“No, no, not at all!” The receptionist is now fully animated, his night-shift weariness evaporated. He turns his monitor to show her a photograph of the original facade, and in doing so, angles the screen directly toward where I am casually drifting behind the desk.
The guest register is visible in the open tab behind the photograph. Three seconds. That is all I need.
Welling, C. Room 307.
I move toward the elevator. Behind me, I hear Priya say, “And the courtyard, is that original stonework? It reminds me of a haveli I visited in Udaipur, last year. You have such an eye for these details. What was your name? Vikram? What a lovely name,” and the last thing I see before the elevator doors close is the receptionist offering to personally give my sister a tour of the building, and Priya accepting with a smile so radiant it could power a small city.
My sister is a terrifying woman. I make a mental note to never be on the opposing side of any operation she conducts.
The elevator doors close. Third floor.Room 307.
I stand in front of the door. My hands are at my sides. Not clasped behind my back. Visible.
I knock.
No answer. I knock again. Harder. The sound is loud in the quiet corridor, and I am aware that I am a wild-eyed man in a rumpled shirt banging on a hotel room door at six-thirty in the morning and this is not the behaviour of a composed neurosurgeon and I do not care.
I knock a third time.
“Casey.” My voice is not the Dread Prince voice. It is not the surgical voice. It is just my voice, raw and thin and scared. “Casey, it's me. Open the door.”
Silence. Footsteps. The sound of a deadbolt turning.
The door opens.
Casey is standing in the doorway in a T-shirt and track pants. His hair is a disaster. His eyes are puffy, the specific puffiness that comes from sleeping badly or crying or both, and there are dark circles underneath them that I have never seen on his face before, because Casey Welling is a man who sleeps like the dead and wakes like the sun, and the evidence of disrupted sleep on his face is evidence of what I have cost him.
He looks at me. I look at him. The hotel corridor is quiet. The morning light is filtering through a window at the end of the hall, warm and gold, and he is standing in the doorway filling it the way he fills every doorway, and he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
“Hi,” I say.
It is not a speech. It is not clinical. It is the smallest, most inadequate word in the English language, and it is all I have.
“Hi,” he says. His voice is rough. Morning voice. The voice I heard days ago in a bed with silk sheets.
“My grandmother sent me.”
Something flickers across his face. Not quite a smile. The ghost of one. “Daadi sent you.”
“She called the car before she called me. She told me not to compose a speech. I composed them anyway. I rejected all of them.”
“How long have you been downstairs?”
“I just arrived. Priya is distracting the receptionist so I could find your room number. She is probably still flirting with him. She is very committed to the operation.”
The ghost of the smile gains a fraction more substance. He steps back from the doorway. Not an invitation, exactly. An opening. A space where a person could enter if that person were brave enough to step into it.
I step into it.
The room is small and clean and the bed is unmade and the ceiling fan is clicking and there is a window that looks out onto a Jaipur street in early morning light. His phone is face-down on the nightstand. His shoes are next to the bed, kicked off and left where they fell.
He closes the door. He turns to me. He leans against it, his broad shoulders spanning the frame, arms crossed, blue eyes guarded and tired and waiting.
“Talk,” he says.
I open my mouth. The rejected speeches crowd behind my teeth, and I push them all aside.
“I don't have a speech,” I say. “I had three and I threw them away because they were all terrible. The first one used the phrase 'interpersonal disruption.' The second one was a discharge summary with feelings. The third one was three words that aren't enough.”