Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors

by Sonali Dev

  Did she just threaten to fire him? For trying to be helpful? “I didn’t say I was going to tell anyone. You seemed uncomfortable with having to step in. I was trying to help.” He had to work hard to keep his voice even, to not tell her to stuff her job. Maybe it wasn’t a threat.

  “I am uncomfortable, but Nisha assured me that you were competent enough for the both of us. Keeping this under wraps is not negotiable. If you would rather not help us keep this secret, tell me now and we can find someone who can.”

  There it was again. Definitely a bloody threat. He opened the boot of Emma’s Beetle and placed his hot bag in there. His jaw was so tight it was going to snap out of its joint if he didn’t calm down.

  Actually . . . to hell with calming down. He slammed the trunk shut. “I’m sorry, but am I missing something? I wasn’t aware that I was still auditioning for the job. I try to help you and you threaten to fire me?”

  She met his eyes. The harshness in his tone seemed to surprise her. Not that he gave a shit. Anger rose in her gaze and matched his, their five minutes of peace gone like water drops on an overheated pan.

  Just as quickly her shoulders slumped and she squeezed her temples. “Look, I’m sorry. I wasn’t threatening you.”

  “Whatever it was you were doing, I need to know if the job is mine or not. We have the menu almost pinned down. I’ve spent days on prep work. I’ve booked assistants. I really cannot afford to go through all that if you’re still considering other people. I need to talk to Nisha.” He walked past her and headed for the front door to go back inside. This had to be straightened out now. He needed this job, but no matter how disposable Trisha Raje thought he was, he wasn’t desperate enough to be treated like a common cook in constant fear of being thrown out of the kitchen.

  She jogged after him and held his arm. “You don’t have to talk to Nisha. I said I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just really hard to explain how important it is that no one in the family finds out about Nisha.”

  “I thought your family was close.”

  She let his arm go and pressed her hand into her belly. On anyone else the gesture would’ve been vulnerable, but on her . . . on her he would be stupid to imagine vulnerability. “We are close. That’s why. It’s not serious and we don’t want to alarm anyone.” She worried her lip with her teeth, looking awfully anxious. “Actually, that’s not true. It is serious, but not the way you would think. We aren’t sure how things are going to . . . to turn out. But it . . . it impacts the entire family. I know it’s not easy to understand. But I can’t let Nisha be hurt. Imagine if this were your sister, imagine if it were Emma.”

  Was she bloody joking? “You want me to imagine how it feels to let Emma be hurt?” He pressed his jaw into his hand in the Thinker’s pose. “That’s not going to be easy now, is it?” He couldn’t help but laugh. She had just sent his gravely sick sister home where anything could happen to her. Did she have absolutely no empathy at all?

  Her face softened. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. How is Emma holding up?”

  That question just made everything worse. “Holding up what? She’s home and wants to act like everything is normal. But it’s not.” He hadn’t slept one wink since she’d come home. At least not without waking up in a panic every few minutes. “She should be in a hospital being treated, not at home left to her own devices.”

  She blinked in surprise. A car passed behind her on the shaded street and she turned around and threw it a glance over her shoulder. For a few moments she seemed unsure of how to respond. The conversation had veered off in a direction she hadn’t expected. He hadn’t either. “It wasn’t my decision,” she said finally.

  “I beg your pardon? Emma didn’t discharge herself. No other doctor did either. You did.” Their voices had gone quiet, but suddenly they felt louder than when they’d been nearly fighting a few minutes ago.

  “No other doctor gave her a solution, either.”

  Didn’t he know it. “But if she doesn’t want your solution, isn’t it your job to convince her to do what’s right for her?”

  She touched her fingers to her temples again, then met his eyes again. “No, actually that’s her job. Your job. You’re her brother. You should be able to talk sense into her. Millions of people live in the world with disabilities.” Her voice gathered steam as she spoke. “My job was to analyze what was wrong with her and to find a way to save her life. And now my job is to execute that surgery—and there’s no one else in the world who can execute it with as much skill as I can. That is my job. And I always do it well.”

  As opposed to him. Who was failing at his part by not talking sense into his sister.

  She didn’t say it. But it was there in her eyes. Right there with that uncontainable arrogance when it came to her work. This was only about the surgery to her.

  He thought about backing away, but he was sick of backing away from fights. So sick of it. “And doing your job well is sending her home where she can’t be monitored, where she can’t be treated? For what? To teach her a lesson? Put her in a corner until she comes around to where you need her to be? So you can prove your skill?”

  She took a step back, but she didn’t look away. “I don’t need to prove my skill. But you seem to need to find someone to blame. Maybe you should try stepping up instead, and try finding a solution?”

  Once again, was she bloody joking? He’d been stepping up and finding solutions for problems since he was twelve years old. Feeding his family, putting a roof over their heads. Real problems, not challenges he sought out to prove his skill. “I’m not blaming you for what’s happened to Emma. Hell, I couldn’t appreciate your skill more. But pardon me for wondering if this is about Emma at all for you, or if it’s only about what you can accomplish.”

  A combination of emotions flashed in her strangely colored eyes; in the end, disbelief at being contradicted shone brightest. “Do you always judge people without knowing one damn thing about them? Or is it just me?”

  He almost laughed. The woman had called him the hired help without giving it one thought and she thought he judged people? He turned around and looked at the idyllic white stucco home nestled into a row of other idyllic homes, at the Tesla parked in the driveway, at the ease with which she had worn those rumpled scrubs at Ashna’s and still looked like a bombshell. He wanted to ask her what the hardest thing she’d ever been through was, but he couldn’t bring himself to. “I guess that would make two of us judging each other then, wouldn’t it?”

  Her cheeks colored. But this back-and-forth was useless. He wasn’t here to bring down mighty egos. He walked back to the Beetle, then abruptly turned to her again.

  “I quit my job . . .” He almost didn’t say the next part, because accusing her of arrogance and then showing his own was too bloody ironic, but he couldn’t stop himself. “. . . at a Michelin-starred restaurant in place des Vosges, so I could be here for my sister. And I will do anything to make sure that the only family I have left on this earth does not leave me. Does that sound like me not stepping up to you?”

  She swallowed, her neck stretching with the effort. For a moment he thought she wouldn’t respond. “The only reason I discharged Emma was that I thought she needed some time to find her footing. From everything I’ve seen, your sister needs badly to feel in control—her art, everything about her, thrives on power. Pushing her into a corner will have the opposite effect of what we want. Right now she’s making choices from a place of anger. Our best bet is to get her to see that. Let her do the things she loves, that she lives for, so she remembers why she loves them and bases her choice on that. My opinion is that you find a way to show her how worth living her life really is.”

  DJ had been kneed in the ball bag once. This is exactly what that had felt like. He slumped back into Emma’s Beetle, his ears ringing. Every word she’d just said was true. It had taken him some time but he’d figured out where his sister was coming from. The fact that this woman saw it so easily, t
he fact that she could lay out a solution with such calm, when he had been too mired in feeling sorry for himself to do the same, made him want to kick himself, kick something. “What about her safety? Is she safe at home?”

  “I would not have discharged her if I didn’t believe that she was.” Some of her sharpness returned and it was a ridiculous relief. “From the growth trajectory of the tumor thus far, she has at least a few more weeks before anything changes. It’s still a brain tumor, so she has to be around someone who can watch her twenty-four seven. I told her that.”

  He nodded. “I . . . I can do that. I’m making sure.” He wanted to thank her, but instead he said, “I’ll keep the fact that Nisha isn’t feeling well to myself.”

  Her shoulders slumped visibly. “And you understand that I have absolutely no idea what this fund-raiser thing involves?”

  “Good thing I do.” He fitted himself into the driver’s seat. “Looks like we’re stuck together for the sake of our sisters.” He pulled the door shut, put the car in gear, and shot off around the looping driveway, watching her disappear in his rearview mirror. She didn’t look any happier at the prospect than he was.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was normal for Trisha to get just a few hours of sleep a night. But it was usually because she didn’t make it into bed in time to get a full night. Once she hit her pillow, however, she was usually dead to the world until her alarm jolted her awake like a defibrillator.

  For the tenth time that night she threw a desperate glance at her clock. It was two A.M. but she just hadn’t been able to turn off the noise in her head and fall asleep.

  Nisha lay next to her, so wiped from the day’s events that she was emitting soft snores.

  Trisha squeezed her eyes shut, but another set of fathomless eyes came alive in her head—a ring of crystalline brown rimmed around intense dark centers flecked with soft green and gold, watching her as she ate, giving nothing away, yet giving everything away from under those thick arched brows.

  That food. Magic melting on her tongue. Pleasure flooded through her senses at the memory.

  He’d seduced her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this satisfied, this filled up, this boneless. As though a masseuse had gone at the knots in her muscles for hours. The intense explosion of flavor in each bite had consumed her in one quick beat and then stretched out slowly sliding down each cell in her body. By the time she had eaten every single morsel of every single thing he placed before her, even wiping at the plate with her fingers after it was gone in a way that would have caused Ma to faint, she’d been done for.

  Is this what an addict felt like after their first hit?

  That rice at the Anchorage should’ve been a clue. Ever since she had put that first spoonful in her mouth, the memory of those flavors had surfaced at unexpected moments and set off cravings. Ever since he’d driven away from her in that bright pink car after telling her he’d do anything for his sister, the craving for his food had been rolling in waves across her taste buds, tangling her thoughts up inside her.

  It reminded her of the time when her mother had dragged her to a Kishori Amonkar concert when she was eight years old. HRH had canceled on Ma because of a surgery—which Ma had said was code for please don’t make me listen to classical music for four hours.

  Trisha was the only one of the children who seemed drawn to the ethereal presence of the long-held Indian classical notes that were a constant in their home. One of the maestros was constantly playing around Ma and Aji. Tabla, sitar, sarangi, the flute—some combination of vocals with these instruments followed the two women everywhere they went.

  To this day Trisha remembered the sound of Amonkar’s voice that evening. Even more clearly, she remembered how the music had felt inside her, how it had bloomed outward until it wrapped her in its folds. The near-acrobatic ragas had spun tales and gathered into emotions Trisha had no names for. It had felt as though she were unraveling into the air around her.

  A sold-out audience at the Orpheum Theatre had become tied into one consciousness by the magic of that voice and the emotions it harnessed. It had continued to vibrate inside Trisha and called her back to it again and again for months after. Now that magical pull was alive inside her again.

  The yearning for those flavors she had tasted yesterday was constant. Constant.

  After DJ had left, Trisha had brought Nisha to her condo. Miraculously enough, they had managed to get around the Neel problem. Nisha had called him apologetically with a story about how she couldn’t take him to the airport because Trisha was having “one of her meltdowns” over being kicked off a surgery team, which by the way had never ever happened in Trisha’s life. Neel being Neel had insisted that Nisha stay with Trisha until she was better. Then Nisha had topped it off with a dramatically whispered “And Trisha absolutely does not want anyone in the family to know.” This was a stroke of genius, because if “some drama with the sisters” wasn’t enough to keep Neel off their case then a “Raje family secret” certainly was. He and Mishka were on their way to London now.

  Once she’d settled Nisha in, Trisha had walked to her favorite bakery around the corner and bought their favorite blueberry and chocolate chip muffins—the combination was a specialty the bakery was renowned for and it had been Trisha’s staple pick-me-up for years. The pathetic substitute for her cravings had tasted like cardboard in her mouth.

  When Nisha had asked her about the tasting, she had blathered like an idiot for an hour, trying to describe each flavor.

  “He is a pretty amazing chef, isn’t he?” her sister had said, a little too smugly. “Yay Ashna for bringing him to us!”

  A sharp twinge of something panicky hit Trisha at the thought of him and Ashna together. But she remembered how insistent Ashna had been that they were just friends, and it settled the feeling a little. Then the fact that she needed to settle the feeling in the first place made fresh panic spring up again.

  For a moment there she had almost lost him. Nisha, Ashna, and Ma would have taken turns killing her if DJ had walked off the job. The man’s ability to endear himself to her family was astonishing.

  A violent sob snapped Trisha out of her reverie. Nisha sprang up to sitting and started gasping for air. Her face was flushed and glistening with tears. Trisha sat up, her own heart beating hard.

  Nisha started patting the mattress, her hands feeling for something, gouging desperately at the sheets beneath her, all of her trembling, a horrid sniffling hiccuping out of her.

  “Nisha, sweetheart. It’s okay.” Trisha grabbed her sister’s hands, trying to still the panic in them, trying to be gentle, trying to be firm. “Nisha, stop. Look at me.”

  Nisha’s wild eyes met hers.

  Holding her gaze, she secured her sister’s hands with one hand, then ran her other hand over the sheets under Nisha. They weren’t wet. Looking away from Nisha’s terrified eyes she threw a glance at her own hand. No blood. Without letting her relief show, she met Nisha’s eyes again. “Everything is all right.”

  Nisha’s breath slowed. She nodded and squeezed her eyes shut. A sheen of sweat glistened across her brow and upper lip.

  Trisha pulled her close and reached for the remote on the nightstand. “Chopped?” she asked, leaning back into the headboard and tucking her sister into her side.

  The TV buzzed to life across from them.

  Nisha snuggled into her, still trembling a little, and wiped her cheeks as discreetly as she could.

  No one would ever see Nisha like this again. Trisha wouldn’t let anyone. Her sister was the strongest, most put-together person Trisha knew and for years she had let herself be a mess for everyone to see because she had wanted those babies so much. If Nisha believed keeping her pregnancy secret gave her a better chance, Trisha would do anything to make it so. If she needed to go through this horror of hoping and waiting again privately, then Trisha would make that happen. She would do anything to give her sister that.

  I will do anything to
make sure that the only family I have left on this earth does not leave me.

  Not for the first time, the idea of Emma refusing surgery made Trisha sick to her stomach. The pain in DJ’s eyes had been so immediate, so uncontainable, she had the unbearable urge to know why Emma was all he had left on this earth. Never in her life had she had such a raging need to know what her patient’s life outside of her illness was like. It was usually something she avoided thinking about at all costs.

  Looks like we’re stuck together for the sake of our sisters. That wasn’t what the chef on Chopped was saying, but that’s what she heard him say. The chef on Chopped looked nothing like DJ—no smoothly shaved head, no undulating biceps, no deep dimple in his stubborn chin, no innate gentleness when he interacted with people, no fierce purpose for the sister he loved, and most certainly no ruthless provocation in his eyes for Trisha.

  Still, her mind projected him on the screen. And it annoyed her so much she pictured herself shaking him until his bones rattled and all those infuriatingly distracting parts flew off him.

  “I think the guy from Kansas will be chopped first,” Nisha said, her voice soft but steady.

  Trisha didn’t agree, so they laid wagers on who would get chopped in which round. Nisha was bang on target. Trisha, as usual, got it all wrong. But Nisha went back to sleep with a smile on her face, and that made everything all right.

  Chapter Sixteen

  DJ shook his head in utter disbelief as he finished moving the last of Emma’s things to his flat from Green Acres. Emma had lived in America for all of five years. After over a decade in Paris, the entirety of DJ’s possessions had fit in two suitcases. It had taken DJ seven trips to Green Acres to retrieve all of Emma’s belongings. Seven!