Spice and Secrets (17 page)

She said something about the operation. Pain. Blood. Some stupid sod of a male nurse not letting her in the room at first. And then “Davin…Davin, she’s fine,” finally burst out amidst the cacophony. “They’re both fine and beautiful and
alive
.”

Thank bloody God. Yes.
That was all he heard. All he needed to. The breath he’d been holding released itself in a not entirely unexpected, but rather unmanly, flood of tears. “Christ. Oh, Christ.” He wasn’t a particularly religious sort, but suddenly he and Him were on intimate terms. “Jesus. God.”

“
Jai Sri Krishna,
” Sunita added, eyes bright with emotion. She pried the cellular from his hand, murmured well wishes and a goodbye to Tegan and put it aside, all while he was still flailing about in relief-ridden epiphany…and then she took him in her arms and held him close.

Her embrace was both the storm and the respite from it. It was what he’d adored about her from the outset: her passion. And he clung to her with a tenacity that surprised him only because he’d been fool enough, once before, to let her go. George and her baby were alive…and, by God, so was
he
. He wouldn’t waste another moment on principles that wouldn’t hold his hand or kiss his brow.

“Sunita,” he sighed, turning the few, precious millimeters to her lips and then taking them in a fierce kiss. “Darling, I love you,” he whispered against her mouth. “I fell in love with you the day we met.”

“I know, you
angrezi ulloo
.
That
is why I’m here.” She kissed him back. Over and over and over, until the damp of catharsis evaporated in the scorching Mumbai heat…and then she burned him in the most beautiful of ways, climbing into his lap, bracketing him between her glorious thighs and enclosing them both in the curtain of her untamed hair. “I love you, too,” she said, as though it were a given.

Perhaps it was. The first thing she’d freely given in years. It wasn’t trust—not quite yet—but it would more than suffice in the meantime. It was
hope.

Chapter Twenty-Four

He’d lost count of how many times he’d called Priya. On and on the mobile seemed to ring, and with each unanswered call, each ignored message, his feelings of betrayal turned increasingly into feelings of helplessness. Him. Rahul fucking Anand. Purveyor of critically acclaimed hit films. He couldn’t produce results in his own life. He couldn’t cast himself in the role of lover, of father. How was that fair?

He blamed Priya for the first twenty-four hours after the taping, raging at her and calling her all sorts of unsavory names. After the night he’d found her dumping drinks on Nina, he’d been reduced to trading woes with Shaw over a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue and trying in vain not to cry like a character in a melodrama. Even when he was back in his ungodly bungalow, alone and sober, the sense of failure, of misery, followed him like a cloud. Further compounding his situation, Shaw rang to let him know that he and Sunny had patched up…and that the re-shoot for his episode of
Sunny Days
would be delayed.

“Why can’t Pree do the taping next week?” He frowned at his mobile as if it, not Davey, was the source of consternation.

“She’s leaving the city, mate.”
What?
At his sharp intake of breath, Shaw cursed, the words loud and emphatic over the phone line. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew. She’s off to Calcutta until she has to report on-set for
Khoon
.”

No, he hadn’t known. Pile that on the ever-increasing heap of shit no one thought he ought to be made aware of. “When?” He managed to grind out the words with a mortar and pestle. “Do you know
when
she’s leaving?”

There was a rustling. And then Shaw calling the question across the room, complete with bedroom voice and endearments. Oh, beautiful. Rahul sincerely hoped he wasn’t having a conversation with a naked man. After a moment, the man in question returned to the call. Apologetic. Ideally wearing trousers. “I’m afraid the flight’s tonight,” he sighed. “I’m sorry. This whole thing’s just been a right mess, hasn’t it?”

“No. Because it’s not over.” Rahul hung up without further ado—presumably Shaw wouldn’t feel too slighted; particularly if he was as naked as a newborn and in the proximity of his lady—and immediately hit the first number on his speed dial. The only number that had ever mattered to him.
Please answer this time.
He had never been a seer or a sage, but suddenly, he prayed for his mental powers to spider out from the cellular network to her beautiful brain
. Pick up, Pree. And, for God’s sake, don’t leave me again.

After what seemed an eon, when he expected her voicemail to click on, his prayer was fulfilled. The first half, at any rate. “Rahul?” No “hi”. No “hello”. Just his name. In exactly the sigh she’d caressed him with in the erotic darkness of his bedroom.

“Where the hell are you going?” Desperation and vehemence combined for a question far ruder than he’d intended.

“Kolkata.” There was no such emotion in her reply. This was the ice maiden she’d shown him in Premnagar. Encased in the rustling and jostling of someone on the move. “I have to clean up a mess. Shonali will have questions, and
Baba
owes me so many answers.”

Shona. Just thinking of her was like incurring a hundred scrapes and having each kissed into healing.
“Aur main?”
He could scarcely breathe. “Aren’t I owed those answers, too, Priya? And your
time
, at least?”

“I gave you too much already, Rahul.” She would not bend for him; she would not break. “That was my biggest mistake…and my biggest blessing. But I have to live with it. Even if it becomes a court case. What’s done is done,
na
?”

“You don’t have to live with it alone, Priya. Not anymore.” If he was begging, so be it. Pride served no one in the eleventh hour,
na
? “You don’t have to fear me, to mistrust me. If this goes to the courts, it will not be because I pushed it there. I don’t want to
take
anything from you, Pree. I just want to give. Let me fix this. Let me marry you. Let me be Shona’s papa.”

“
Let
you? Oh, God. I wish I could
let
you do a thousand things.” She made a strangled noise that cut at him like a blade. Half laugh, half cry. Priya’s sounds of grief said in syllables what so many others took entire speeches to impart. “
Itne asaan nahin
, Rahul Anand. It’s not so easy as that. It’s not in my power, and it’s not in yours. Your magic phone calls cannot solve this. Life is not a film. You can’t direct or write your happy ending. You cannot produce a superhit. Not this time.”

The line went dead, leaving him with silence…and something far more powerful. Resolve.

You can’t direct or write your happy ending?

Bullshit.

She left for the airport with just her handbag and one rolling case, stifling the impulse to pack up her entire life and put the whole of Bombay in the hired car’s rearview mirror. She would be back. This wasn’t forever. Her dreams weren’t over. She was going
to
something, not running away, and very soon she would be holding Shona tight in her arms.

These were the things Priya told herself as the driver pulled into the throng of evening traffic. Auto horns blared merrily, and the few bicycle rickshaws interspersed with the cars seemed to be made entirely of bells. Mumbai was always in motion. Though the distance was barely a blink, she’d given herself an extra hour to make the trip from her flat to the domestic terminal in Santacruz…and to think over her regrets.

Rahul was not among them. To regret him was to regret Shona, and that was unthinkable. But as she gazed out the window at the hustle and bustle, she wanted to erase a dozen smaller things. Those stupid, frantic moments of weakness in Bihar. Staying involved in
Khoon
even after Rahul stole the film. Every lie of omission. Every unanswered call.
Let me marry you. Let me be Shona’s papa.

She shuddered, fingers instinctively closing around the mobile phone peeking out of the top of her bag. Rahul thought it was all so simple, so easy. That he could swoop in and rewrite her life just like he’d rewritten the
Khoon
dialogues…adding himself into all the family photos, making up for every birthday he wasn’t there to celebrate and pretending that a gulf of years hadn’t turned them into two completely different people. Oh, how she wished that was possible. She desperately wanted to believe it all could be fixed with a snap of fingers.

But how could she again reach for Rahul and accept his brazen promises, when she’d spent half her life struggling to think only of others? How could she again indulge herself when her weakness, her
kamzori
, had only caused her family pain? She was no longer the silly girl who’d first learned of love and making love in the shelter of Rahul’s arms. She was a woman grown, and the memories of the few joyous nights they’d spent together in Mumbai would have to be enough to sustain her. She could not dare hope for more, even if her soul shouted out for it.

After all, she was an item girl now, not a heroine. Item girls never had their own story, their own happily ever after. In every film, they only had one hit song.

“Madam, airline?” The driver craned his neck to look at her, all the while forging forward in the unsteady sea of vehicles. He didn’t really need to know what she was flying. Departures was departures,
na
? But perhaps he thought she was famous and wanted the excuse to try and place her face.

“JetLite,” she said, thanking her stars that none of her new films were ready to be played in the cinema halls. For just a few months more, the general public would not be able to pick her out of a crowd. She was a one-film wonder, and that one film had been in another lifetime, a different skin.

The remainder of the drive passed in a blur, and soon she was making her way into Terminal One. Brightly lit, metallic and shining, it saw thousands of travelers each day. Security was strict, allowing only ticketed passengers beyond the door…not that it stopped films from crafting those crazy, romantic scenes of the hero running through stalled rush-hour traffic, hopping over parked cars and stealing a motorcycle in order to get to the airport and proclaim his love.

In reality, the hero would be stopped, all those
paagal
efforts for naught. He’d get arrested for his trouble, maybe even shot on sight. The hero…
her
hero, her traitorous heart corrected. Rahul could not come for her, jumping over barriers and pounding on glass and melodramatically shouting her name as she passed through the metal detectors. She’d imagined the scenario so many times when she first left Bombay, glancing back over her shoulder, praying that he would stop her…hoping he might make some big, grand gesture that proved he would love her and their baby long after the credits rolled. How naïve she’d been to think that life really worked in such ways, how stupid and easily led. Because even when heroes
did
come for you, happiness could not always follow. The woman leaving tonight had learned her lesson; she was not so full of illusions or so full of hope.

Main tumhara bin ji nahin saktha, Priya. I can’t keep living without you.

He would have to. Because, surely, they’d gone too far, hurt one another too much, to make a real go of it together,
na
? And because Garuda himself had brought Shona to her parents for safekeeping, and who could argue with Vishnu’s right hand?

Rahul could argue
, whispered a small voice beneath the jumble of far louder ones crowding her thoughts.
Rahul would pull forth his mobile phone and text Vishnu’s left hand to give his right a swift punch.
Priya trembled, not with the effort of lifting her bags onto the X-ray conveyer, but with the effort of silencing that rebellious voice. “
Aage dekho
, Priya,” she said to herself. “Look forward.” There was no use in looking back,
na
?

Once done with the business of the security line, she headed for her gate, stopping along the way for a coffee—the only way to guarantee that she’d be moderately alert when they landed in Kolkata. At home, Shona would be wide awake, bouncing up and down, ready to tell her Prithu
Didi
everything she’d missed…and she didn’t want to miss a single moment of it. She needed to cherish that innocence before she changed everything her daughter had known as truth. She would cherish it and keep it next to the beats of her heart, alongside each draw of her breath…all of which would belong only to Rahul till the end of her days.

Priya’s thoughts were so occupied with reunions, practice monologues about fathers who were flesh and blood—not simply imaginary—and a future spent alone that she didn’t realize she’d strayed into someone’s path until the half-empty coffee cup was plucked out of her hand. And that was all it took to bring her back to the here and now: a brushing of fingers. Like a match to the side of a matchbox, it ignited, and she recognized the heat. Her body knew him before her eyes even focused.

Rahul. Here, in the airport lounge. Flesh and blood indeed…looking exhausted and angry, his shirt haphazardly buttoned, his sports coat hanging off one shoulder. A boarding pass was tucked into his top pocket like a crisp, white handkerchief. “Hello, Pree. All checked in?”

All the breath left her lungs, and a sharp blade of pain pierced her chest. Her fingers went numb, loosening on the handle of her roller bag. It tilted over, clattering to the floor. “R-rahul…
kaise
…how?”

He sipped from her coffee before answering, his gaze bloodshot. He was drinking from the exact spot she’d put her mouth to; the paper was stained the pale pink of her gloss. “I’ve shown you all the things I can get done with one phone call. Contrary to your disappointing lack of faith, I
can
make things happen.”