Bombay 1966: I was 26, having dinner in the dining room of the Natraj Hotel, on a week’s vacation from my job in New Delhi at the Ford Foundation. Several tables away an attractive woman, dark and exotic, European probably, was eating alone. I wanted to meet her.
We’d both finished dinner and were nursing drinks, and I considered taking the direct approach—introducing myself and asking if I could join her—but she might take the direct approach too and say, “No, I don’t want you to.”
So I decided to send her a note on a napkin—a technique I’d never tried before and never would again. As I composed a very cute greeting on a cocktail napkin, however, she pulled back her chair and—to my dismay—headed for the door.
And asking the waiter to follow in pursuit and give her the note while she was leaving or maybe at the elevator seemed really bad form.
That night I slept fitfully, the third scotch talking, and woke around 2:00. I felt a little dizzy, plus which the room was swaying slightly.
Swaying?
It continued for about 20 seconds, a few items sliding off a table, then stopped.
I leapt out of bed, slipped on my bathrobe and slippers, and went into the hallway, where everyone from the floor was gathering—the lights were out, and some people carried flashlights.
Emerging from a room across from mine was the woman from dinner, wearing a nightgown and bathrobe, her hair loose and flowing, and we joined a cluster of people comparing notes, the conversational buzz in the hallway at high pitch. Then—seeing through my open door that the window looked out on a main thoroughfare—she said, with a Spanish accent, “Do you mind if I come into your room and take a peek?”
Did I mind if she came into my room? Was that the question?
“Not at all,” I said, my voice higher than usual.
She followed me to the window, and, standing side by side, we took in the sight of the city gone dark (the result of an earthquake, I learned later), commenting on the moving lights below—people carrying beacons and torches. Her bathrobe brushed my arm; I could smell the moisturizer on her skin.
The Lord, in His Infinite Wisdom, had seen fit to bring us together, in a dark room, in a dark city, but now what?
I could let this wonderfully absurdist moment pass by—something I’d always regret—or take control of the narrative, move beyond our desultory conversation, and get her to see me as not just anybody whose room she was visiting in the middle of the night.
Racing against the clock, I considered deft ways to turn the conversation from the earthquake to us, not an easy leap. I kept the small talk going while zipping through my arsenal of surefire pickup lines (“you must be exhausted, you’ve been running through my dreams all night”), and then it hit me: I’d tell her about the napkin note—and let the chips fall where they would. Presumably, she’d either be amused and flattered, paving the way perhaps to further paving…or shrink back, eyeing me with distaste, and flee to the hallway.
“I must tell you something funny,” I said in a vaguely conspiratorial way, as if we all knew how I could be sometimes. “I had dinner in the hotel dining room tonight and noticed you a few tables away. I smiled but don’t think you saw me. So I had an inspired idea and wrote a…
A second tremor hit!
Things started sliding off the table again. We looked at each other, frightened, I waited for her to fall whimpering into my arms. I heard a glass crash, we swayed together, the earth moved for her…
Well. We all eventually ended up in the first-floor lobby sharing a bottle of Bombay gin donated by somebody, riding out the night until dawn, my Spanish countessa deep in conversation with another man.
It’s hard to say what the moral of this story is, but I certainly relearned a crucial life lesson—and one I’m regularly reminded of: The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.
The Lord has more of Bob Strozier to give you very soon. He and Cath Mason will co-present a class called “New Yorker Poems: A Feast of Plenty” on Thursday, October 17, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Compton Park Meeting Room. It will include refreshments, lunch, and a door prize! You can click here to learn more. To register, call Charise Dixie at 813-974-5848 or go here. (After you log in at usfseniors.org) — Editors
Robert Strozier’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications including Atlantic, Esquire, The New Times Magazine, and The NYT Book Review. He’s had plays produced in NYC, and a musical he wrote (book and lyrics) has had five concert readings.
He also helped launch five national magazines, then served as Editor-in-Chief of two and a senior editor at the others.
Leave a Reply