The Object of Your Affections

by Falguni Kothari

  The oil was that hot that it had burned her?

  “Paris! Your hand. The diya!” I yelled, rushing forward.

  But my warning came a second too late. Paris slipped on the spilled oil on the floor, her arms flailing for purchase. She righted herself promptly, but in doing so, lost her hold on the diya. It smashed to the floor, its contents flying willy-nilly. The flame went out and I whooshed out a breath. Disaster averted. Then suddenly, the silken hem of her lehenga began to blaze.

  Holy shit. I wondered if Paris would ever forgive me now.

  chapter three

  Paris

  I hobbled into my hotel room, feeling like the world’s clumsiest klutz. A goddamned shlemiel. For crying out loud, hard-core criminals pissed in their pants when I marched into a courtroom, or so much as looked at them sideways.

  Okay, slight exaggeration there. Though I thanked God that this wasn’t a courtroom and that no one from work had witnessed my graceless tumble. As it was, I was never going to live it down with my friends. Or hear the end of Neal’s lectures on safety and fire hazards. Or Lily’s on the inauspiciousness of using fire as a dance prop. Wait! Maybe Lily no longer considered fire as holy or symbolic after her divorce from Judaism, maturity and sanity.

  Letting go of Naira’s shoulder, I collapsed on the bed, irritated beyond belief at the tween who’d triggered my fall, and even more at myself. How could I have been so distracted as to forget—forget!—that damn diya in my hand? Hadn’t I warned Lavinia that the diya dance was a lawsuit in waiting if the tent was accidentally set on fire? Forget accidentally setting a human being on fire. But Lavinia in her absurd nothing-will-go-wrong-at-my-wedding mood had chucked my advice out the window for the sake of authenticity, ambience and tradition. The diya dance had been performed at every wedding in her family since the dawn of civilization, apparently. “After all, we’re all adults and know how to be careful,” Lavinia had said in her nauseating bridal daze.

  Well, she’d miscalculated that one because I definitely wasn’t adulting today. And this mishap was exactly why I was against weddings that tried to compete with the Cirque du Soleil, especially when kids were involved. I shuddered at the thought of getting involved with kids on a daily basis.

  Pandemonium followed me inside the room in the guise of my shrieking friends who were making too much noise to make any sense, if they were indeed trying to help. Naira, who seemed dumbstruck with panic, wasn’t adulting today, either. Usually, she was the one we’d relied on in a crisis back in college. She’d known all the Zen answers to life, and a bunch of home remedies for life’s ailments.

  I pressed my fingers into my ears and yelled loudly enough to drown everyone else out. “Thank you all for your well-meaning prattle, but I’m fine. My foot is fine.” I stuck the appendage in question a foot off the floor as irrefutable evidence. Half my toes were red and part of my skin on the top of the foot was on the hotter side of the temperature gauge. It was probably going to blister, but I wasn’t screaming in pain so it must be okay. Really, I felt more stupid than hurt anyway. “I’ll survive a bit of peeled skin. Now get out. This room is too small for all of us to congregate in. And for the love of eardrums everywhere, stop screaming, Aria. You’d think I’d been burned alive.”

  Downstairs, Naira had helped me remove my block heels and a quick side peek confirmed that she still clutched them between her hands like loaded weapons. My brain sputtered to a stop again at the sight of her.

  Naira was really here. In the flesh. She’d come for Lavinia’s wedding and not mine? Oh, she’d tried her best to come—blah blah blah—she’d explained then. But she hadn’t tried hard enough, had she, I thought in resentment.

  I frowned at my foot—it was still stinging—wondering why Naira was here. It couldn’t just be the wedding. I was certain of it. I frowned harder, wiggling my toes, then hissed when it hurt. I needed to do something about the stinging. I’d deal with Naira later. I had to sort out my foot before it got infected. For that, I needed my room back, and some peace and quiet.

  “Look, guys, the reception’s already started. I suggest you quickly run Naira through the dance choreography so she can fill in for me. We all know she’s a way better dancer than I am,” I said on a stroke of genius. They could all get out of my hair and let me breathe. Think too. What was she doing in New York now? What had happened?

  “What? No!” Naira exclaimed, coming out of her stupor. “I’ll ruin the dance if I join in out of the blue. I’ll stay and help you. Lavinia? We’ll come down once she’s better. Okay?” She raised her eyebrows first at Lavinia, who nodded joyously, then at me.

  I wasn’t ready to let go of my mad. “You don’t need to stay. I can manage by myself. You’ve come to enjoy the wedding. Don’t let me keep you from it.”

  “I’m staying,” she said, shooting me a look that read: don’t be an ass.

  My back stiffened, but Lavinia interjected before I could open my mouth and trigger an all-out war of words. “Thanks, darling. We appreciate it.”

  Lavinia didn’t even try to disguise her meddlesome glee. She’d been trying to get Naira and me to make peace for a while and I imagined she was going to take full credit if we did so at her wedding. My nostrils flared but Lavinia was already herding our excitable group of friends out of my room.

  “Can one of you find my husband and tell him what happened and that I’m fine? Or, never mind. I’ll tell him myself,” I shouted at their retreating backsides.

  I didn’t want him to hear an embellished, screechy version of the fiasco. He was going to be a pain in the tuches about it as it was. I frowned at my foot again. I couldn’t bear to look at Naira. And because the room was seriously tiny, and she stood way too close, I couldn’t not look at her size six-and-a-half golden mules peeking out from under her peach-and-gold sari.

  I couldn’t wrap my head around her sudden appearance in New York. And looking like Little Orphan Annie. Naira had always been on the petite and dainty side, but goodness, she looked like a wraith right now. As if Death had kissed her and sucked the life out of her.

  Was she still grieving for the criminal? I peeked at her from beneath my lashes. Nearly three years as an ADA had honed my people-reading skills, and I hoped to get a solid read. Tiredness, nerves and maybe a dash of guilt were painted on her face.

  Good. She should feel guilty for standing me up at my wedding. I’d also tack on the charge of disturbing the peace. If I hadn’t been gaping at her in the tent, I’d have seen that child coming right at me and spared myself some humiliation.

  “You can set my shoes down.” I gestured toward the closet by the door.

  Naira did so, then came back to me. She bent over my foot, worrying her bottom lip. She seemed just as averse to making eye contact as I was.

  “Do you have Neosporin in your travel kit? Let’s at least get it under cold water to cool the skin,” Naira, the queen of home remedies, suggested when I shook my head about the Neosporin.

  “Good idea.” I stood up, but as I began shuffling toward the bathroom, the heavily embroidered and slightly charred hem of my lehenga—which was also soaking wet thanks to the quick-witted Samaritan who’d thrown a pitcher of water at me when I’d set myself on fire—scratched against my skin, making me gasp in pain.

  “Close the door. I have to take off the pants.” I reached for the side zipper and tugged.

  As I balanced on one leg and stripped, Naira hovered behind me, arms at the ready to catch me if I toppled over. The thought of her trying to break my fall sent a flutter of amusement through me. I still had half a foot on her and, at a minimum, an extra thirty pounds of curves and muscle. If I fell on her, she’d be squashed like a gnat against a flyswatter.

  The zipper got stuck halfway down my hip and I had to rezip and unzip twice before getting it right. Our friendship had also been stuck like my zipper for two and a half years, and neither of us
had dared to force it closed or open it up again. Until now.

  When I finally stepped out of my pants, tears blurred my vision.

  Naira’s eyes widened into circles of panic. “Is it painful? Paris, you need to see a doctor. We have to go to a hospital. I’m going to text Lavinia and check if there’s a doctor among the guests. Odds are there should be. Tell me what to do! What do you need me to do?”

  “That’s not why I’m...” I gestured to my face, sounding as choked up as I felt.

  I hated putting my emotions on display. I hated her. So much. I would never forgive her for the two years of silence. But I was absurdly happy to see her. I still couldn’t believe she was standing right in front of me.

  “Why did you shut me out?” I sniffled, so embarrassed by the quaver in my voice.

  “Why didn’t you force me to talk?” she countered, her face pale and stark. “I waited for you to call. I waited for you to come. I expected you to barge into my house after the...funeral. After you’d finished your case. I waited every single day. But you never came.”

  A tear rolled down my face as I gaped at her. “You told me you wanted to be left alone. That you needed time and space to grieve. You told me to respect your wishes.”

  The week following the funeral, she’d told me she needed to be with Kaivan’s family, that his parents, his sister were inconsolable. They were her responsibility now and she had to take care of them. A month later, she’d said she was busy sorting out the will, the finances, settling the debts. That her family was helping her and things were a bit hectic and urgent in her life. She’d implied that she didn’t have time to spare for me.

  Had she been lying? I hadn’t pushed because I’d genuinely believed that she needed to be with her family. Naira was super close to her family, especially her mother. Also, I’d never liked Kaivan the Criminal, so it had seemed a little hypocritical to show up and mourn him. But now, in retrospect, I realized I should’ve gone to Mumbai. Neal had even bought our tickets and I’d made him cancel. I should have forced Naira to talk to me, to pour her heart out, confront her grief. But I’d been so angry with her after my wedding that I’d let my anger blind me.

  “I never thought you’d listen,” she said, confirming my suspicions. “You never ever listen to other people. You always do what you wish. Ordinarily.”

  “God, Naira. If you wanted me to come, why the fuck didn’t you just say so? Why play games?” I frowned at her. My head was beginning to hurt too.

  “Because I was punishing myself, okay?” she shouted in frustration.

  “What?” Now I was completely dumbfounded.

  She threw up her hands. “I didn’t come for your wedding. I wasn’t there to support you when I knew... I knew how hard it must have been for you to trust him...to commit to marriage. Doubly hard with your father gone and I still didn’t...couldn’t come. So I thought I didn’t deserve your support in my time of need. So it’s quits, okay? We both have one tally mark each in the terrible friend department.” She ended the declaration on a half moan, half hysterical giggle, reminding me how we’d kept score of who was a better friend back in college.

  We stared at each other for the next several heartbeats, thoughts whirling. Mine certainly were. She was right. Everything she said was true. We’d been punishing each other and ourselves for our crimes. It was past time to stop.

  I nudged her hand, tapped it with a finger, really. That’s all it took. One tap and we were in each other’s arms, crying and laughing and cursing at one another. Bouncing—well, I hopped.

  The door swung open amid this drama and Neal, my husband, my lover, my mate, stood there, key card in hand and his tuxedo jacket folded over an arm, looking understandably bewildered. But so gorgeous.

  I drew back from Naira, gurgling with happiness. I flapped a hand between them and tried to introduce them to each other. My wonderful self-flagellating bestie and my amazing man—the two people on this planet who knew the core of me down to the last misshapen pinkie-toe.

  Neal sauntered deeper into the room, his gaze zeroing in on my red foot. Not the one with the bad pinkie-toe.

  “I’m fine. It’s nothing,” I blurted out, co-opting his lecture.

  “Hmm. Read this.” He clicked his phone on and showed me the screen, never taking his frown off my foot. It was a text from Karen: Paris on fire! Needs u in bedroom now!

  Oh, good lord! That Karen was such a ninny.

  “I will say this, hen. After such a provocative message, the last thing I expected to find in my room was my wife...erm, half-naked with another lassie in her arms. Warn a lad next time, aye?” Finally, his blue-blue eyes lighted on mine. They were brimming with unholy humor.

  I was done. Slain. As I was slain the night we’d met. Neal’s deadly combination of wit and Scots and the absurdity of the situation had me sliding to the carpeted floor howling with laughter, my burned appendage all but forgotten. Naira tried to maintain decorum—on account of Neal, I supposed—but my giggles were too contagious and soon her body was also shuddering in mirth on the floor beside me.

  We laughed for a long time, Naira and I, even after Neal’s amusement changed into exasperation. “It wasn’t that funny,” he said, standing over us with his hands on his hips.

  Nope, it wasn’t. But I knew why we laughed even if he didn’t. We laughed because there was no longer any reason to cry.

  Our friendship was back on track. Mazel tov!

  * * *

  Some friendships were toxic. They made you bitch or turned you into a raging bitch. They made you hate and be loathed in return. They brought on migraines instead of inner harmony. You couldn’t laugh like a loon with that friend. You might let out a witchy cackle or two, but genuine mirth? Heaven forbid if you dared to be genuinely amused on a toxic friend’s watch.

  The same was true of toxic relationships. I’d seen firsthand the destruction such relationships unleashed on marriages, families, friendships, children. It was ugly what humans did to one another in the name of right, might and possession. Even before I’d thought about being a lawyer or fighting for people’s rights and justice, before I’d ever imagined that I might have a future that didn’t involve tears and harsh words, I’d experienced relationship toxicity. My birth mother had given me away on the very day I was born. Just ejected me from her womb and her life, and like a cuckoo had tricked random suckers into caring for me.

  The first couple who’d adopted me as a three-month-old infant had eventually turned toxic too. Perhaps they hadn’t planned to harm me or each other. I’m quite certain they’d dreamed of being the perfect parents, once. I sometimes had flashbacks—or was it only wishful thinking—that I’d laughed a lot as a toddler. But by the time I was six, Jared and Sandra had hated each other’s guts and they’d channeled their mutual hatred through me. They divorced, obviously. And they divorced me too. I was meant to be a joint project and not a sole responsibility. Once Social Services had taken me off their hands, neither one had ever checked up on me—not even out of guilt or duty or simple humanity. Maybe they’d realized I was a cuckoo—wrong bird, wrong nest.

  And then there were friendships and relationships that were effortless. Not that you didn’t have to put some effort in maintaining them, but they were easier to navigate, solid as stone and, most important, forgiving.

  My relationships with Neal, Naira and the Judge had always been solid.

  And there I went, thinking weird, maudlin thoughts in the middle of a happy occasion. I simply wasn’t capable of sitting still and being Zen in mind, which, due to my own klutziness I was relegated to this evening. I’d been advised to stay off my feet—Lavinia had managed to tag a wedding guest who was also an ER doctor, and had dispatched her to my room for emergency foot care. The doctor had applied ice and aloe vera to the blister and proclaimed me as good as new again. As long as I stayed off my feet, she’d seen no reason for me to hide o
ut in my room, nursing the burn. Except, I’d then realized that my lehenga lay in a puddle on the bathroom floor and I hadn’t packed any spare clothes. Naira had come to the rescue, quickly fashioning a sarong-style skirt out of my chiffon and gauze dupatta and my outfit was decent once more.

  (Sidebar: I loved the ease of the makeshift skirt so much that I made a mental note to tell Neal’s sister, Helen, to incorporate the style into whatever outfits she designed for me henceforth.)

  We’d made it to the reception in time for the diya dance, which went amazingly well despite the confusion my absence created in the choreography. Now, almost every guest and their mothers were wiggling their tuches off on the dance floor as the DJ brought the tent down with eardrum-busting music.

  I shifted, easing my outstretched leg off the footstool Neal had found for me, and gingerly placed my burned foot on the floor. I hated the feeling of pins and needles in my appendages—especially when it happened during a particularly long and drawn out deposition or trial—thus I kept shifting positions.

  “Okay?” Naira shouted into my right ear.

  I nodded, smiling. I’d tried—We’d all tried to get Naira to dance but she was determined to demur. Jet lag had fatigued her, apparently. I didn’t believe her.

  “Go. Dance!” I poked her again.

  “I’d rather keep you company,” she said, her lips curving in a dreamy smile.

  She wasn’t jet-lagged. She was tipsy, I decided in amusement.