"Bring me an atlas.
But I said this only after I'd finished my second brandy.
What for? she objected You know where Paramus is.
You went to Paramus mall with us.
But she shuffled across the den in the worn-down slippers
with zebra stripes she couldn't bear
to throw out because it had been a Mother's Day
gift from the girls.
And she pulled out the Rand McNally easy-to-read travel
atlas from under a stack of board games
on the lowest shelf of the bookcase.
Where's the third?
I asked.
What third?
The third of Doctor Patel's new properties.
Somewhere where we don't know anybody,
where we don't want to go.
Colorado.
Where in Colorado?
What's wrong with New New Jersey, she demanded.
What's wrong with living closer to relatives who care about us?
What town in Colorado, I persisted.
You look it up in the letter yourself if you're so keen.
I scanned the letter.
Montrose.
I played my trump card.
God is sending me a message, too.
God is saying choose between Montrose and Mithapur.
That's how we got into the motel business
in Colorado seven years ago.
Mrs. Patel and I co-managed the Bellevue in Montrose
with the cardiologist's brother-in-law for five years.
The profession did take some getting used to.
The pay was 1/5 of what I'd made my last year at Automoto.
The work hours were all night, as well as all day.
But Mrs. Patel, who despises despair,
reminded me that I had job security.
Also, that the air was fresher in Montrose
than it had been in Detroit.
Though the only time she stepped outdoors was
to get in or out of her car.
Each time we discovered efficient experimental methods
for removing gum from Broadloom, crusted vomit
from the inner edges of toilet rolls, and cigarette burns
from Formica countertops.
She announced this is what God had in mind for US.
Patent this invention and make a fortune.
The only job I refused to let her help with
was registering guests between midnight and 4:00 AM.
Not that Montrose is any less safe a town than Detroit.
But doing the night shift by myself
was the only insurance policy available to me.
But Mrs. Patel is a persuasive woman,
and within weeks, she coaxed me into relaxing my room enough
to allow her to sleep in the office on a cot behind a canvas
screen that little Kitty decorated with crayon pictures
of pointy Indian mountains.
In Southfield, we had put up Kirti's drawings,
countless essays, and Londoners' brilliant report cards
on the refrigerator door in our eat-in kitchen.
At the Bellevue, we improvised.
No self-pity is being invited.
The truth is that imagining Mrs. Patel asleep on the cot
behind that screen turned me on more than she ever had
in her person in Southfield.
More, even, than that time just after Kanta was born,
when she had failed a love quiz in a lady's magazine,
and so had bought herself a pink sleeping
suit with ribbons and frills.
[LAUGHTER]
Even her snores sounded voluptuous to me.
We might have gone on co-managing
the Bellevue for Dr. Shah longer than the five years
we did if Dr. Shah hadn't got himself snared by some Medicare
fraud sting operation.
His investment properties, the Bellevue included,
had to be sold to pay trial lawyers who were
trying to keep him out of jail.
Mrs. Patel's sister broke the news
to us very late one night from a payphone at Newark Airport.
Mrs. Patel took the call on her cordless,
which she keeps on the cot all night in case of a holdup.
And I listened in.
The sister called her doctor-husband
a word in English I hadn't heard her use before.
Nincompoop.
Just my luck.
Then there were sobs.
A nincompoop who didn't even know
enough to cover his tracks.
Mrs. Shah sobbed some more while my wife tried out
calming platitudes.
My wife said luck isn't luck.
The sister said that she was going back to Vadodara for good
and that she was taking the children with her.
Luck is how we respond to an event, my wife persisted.
Clouds look like clouds to some people.
To others they look like silver ingots
right for smart investing.
My investment took a bad beating, the sister snapped.
Dr. Shah's troubles led us to our buying Harry's Hideaway.
While angry Mrs. Shah was jetting high above clouds,
I checked all ads for motels in the
investment-properties-for-sale columns of the two
Indian-American weeklies that I subscribed to.
That's how I found Harry's Hideaway.
It required the lowest down payment of all motels listed,
and the seller, a Sri Lankan Tamil,
who needed cash to smuggle his family out of Jaffna,
was as desperate to sell as Mrs. Patel
and I were to find a new motel roof over our heads.
Harry's Hideaway in Granada.
I liked the name of the town as well as that of the motel.
Gra-na-da.
Good things would happen to me in Gra-na-da.
Like sages who retire deep into forests to meditate,
I would retreat into my deepest self in Harry's Hideaway.
I drove down the asking price over the phone
without finding out from my travel-made-easy atlas
where exactly in the state Granada was located.
Good things did happen.
They're still happening.
I'm falling deeper and deeper in love with Mrs. Patel,
with an exuberance that shocks me.
But what good is passion if it does not
make you shudder at the limitlessness
of its possibilities?
My new happiness was jump-started
by one small adversity.
The seller had fixed the books to look as though he had made
more money than he really had.
We discovered that we'd gotten more traffic in one day
at the Bellevue than we were luring
in a week at Harry's Hideaway.
We tried different promotional dates.
We offered 24-hour samosa and coffee in the lobby.
[CHUCKLING]
Mrs. Patel's rewash while you sleep, and even threw
in free ironing and mending.
Then we got wise to the American-owned signs
other motels put up.
So Kirti painted us a big, beautiful American-owned sign,
and we stuck our sign in our window.
Still, 70% of our rooms stayed vacant.
Finally, Mrs. Patel hit upon the idea of renting by the hour.
[LAUGHTER]
Now the No Vacancy under Harry's Hideaway lights up
the gloomiest night of rain or snow.
Most of my rooms are rented by married couples.
Mr. And Mrs. John Smith.
[LAUGHTER]
Mr. And Mrs. Joe Blow.
Mr. And Mrs. What's-It-To-You.
Sometimes they'd bring their children along.
I wave to girls with bruised smiles
the age of my Kirti and boys with sad eyes
and flamboyant tattoos.
I provide a cheap roof over the heads of all
who need it for however long.
I watch over my extended family through holes
in walls and mirrors.
They kiss, they caress, they tangle and tumble
through love's fierce pace.
I read their lips through my peep hold.
You bitch, they moan.
You cunt.
You angel.
From my hideout, I undress Mrs. Patel as Joe Smith tears
clothes off his Mrs. Joe.
I shot Mrs. Patel's zebra-striped slippers
off her tired feet.
My tongue licks the harsh, cracked skin of her heels.
My body shudders against her body
and drinks its fill of sweet fragrances.
Sandalwood, Lysol, Listerine, cumin, turmeric.
Oh, Harry Hideaway, I whisper to [INAUDIBLE].
You have been lucky.
Very, very lucky."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]