Again that look. Wide eyes, dark irises opening up to expose even darker pupils that left her bare. And that furious blush.
He settled into the driver’s seat, refusing to let his face reflect the stupid wide smile in his heart. “So where to,
memsaab?
”
Her fingers relaxed in her lap. “I need to go to the office first. From there I can walk to class and then to Panda Kong.”
“And then?”
“And then . . . could you please come and get me?” She joined her hands together in a pleading
namaste
.
He grunted. He knew she was teasing him but he still hated the hesitation in her voice. “What time do you get off work?”
“Five-thirty.”
“And class?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“And Kung Fu Panda?”
That made her smile. Good.
“Around midnight.”
His grip tightened on the wheel. She was going to wash dishes with that hand for four hours? Over his fucking dead body. But no point in arguing with her now. He was going to drop her off and then pay Kung Fu Panda a visit. Good thing she’d pointed it out to him on their way here.
“There it is,” Mili said, and Samir pulled up to a squat, ivy-covered building with wide steps leading up to heavy wooden double doors. An embossed concrete slab jutting out of the lawn proclaimed it Pierce Hall.
Samir pulled himself out of the convertible and jogged around the car to help Mili out. He handed her the cane, then leaned into the car door and watched her make her way up the concrete path.
Suddenly she turned around. “Samir?” she said softly, as if she were throwing his name into the wind. Her forehead crinkled under the wet curls. She looked so serious.
He didn’t respond. Just stared at her, afraid of what might come out of her mouth.
“Can I tell you something? You won’t be angry?”
Again, he didn’t respond, but his entire body hummed with anticipation.
“You are the most decent guy I’ve ever met.” She gave him that sunshine smile. “Thank you.” And with that she limped the rest of the way up the stairs and disappeared into the building.
Samir did a U-turn in the parking lot, spinning so fast the tires screeched. He loved the way this baby took curves. He turned around and threw one last glance at the spot where she had stood and declared him decent before jamming his foot into the pedal.
When he pulled the Corvette into the Panda Kong parking lot it was isolated. The fluorescent red sign was missing a
g,
making it sound like “Panda
Kon?
”—Hindi for “Who the heck is Panda?”
He smiled. Mili would’ve found that funny too.
Walking in, he found the lights turned low. It was three in the afternoon. Obviously they weren’t open for dinner yet. A few Chinese women sat huddled in a circle at the back of the restaurant, singing. Not loud jamming kind of singing. Not even the women gathered around the
dholki
drum kind of singing at festivals and weddings back home, but more a barely audible chorus of lilting melody as their hands worked on piles of green beans.
It took them a few moments to figure out someone had entered the restaurant.
“Not open for dinner yet,” one of the women said. The singing stopped, and Samir felt oddly sad.
“Can I talk to the manager?”
The woman gave him a worried sort of look and shouted something in Chinese at the door that led to the back of the restaurant.
“I wanted to talk to him about Mili.”
“Ah, Mili!” the woman said much more cheerfully. The women behind her repeated it in unison, looking at each other like the nuns in the abbey in
The Sound of Music.
Samir almost expected them to break into a Chinese rendition of “How d’you solve a problem like Mi-li.”
“How is she?” The woman who’d been talking to him pointed to her wrist and her foot. Then turned to the door again and this time bellowed something in Chinese in a substantially stronger voice. The only word Samir recognized was
Mili.
“She’s much better, thank you,” he said.
“Mili very nice.” She peeked at his left hand, patted her own ring, and asked with some alacrity, “You husband? You new one?”
Now there was a question. No, he wasn’t the new one and he certainly was not her husband. She didn’t have a fucking husband.
“I’m a friend.” Samir found his hands in fists and tried to relax.
“Ah,
friend!
” Another chorus of whispers rose behind her amid scoffing giggles and disbelieving glances. How many times had this happened to him?
Just good friends, ha?
Nudge nudge, wink wink.
A man with a rather nasty frown entered the room and snapped something even nastier at the women snapping beans in a circle. His head was curiously egg-shaped.
“Can help you?” he asked Samir with a look that was anything but helpful.
“Yes, I’m a friend of Mili’s. Can we talk for a moment?” Samir threw a glance at the circle as if they were in a Bond film from the Roger Moore days. “Privately.”
The man looked suddenly interested. He beckoned Samir to follow him into the kitchen. “Mili good dishwasher. No lazy like friend. Ridhi.” He made a face as if he had swallowed something foul. “She no good. Think too much like American brat. No notice before quit.”
Of course Mili would be a good worker. Groucho Marx was just going to have to live without his trusty little elf for a few more weeks. “Actually, Mili can’t come back to work for another two weeks.”
“Why?” The guy looked crestfallen, as if Samir had just told him a family member was on her last leg. “She say she come today. She say she fine.”
“But she isn’t fine,” Samir said. And she was too damn stubborn to admit it.
“Why she not tell me herself, then?”
Because she needs the money, you idiot.
“Because she doesn’t want to leave you hanging. But if she hurts herself while working here when she shouldn’t be, she can sue you.”
The man jumped. “No, no. Don’t need her. Tell her she no need come back.”
Fuck, wrong thing to say. “Listen, relax. She’s not going to sue you. All she needs is for you to give her two more weeks.”
“No, no. Too much trouble.” He pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his egg-shaped head.
The man was at least a foot shorter than him. Samir stepped closer and loomed over him. “Listen, how much do you pay her?”
The man cowered and studied Samir with beady eyes.
It didn’t take Samir much to convince him to give Mili two weeks with full pay and a bullshit explanation about the laws requiring her to be paid when she was hurt. All it took was twice Mili’s two-week salary. One half for Mili, the other half for Egghead.
When Samir walked out of the darkened restaurant a few hundred dollars lighter, he felt better than he had in a very long time.
11
O
f course Mili believed in miracles. But there were miracles and then there was what Egghead had just done. For someone who had never so much as strung two kind words together for her, he had lectured her about taking care of herself because health was wealth and so forth. She’d been contemplating throwing herself at his feet and begging him to let her work—she needed the money, no point in hanging on to her dignity—when he’d informed her that the law required him to pay her since she was missing work because of an accident. She had thrown her arms around him, taking them both completely by surprise. Her appreciation for this great country was growing by the day.
She started down the path that led from the restaurant to her apartment. Samir wasn’t going to pick her up until midnight. The mile-long walk had seemed like nothing when Ridhi and she had made the journey every day. Now she seemed to be moving so slowly she might as well be walking backward. Her ankle weighed her down and refused to move the way ankles were supposed to. But the cane was so much easier than those cursed crutches. In fact the cane was kind of fun. It made her feel like a retired colonel in an old film. Grinning at her own silliness, she spruced up her gait. But then it struck her that Egghead might find someone else to do her job and not want her back in two weeks and she didn’t feel like smiling anymore.
She could say with the utmost honesty that she had done everything in her power to do her job well, scrubbing every utensil until it shone, wiping down every counter after Egghead had wiped it down himself. And she’d done all this while keeping her mouth shut and her eyes down. Her ideal-woman act would have made her
naani
proud, right down to no answering back and plastering a patient smile across her face. She’d even helped Egghead’s niece with her homework.
She just could not lose this job. She needed the two hundred dollars to send to Naani. Although this month she was going to need the money to make her rent, if she ate nothing.
The thought of food made her stomach growl and the sound of her growling stomach brought Samir’s Greek god face blazingly alive in her mind. His face and his body and that presence of his that swirled around him like a sweeping Rajasthan sandstorm everywhere he went. Her mouth watered. Not because he looked like a minty-fresh toothpaste model but because he cooked like the goddess of domesticity.
He’d solved some of her food problems by stocking her fridge with groceries. She could go a good month on that food. But he ate like a bull—or was it a pigeon? She could never remember which one of those animals ate twice their weight in food every day. Maybe she could steal food out of her own fridge and hide it in the office fridge to use after he was gone. Was that stealing from him or stealing from herself?
It didn’t matter. Tomorrow she would start to take some of the food he bought and cooked and put it in the office for after he was gone. Desperate times did call for desperate measures. She was not going to feel guilty about wanting to feed herself. And that was that.
She came to the end of the parking lot. All that effort and all she had done was cross it. Her ankle was starting to throb and she had that trembling, weepy sensation in her belly from the rising pain. Maybe she should go back to the restaurant and ask Egghead to drive her home. She turned around and gauged the distance and noticed a tall, bulky man watching her. Something about the way he was looking at her raised her defenses and she turned and started scrambling away.
The man broke into a run. She had no chance. Before she knew it, he was upon her.
“Wait, Malvika Rathod?”
She acted like she hadn’t heard him and kept on half walking, half hobbling along on her cane.
“Excuse me, ma’am, I asked if you were Malvika Rathod.”
“No,” she said and kept walking.
“Are you sure?”
“I would know if my name was Malvika Rathod, wouldn’t I?” She clenched her jaw and tried to keep her panic levels down. There wasn’t a soul in sight but it was still bright and she was on campus. She had nothing to worry about.
“Then what’s your name?”
“If you don’t stop following me I’m going to scream.”
“Listen, I’m Ranvir, Ridhi’s brother. I’ve been looking for her for a week. Everyone at home is sick with worry.”
Mili spun around. Ridhi’s brother didn’t stop in time and almost ran into her. She took a step back, stumbled, and fell on her bum.
Before she knew what was happening, a yellow convertible screeched to a halt next to her. Samir leapt out of the car and ran at Ridhi’s brother like some action-film superhero.
“Samir, wait!” Before her voice left her mouth, Samir’s fist connected with Ranvir’s jaw and he went flying back into the pavement.
Samir lifted the horrified boy, for all his chubbiness, like a bag of feathers, and pulled his fist back for another punch.
“Samir, stop. Stop!” Her voice finally seemed to reach him. He dropped the guy and ran to her. His eyes travelled over her body as she sat on her bottom on the sidewalk and his breath seemed to catch. He threw one desperate look at the cane lying next to her and his gaze met hers. His eyes softened with something so tender, so helpless she couldn’t breathe.
“My God, Mili, are you okay?” It was the first time she’d seen Samir like this. She had a clear view all the way inside, no filters, no fronts. He fell to his knees next to her.
“I’m fine.” She reached out and touched his knuckles. They were bleeding. “He was just asking me a question.”
“By pushing you off your cane?” His voice trembled.
“He didn’t push me. I fell. I didn’t realize how unstable I was.”
“Your leg’s in a cast and he assaulted you and you’re protecting him?”
The guy groaned behind them and Samir sprang up. “I’ll kill you, you bastard.”
“Samir, stop. At least hear me out.”
But Samir already had the guy pulled up by his collar. Ranvir had seemed so large and threatening when he’d approached her only minutes ago. Now, hanging from Samir’s hands, he looked like a pudgy little schoolboy.
“He’s Ridhi’s brother. My roommate’s brother. He was just asking me where she is.”
“I’ve been looking for her for weeks,” the guy squeaked. “I just want to know if she’s safe.”
“Samir, you’re choking him. Can you let him down? Please.”
He did. Then he scooped her up and carried her to his car with all the glowering finesse of a caveman.
Beating the shit out of the poor fuck might have been a more humane way to deal with him. As it turned out, Mili had different plans for her absconding roommate’s brother. Five minutes after delivering a neat right hook to his jaw, Samir was carrying the man a café latte—complete with a frilly cloud of whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.
Mili sat by the huge mullioned windows in the university food court and dispensed her lecture as if she were Mother Teresa while the idiot stared at her openmouthed like a zealous devotee. She was sending him on a guilt trip so long he could’ve circled the globe by now. He looked ready to weep. Fucking bozo.
“She’s in love. Don’t you understand? If you force her to marry someone else, she could kill herself. You know Ridhi. She’s so
filmy,
she’ll do it just to prove her point. And you know who would have to live with it for the rest of his life?”
The idiot actually shook his head.
Samir slammed the latte in front of him. “You,” he said, because, really, the guy needed help. “The correct answer is
you
.”
Mili gave Samir a congratulatory look, using both hands to indicate his brilliance to the nincompoop. Suddenly Samir felt like an insider. He put Mili’s mocha in front of her and took a sip of his black coffee. He flipped a chair around, straddled it, and watched as Mili proceeded to empty one . . . two . . . three . . . four packets of sugar into her cup. If he had picked up more packets, she might never have stopped. It was a mocha, for fuck’s sake. Wasn’t the thing already sweetened for a diabetic coma?
She took one long slurping sip and looked like she was having another one of those food-induced orgasms. Dumbass drooled at her as if she, and not her mocha, were the sweet treat. Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Haven’t you ever been in love?” She skewered Dumbass with those sugar-softened eyes. He whimpered.
“You think it’s easy to find someone who will risk everything for you? Go on the run in a foreign country, jeopardize a career, risk deportation? You think it’s easy to find love like that?”
The guy stared at her, then turned to Samir for help.
“No. The right answer is
no
.” Samir was nothing if not helpful.
“No,” the guy repeated with a dazed but not entirely ungrateful expression.
Samir raised his coffee in salute and took another sip.
Mili waved another hand in Samir’s direction, indicating yet again his unarguable brilliance. “Look at Samir. Even with those looks, he still hasn’t found anyone. Can you imagine that?”
Samir choked on his coffee. Sprayed a goodly amount on the poor guy’s white shirt and earned a good beating on the back from Mili. But a little choking wasn’t going to stop her. She was on a mission. She continued to pat Samir’s back and skewered Dumbass with another glare. “You’re her brother. You. Are. Her. Brother. Her brother.” She gave the word
brother
so many nuances, such heartfelt emotion, that moisture danced in the guy’s eyes. “You should be fighting for her. Helping her and Ravi become one. You should be talking to your father, to your uncles. You should be
helping
your sister.”
Samir knew what was coming next. He rested his chin on the back of the chair he was straddling and watched.
She is your sister. Your sister. Your. Sister.
Samir said the words in his head as she spoke them aloud. He was grinning like a fool when she turned her eyes on him. He hadn’t had so much fun in years.
She narrowed her eyes and he gave her a big beaming smile for her effort. She shook her head at him and turned back to the brother.
The. Brother. The bro-ther,
who had tears spilling down his doughy cheeks now.
Samir had to work so hard not to laugh, his shoulders shook.
“I’m sorry. Will you help me find her?” the guy said and burst into sobs. Mili pulled him into a hug. Her arms went comfortingly around the idiot’s hiccupping shoulders. He took full advantage and completely let loose. Mili patted his back and winked at Samir over his head.
The laughter died in Samir’s chest.
All he wanted to do—with an intensity that sucker-punched him in the gut—was pull the bastard away from her.
Instead Samir gritted his teeth and watched as she pushed him away gently and asked Samir to drive them home. It wasn’t easy, but of course he did as she asked, without tearing the sniveling idiot’s limbs out like he wanted to.
How could anyone be so smitten in such a short period of time? The asshole hadn’t pulled his jaw off the floor and shut his mouth once since he’d seen her. Even when they were back in her apartment, waiting for him to finish speaking to his parents, his eyes kept darting in Mili’s direction as he mumbled into the phone. Oh, and suddenly Dumbass was her best bud. No, make that Dr. Bestbud. Apparently med school wasn’t as important as hunting an errant sister down in full-blown seventies-film fashion.
“You’re muttering to yourself, you know.” Of course Mili, in her all-seeing wisdom, caught him being even dumber than Dr. Dumbass Bestbud.
“I am not.” As dialog went, brilliant!
“And now you’re glaring.” Her tone was soothing but it only made him angrier.
“The guy attacked you. Excuse me if he’s not at the top of my love list.”
She matched his glare. “Samir, he’s trying to do the right thing.”
Dr. Right-Thing came up behind Mili—standing a bit too close for decency if you asked him. “I just spoke to Mummy and Daddy. They were just getting ready to call the cops. I’ve asked them to hold off until—”
Samir cut him off. “This is all very touching, but how is it that your sister has been missing for two weeks and your family hasn’t called the cops yet?”
Both Mili and Dr. Dumbass turned to Samir as if he were from another planet, from Pluto, in fact, not even worthy of being assigned a real planet.
Mili spoke first. Of course Mili spoke first. “How can they call the cops on Ridhi?” Her tone suggested Samir was hanging from a stupid tree on non-planet Pluto.
“Yeah, how?” Dr. Glib added.
They looked at each other and nodded in mutual understanding of Samir’s endless thickness.
“Okay, enough with the how-can-he-be-so-stupid looks. Any normal person, any normal family would have called the cops first.
Then
pulled all the relatives out of their respective colleges and jobs to send them off in hot pursuit. I’m just saying.”
“Samir,” Mili said, drawing his name out even more than she usually did and making it sound like she was saying “you imbecile.” “
Honor!
How can you risk public humiliation by going to the cops? It’s a family matter. Family has to resolve it.”
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
He was stuck in a fucking seventies film.
“We’re Punjabi, man,” Dr. Dumbass-Ten-Times-Over chimed in because what Mili had just said wasn’t bizarre enough.
I know plenty of sane Punjabis,
Samir wanted to say. But he didn’t think it would register with these two seventeenth-century escapees.
“You know what the problem with people like you is?” Mili said. “You live in your own little bubble and you have no idea what the real world is like.”
“And in the real world you only call the cops when it’s time to look for a body?”
“See?” Mili turned to Dr. Punjabi-Pride, who nodded, all knowing, all understanding. They started a side conversation, because “people like him” weren’t worth talking to.