a sleeper seat in an air-conditioned car, which India Rail chills like a meat locker. The bed has nothing but a sheet. I shiver, and then think of the tapestry, thick and warm. I unwrap the paper; out tumbles something small and hard.

It’s a small statue of Ganesha, holding his ax and his lotus, smiling his smile, like he knows something the rest of us haven’t figured out yet.

Twenty-five

Mumbai

The movie is called Heera Ki Tamanna, which translates, roughly, as Wishing for a Diamond. It is a romance starring Billy Devali—big star—and Amisha Rai—big, big star—and is directed by Faruk Khan, who apparently is so big, he needs no further description. Prateek tells me all this in a breathless monologue; he has hardly stopped talking since he swooped me out of the arrivals hall and rushed me to the car, barely glancing at the various Rajasthani goods I painstakingly shopped and bargained for over the past three weeks.

“Oh, Willem, that was the last plan,” he says, shaking his head, dismayed that he must explain such things. “I am working in Bollywood now.” Then he tells me that yesterday, Amisha Rai swept by him so close that the edge of her sari brushed his arm. “Can I tell you what it felt like?” he asks, not waiting for me to answer. “It felt like a caress from the gods. Can I tell you what she smelled like?” He closes his eyes and inhales. Apparently, her odor defies words.

“What exactly do I do?”

“Do you remember in Dil Mera Golmaal, the scene after the shootout?”

I nod. It was like Reservoir Dogs, but on a ship. With dancing.

“Where do you think all those white people came from?”

“From the same magical place as the go-go dancers?”

“From casting directors like me.” He pounds his chest.

“Casting director? So it’s official. You’re up to ten?”

“You make eight. But I will get there. You are so tall and handsome and . . . white.”

“Maybe I can count for two?” I joke.

Prateek looks at me like I’m an idiot. “No, you count for one. You are only one man.”

• • •

We arrive in Film City, the suburb that houses many of the studios, and then we pull into the complex and then into what looks like a large airplane hangar.

“Oh, by the way, the payment,” Prateek says nonchalantly. “I must tell you, it’s ten dollars a day.”