wildly. We drove off, leaving Julian behind. The driver looked back expectantly for directions.
The passenger part of the rickshaw consisted of a narrow main seat. Every pothole heaved me inches into the air. I had to hold my arms over my chest since I didn't wear a bra. How could Julian accuse me of such a thing? Five pounds! What do I do now? 'You know cheap hotel?' I asked the driver. 'Cheap, cheap?'
'Hotel?'
'Cheap hotel. No money.'
'Okay. I take.'
A few minutes later we jolted into a flowered compound. At a desk on the porch sat a lady with a kind face. She smiled at me. 'You alone, honey?'
That did it. Her friendly face unleashed my tears. 'I had a . . . (sob) . . . fight with my boyfriend. Do you have a cheap room?'
'There, there. Don't cry. We'll take care of you.' She stood and came around the desk. 'Is that your rickshaw?' She ordered a young Indian sitting on the floor to collect my bag. 'Hush, don't cry.'
I paid the driver and followed the lady to a room with six beds. Young Western travellers jumped up at my entrance.
'What's the matter? Are you alright?' somebody asked.
'She’ll be fine,' said the motherly proprietor, who then left us.
Two women sat on my bed; one put her arm around my shoulder. A guy came over, and everyone introduced themselves. People waved at me from across the room.
'My boyfriend accused me of stealing his money,' I managed to tell them between crying, sobbing, gulping for air, and sniffling.
'The creep. Forget him. You don't need him.'
'How could he . . . (sob). . . think I stole . . . (gulp). . . his money?'
'Forget him. You're with us now. We were just going out—want to come?'
I nodded.
'Hey, want some opium?'
'Oh, yes!'
One of the women went to a nearby bed and unearthed brown putty in crinkly paper. She broke off a greasy ball and handed it to me.
Someone else brought me water, and I swallowed it.
'I hope I don't . . . (sniff) . . . get nauseous.' I started to hiccough.
'Last time I took opium . . . (hic) . . . I wanted to die.' To be on the safe side, I took one of the pills I still had from the Taj pharmacist in Bombay.
I soon felt peachy. We left to explore Delhi, and by the time we returned I was giggling along with them.
In the morning, Julian appeared.
'How did you find me?' I asked.
'I've been to every guest house in Delhi.'
'Go away.'
'Listen, I'm sorry. Please come back. I found the money.'
'You found it? Where?'
'In my wallet, behind a flap. I thought I'd looked there. Please forgive me. Please?'
I forgave him. I said goodbye to everybody, thanked the kind lady, paid the bill, and Julian and I went back to Old Delhi.
The morning of the day Tom and Julian were to begin their trip back to Europe, Julian accompanied me to the train station. Close to my last rupee, I bought the cheapest ticket, and we went in search of the Bombay train. The platform was jammed with people, suitcases, babies, coolies, and vendors selling vegetable patties and Coca-Cola.
'Well, I guess this is it,' I said, docking a fast-moving coolie whose forehead veins bulged from the weight of a suitcase.
'Yeah, I guess so.'
I stepped around a basket of bananas and closed the space between us. My hand grasped the front of Julian's T-shirt. 'I'm going to miss you.'
His eyes were round and sad and moist. 'Will I ever see you again?'
Quickly he threw his arms around me and dog his chin into my neck. 'You never know. Write me?'
'Oh, yes. Will you write me back?'
'Yes.'
There was a shout, and we broke apart in time to avoid being run over by a speeding pushcart loaded with baggage. I tripped over a street dog and stepped on someone's mat. The woman sitting on it muttered at me and pressed her sleeping child closer to her breast.
'I'd better get on the train.'
'I guess so.'
'Have a nice trip back to Amsterdam.'
'You be careful.'
'Goodbye.'
I took my sleeping bag from him and boarded the train. 'Bye.' He kissed into the air.
After one last look I entered the car. Oh, my god. A nightmare. The wooden benches were packed tight with bodies. More people squatted on the floor, with not a speck of space left anywhere.
'This is not possible. Where am I supposed to sit?' I grumbled aloud, trudging through the Indians on the floor. My bulky bag banged into shoulders, but I didn't care. 'Oh, excuse me. Shit! EXCUSE me.'
'I here. Missy. You can sit here.' A fat man squeezed closer to his neighbor, making six inches of room for me. I eased backwards onto the hard wood. Squashed. This would never do. I would never survive the twenty-five hours to Bombay like this.
'This is unbearable,' I complained. 'This is for animals. I can't take this.'
'You ask conductor. Maybe he find you room in the Lathes’ Compartment. You ask.'
I tripped back over people, swatting them again with my sleeping bag, and found the conductor. For a little
Consisting of two benches facing each other, it was chock-full of women and children. Two women and one toddler sat on the floor. A teenager moved her leg and offered me a triangle of space on the seat. Another one wiped snot from her baby's nose with the end of her sari and tittered at me. Well, it was better, but still not good. With hand gestures, they explained that the seats became beds and that two more beds-unfold-ed from the wall at night. Near the ceiling hung luggage racks. I had an idea.
Stepping on a seat, my other foot on the window ledge, I moved baggage from one rack to the other and then climbed into the empty one. It was suffocating hot up there, and I didn't have room to sit up; but I could he in peace without touching another human being, and after what I'd just experienced, it was heaven.
Through the open window, I bought a Fanta orange drink and swallowed a bit of the opium I'd bought when Tom, Julian, and I made a visit to a Delhi den. Still afraid of throwing up, I took another nausea pill. Stoned and sing in the luggage rack, eighteen inches from the ceiling, I slept most of the trip.
In Bombay I went to the Rex Hotel, a Freak place I'd heard about. I was shown to an airless back room after promising I'd pay the money in advance within a few hours. Then I checked the card of the man who had my portfolio. Indian Airlines, it said, near Churchgate Station. With my last five-rupee bill, I taxied to his office.
I'd completely forgotten what he looked like, but he remembered me. Dressed in suit and tie, sweating in the airless room, he beamed at me and shook my hand. 'How was your holiday in Goa?' he asked.
'Great. I'm going right back, I just came to get money. Can I have my portfolio?'
When he fetched it from an inner office, I opened it and looked for my remaining two hundred dollars in traveller’s checks hidden behind a picture. I couldn't find them!
'I can't find my traveller’s checks!'
