by Sonali Dev
She had kneed him. With so much force, spittle had flown from his mouth as he went down. It had been stained with blood from him biting down on his own tongue. She wished he’d bitten it off and choked on it. She had wanted to go on kicking him. Instead, she’d spit on him as he lay writhing in the ditch sobbing over his smashed balls.
“If you touch me again, I’ll find you and cut off your stick in your sleep,” she’d hissed at him.
Back then she’d still known how to say what she felt. She’d still felt like she could fight. We are copper, kanchi. We bend but they can’t break us.
She hadn’t known then quite how much they could bend you. Aama had been wrong. If they bent you enough, no matter how strong your copper, you broke.
The hill rose, she crested it, and came upon the most beautiful sight. A huge tree at the edge of a river. Once she’d seen the water she heard it. She walked to the water’s edge and sat down on the bank. The swollen river raged with the force of melting ice. Looking around to make sure she was alone, she rolled up her sweatpants and slipped her feet in. This was like the ice-water footbaths she needed when she danced too long, but with a live, healing current. The icy sting felt sinfully good.
All the feeling was gone from her feet when he spoke behind her.
“I’m sorry.”
The sorrys were starting to fall too thick between them. She didn’t even know what he was apologizing for this time. He squatted down next to her.
“Why did you leave?”
She shouldn’t answer. Already she had allowed herself to get sucked into this far more than she should have. “I wasn’t needed there.”
The look he gave her broke her heart.
He needed her. He hated needing her.
“Why is it so hard for you, being in a room with them?” He was in the mood to push. She could tell.
She considered slipping into the water. Letting the swollen current take her away.
“Why is it so hard for you, sharing how much you’re hurting with them?”
The hurt in his eyes shoved her back in time to when she’d first found him. He opened his mouth, shut it again, and sprang up.
From the periphery of her vision, she saw his feet spin around and walk away. But she refused to turn toward him.
She hadn’t meant to push him away like that, but she couldn’t go after him either. This is what you got when you hurt each other because you needed distraction from your own pain.
His feet reappeared next to her, bare this time.
They were long-toed and pale, the nails neatly trimmed. Something hot and helpless squeezed inside her. She was used to seeing him vulnerable. He had never bothered to hide the depth of his grief from her. But the sight of his feet, his toes tucked into the grass, ripped her heart out.
He lowered himself next to her again and put his feet in the water. Not bothering to roll up his jeans. “They’re still hurting too,” he said without looking at her. “And I can’t add to that. I don’t want them to be stuck in hell.”
Like him. But he didn’t say that.
He couldn’t see it yet, but the two days around his family had been really good for him. It had helped the man he was behind the man he’d become to find his feet.
The strangest thought struck her.
Whatever Ria Parkar and his mother had been planning, their version of the baby shower, Ria was convinced he wouldn’t be able to handle it. But it might just be exactly what he needed.
“Can I ask you something?”
“It’s never a good sign when people ask you that before they ask you a question.”
Despite herself, her lips pushed up on one side. “You’re right. This is your warning: It’s a hard question.”
He didn’t look away, just waited.
“How do you feel about your cousin’s pregnancy?”
His pause was slight, but she couldn’t tell if that was surprise or deliberate thought to find the right answer. “What do you mean, how do I feel? Ria is healthy and I’m thrilled to bits she and Vic are going to be parents.”
“No, I mean the fact that she didn’t tell you about it. Why are you so angry about that?”
He studied their rippling feet beneath the racing water. “I don’t know. I guess I do understand why they didn’t tell me. Jen’s pregnancy was the last conversation we had before she died. Why are you asking me this?”
“No reason, it just seemed to create such an undercurrent between you and Ria Parkar.”
“I told you Ria and I were raised like siblings, so, like all siblings, our relationship is all about undercurrents.”
“So she lives here?” She tilted her chin toward the house. “With your parents? She and Vikram?”
“No, they have a home in Mumbai and in San Francisco, and they spend part of the year at each place and then travel for Vic’s work.” His brows drew together. “I wonder what Ria and Vic are doing here,” he said absently.
Suddenly, his eyes narrowed and his focus sharpened—his patented I’m-studying-you look.
She pulled her feet out of the water and wiggled her toes to bring back the feeling in them.
“What?” he asked, not looking away from her face.
“What?”
“You know something I don’t.”
“That would be many, many things. Which one are you talking about?” She focused harder on her toes. She’d left them in the freezing water too long the way she always did when it felt so good.
His finger crooked under her chin and turned her face to him, his eyes sparkling with such amusement for a moment she forgot what they were talking about. “I can see it written all over your face.”
Warmth kissed her cheeks and spread. “I’d better go wash my face then,” she said, pulling away to smack her forehead. “That was a manner of speaking, wasn’t it?” She blinked up at him.
“Very funny.” He didn’t smile, but he was amused, she knew it.
“Thanks,” she said, needing desperately to set that amusement free, to have it tease those dimples out of his cheeks. “It’s not bad for what I had to work with.”
“Stop deflecting. I’m not that stupid.”
“Oh, you’re not stupid at all. Your mother was telling me you skipped two grades and you had perfect SET scores.”
“Still deflecting. But it’s SAT and, FYI, Vic had the perfect SAT score, not me. I was one point short on the ACT and three points short on the SAT.”
She clucked her tongue. “How sad. Seems like the story of everyone’s life around here. Keeping Up With Vikram.”
* * *
Nic had the craziest urge to smile. Who would have thought the Goddess of Darkness could tease him like this. How had he ever even thought of her as that? There was no darkness in her when she was like this.
“Are you going to stop deflecting and tell me why Ria and Vic are here? And why you didn’t tell me before that you knew?”
“First, how would I know why they are here? Second, even if I did, when did I ever agree to share everything with you? And you’re throwing stones from a glass house.”
Her usually placid eyes did that soft blaze again with that amalgam of hope and spunk and something else he didn’t want to name. Suddenly, he didn’t feel like smiling anymore. “I’m letting you look at the carcass of my marriage, for God’s sake. What have I hidden from you?”
She wasn’t smiling anymore either, but she didn’t withdraw into her shell, and the relief of it was a sucker punch to his gut. “For starters, you said all the boxes were here.”
He hadn’t expected that, and it must’ve shown on his face because she looked like she wanted to scream “Aha!” at him, the way they did in old sleuth movies when they figured out who the killer was. Suddenly, he wanted to smile again.
“I was going to tell you,” he said, refusing to sound sheepish.
“I’m sure you were.”
She was still teasing him, but there was a razor edge to it. Her eyes challenged him to back of
f. Nothing soft about their interaction anymore. “You know what. You’re right. There’s no deal between us for sharing things.”
“So that’s it?” She tucked her feet under her. Not looking disappointed, not looking afraid either. This strange, pushy side of her making it impossible for him to withdraw from her. “There are more boxes, you know where they are, and all I get is that.” She pointed at him with her entire hand. Palm up.
He put his hand on hers. “No.” No, he couldn’t give her just that.
She blushed and tried to pull her hand out of his. He tightened his fingers around her hand, it was soft and warm. “No, that’s not it. I’m making that deal with you now, for ‘sharing things.’”
Her blush flamed, all the playful teasing, all the inability to play, all of it melding. Whatever raged inside her, beneath that cool exterior, pushed to the surface. She closed her eyes.
He pushed their joined hands under her chin, and turned her face up to his again.
It took her a few moments, but she opened her eyes and everything was back in place. Her shields locked and loaded and in place.
“I’ll go first,” he said, wanting to tear those shields away again. Needing to tear them away. “Jen owned a condo in the city. Vic moved some of the boxes there.”
She held her silence, but obviously she knew about the condo.
“We’ll drive to the city tomorrow and look through the stuff.” Amazing how he was still sitting up after saying those words. “Your turn.”
She yanked her hand out of his. “We should go back inside.” She stood and turned to the house.
“Why are Ria and Vic here?”
“Why don’t you ask them?”
He had to smile. “Okay,” he said, standing up to follow her. She looked suspicious. Throwing her was fun.
“Okay, let’s go inside now?” she asked hopefully.
He had to laugh. “No. Okay, I’m going to have to figure this out on my own. But let the record indicate that I kept my end of the bargain and you didn’t.”
“It’s not really a bargain. You made it. I never agreed to it.”
“So I tell you everything and you do what?”
“Listen without judgment?”
He laughed some more, and her eyes hitched on his laughing face before she looked away. “Okay, I’ll just have to figure it out myself then.” He studied her. The unexpected playfulness inside her was a rush of relief and he filled his lungs with it.
She kept her face noncommittal, or tried to, and started toward the house.
“But they are here for a reason?” he pushed, running past her and turning to keep on looking.
She gave him nothing. Just looked bored and kept walking.
Okay, so he did have to figure this out on his own. “It has to do with the pregnancy if they haven’t told me what it is,” he said.
She stared out at the house and looked like she was going to start humming.
“It’s not her health,” he went on, “because Vic wouldn’t lie to me about that.”
She started humming. It was quite nice actually.
“That’s lovely. I had no idea you could sing.”
She blushed. “Thank you.” She didn’t go back to humming.
“Oh.” He’d heard Ria tell Aie that they wanted to cancel something. Bingo. “They’re here for her baby shower, aren’t they?”
She looked so surprised he laughed. “My mother did tell you how smart I was.”
She narrowed her eyes at him again, but she looked so impressed it made the strangest thing happen inside him. He was pretty sure the thing was called smugness.
“I’m fine about it,” he said, holding her gaze. “Look at me. I’m not breaking down. Of course Ria should have a baby shower.”
Her eyes got serious. He shrugged. She had dragged him back home. If not for her, he might have missed this. Him becoming an uncle.
“Thank you,” he said again and the gratitude felt good inside him.
27
Sometimes I’m amazed at the bread crumbs we scatter through life like the little trinkets the Goddess Sita had used to leave a trail so she could be found. There really should be no way to ever get away with anything. And yet, crimes go unpunished every day.
—Dr. Jen Joshi
“Bastard, you never told me what maal your daughter was. Totally fuckable, like.” Asif rarely needed to make an effort to be a bigger chutiya than he was, but this bastard was definitely deserving of the effort.
Instead of losing it the man laughed. By God, was there a greater chutiya in the world than an Indian politician?
“You think this is funny?”
He didn’t stop chuckling. “What’s funny is how yellow your pants are getting right now, Asif Khan. You know you’ve lost. Pack up your bags and go hide in Dubai or something. Your brothers there can deal with you. We’re trying to get the garbage off our streets here in this country.”
Asif squeezed the ghoda he was holding—the real stuff, Smith & Wesson, not the local handmade garbage the rest of the gangs had come down to—and watched the bitch through the darkened windows of his car. She looked just like her chutiya father. She was thrusting a mike at the drunk-looking TV star, who was trying to get away from her and the rest of the mob of journalists. Apparently, he was fucking someone other than his wife. That was news, why?
The bastard was playing up his shame for the cameras like the TV-serial star he was. You had to love actors. Asif would bet both his balls that he was taking that ashamed face straight to his girlfriend (or boyfriend, if the rumors were true) to have her (or him) blow off the stress of all those mikes shoved in his face.
“As long as big-shit garbage like you is sitting in parliament, minister saab, small garbage like me isn’t going anywhere.”
“Fun as it is to chat politics with you, I have better things to do with my life. So unless you have anything more—”
“I have an order for seven kidneys going to Sharjah. Make sure your police dogs stay off it.”
“Seven! Are you out of your mind? Saving your pea-sized dick with one or two was difficult enough. Even if I were still playing this game with you, I could never cover up that many. I’ve already told you, it’s over. I’m not risking my job for you anymore. I’m finished.”
Sure, and Shah Rukh Khan was Asif’s bitch. “You should have thought about that before you paid me five crores to kill that doctor bitch and get your daughter her heart.” It had been a sign from God, finding out that the nosy doctor bitch was a match for the minister’s daughter. And he’d found that out from her own donor registry. It was hilarious, really. He had been meaning to get rid of her anyway because of all her digging around. But getting to use her to trap the home minister and blackmail him for the rest of his life could only be divine intervention. Good thing he had fed a thousand starving beggars outside the Haji Ali mosque for it.
“I did not pay you to kill anyone. You told me you knew how to get the heart. You tricked me. My daughter was dying, you bastard. You used my desperation to trap me.” Oh, now the chutiya was breaking down?
“So, you thought what? That I went to the heavenly concubines and requested a heart for your daughter from their freezer in heaven? You knew exactly where the heart was coming from. Or was it okay to kill some undocumented refugee for it, but not some fancy, noisy doctor?” Seriously, rich people were the sewage of the earth. Even he felt like a saint compared to them. “You better make this happen or your voting public and adoring fans are going to find out exactly what kind of dog you really are on top of your precious daughter dying.” And wouldn’t that be poetic justice?
“Asif, are you deaf? I said it’s over. I have everything I need to get you the death sentence. If I were you, I’d listen and disappear while there’s still time.”
Why did these guys continue to think Asif Khan was stupid? If the bastard had anything incriminating, Asif would already be inside the slammer. “Listen, chutiye, if I get the death sentence, I’m t
aking you down with me. You can be my bitch in prison while your government feeds me biryani for twenty years before they gather the balls to execute me.”
“Or we could both back away from this and stay out of prison.”
Asif lifted his ghoda and pointed it straight at the man’s daughter across the street. She looked even more fuckable through the crosshairs. “So you color some bitch’s hair and send her after that doctor bitch’s husband and you think I’m going to chop off my dick and hand it to you?”
That earned him a stunned pause, and he knew his boot had found the bastard’s balls. He lowered the gun. No, when the time came, he had plans for the daughter. She was going to swallow his load once for each time her father had fucked with him.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But the bastard knew exactly what he was talking about. Asif hadn’t become the Bhai he was without knowing how to read these entitled chutiyas like those books they kept waving around and mistaking for brains.
“Seven kidneys,” he said.
“Or I hand over what I have, you hand over what you have, and we walk away from this like intelligent men.”
Not a bad idea. “Sure. Where’s the bitch with the colored hair? In America with the doctor’s husband? What do you have on her?”
The politician laughed, but Asif had watched enough of his movies to know when he was acting. “You have a very good imagination, Asif Khan, maybe you should join Bollywood. I can put in a good word.”
“Is that where you found her? Is she an actress?”
“Whoever she is, she’s already made sure your days of stealing lives are over.”
“Now, now, ministersaab, I know you want that to be true, so you’d better get her to hurry. Because seven kidneys are moving next month.” And with that he tired of the game and hung up.
Across the street the bastard’s daughter got in her fancy Mercedes-Benz. The black Pajero that had been tailing her followed faithfully. His man put the car in gear and joined the caravan. It was only a matter of time before he found the bitch the minister had sent to screw over the doctor’s husband.
