Sweet Sanjay

I looked for signs that he had expected to get the job because he'd let me fuck him. But I saw none. If I'd seen that, I would have offered to pay him a large sum. Not having seen that, I felt I couldn't insult him with suggesting he was a whore.

"Does that mean . . . that we won't be together again?" he asked with sad eyes.

"Probably. I'll make my final selection tomorrow and the consulate will handle the processing from there. I'll fly back to New Delhi and then back to New York." I tried not to make it sound too hard, but I also tried to make it sound final—and inevitable.

"Oh. Did you not like me? Did I ask for too much?"

"I liked you fine. It was good. Very good. We just won't be on the same continent." And that indeed was the crux of the matter. I certainly did like him. I thought that I might even love Sanjay. I knew that his body brought me great joy, and I loved fucking him. But he could not be in New York. I could not trust myself with him in New York. I could not rock the boat with Jennifer that way. My cushy life was too important to me. I steeled my heart and wished him luck. I said I would put in a good word for him to the consulate for the possibility that they someday might need an excellent translator.

He left quietly, and if it was a sob I heard when he got to the door, I pretended that I didn't.

That night, after he had ridden my cock, Gupta quizzed me on how the candidate search was going—and pointedly asked me if I'd found anyone who spoke better English then he did. Nearly half of them did, but I diplomatically brushed on, concentrating on what else he had asked.

"It was hard deciding. I still have work to do on it tomorrow, but I think I will be ready to leave the morning after that. You can go ahead and look into flight schedules back to New Delhi for us. There is one, named Sanjay, who is beyond excellent."

"The well-muscled, dark brown one with the pretty face and ponytail?" Gupta asked.

"Yes," I answered, disconcerted because I had no idea when Gupta might have seen Sanjay. Did he, perhaps, see him leaving my room this morning after I had left?

But he didn't pursue the point. And he didn't try to maneuver me into another fuck. He dressed and left the room. I double-locked the door behind him, showered, and got my first full night's sleep since arriving in India.

I woke up full of remorse. I couldn't do this to Sanjay just because he was such a good and willing lay. It wasn't just to him. I had to include him in the last set of candidates. I breakfasted with Gupta in the Sheraton coffee shop and called the consulate and asked them to send someone to inform Sanjay he was still in the running and should appear at the consulate for another test if he was still interested in the job. I had his folder and read his address over the phone to the secretary at the consulate.

Between the second and third interview of the five I'd called back—six, counting Sanjay, Gupta appeared at the consulate and called me aside.

"I went to this Sanjay's home to make sure he got the word you would test him today," Gupta said. He was wearing a sad face and spoke slowly and haltingly.

"Yes, and?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Clifford. Sanjay took his life last night."

"Took his life?" I heard him, but I rejected what he had said. It couldn't be. It was just too horrible.

"His family said he went down to the sea and just swam out into the water. They recovered his body this morning."

I sat down hard on a bench in the corridor, my ears buzzing. I felt like I was going to be sick.

"But I don't know why you need to continue the interviewing," Gupta said. "I think we both know I am the best man for the job. Khurana told me all about what was needed, and I have prepared myself. I have even let you make love to me. I think it's obvious the job should be mine. When I am in New York, you can make love to me as often as you want to."

I looked up at him dully, the horror of what had been happening to me sinking in. It all had been engineered by Khurana—to get his cousin the job. Just as upon hearing that Sanjay was beyond my touch now and realizing that I loved him and my heart had rent, hearing what Gupta had said—so crassly transitioning from telling me that Sanjay was dead to making a claim on the translator position—and saying that he had let me fuck him when he had controlled all of the fucking—I woke up and my heart snapped back together and hardened.

"You can't have the job, Gupta. Not only are you not as qualified as any of the five I'm interviewing today, but you cannot have the job precisely because we have fucked. I can't let you come back to New York with me as a man I'm fucking. I can't do any of that in New York. I am married. I have a reputation."

"But we have fucked, and I can say that all the way to New York if I must," Gupta said, his tone just as hard as mine.

"You want a job, I'll give you one. But here, in India," I said, realizing the truth of what he said about knowing already that I went with men and my mind already racing ahead to repair my folly. "We are opening an office in India. Khurana will come here as chief. And you can work in the office, but only as long as you keep your mouth shut—and your body in India."

We'd only talked at the corporate level of opening an office in India and no one had mentioned sending Khurana here, but I could make it so. I knew I could. Now I couldn't have Khurana in New York either.

"I think you should make your own way back to New Delhi," I said. "I will be traveling separately now."

I stood up and marched toward the entrance of the consulate, right by the receptionist, not seeming to hear her trying to tell me that the five remaining candidates were here now and ready to be interviewed again.

I walked to the beach and stood there, looking out to sea. And I wept. After I had no more tears, I opened my briefcase and fished out Sanjay's folder. It took effort to find flowers and to make my way on my own without help to the address Sanjay had given, but I did it not only because it was the right thing to do, but also as a token of atonement. Perhaps I personally hadn't caused Sanjay's death, but I had provided that last push over the edge for him, that last rejection, both sexually and as an opportunity to escape out into the larger, more forgiving and supportive world.

"Sanjay, he not here," the old crone said when she opened the door of a small shack in a sea of temporary hovels.

"Yes, I know. I am so sorry. I am a friend. I've come to—"

"He has gone to Mumbai, this morning. A man from New Delhi came and gave him money and Sanjay has gone to find job in Mumbai."

I swallowed my breath, almost choking. So that's how it was, what Gupta had been up to. I could have cursed him, but I was too elated in knowing that Sanjay hadn't died. "Mumbai? Where in Mumbai? How can I contact him there?"

But she was already closing the door on me. She had taken the flowers, though.

I had lost him once; I couldn't lose him again.

In the airport, after changing my ticket to Mumbai, I found a telephone and called Leonard's office in Delhi. My name was enough for me to be put directly through to him. It always had been. We had met periodically over the years, arranging our meetings by phone to our offices under the guise of being old, dear friends—which, of course, we were.

"Leonard. Yes, I'm fine. But I need something urgently. Even Indian citizens have to register when they move from city to city, don't they?"

"Yes, certainly, but it isn't really as draconian as you might—"

"I'm not judging that. Listen, can you, from your position, or from Manjula's, tap into that system and locate someone?"

"Yes, of course, for you, if that's what you—"

"Yes, good. I need a location for a Tamil Nadu citizen arriving in Mumbai today from Chennai." I gave him Sanjay's name and as much of the personal information from his folder that Leonard needed. "I'm headed for Mumbai myself and will give you a call from my hotel when I get there."

"No, nothing's wrong. I have selected him for a position and must get in touch with him as soon as possible."

My relationship with Leonard was such that I couldn't tell him that, although I would select Sanjay for the translator's job, his more significant position would be under me and that the touch I was looking forward to was that of my thick cock inside his tight channel.

I had no idea what I'd do about the life I led with Jennifer when Sanjay and I got back to New York. But I was reassessing my priorities as I chased the man I loved across India, and something would work out. I had to believe that it would. I pulled a handkerchief he had left behind in my hotel room out of my pocket and raised it to my face. I ingested the sweet smell of cloves and cinnamon, feeling Sanjay close beside me.