A Bollywood Affair (4 page)

5

“Y
ou know, Mill, sometimes I think about Ravi, and I feel like my heart is going to explode. There are no words, no words to describe what just thinking about him does to my entire body.” Ridhi popped another square of the Hershey bar into her mouth and closed her eyes.

They were sitting cross-legged on Mili’s mattress on the floor of their shared bedroom, the chocolate bar dwindling rapidly in its glossy brown wrapping between them. Mili broke off another piece with the reverence it deserved and popped it into her mouth.
Oh. Heavenly. God!
Whoever discovered chocolate was a genius and this Hershey person—may all the gods from all the religions in the world bless him ten times over—was a divine angel. Pure pleasure melted through her entire being. Surely there was no other sensation quite like this in the world.

Ridhi grinned at her like a fool and gave her one of those looks that indicated she had done something “adorable” again. “If I were a man, I’d want to eat you with a spoon, Mill. I don’t know how your Squadron Leader let you out of his sight.”

Mili stuck out her tongue at Ridhi. “Is that what your Ravi does, use a spoon?”

Ridhi made a face but the deflection worked and her eyes grew instantly dopey again. She threw herself back on the mattress. “You know, the first time Ravi touched me, I thought I was going to burst into flames. I think I had an orgasm even before we got to the good stuff.”

Mili sucked furiously on her chocolate and squeezed her eyes shut.

Ridhi giggled. “How was it for you the first time with your Squadron Leader?”

Mili’s cheeks warmed. She had told Ridhi she was married. The truth. But she hadn’t mentioned that she hadn’t met her husband in twenty years, so to have had a first time with him would have been magical in more ways than one. “Unreal,” she said, her eyes still closed. The truth wasn’t as hard as people seemed to think it was. You just had to phrase it right, so it wasn’t a lie.

“Get out!” Ridhi yanked Mili’s arm so hard she fell back on the mattress, laughing. “I mean if he’s a military man, he must be all aggressive in bed, ha?”

Mili’s cheeks went so hot they had to have turned maroon again. What was the point of being dark if you couldn’t even hide a stupid blush? Ridhi said a very American “aw” and went up on her elbow next to her. “You know what the sweetest thing about Ravi is? He’s so unsure of himself. I feel like I’m totally corrupting him. But it’s also so annoying. Sometimes I want him to just lose his head and totally come at me, you know.”

Oh, Mili knew all about wanting someone to come at her, come to her, come for her. Anything but neglect her as if she were a crumb on the verandah no one bothered to sweep up.

“So, is your Squadron Leader going to come see you while you’re here or are you going to go without sex for a year?”

Mili tried not to choke on her chocolate. Every single person she’d ever known would have swooned in a dead faint before asking a question like that. “You know, I used to believe he would come for me, but now I’m starting to think he might wait until I go to him.”

“OMG, Mill, I just realized we’re both waiting for the men in our lives like good little Indian women.” Ridhi burst into giggles.

Mili’s heart did a little twist.
Yes, but yours can’t wait to be with you. Mine . . . well, he doesn’t have that problem. Yet.

Ridhi popped the last remaining chocolate piece into her mouth. “I can’t wait a moment longer to finally be free of Daddy. He has never let me make one single decision for myself. He chose the courses I took in high school, tried to choose my career. ‘Medicine is the most gratifying, most lucrative profession in the world. Why would you want to do anything else?’ ”

She did a pretty authentic male falsetto with a Punjabi accent and Mili giggled.

“The first time I had my way was when I did badly on my SATs and he couldn’t do a thing about it except rant and shut me out. I wish I had figured out sooner that there are things he can’t control.”

Mili sat up and pushed a wispy strand of hair behind Ridhi’s ear. “Ridhi, do you ever wonder if—”

“No. I’ve thought about it—whether wanting to be with Ravi has to do with getting back at Daddy. But no. Ravi is—you have to meet him. He’s the most handsome, the kindest man I’ve ever met. And Daddy can’t keep me away from him by marrying me off to some Punjabi doctor. I’m not marrying anybody just because he’s Punjabi and certainly not just because he’s a doctor.” Her eyes shone like bright lights.

Envy swirled in Mili’s chest, hot and heavy. What must it feel like to have that kind of freedom? The freedom to forsake everyone and everything, to break every bond and reach for the man you chose for yourself. For a moment she wanted it so badly it burned a hole inside her.

Then just as quickly it was gone and guilt flooded where it had been. She smacked her forehead. “I’m sorry, Ridhi, I don’t know what I was thinking asking a question like that. Ravi and you are going to be so happy. I just know it.”

Just like she knew Virat and she were going to be. She would make it happen, whatever it took. So what if she hadn’t chosen him? She had vowed to be his forever, body and soul, and in the end that’s all that mattered.

 

A horrible, bottomless feeling settled inside Samir. Not just the sadness that had squeezed around him like shrink-wrap ever since he’d picked up the phone. This feeling was layered on top of that sadness, under it. This feeling he had carried inside him for as long as he could remember in that unforgiving hollow that held up his ribs. It had woken him up on countless nights, screaming, drenched in sweat. As a child Baiji had held him, rocked him back to sleep. In adulthood he had simply learned to silence the screams.

This feeling was the reason he avoided shooting in America. One film in New York—that’s all he’d done. New York he could handle. The choked-up concrete jungle he could handle. It was this open-earth, open-sky America that made his insides cave in. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him exactly where that came from. This icy hollow inside him was the only thing he’d taken from here—from the country of his birth. The country he’d been tossed out of like so much garbage. The country where mothers could just pick up their children and give them back like clothing that didn’t fit.

He gave the Corvette some juice and she purred under him like the sweetest lover begging for more. He was going to drive to the chick’s house, hand over the papers, get her to sign and then get the hell out of here. And if she happened to be in need of some persuasion, well, it was a good thing persuasion was one of Samir’s best talents. He had never had an actor refuse him a role, no matter how big of a star, and he had yet to meet a woman who wouldn’t give him exactly what he wanted.

Already she had been too much trouble. Talk about being hard to find. Thank God for DJ and all those damned contacts of his. From Balpur to America. If finding her hadn’t caused him such heartburn he’d be impressed. The vaguest memory of a chubby-cheeked girl bawling amidst wedding fires flashed in his mind. And like all memories from his childhood, it blew the raging hole in his gut open.

He forced himself to think about the letter instead. About laughing with his brother. About Rima’s tears.

Those had been Bhai’s first words when he came out of his coma. God, what if no one ever called him Chintu again? He still couldn’t believe Virat had escaped with two broken legs and a few broken ribs. But the weeklong coma had left Samir as terrified as the child who’d been thrown into a well in a fit of rage. Who’d been branded a bastard and then beaten for it. It had been Bhai who had jumped into the well after him and pulled him from the darkness. It had been Bhai who had thrown himself across his back to shield him when their grandfather’s belt came out to play. If anything ever happened to Bhai, there would be no one to pull Samir away from the terror. Horrible hot anger rose inside him and a desperate need to do something, anything, to make it go away.

The GPS showed ten miles to Ypsilanti. Where had she found a town with a name like that?
Ip-sea-lan-tee.
That’s how the car-rental lady had pronounced it. He repeated the ridiculous tongue twister under his breath. And why did it have to be Michigan? Fifty states in this godforsaken country and she had to pick the one where he’d first felt the burn of hunger in his belly, felt the horror of finding the woman who’d given birth to him lying in her own vomit, her white cheeks sunken, her eyes rolled up in their sockets, blood trickling from her nose and mixing with the acrid yellow liquid pooled under her head. He had crawled through the snow on bare hands and feet, unable to stay upright in the waist-deep snow, absolutely sure she was dead, absolutely sure he was going to die too. Even today, when he woke from the worst of the nightmares, he couldn’t feel his arms and legs.

He let go of the steering wheel and rubbed his hands on his jeans. This was fucking bullshit. Ancient history that had no place in his life anymore, thank you very much. He rammed his foot on the accelerator. How long would it take the chick to sign the papers? If only Bhai were here to make a wager. Not that Samir had much choice but to get it done in a few days and get his ass back to Mumbai. If the script wasn’t completed by the end of this month he was going to need a new career. This was his biggest budget yet. International-market big. With what they were giving him, he could actually make the kind of movie he’d been dreaming of since the first time he touched a camera. But if he’d had trouble writing before Virat’s plane crashed, after the accident it was as if his brain had forgotten what it took to make words, let alone make stories. He had spent the entire plane ride from Mumbai to Detroit staring at his open laptop with nothing but buzzing white noise inside his head.

It was another strike against the girl. Not only had she piled worry and guilt on his brother’s head when he should’ve been focused on his recovery, but she had also dragged Samir from his work. Away from doing what he should be doing—writing, taking care of Bhai, doing anything that did not involve coming back to this godforsaken country and being sucked inward into the hollow that was suddenly too close to the surface.

Next to him the legal notice she had sent the day after Virat’s accident taunted him from inside his messenger bag and set his blood to boil. What kind of sick bitch sent a wounded soldier a legal notice demanding a share of his ancestral property? He’d made damn sure his lawyers wouldn’t let her get her greedy little paws on anything. But he didn’t trust anyone but himself to make sure she didn’t come anywhere near Bhai and Rima ever again. He would carry the expression on Rima’s face, as she sat by Virat’s side waiting for him to wake up, to his dying day. Bhai was right in keeping this from Rima. Some chick who crawled out of nowhere was not going to subject Rima to any more pain. At least not until the baby came.

Samir switched gears and caressed the sweet spot with his foot. “Would you prefer an automatic, sir?” the lady at the rental counter had asked. Who needed the flat lifeless ease of an automatic? What he needed was to feel the throb of each one of those four hundred and thirty horses as they pounded beneath his foot and he harnessed them into submission with his bare hands. If the village girl gave him any trouble she better be ready to have her life turned upside down. He was in no mood to suffer gold-digging opportunists. Hunger for vengeance against every injustice that had ever made him helpless raced through his veins. Maybe he wouldn’t let the sneaky little bitch off that easy. Maybe he’d turn on some Sam charm and make her fall so hard she’d be panting to sign the annulment papers. The thought calmed the fire a little. But not nearly enough.

6

M
ili’s heart thudded as Ridhi and Ravi backed out of the parking lot. She waved madly until Ridhi’s beaming face disappeared from sight. Ridhi looked so happy that the flutters of nervousness bouncing about in Mili’s belly seemed pointless. Even so, she joined her palms together and said a quick prayer for their safety before turning around and heading back to her apartment building. Ridhi called it a rundown shitpot but with its red bricks, white balconies, and sloping black roof Mili thought it was the most beautiful building on earth—after her home in Balpur, of course. She would never disrespect the home that had sheltered her all her life. But she sent up an apology anyway. Things were going so well she didn’t want to jinx fate by appearing ungrateful.

Life was wonderful. Ridhi was going to have her happily ever after, Mili had aced her midterms, and her boss had asked her to coauthor a paper with him. There was the small problem of the rent. Of course Ridhi wanted to keep on paying her half, but how could Mili make her pay rent for something she didn’t rent? Not that any of that mattered right now. Ridhi and Ravi were finally together and in this moment Mili couldn’t bring herself to care about anything else.

It was just so incredibly romantic. Slightly crazy, awfully scary, but insanely romantic nonetheless. Mili jiggled her hips in a little
thumka
dance. She’d find a way. She’d made her way from Balpur to America. She could make the fifty dollars in her purse last until her paycheck came in next month.

Please, please keep them safe. And please don’t let Ridhi’s family find me.
She repeated the plea for the hundredth time that day. No matter how hard she tried she hadn’t been able to stop worrying about ruining Ridhi’s love story if Ridhi’s family found her. She did a quick sweep of the parking lot with her eyes, 007-style. Then followed it up with a full 360-degree spin. There wasn’t a soul in sight but one could never be too careful. Better get inside. Considering Ridhi had just taken off, chances were it would be at least another day or two before Ridhi’s family caught on and came after Mili. Even so she planned to stay out of the apartment and hide out in Pierce Hall and the library until she knew that Ridhi and Ravi were safe.

Something rustled behind her and she jumped and spun around. A man was parking a bicycle too close to the huge green refuse tank across the parking lot. Oh no, today was the day the collection truck came.

“Sir!” She ran after him. “Hello?”

Clearly, he didn’t hear her because he sauntered off in the opposite direction. She raced to catch up with him and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and looked down at her as if she had just broken out of a mental asylum. Had to be her hair. Her grandmother always said she looked a little mad when she left it loose. She pushed it back with both hands. It bounced right back and spilled all over her face.

“You parked your cycle too close to the dirt,” she said, panting slightly.

Almost lazily, he pulled a headphone from one ear and gave her a look that suggested she wasn’t worthy of being listened to with both ears.

“They’ll take your cycle away if you leave it there.” She pointed at the bright yellow bike.

The poor fool just stared at her. Maybe it was her accent. They often didn’t understand her English. A sharp stab of homesickness pierced through her followed by an intense urge to hear the familiar tones of her mother tongue. Yes, big fat chance of that happening here.

She slowed down and tried to speak more clearly. “The big truck, it comes to take away the dirt today. They’ll take away your bicycle if you leave it there.” She swept her hand from the bike to the huge green tank in which everyone dumped their trash bags.

More blankness. Maybe he didn’t speak English.

She tried again. “They collect it on Friday—you’ll lose your bicycle.” She walked up to the bike and rattled the handle.

Finally understanding sparked in his eyes. “You mean the Dumpster? Are you trying to tell me they collect the garbage today?” He laughed, but it wasn’t a kind laugh.

She refused to feel small or stupid. Dumpster. Garbage. Not “tank.” Not “dirt.” It was just a matter of getting the terms right. Next time she would.

She nodded but couldn’t get herself to smile at him anymore.

“Yeah, I know,” he said really slowly, enunciating each word as if she hadn’t just spoken to him in English. “Why do you think I put it there?”

She gaped at him. “You don’t want it?”

“Well, duh. Why would I like throw it in the Dumpster if I wanted it?” He jammed the headphone back in his ear. “You can have it if you want it.” And with that he walked off.

Did she look like someone who picked up things other people threw away?
You can have it if you want it,
indeed! What was she, a trash picker?

But instead of heading home she found herself standing in front of the
Dumpster
inspecting the bright yellow bicycle. The paint had scraped off in a few spots but other than that it was beautiful. If she had a bike she wouldn’t have to walk around campus or make the mile-long trek to the grocer on foot. She darted a furtive glance around to make sure no one was watching, then grabbed the bike and quickly backed it away from the Dumpster and walked it to the bike rack just under her balcony, unable to stop smiling. There were several other bikes there. She parked hers in the one remaining spot and gave in to the urge to wiggle her hips in another little hip-wiggling dance. Naani was right. When a door closed, a window always opened. You just had to have the good sense to stick your head out of it.

 

Samir hated slowing the Corvette down. It was a damn shame. But once he got off the highway he ran into red light after red light until the insanely sexy growl of the engine started to taunt him. He revved it. An uppity looking blonde swept a sideways glance at him from her giant SUV. Automatically, he counted under his breath. One . . . two . . . three . . . And there it was, the double take.
Not looking so bored anymore, are we, missy?
He burned her with his smolder just as the light turned green, then drove off, leaving her gaping in his wake.

Slowly the buildings got closer together and older and more decrepit, going from the set of a rural saga to a period film. Redbrick bungalows with steeple ceilings and snow white trim lined the gravelly, rundown street. He sped past a concrete sign that said
EASTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY EST
. 1883 and the GPS started to go crazy.
Turn left, turn right, turn left. Make a U-turn!
Reluctantly, he reined the engine in, listened, and the tinny electronic voice led him to a dingy little parking lot that smelled as if the world had rotted and gone to hell. A garbage truck was digging up a Dumpster. Impeccable timing, Sam!

Samir screeched to a halt as far from the Dumpster as humanly possible, pulled himself out of the convertible without bothering to open the door, and stared up at peeling trim on the deserted redbrick building. It was lights, camera, action time.

 

Mili was in the middle of peeling the wrapper off her last remaining chocolate bar when she heard the knock. She took a quick bite and put the rest of it back in the empty fridge. Her stomach growled in protest. She hadn’t eaten anything all day. There were some noodles from Panda Kong in the fridge but she needed those for dinner. Who could be knocking on her door? No one, and she meant no one, had ever knocked on that door in the four months that she had lived here. Except that one time those Jesus Christ people had stopped by and tried to give her a Bible. Another forceful knock. Too forceful. The Bible people had been too polite to knock this hard. Something about that knock made her defenses bristle.

It couldn’t possibly be Ridhi’s brother, could it? Ridhi had said they’d send him first.

Another knock.

Oh Lord. Oh Ganesha. Oh Krishna.
What now? Ridhi was gone only about half an hour. If Mili let anything slip they would find Ridhi and Ravi before they got away. A complete tragedy-style ending to their love story. Mili could never let that happen. Never. Never.

She tiptoed to the door.

“Hello? Anybody there?” A deep, authoritative man’s voice shouted from the other side. A deep, authoritative
Indian
man’s voice. She looked through the fuzzy peephole. All she saw was a blurred outline of a large figure.
Oh. Lord.
She tiptoed backward and tripped over the shoes she’d left in the middle of the floor, and landed on her bum with a thud, knocking over the lone chair that stood in the middle of the room. Oh no, she had probably broken the one piece of living room furniture she owned.

“Hello?” the voice called again, sounding a little confused. He’d heard her.
Oh Lord.
She hurried to the balcony. No way was she going to be the reason for Ridhi taking on her monosyllabic-slash-near-suicidal avatar again. She leaned over the white spindle railing and saw her new bike on the bike rack just below her. It wasn’t much of a jump. Just about seven feet to the grassy mound below. She jumped.

She landed on her feet and then toppled headlong into her bike, which in turn crashed into the three other bikes next to it. Metal tore through her shirt and jabbed her shoulder. The crash made her ears ring. “Shh,” she hissed at the bike she was lying on and tried to straighten up.

 

Samir heard a loud crash. He ran to the open stairwell and leaned over the railing. Some sort of crazy creature with the wildest mass of jet-black curls was dusting herself off and trying to grab a fluorescent yellow bike from a jumbled heap. Was she stealing it? In her rush to pry it free she stumbled backward and her eyes met his. Something in the way she looked at him set alarm bells gonging in his head. His eyes swept from her panicked stance to the low-hanging balcony. Had she jumped?
Damn it.

“Hey! Wait a minute. Are you Malvika?” he yelled at her.

Her eyes widened to huge saucers, as if he’d accused her of something truly heinous. Was she crazy? She had to be because before he knew what to do next she yanked the bike free, hopped on it, and took off as if he were some sort of gangster chasing her with a gun.

He ran down the stairs, taking almost the entire flight in one leap, and saw her desperately peddling away from him. The rickety piece of shit she was riding wobbled and teetered, looking even more unstable than she did. She turned around and gave him another terrified glance. What was wrong with the woman? Just as she was about to turn away again the bike’s handle jerked at the most awkward angle as if it had a mind of its own and she went hurtling into a tree at the end of the street.

“Holy shit!” He ran to her.

By the time he got to her she was lying on her back, her butt pushed up against the tree trunk, her legs flipped over her head like some sort of contortionist yoga guru and the bike intertwined with her folded body. Through the tangle of hair, limbs, and fluorescent metal he heard a sob and a squeak.

“Hello? Are you all right?” Leaning over, he lifted a long spiral lock off her face. It bounced against his palm, soft as silk.

One huge, almond-shaped eye focused on him.

“Teh thik to ho?”
he repeated in Hindi. He had no idea why he’d spoken it or why he had used that rural dialect he now used only with his mother, but it just slipped out.

The tangled-up, upside-down mess of a girl, looking at him from behind her legs, literally brightened. There was just no other way to describe it. Her one exposed eye lit up like a firework in a midnight sky. He pushed more hair off her face, almost desperate to see the rest of that smile.

“You can speak Hindi,” she said, her surprisingly husky voice so filled with delight that sensation sparkled across his skin.

For one moment the almost physical force of her smile and the uninhibited joy in her voice stole his ability to speak.

She squinted those impossibly bright eyes at him. “Sorry, is that the only line you know?”

“What? No, of course not. I know lots of lines.” Wow, that must be the stupidest thing he’d ever said in his life.

She smiled again.

He gave his head a shake and forced his attention on her mangled situation instead of that smile. As carefully as he could he pulled the bike off her. “Can you move?”

She bit down on her lip and tried to push herself up. But instead of her body moving, her face contorted with pain and tears pooled in her eyes.

He dropped down to his knees next to her. “I’m sorry. Here, let me help you.” He ignored the absurd shiver of anticipation that kicked in his gut as he reached for her.

 

No man had ever touched Mili like that. Ridhi’s ridiculously handsome brother wrapped his arms around her and tried to ease her into a sitting position. Pain shot through her back, her legs, through parts of her body she wasn’t even aware she possessed, and all she could think about was the warm bulges of his arms pressing into her skin. So this was what a man’s touch felt like.

Yuck.
She was an awful pervert.
You’re a married woman,
she reminded herself.

But then he gave her another tug and she forgot her own name. Pain buzzed like a million bees in her head. She tried to be brave but she couldn’t stifle the yelp that escaped her.

“Shh. It’s okay. Let me look at that.” He propped her up against his chest and reached out to inspect her ankle. His face faded and blurred and then came back into focus. His skin was almost European light and his hair was the darkest burnt gold. If he hadn’t spoken Hindi the way he had, she might have mistaken him for a local.

He touched her ankle and she was sure something exploded inside it. She sucked in a breath and her head lolled back onto his chest. A very bad English word she had heard only in films rumbled in his chest beneath her head, which suddenly weighed a ton. Her stomach lurched. She heard a pathetic whimper. It had to be her. He didn’t look like the whimpering type.