“If you’re feeling me out for some kind of random hook-up because of the suggestive sounds of our neighbors, Mr. Kennedy, you should know I don’t swing that way.”
The corner of Kane’s mouth cracked, and even in the partial light, Xavier could see his roomie’s scowl. “Don’t play games with me. I know you’re still in to Rose. I recall a certain conversation we had at some point about you and a certain desire to kiss her. I just want to tell you, if you got any other garden’s you’re tending, you should spend your time there. You’re bound to harvest a better crop.”
Xavier had almost forgotten the admission he’d let slip out over the phone after the Fireman’s Charity Ball. The last thing Xavier needed right now was for Kane to be aware of his true intentions. He employed his best poker face. “That was a fleeting sensation, you needn’t worry. She is my client, nothing more. We’re amiable, but professional.”
“See that it stays that way,” Kane warned. “But I need to ask you something.”
Sighing, Xavier invited Kane to continue.
“You did your workup, mumbo jumbo thing on her, didn’t you? They say you’re famous for it, that you have an innate ability to figure out exactly what an employer is looking for, and find the perfect employee.”
Xavier gave as good a nod as one could while in his position.
“You understand what she’s hoping for, what would be good for her, then,” Kane continued. “And I wonder, why did you think it was me?”
Xavier lowered himself back to the mattress and fixed his eyes on the ceiling. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss the details with you. It would be exposing my trade secrets, and the key reason why my firm is so successful.”
“Right,” growled Kane through clenched teeth.
Xavier considered what to say that would both satiate Kennedy and not let out anything too revealing. “If it helps you to know, a good portion of it was Ms. Betters’s own determination.”
“But did she tell you to find me? I mean, specifically.” Kane seemed sincerely eager now, as though he had caught scent of something. “We knew each other at Stanford. Well, I mean, kind of. I noticed her, and I caught her checking me out more than once.”
“Yet somehow, the two of you never got together.” Xavier’s comment was meant matter-of-factly, but somehow it came across as mocking to his own ears. At the moment, the percussion section next door was joined by a vocal accompaniment. The tongue was foreign, but somehow Xavier got the gist without subtitles.
The man in bed with him took no notice of the intentional, but no less sincere, jibe. “I wasn’t really looking for a relationship then. At least, not the kind I could have had with her. Rose had a reputation. Guy I knew took her out a few times, said she was frigid.”
“I’ve already told you, I wasn’t aware of your prior knowledge of each other.” Xavier suppressed the urge to defend his client, but realized all too well anything said one way or the other might make certain implications. “She simply gave me a list of qualifications, and I used that as a basis—along with my own instincts and methods—for drafting a pool of candidates that met those standards. Out of those candidates, she chose you.”
“And outside of that candidate pool, you didn’t push her one way or the other?”
“No,” Xavier confirmed. He grinned when he thought about the mock portfolio he had presented to her for her first round of reviews. Technically, one might say that qualified her as pushing her some direction, though in retrospect Xavier couldn’t say if the intention had been into Kane’s arms, or on some subconscious level, his own. “If I make the decision for my client, they’ll never embrace the selection as their own. It could lead to the working relationship feeling forced and making the employer to wonder if there was a ‘what if’ person out there they never gave a fair shake.”
Kane rolled back, lacing his fingers together and putting his hands behind his head. “And do you think Rose will ever wonder ‘what if’ about the other candidates?”
“Of course she will. That’s what women do. And it doesn’t mean a thing.”
The climatic end finally arrived for the couple next door. A woman’s invocation to some divinity was quickly chased by a staccato section that culminated in a man’s groans. The symphony at last grew silent, as did Kane and Xavier. Finally, Xavier felt his lids begin to knit shut, sensed his awareness begin to drift.
“Can I ask you something else, Hommes?”
Xavier’s eyes shot open. His heart thudded, along with a pulsating vein in his forehead. “Since you’re so inclined to make pillow talk.”
“Do you think she really wants to be married, or that she’s just doing it because it’s a task she’s added to her to-do list?”
That had been the goal, of course. Even still, the words walloped Xavier’s lungs, wrapped around his heart and squeezed.
“You say that like it’s two different things with her.” His mouth went dry, and his words consequently came out through a cracked tone. “Look, she already has a dress and a date. If not you, she better get going on someone else. I know she would hate to lose her deposit.”
“Really?” Kane perched up again, scooting a little closer. “When?”
Instantly, Xavier dreaded having shared that tidbit. Obviously Kane hadn’t known that little fact, and knowing the exactness with which Rosalind made decisions, it wasn’t simply because it had slipped her mind. If she had wanted Kennedy to know there was a groom deadline, surely Kane would be in the loop on it. The date itself wasn’t that far away, what was she waiting for?
Maybe Kamakshi had been misinformed? Perhaps Rosalind wasn’t as sold on Kane as she seemed to think.
Hope glimmered and prospects teased as Xavier tried his best to fix up the faux pas. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it to you, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it to Rosalind that I let that slip. Given the method she went about to find a suitable candidate, you might imagine she’s quite eager to make a go of it. You should also know I don’t receive my full commission until she’s officially engaged, so I’m doing what I can to—unobjectionably, of course—hasten things.”
“Good.” Kane blew out a mouthful as he resumed a horizontal position. “Because we’re not exactly young, so we’d have to start putting things in place for children pretty soon.”
“Children?” They weren’t even engaged yet, and already Kane was concerned about pre-arrangements to expect? “I don’t think she wants to have children.”
“All the overly-educated women in the city say that, but it’s temporary. Sooner or later, instinct kicks in. At Rosalind’s age, the wait won’t be too long.” Kane’s tone left little room for doubt. “One day they see a friend’s baby or a Hallmark commercial, and then they’re all over you about it. All you have to do is plant the seed in her head.”
If there was one thing Xavier did not want to think about, it was Kane planting seeds of any type in Rosalind. “I understand where you’re coming from, that at our age in life we’re beginning to think it’s now or never. Thing is, she seems pretty dedicated to her career. Running a business like she does takes all one’s dedication. I wouldn’t be so sure that’s going to happen with her.”
“Yeah, well up until a few months ago she insisted that she’d never want to get married, either,” Kane answered.
On his side of the bed, Xavier nodded. “True.”
“Women like Rosalind… They’ve been sold on this bill of goods by the feminist agenda, think that motherhood and home making is inherently a demeaning process, that letting the man be the breadwinner and allowing him to take care of her is a roundabout way to suppress her,” Kane rattled on. “Don’t get me wrong. She’s been fabulous with BetaHouse, and I don’t doubt she’d succeed at anything she put her mind to, but I want to take care of her, the way a man should. Women like Rosalind, they’ve just never had a man come along who tr
eats them proper. They need to be worked into understanding how things are supposed to be.”
Suddenly Kane’s odd request to him all those weeks ago to dance with Rosalind made more sense. “You think that because she let me take the lead dancing, that shows she’s able to cede control?”
“Exactly.” The mattress groaned as Kane pulled the blankets up under his chin. “It’s not that I want to dominate her, it’s just that I want her to let me guide her, guide ‘us.’ You see, Hommes, I have big plans for the two of us, but there can be only one driver in this car.”
Xavier wondered if Kane realized such an arrangement would insure that instead of the beautiful woman he thought he’d be marrying, he’d find himself hooked up with an Indy500 champion. He thought of saying as much, but saw the ticking time bomb of a presumption for what it was: his ticket to getting rid of Kane Kennedy.
A Marked Woman
Jamie slammed down the phone like it had just insulted her mother. “Son of a …” She left the insult open-ended and instead planted her balled fists on her hips. “It’s my first evening away from the baby in like, ever, and my darling husband is begging for mercy.”
Rosalind drew a sip from her wine glass. “And every one wonders why I don’t want children.”
Jamie dug her purse out from the heap of designer bags piled up in front of the television. “Trust me, Roz, kids are easy. Husbands are impossible.”
“The perfect thing to say at a bridal shower-slash-henna ceremony.” Nichole laughed at her own joke. She may have been just a little deeper into the bottle than the others.
Leaning over, very careful not to disturb the work of the mehndi artist weaving epic patterns over Kamakshi’s wrist, Jamie kissed her friend on the cheek. “I’m sorry I have to cut out so early. It was great having some girl time like the old days, but apparently I need to go change a diaper. Hopefully the baby’s. Night.”
Kamakshi tilted her face but remained stationed. “It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re here. I wish Lani and Liz could have come, too.”
“The directions all of our lives have taken the last few years, it would take a miracle to get us all in the same place at the same time.” Nichole turned eyes on Rosalind. “Then again, you pulled Rosalind away from her boardroom for four whole days, so miracles still happen.”
Nichole took a seat beside Rosalind, across the seating area from where a small collection of Kamakshi’s cousins, sister, and two of her childhood friends painted each other with crimson outlines. The “white” girls had been done first and stationed on the couch, supposedly to keep them from having to stay up too late; all three had just arrived from overseas that day. Rosalind wondered, however, if it might not be a case of getting them out of their way.
“This is good enough.”
Kamakshi’s shrunken mother, Nila, inspected the design woven in a dizzying patterns over her daughter’s hands and arms. The dark red paste doled out by the young woman in traditional yellow dress still glistened where thickest. The earliest laid lines no longer shone, indicating the dye had dried out two hours after the design had been piped.
Nila crossed her arms over her chest and huffed in the slight women’s direction. “Now convince my daughter that she should have her feet done as well.”
“Amma!” Kamakshi flapped her arms as much as she dared under the mehndi artist’s wary gaze. Fear and frustration erupted from her in a string of Hindi that could have sliced a melon in half. It stilled Kamakshi’s arms, but not her tongue. “I told you I don’t want to sit for that many hours! No one will see my legs when I have my shoes on and they’re hidden under my sari!”
“It is a treat for your husband to discover,” Nila argued. “Will you put no effort in to teasing his appetite? Ayyah! Here I was beginning to think you would never be married, and now I’m convinced you’ll ruin it before the wedding is over. Have your feet done. Just as the hands draw in his lips, so will the patterns on your legs draw him in to your—”
“AMMA!”
Mollified, Nila stopped, but her suggestive mannerisms sent the other girls bursting with coquettish laughter.
“I only don’t see how she could not want to have some surprises for Prashant on their wedding night.” Blank-faced, Nila looked honestly confused.
Preeti, Kamakshi’s cousin, laid a delicate finger upon her slight chin. “A little bird tells me there is little left for him to be surprised by, Auntie.”
Rosalind sought out Kamakshi’s reaction to the jibe, eager to evaluate based on her friend’s expression if she needed to, as they would say back in college, “cut a bitch.” Thankfully, Kam laughed away the suggestion while her cheeks blushed the same shade as the henna paste on her arms. “Preeti, as you’re so fond of discussions with birds, this one would like to talk with you.” Kamakshi lifted her arm from the table top and extended a prominent middle finger salute to the woman across the room.
“Ach! Child, put your arms down! Down!” Nila bounced forward, pushing two pointed fingers in to the muscles of her daughter’s upper arms. “If you smudge your henna, people at the wedding will say, ‘There goes Nila’s daughter, the impatient one!’”
Kamakshi shot her mother an epic eye roll before refocusing to where Rosalind sat on the edge of a sofa. “Why so quiet, Roz?”
Rosalind had felt for much of the night like a modern Panama Jack, trapped in a parallel reality where she was observing a foreign culture from behind a bush. A foreign observer amongst a sea of a dozen native women in the splendid rainbow of their indigenous garb, she’d kept mum while Nichole and Jamie had had a chance to catch up with the bride. Suddenly, Kamakshi’s question drew her back into the fray, and back in to the gravity of the matrimonial festivities. She was hyperaware suddenly of everyone’s eyes on her.
She shrugged as she tried to conjure up an explanation that would simultaneously be truthful and inoffensive. As she watched Kamakshi’s mother, a few cousins, a sister, and a half dozen lifelong friends buzz about the room brimming with energy pushing Kamakshi closer to the altar, her foreignness became so much more than an aspect of her nationality.
Rosalind looked down to her own arms. A simple pattern of henna swirls between her wrists and her elbows that had been painted by Nila herself stared back at her. She tried to imagine what her wedding would be like in a few months. There would be no mother there to caution her—needlessly—about expectations her husband would have on the wedding night. No retinue of friends and family to serve as witnesses to the preparations, except perhaps Kamakshi and Carmen. If she didn’t convince herself to bite the bullet and propose to Kane, there might not even be a groom. Living in San Francisco, Rosalind had been to her share of weddings of all varieties. She understood that a groom was a necessary element about two-thirds of the time.
“I’m just a little overwhelmed by all this, is all.” It was diplomatic and vague.
And utter bull shit, a commodity in which Kamakshi did not traffic. “Seriously, you want to sit there and pretend like I don’t understand there’s something wrong?”
Another of Kamakshi’s childhood friends entered the conversation with her diagnosis, “Whenever a woman has that look on her face, it is always due to a man.” She considered for a moment her statement, then added, “Unless she is a lesbian.”
Nila let out a huff of animated disgust.
“It’s just… Kane.” Rosalind sighed out his name like the problem would be obvious. “In my mind, I know he’s the perfect guy for me. He’s everything I told Xavier I wanted.”
“Xavier?”
Rosalind wasn’t sure who inquired, but she could tell everyone was thinking it now.
“Her matchmaker,” Kamakshi informed them, bringing understanding to the Indian women’s faces. Nichole sipped at her wine, so obviously forcing her tongue to stay still on the issue.
Nila cackled. “Good for you, Rosalind. You take some lesson f
rom Kamakshi, no? He’ll find you a good husband, a good match.”
“I didn’t know Americans used matchmakers.” Preeti examined Rosalind with wary suspicion, like she had unearthed some unappetizing nugget from the bottom of a salad bowl.
“I did get the idea from Kamakshi, actually.” Rosalind motioned toward her Hindu Etch A Sketch-bearing friend across the room. “I mean, it shouldn’t be that hard, right? I made a list of what traits were important to me, of what qualities I wanted in a spouse, and boom: Kane fits them all. And it isn’t like there’s nothing there. It’s just…”
Kamakshi’s eyes narrowed into introspective slits. “Something happened with him.”
Rosalind’s focus went to the window, though the late hour meant there was nothing beyond the pane of glass other than darkness. “On paper, he’s everything I hoped he would be. And, holy cow, Kamakshi, Kane Kennedy. Kane-blasted-Kennedy. Do you remember how we all used to crack jokes about how hot he was? About how tempting it was to get Kaned? And now, he thinks that about me. There’s… I don’t know, a little thing. But I guess there’s little things in every relationship, right?”
“Of course, there are!” the wise Nila confirmed. “Kamakshi’s father likes to cut his toenails while sitting at the kitchen table. So unsanitary, but I’ve learned to live with it.” She placed her hands on her hips and pitched herself forward. “Does Kane cut his toenails in inappropriate places as well?”
The topic of personal hygiene hadn’t yet come up. For a passing moment, Rosalind wondered if not knowing Kane’s preferred nail-clipping venue wasn’t a more significant concern than it seemed on the surface. “Spark, Auntie Nila,” she informed, using the title Kamakshi’s mother had insisted on when first they’d met. “There’s no… spark there. There should be, shouldn’t there? I mean, on top of being everything I asked for, he’s well-respected in his field, independently wealthy, charitable, and drop dead gorgeous.”
Kamakshi and Nichole bobbed their head as if to testify to the fact.
Have Gown, Will Wed Page 15
