The Bollywood Bride (25 page)

“And yet you chose to dump him like so much garbage. You took the easy way out. You could’ve ignored me. You didn’t have to do as I asked. You could have struggled to build a life with him. But it was easier to open your legs and get what you wanted instantly, wasn’t it? God knows you had enough practice.”

Everything turned hot and black and singed. Chitra’s blue-gray eyes sparkled with triumph and an intense urge to smash her angel head into the wall behind her overcame Ria. She pictured blood running down her hands as she kept slamming, unable to stop. She backed away from Chitra, putting distance between them as fast as she could, her fists clenched so tight her fingers numbed, her jaw clenched so hard her teeth ground out dust in her mouth.

“You have no answer for that, do you?” Chitra goaded, her sari billowing in the wind, her petite form turning gigantic and distorted in Ria’s vision.

“Are you really that stupid?” Ria hissed through the physical, tangible heat of her breath. “Can you really not figure it out on your own? Didn’t you ever wonder why I never told Vikram about your threats? Don’t you wonder why he still doesn’t know? Why I still haven’t told him, all these years later, when I have nothing left to lose?”

Chitra took a quick step back, wobbling slightly on her heels. The triumph in her eyes popped like a bubble. No, Chitra wasn’t stupid. Fear flooded her eyes as understanding dawned on her. Ria wanted to get away from her, but she couldn’t stop now. This too had to end today.

“It was never about you. Never about your threats. Never about keeping you from disowning Vikram and throwing him out. It was about keeping him from throwing you out of his life. Even today, I can take your son away from you with one word.” She snapped her fingers in Chitra’s face. “If he ever finds out what you did, you’ll never see him again. You’ll lose him forever.” She watched terror spread across Chitra’s face and drew strength from it. “Fortunately for you, I would never do that to him. I am the only reason you still have your son.”

Chitra had gone as white as the clouds streaking the blue sky behind her—all the fight squeezed out of her silk-wrapped body like a deflated balloon. A wisp of tinder that Ria could ignite with just one spark. And it made Ria sick to her stomach. Evil as Chitra was, she had to be better than the mother-shaped hole that had defined her own life. Hard as it was to imagine right now, even someone like Chitra for a mother had to be better than the indelible scars Ria carried on her body and the desperate craving and shame she had lived with all her life.

Chitra was Vikram’s mother and the thought of losing him made all her arrogance, all her brutal machinations go up in smoke. Vikram had that. Ria would never have that. How could she take that away from him after everything else she had already taken?

Suddenly all her anger, every ounce of her strength dissipated, leaving her drained. Chitra stared at her—her Vikram-shaped mouth hanging open.

“Are you going to tell him?” she asked, her voice paper thin with fear.

Disgust rose in Ria’s chest. She wanted the same thing Chitra wanted—to protect Vikram from the unforgiving secrets of her past, from the inevitable violence of her future. But she’d be damned if she gave Chitra the satisfaction of knowing that. “If you ever threaten me again, or if you ever try to control Vikram in any way, I’ll make sure you lose him forever.” She turned around and walked away.

This time Chitra didn’t follow her. “Are you going to tell him?” She called from behind Ria, as persistent as her son.

“No. But I’m going to rip his heart to bits,” Ria mumbled to herself. “Good luck picking up the pieces.”

Ria pushed the heavy metal door with all her strength and it swung open. She stepped into the lobby and slammed it shut behind her, needing a physical barrier to separate her from the woman she hated almost as much as she loved her son. She never wanted to be faced with either of them ever again.

Across the lobby she saw an elevator open and rushed to it, reaching it just as it started to slide shut. She slipped in through the closing doors and started pounding on the Door-Close button as if this entire mess was its fault and not hers. But it didn’t respond, didn’t recognize her desperation. The mirrored doors took their time to make their way across the wide opening with lazy grace. A far too familiar hand wedged itself into the closing gap and the doors slid open again.

Vikram stepped in. Ria tried to rush back out, but his arms wrapped around her and held her in place. The doors closed, this time too fast. The elevator started to move. He tried to turn her in his arms, but she lurched away from him.

“Okay, that’s it. Game over, Ria. What’s going on?” Patience laced his voice, and strength, so much strength.

The shaking started again. Maybe it hadn’t stopped at all. She had to do this right now. If she wanted to get away from him she had to get the words out. He wasn’t going to let her go until she got the words out.

“You’re right, game’s over.” She tried to imagine the heat of the set lights on her skin, but the ice wrapped around her was too thick. She willed it to harden in her veins and hold her up.

“What is that supposed to mean? Will you at least look at me?” The muscles in his forearms flexed as he controlled the reflex to reach for her again. “Sweetheart, at least look at me. Please. Tell me what’s wrong. We can fix this.”

The elevator stopped. Ria rushed out and kept walking, Vikram hot on her heels.

“There’s nothing to fix. I should never have let this happen. I should never have let you suck me in again. I have to get back to Mumbai. I have a movie starting next week. I’m leaving tonight.”

“Like hell you are.” He stopped mid-step, his voice no longer gentle. “You’re not going anywhere.” His words slashed like a whip against her back.

She had to stop. She had to do this. “Don’t, Vikram,” she said, turning around. “Don’t do this. You can’t stop me. You knew I wouldn’t stay. You knew I had to go back to my life in the end. The wedding’s over. It’s done. I was always supposed to leave after that. That was always the plan. You complicated everything by starting this up again and now it’s going to turn into a huge mess.”

“Like hell I started it,” he said. “And don’t call me Vikram. I hate it.” She could see his control slipping, see the age-old anger and hurt kindle back to life inside him.

She stoked it. It was her only hope. “Believe whatever you want. But you did start it. You came after me. You were the first man in my life, my first relationship, and those are always easy to fall back into. But I have a movie to shoot and—”

“Ria, cut the crap. What’s going on? The truth, plain and simple. Something’s scared the shit out of you, what is it, sweathear—?”

“Of course I’m scared. Nikhil, Uma Atya, Vijay Kaka, they’re going to kill me. If you run off and do something stupid again, they’re going to blame me for it and I’ll never be able to face them again.” The words flowed fast, spurting from her, fuelled by the force of her mounting fear.

His breath sped up, came in spurts. He didn’t want to believe her, but they had those ten years between them, and they overpowered him. She watched him turn twenty again, watched him fight it.

“Are you crazy?” he asked. “Weren’t you there yesterday? Weren’t you back there in the linen room just now? Where’s that person I made love with? Where are you, Ria?” He tried to look into her eyes again. But she couldn’t bring herself to let him. His voice rose. “How can you do this? Haven’t you learned anything? You’ll never find this again.” He waved his hand between them, tracing that invisible arc, that bloody invisible arc that was her noose, her lifeline. “There’s no more of it out there, Ria. Can’t you fight for it? Can’t you fight for us? Whatever it is you’re so damn terrified of. Whatever the fuck it is. Isn’t this bigger?”

His chest pumped, his
sherwani
caught the fluorescent light in silken flashes. His hair stood in spikes after umpteen assaults from his fingers.

“Ria?” He searched her face, lost, in shock, desperate for answers.

But her words were gone. She was wrung dry, empty. Words that were afraid of everyone else had never been afraid of him. Now he was their greatest fear.

His hands balled into fists, pushing against defeat, refusing to back down. Remnants of hope mingled with such pain in his eyes, shame burned through what was left of her.

“Just tell me what it is. Just open your mouth and tell me what the hell it is.” His eyes beseeched her, opening up until each glistening crystal exposed his soul. He could take anything. He would pay any price, walk away from his family, his work, give up everything that mattered to him, give up being a father without so much as a thought. He wouldn’t leave her, not when she turned into an animal, not when she turned his home into a mausoleum, not even when she set him on fire. This she knew with as much certainty as she knew she was alive. And she would never let that happen.

Every cell in her body hardened with purpose. With every fiber of her being she shut him out, and she knew the precise moment when he saw it. If his eyes had bled thick, black liquid pain, his hurt couldn’t have been more visible to her.

“Fine,” he said when the silence between them had stretched out long enough that he knew it was impregnable, knew she was immovable.

When he spoke again, his voice had a deadly finality to it. “So again, you’ve made up your mind. You get to decide. I don’t get a say.” Anger suffused some of the pain in his eyes. “If you can still hear me. If any of this is still reaching you, I want you to listen very carefully. I told you this once before—I won’t chase you again. I can’t. If you can throw this away, if you can live without it, then go. But if you leave me now, if you run from us again, it’s over. Finished. Don’t bother coming back. Ever. You hear me? Never again. If you walk away from me now, you will never see me again.”

He waited for her to respond, his body locked in place, his chest stock still. No breath entered or left him, every part of him focused on her answer as if all he had to do was want it badly enough and it would be his.

“Ria?”

Nothing.

Finally he lifted her chin, unsteady fingers forcing her to meet his eyes. She lifted her eyelids and let him look. He searched the charred emptiness left inside her. She wasn’t afraid to let him look anymore, because there was nothing left there to hide except the leftover scraps of her. He pulled his hand back, letting her go, unable to bear what he saw. And it finally pushed him away.

When she walked away from him, he didn’t try to stop her.

Where Vikram went after that, she didn’t know. She was barely conscious of her own actions. Somehow she got herself through the rest of the day. Nikhil and Jen tried to talk to her before they left, but she had this down to an art. No one stood a chance. No one would get through to her and they wouldn’t even know it. She didn’t say good-bye. She couldn’t. They would find her gone tomorrow at the reception. She would make up for it later. Later, when she knew how.

The only person she spoke to was Uma. The only person who would understand that she had to go, without forcing her to come up with reasons neither one of them believed. “I have to go, Uma Atya, it can’t wait.” She dug the words out with all the strength she had left.

“You know you can talk to me about anything, right?” It was all Uma said when Ria allowed herself one last pleasure of letting Uma hold her close when she said good-bye.

Ria would have given anything to be able to talk to Uma, to put her mind at ease. But the words were all gone. Lost forever. There was only silence inside her. She could find only one word to whisper into Uma’s hair before letting her go. It rose up inside her and slipped from her lips. “Aie,” she said, and then she wrapped it up in the feel of Uma’s softness and took it away with her.

27

 

D
J threw the drapes open, and Ria blinked and pulled the white cotton quilt up to her chin. Bright light rushed in through the windows and pierced daggers into her head. She crossed her arms over her eyes. Pain shot from her elbows.

Why was DJ in her bedroom? “How are you feeling?” he asked, and Ria had to clear the fuzz in her brain to know what he was talking about.

He put a cup of tea on the nightstand and leaned over to help her up. She pushed him away and sat up by herself, picking up the cup. The tea tasted like dishwater. Ria wanted coffee, with the perfect balance of cream and sugar and mellow bitterness. And a strong, steady hand to slide the cup toward her. She pressed her hand against the pain in her heart and straightened against the headboard. A more bearable pain spasmed in her back and smarted in her elbows, her knees, the side of her face, and the memory of that night came back to her. How long ago had that been?

“Do you need a painkiller?” DJ asked, frowning at her.

She shook her head. The pain felt good.

“Are you going to tell me what you were thinking, doing something so stupid?” He gave her the famous DJ glower. She had forgotten it.

The journey back to Mumbai had gone by in a blur. It had felt in part like the blink of an eye and in part like an eternity. Coming out of Mumbai airport Ria had been so numb, so disconnected from herself, she had forgotten that she should wait inside the terminal for DJ to come and get her. She had walked straight out of the airport, meaning to hail a cab. It had taken less than a minute for the mob to collect, and another minute for them to start pulling and tugging at her. Touching her hair, her clothes, groping parts of her she did not want anyone to touch ever again.

By the time she realized what she had done, it was too late to get herself to safety. Fortunately, DJ had been nearby looking for her. It had taken the combined strength of him, his driver, and two security guards to pull the mob off Ria and pick her up off the sidewalk, where she sat on her knees, her face pressed into the concrete with her hands over her head, her clothes ripped, her skin gouged off, mauled and bleeding.

DJ had asked over and over again how she could do something as stupid as that. She had no idea how to tell him that she had forgotten who she was. That she had forgotten everything she had been before she left. That she would never be any of those things again. She had no idea how to tell him how being torn on the outside was nothing compared to how she felt on the inside.

DJ stared at her, waiting for an answer. The impatience in his eyes pushed at the deadening sadness inside her. She knew she should answer him, but forming words was taking too much effort these days.

“Sorry,” she said, forcing the word out and then coughing from the effort it took.

He waited for more, but she looked away and took another sip of the dishwater.

“ ‘Sorry,’ that’s all I get?”

He wanted more? Maybe “I’m really sorry” would help. Again, she tried to say the words, but nothing came out.

“Ria, it’s been four days since you came back and I’ve got a total of five words out of you. What’s wrong, babes? What happened in Chicago?”

Ria wanted to laugh. Now
there
was a question worth sinking her teeth into, a question words had been invented for. He was a busy man. “How much time do you have?” she wanted to ask him.

“What the hell is funny?” Concern flooded his face. He waited for an answer, then gave up.

“Ria, it’s past noon. You were supposed to be at a meeting with the director at ten this morning. I’ve called you a hundred times. Don’t you answer your phone anymore? Where is it?”

She had no idea where her phone was.

He started to walk around her room looking for it. “Listen, babes, you have to snap out of it, whatever it is. You’ve never missed an appointment, what is—” He picked up the pillow next to her and found the phone under it. “It’s completely out of power.” He glared at the phone and started hunting for something else. “He’s rescheduled it. But only because it’s you. And because I spent all morning pacifying him.” He found a charger and plugged the phone in. “We need to get there in an hour. Shit! Look at you! Ria? Get out of bed, please!”

He started to yank the sheets off her and she grabbed them in horror. She felt the sheet slide off her. Felt her bare body beneath it. Saw one of Viky’s eyes open as he laughed at her absurd bashfulness. Frantically, she pulled the sheet to her chin, reached under the sheets, and ran a hand over herself, touching her clothes to make sure they were there. Her cotton shirt bunched beneath her fingers. Relief and embarrassment flooded through her, crashing against the pain wedged so tight inside her she was amazed she could feel anything else.

DJ looked at her funny again—a scared, pitying look you saved for rabid strays on their way to the pound. Ria forced herself to swing her legs off the bed and stood. Behind her DJ picked up the sheets that fell to the floor as she dragged herself to the bathroom. She hadn’t showered in days, didn’t remember the last time she had left the bed. She could smell herself, sticky and sour.

It took every ounce of strength she possessed to climb into the tub and turn on the shower. With every sharp, spraying droplet Vikram’s fingers dragged across her body, gentle, then insistent. His lips, his tongue, his smooth sliding skin caressed every inch of her. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned up the heat until her skin scalded and all feeling disappeared except the stinging burn of the water hitting her.

When she stepped into the living room, weaving on her feet from the heat, she saw takeout food boxes sitting on the dining table. DJ had even laid out a couple of plates. A tremor of gratefulness quivered through her hard, frozen insides. She sat down next to him. He muted the TV and forked some food on her plate. They ate in silence, watching the stiffly dressed news anchor on TV move her lips to stories that flashed in vignettes behind her. Suddenly, Ria’s face splashed across the screen and DJ punched up the volume.

“. . . Film star Ria Parkar was mobbed outside Mumbai airport on Sunday,” the anchor said in formal, literary Hindi. “Sources have confirmed that the fiercely private star was returning to Mumbai after a closely guarded vacation overseas. Ms. Parkar was taken to the hospital where she is said to be recuperating from her reportedly severe injuries.”

They both stared at the TV.

The newswoman picked up the sheaf of papers in front of her and tapped them on her desk, straightening the already neat stack in a practiced, professional-looking move. “The star is scheduled to appear in Shivshri’s next magnum opus
Piya Ke Ghar Jaana—PKGJ,
which is slated to release next month. She will also be starring in their next film,
StarGangster,
which commences shooting soon.”

As she signed off, asking the audience to stay tuned for news on the earthquake in Bangladesh, the promo for
PKGJ
came on.

“You’ve got to love this business.” DJ stabbed his noodles with disposable wooden chopsticks. “Bastards. Not bad for hospital food, ha?” He lifted a clump of noodles at Ria in a salute and shoved them into his mouth.

Ria continued to chew, the oily spiciness jabbing at her taste buds. She swallowed to clamp down on the food, but it edged back up her throat. It had nothing to do with the news, her body just wasn’t ready for food. Sometime soon she would work her way up to being upset. Right now she was just glad to find the strength to go on chewing.

As it turned out, it would have been a better idea not to eat. The meeting with the director was a disaster. Ria ended up spending the entire afternoon trying to keep the food down. She had never finished reading the script and her churning stomach made it impossible to keep her mind on anything anyone was saying. She had never worked with Samir Rathod, the director, before. Until now they’d always done completely different kinds of films. But he had been the media’s darling for years, with a special talent for staying in the papers for all the wrong reasons.

“He’s not the same Samir Rathod you’re used to seeing in the papers,” DJ kept telling her. “Trust me, you’re going to love working with him.”

But Samir was far too full of enthusiasm, far too intense. Far too tall, broad-shouldered, and buff. He made Ria’s skin crawl with discomfort. He peppered every line that came out of his mouth with her name as if they were old friends. “The script is pure gold, Ria.” “I’m sure you can’t wait to get started, Ria.”

Each time he said her name it sickened and violated her. All she wanted to do was get away from him.

“Sweetheart, are you okay?” he asked, placing his large gentle hand on her shoulder, and Ria jumped and backed out of the room, rushing out of the building, leaving DJ mumbling apologies in her wake.

“He was just trying to be nice, Ria. Just give him a chance,” DJ told her in the car, carefully ignoring her bizarre exit.

But Ria was certain she never wanted to see the man again, never wanted to see the inside of a studio. She didn’t know how to tell DJ that she wouldn’t be there when shooting started to give him a chance. She just didn’t have the strength to stand in front of a camera. She was fresh out of it. Whatever it was you needed to keep going.

 

The only time Ria felt remotely alive was when she talked to Uma. With Uma she was able to get the words out. Not too many, but just the few she needed to keep Uma from getting on a plane. She needed to hear Uma’s voice. Even if she talked about the most inane of things. Even if everything Uma said was only to keep from saying the words she really wanted to say. Questions teetered and danced on Uma’s tongue, but she held them in. Ria couldn’t fathom how Uma understood exactly what she needed, but it gave her the strength she needed to go on.

Uma told Ria that the reception had gone well. Jen and Nikhil had both looked great. She never said anything about how upset the two of them must have been that Ria had left without saying good-bye. She never said anything about whether or not Vikram had stayed for the reception. She told her only about the food and the gifts and what each one of the aunties had worn.

Nikhil and Jen were all packed and ready to fly out to Malawi next week. They planned to stop in Scotland for a quick honeymoon before they started work. Uma did ask Ria again to call Nikhil. He had called Ria every day, but she hadn’t been able to answer. She hated to put him through this, but the idea of speaking with Nikhil or Jen right now was unfathomable. Again, Uma seemed to know exactly how much Ria could take. She didn’t push her.

When the story about Ria’s mobbing and hospitalization broke, Uma had packed her bags, ready to fly to Mumbai. It hadn’t been easy to convince her that the media had made up the thing about the hospital. Thankfully, DJ was able to convince her that Ria was not in the hospital and they had gone back to their calls once every few days. There was no way Ria could handle meeting Uma right now—and yet there was nothing she wanted more.

It was only two more days before the fitness boot camp for
StarGangster
started. But Ria still hadn’t told DJ that she wasn’t doing the film. He had scheduled a one-on-one for her with her trainer, and Ria sat in her living room listening to Mina chatter excitedly about the film. She was going to be one of the lead trainers on the film, a huge step for her career. At the meeting, the director had repeated over and over again how physical fitness was a crucial component of the story. “Think of fitness as one of the characters in the film, Ria,” he had said, and his sharply outlined biceps had made Ria hate the very sight of him. Mina, on the other hand, seemed to be nursing a giant crush.

“Such a visionary,” she said in a voice throaty from too much shouting and goading and steroids. “And totally hot too, no?” She winked at Ria. “He really understands the human body. It’s rare to see this kind of knowledge in filmmakers.”

Even though Ria couldn’t begin to understand her fervor, she was glad for the opportunity this film would give her after all these years of working so hard. Mina measured and pinched Ria’s body with tapes and calipers and furiously typed every detail into her laptop.

“Wow!” she said in the hyper-energetic way that always reminded Ria of a spinning top. “Looks like you’ve been following your routine diligently.”

A million crushing memories rushed into Ria’s mind. Ever since she had left Chicago it had been impossible for her to get any food down her throat, and her bones had started to stick out at sharp angles, making her trainer giddy with happiness.

“I wish all my clients were this disciplined.” Vivid images of Uma wringing Mina’s muscled neck flashed in Ria’s head.

Ria hadn’t said a single word thus far, but the conversation hadn’t ceased even for a second. Mina pulled a measuring tape across Ria’s breasts. “Oh no, your bust size has reduced. That’s not going to make the producers happy.” She sucked on her lower lip as if a minor tragedy had befallen them and stared at Ria’s breasts like a doctor studies an X-ray. “You had such beautiful breasts.”

The floor swam beneath Ria’s feet. Vikram’s basement room closed around her. His voice rumbled in his chest.
I’m so impressed, by the beauty of your breasts.
His smile soaked his voice. Love and laughter danced in the blue-gray depths of his eyes. He stretched across his bed, propped up on his elbows. All his beautiful surfaces glistened. She backed away from the trainer and tried to clear the images from her head. But the memories came at her so fast she lost her balance and fell back onto the sofa.

“Ria, babes, are you okay?” the trainer asked, unable to mask her panic.

Ria wanted the trainer out, wanted her gone. But she couldn’t find the words to ask her to leave, to tell her that she was wasting her time.