The Art of Purring (The Dalai Lama's Cat 2)

Sam gazed intently into her eyes. “But what’s he doing in McLeod Ganj?”

“That’s what I’m …” She reached over him to the keyboard and tapped in something else, nodding as another page opened up on the screen. “Yup. This happened when I was leaving London. He cashed out for five hundred million dollars.”

“That guy over there?” whispered Sam, wide-eyed.

“Exactly.” Serena squeezed his arm before stepping away from the counter for another discreet peek.

She nodded. “People in London couldn’t stop talking about it. It’s every entrepreneur’s dream, and for the restaurant business, it’s an inconceivable amount of money. People either love him or hate him.”

“Which side are you on?”

“Admire him, of course! What he did is amazing. He got into a sector with a whole lot of poor-quality associations and created something that was genuinely distinctive. People liked it, and it took off. He made a pile of money, but it took him twenty years of incredibly hard work.”

“Weird guy, though,” Sam said, shaking his head.

“You mean the multiple visits?”

“Not only that. You know, he spends hours in the Internet Shop down the road.”

It was Serena’s turn to look surprised.

The Internet Shop, which catered to an almost entirely local clientele, was dirty, overcrowded, and poorly lit.

“I see him going in there every morning.” Sam lived in an apartment over the café with windows facing the street. “He’s there from eight in the morning. Afterward, he comes here.”

Over the next week, Gordon Finlay was a regular fixture at the Himalaya Book Café. He did miss a couple of mornings, during which the rear banquette felt curiously vacant. On the first occasion he and his wife were seen climbing into the back of a tour van that took visitors on all-day excursions through the surrounding countryside. On the other occasion, a waiter reported having seen him in conversation with Amrit, one of the vendors who plied their trade beneath the tangled chaos of telephone wires along the street.

Of all the vendors, the ragged Amrit was the youngest and least popular, struggling to interest passers in the deep-fried dumplings he retrieved from a filthy-looking pan. What Gordon Finlay found of interest about the ever-disconsolate Amrit was hard to fathom. But when Finlay missed both his preprandial bottle of wine and his lunch, Kusali looked out the window and noticed that Amrit was no longer at his stall.

The mystery was solved the next day when Amrit was seen back in position, in bright yellow-and-red overalls and cap, with the blackened pan replaced by a shiny silver outdoor-barbecue wok and jaunty bunting fluttering around a Happy Chicken sign. As he flipped chicken breasts for a growing line of customers, Gordon Finlay stood behind him in his trademark cream jacket, giving instructions.

At 11 o’clock sharp, Finlay was back in the café.

Exactly what Gordon Finlay was doing in McLeod Ganj became a subject of growing conjecture. Surely he hadn’t picked this modest little town in the Himalaya foothills as the starting point for a new global fast-food chain? Why bother coming here only to spend so much time drinking? Wouldn’t somewhere in Italy or the South of France be more agreeable for this? And what about all the time he spent in the Internet Shop, when he could so easily have gone online from the far greater comfort of his hotel?

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I am pleased, dear reader, to claim a vital part in discovering the answer to these and other open questions. Like many of life’s most intriguing developments, this one didn’t arise from any deliberate action on my part. My simple, if admittedly irresistible, presence was all that was required to unleash the most unexpected flow of pent-up emotion.

Occupying my usual spot in the café, I had adopted what Ludo might have called the pose of Mae West, lying on my side with my head propped up on my right front paw. It was getting close to the time that Gordon Finlay usually made the first of his two daily appearances. But when I glanced up from where I had begun to groom the fluffy white fur on my tummy, who should appear at the door but Mrs. Finlay. She looked anxiously about the restaurant before making her way toward the book shop. She had never ventured this far before; she and her husband usually occupied the same table closer to the front. She had almost reached the magazine rack before Serena approached her.

“I’m looking for my husband,” Mrs. Finlay told Serena. “We’ve been here a few times.”

Serena nodded with a smile.

“It’s become his favorite place in Dharamsala, and I was hoping …” Her lower lip was quivering, and she drew a deep breath to compose herself. “I was hoping I might find him here.”

“We haven’t seen him today,” said Serena. “But you’re very welcome to wait.” She was gesturing toward the banquette at the back, the one at which Gordon Finlay enjoyed his morning bottle of wine, when for the first time Mrs. Finlay looked at the shelf where I was grooming myself.

Sensing I was being stared at, I looked directly at her.

“Oh, good heavens!” Mrs. Finlay’s already fragile composure was threatened again. “Just like our little Sapphire.”

Stepping toward me, she reached out to stroke my neck.

I looked into her red-rimmed eyes and purred.

“This is Rinpoche,” Serena told her, but Mrs. Finlay wasn’t listening. First one tear, then another began to roll down her cheek. Biting her lip to stem the flow, she stopped petting me and reached into her handbag for a tissue. But it was too much. Within moments she had let out a great sob of emotion. Serena put her arm around her and gently guided her to the banquette.