At the restaurant

[NaNoWriMo Day 5]

[Warning: This is poorly written and completely unedited. I just want to get a novel written soon.]

A dark orange-yellow glow permeated throughout the room like thick fog.

The air was thick with the smell of sharp spices. The pans in the kitchen sizzled, filling the room with jets of steams which then seeped into the dining area.

Raul could smell the rancid smell of stale cigarettes. He cleared his throat. He coughed a deep cough, like old men with thick glasses and dhaka-topis who go out on morning walks on cold foggy mornings despite being told not to by their doctor. Since he had quit smoking, he couldn't stand the stench.

He stared into his whiskey glass. The whiskey was cheap, and positively pungent. There was nothing better available, and this had been the best place for the meeting. I need to stop pinching my nose and squirming, he thought, it doesn't look professional enough. Specially in situations like these. The orange lightbulb overhead flickered. Great, he thought, now we even have the mood to go.

The fat old tv at the counter had the news on. Nakul dai was on, giving an interview. Was he balding, or was it the camera and lights that were playing tricks, Raul wondered. A former wife who he was technically not divorced to, a former mistress who demanded as much attention as when she was not former, without giving anything in return, and a wife who he was technically not very legally married to, that had to take its toll. Raul had asked once, when he was four Bourbons in, why he hadn't fixed the affairs better. He had claimed then that it was too much work, and the ex wife wouldn't agree to an amicable divorce. It's the kids, Raul, it's the kids, I spend two nights a week with her even now, and they think I'm gone for work, he said said. Him and his three women, Raul thought...at least three women. No matter how well-organized some people were, they always had obvious weaknesses. Raul wondered which of his faults was as obvious.

The snow-white glow of the television illuminated the faces of servers as they walked by the counter. Raul had noticed a server who seemed uncharacteristically chipper for the place who had been filling everyone's glasses. She had shiny black hair, a pale face, and a golden jewelry with a shiny on her nose. Raul stopped breathing. Dark red lipstick was generously put on her lips. She had a subtle layer of eyeliner on, Raul didn't realize that -- he thought she had unusually large eyes for her features. Raul wanted to find out what she was doing at such an establishment. He took a big swig of the whiskey, and sighed. He closed his eyes, took a long breath. I'm here for an important meeting, and I will attend the meeting, and go back home, and sleep comfortably, he thought. He felt tired. Probably this awful whiskey, he thought. His brain hurt. A server brought in fried brains.

He had had a hard time adjusting to local cuts of meats after returning. Brains, ears, eyes, tongues, heads, feet -- they had sounded like inventory from a cheap horror movie. Few years in, and he preferred those to American cuts. He loved fire-roasted ear that went well with the local vodka. The smokiness and crunch went well with the vodka. The meat, sprinkled with salt and red pepper powder, and lemon, was his favourite appetizer to eat with latenight drink. Fried brain was good by itself, and was a solid mean to go with beaten rice. But it didn't go well with drunken meetings. Somehow the green-ness and fattiness of the brain permeated into everything, and by the end of the night the room smelled as if a baby fed only on a lemon-and-spinach diet had thrown up. The woody smoke flavor of ears gave the air of serious people having serious conversations.

Raul realized he had been tapping his fingers on the table. He straightened himself up: he had to maintain a serious composure for the serious meeting. For all he knew, this place could be a den of spies. He could imagine the servers furtively exchanging information gleaned from overheard conversations, passing it along to the command center in the kitchen, where the cooks also doubled as spy managers. People would exchange memory cards by pretending to be strangers bumping into one another, and servers would pass information to outside by writing coded messages into bills. Hosts and hostesses would flirt with clients to steal documents, pass it onto servers who would copy them, and put them back as if nothing had happened. That could be happening. Raul knew it wasn't so because the scheme was too complicated. Intelligence gathering in Nepal was blunt. Information didn't leak because there was a clandestine undercover operation going on -- it was mostly as simple as an bribing an underpaid servant-boy to retrieve something for a few minutes until copies were made. Or plying a driver with cheap booze every night to share everything he had heard during the day. Raul had been told that the trick was in extracting beyond what to the driver was the juiciest and most salacious gossip. Everything they'd heard, interesting or not, needed to be extracted to get relevant information. The best strategy to protect yourself from spying was bribing your drivers and servants with booze (or money) before anyone else got to them. Treat them well, tip them well, and your secrets are your own, Raul had learned. Too many people had too much of an ego to treat their employees well. These are the people I can leverage over, Raul thought. Careless people, lazy people, people with egos so big they'd dwarf the Dharhara in its former glory. What they saved in money, they paid in privacy. You always pay, one way or the other. You always pay.