Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [52]
“I’m fine. I’ll go find a pay phone and then I’ll be right back. A walk will do me good.”
“But then we dance the night away and watch the sun rise, okay?” She smiled at him, and he felt her love for him suddenly—that unshakable belief in him and in their marriage that she never questioned, never denigrated, as he had tonight.
“Okay.” He walked over to where she was sitting, bent down and kissed her on the cheek, then went up to the admissions building where the bathrooms were. Two large rooms had been opened up for the children to play in. Some were running around, some crying, others sprawled fast asleep on the leather club chairs and sofas. He wandered around, looking for a pay phone. There were only the kind limited to the campus exchange, or private ones, sitting on desks. He saw them through the glass doors of offices. But when he tried the knobs they were all locked.
He walked outside, to see if maybe there was a phone there. He found nothing. And yet he had to call the girls, wanted to hear their voices, this was the sole thought in his mind. He began to cut across the field in the dark, in the direction of the hotel, forgetting that the car was parked at the school. Instead he stumbled across the field, silent except for the faint sound of the music carried across the air, and the sound of his own breathing. He stopped and looked up at the sky and the stars, the constellations that were so piercing outside the city. He thought of Megan, thought maybe he should go back and tell her he was going to the hotel. But he continued walking, unable to see his feet as they marched across the ground.
There were no lights apart from the stars and he was unsure which direction the hotel was in. And then again he stopped, to listen to the serenade of the frogs that lived around the lake, like the repeated, random plucking of a bowed instrument in an orchestra, endlessly tuning itself before a performance. It was a sound he had forgotten, one that had haunted him and kept him awake his first nights in a Langford dormitory, at the end of another August when he was fifteen years old. All the incoming students heard it as they slept in their new rooms, in their strange beds, missing their parents, their homes; they were told at their first assembly that the frogs were calling for their mates, defending their territory by the water’s edge before burying themselves under mud for the winter. The deafening thrum spoke to Amit tonight as it had then, of everything in the world that teemed beyond his vision, that was beyond his grasp.
He saw the hotel. It had taken no time at all; Megan wouldn’t even notice he’d been gone. He went into the room and sat on the bed that was empty, as opposed to the one used for their discarded clothes and luggage, and picked up the telephone. He looked around the room, and what he had earlier found disappointing he now found comforting. He dialed his in-laws’ area code. But he could not remember the rest of the number.
He sat there for a long time, the phone in his lap, trying to remember the digits. But he did not know them by memory, it was Megan who always called. He studied the paper pyramid from all sides, as if that might hold the answer. But no, those were television channels. He would have to go back to the wedding, ask Megan, and then come back again to the hotel. That was what he would do. He stood up, walking across the room to the door. Then he remembered that he could call directory assistance. He returned to the phone and was about to press the buttons. But his head throbbed and things began to spin, the paper pyramid on the bedside table no longer where it had been a second ago, and the need to be horizontal overwhelmed him, pulling him back to the pillows on the bed.
He woke up dressed in his suit, polished black shoes on his feet. The light was on in the dark room, the curtain to the balcony drawn. He first thought that it was still nighttime and that he had to get back to the wedding. But then he looked at the digital clock on the bedside table and saw