Spice and Smoke (9 page)

“
Nahin
,” Harsh said in that husky, genial voice that had won a billion hearts. “You’re not done for. We’re just starting this picture. It’ll be a long while yet till the credits roll.”

Trishna’s infectious laugh surrounded them all like yards of silk. “Maybe we’ll run forever, like
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
,” she suggested. “Seven hundred weeks of continuous play.”

“Seven hundred weeks
ka baat chhoro
, darling.” Avi chuckled before moving to kiss him again. “Leave off talk of continuity. How about we just play tonight?”

Later, Michael would not be completely sure how he ended up in a king-sized bed with three other people, one of them the straightest man to ever walk the earth. But in the middle of it, surrounded by laughter and sweet touches and vows made, all he knew was that it felt absurdly right. It was right to have Harsh and Trishna make love lying next to him, a tangle of golden limbs and long hair…they were salvation and sin wrapped up in one another. It felt perfect to have Avinash sprawled on top of him, sucking on his throat and, no doubt, leaving a Hell of a mark for the makeup girls to cover up in a few hours.

“I could love you,” Avi whispered for only his benefit. “I could really love you, Michael Gill. You could love me, too.”

There was only one reason Michael could have possibly agreed to this gorgeously dysfunctional madness. To touching a man intimately with his wife so nearby, and wringing filthy gasps from his throat in the process. He smiled, threading his fingers in Avi’s hair and cradling his face. “I think I already do.”

The monsoon season was here…days of heavy, humid heat finally giving way to the inevitable. As the crew starting scrambling to wrap things up for the day, Trishna tilted her head back and let the first drops of rain kiss her face. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine each one was the brush of Harsh’s lips.

The subtle stroke of his fingers on the inside of her wrist told her that he was thinking the same…that he was promising it for later. Across the courtyard, Michael was laughing at something. Whatever it was made Avinash drop to one knee and begin doing his best reenactment of the gazebo scene from
Kuch Kuch Hota Hai
. He really was quite brilliant, holding his hands just so, and then twirling Michael in an over-the-top version of the characters’ romantic dance. Though she saw the magic, the spark, no one else could see it as anything but two madcap boys engaging in comedy. The camera guys laughed, while the AD rolled his eyes at the
tamasha
.

It was just noise and silly business. A big to-do.

Then a profane shout shattered the easy moment. Sam Khanna, five-seven with an additional six meters of attitude, strode across the set. A half-smoked cigarette was clamped between his almost cruelly thin lips. He tossed script pages down on the steadily dampening ground with a dramatic flourish and fixed Joshi with an accusatory look. “What the fuck is this shit, man?” he demanded. “How is Vikram Malhotra on this fucking film? What is the meaning of this?”

The director began trying to explain himself, his normally exuberant pitch style turning into an incoherent, nervous stream of babble. Trish met Harsh’s knowing gaze, and laughter overcame them in unison.

Sam had so much to learn. The same lessons they’d learned. There was no meaning. There was simply fate and where it led you: straight to where you belonged.

Part Two

Monsoon Bedding

Flashback…

The
whup
-
whup
sound of the ceiling fan was like a gavel banging. Viki sounded like a
vakil
and looked like a bloody judge, sentencing him to hanging.
Phaasi
would be kinder than the slow death caused by Vikram’s superiority. “I’m not the only one worried about you, Sam. Jaidev is worried, too.”

“Fuck off, man,” he snarled. Sam was used to playing the villain of the piece. It was his forte. Knowing how to slide around a set like a serpent, sneer like a smile had never crossed his face. But playing the villain in his
life
was…was different. Especially in this moment, when every word of Viki’s was like an echo, bouncing around in his skull, harshing the buzz of the coke. His nose was still tingling, and when he ran the back of his hand across his face, a few stray white flecks came away on his skin. “Shut up. Jaidev is my son. I’m his bloody father. Not you.”

Viki looked like Sam had struck him, mottled and bruised. But his eyes were hard. They glowed, too. Like diamond chips. “Then try acting like it! But that is too much for you,
na
?
Jab tum mardh nahin ho saktha?
When you can’t even be a man?”

It was exactly the right button to push. Even from the start they had known how to hit hardest with each other. Sam launched himself at Viki, enraged. He got a few good shots in…only because Viki let him. The man was hewn from solid rock. So goddamn unbreakable. When he grew tired of being abused, Vikram grabbed his wrists in one hand. With his other, he grasped Sam’s jaw. “Enough.
Bas.
Ho chuke.
”

No. It was not enough. It couldn’t be. Sam heard the cry of rage tear from his throat before he’d even consciously decided to scream. He was kissing Viki before he’d even accepted that his fury and his lust were the same thing. They stumbled back against the wall, attacking each other’s mouths in an evenly matched battle.

This was the last time, the
last
goddamn time. Sam was never going to let Vikram Malhotra direct his life again.

Chapter Twelve

Chandu scouts the terrain, sensing that everything is about to change. Not just for the country, but for all those he holds dear. A “freedom fighter” he calls himself…but it is not
freedom
he fights for.
Nahin
, he fights for his brothers. His sisters. His Mother India.

There is not anything he would not do for Varun and Alok, for the cause. Chandu has patriotism for blood, loyalty for marrow. He stares over the ridge at the small British encampment. At the soldiers the ever-so-honorable Mr. Austin did not tell the local
zaminder
and his sweet daughter about.
Sepoys
, they’re called, because the
firengis
cannot say “
sipahi
”.

They bastardize Bharat’s tongues just as they do her peoples and her lands. Chandu swallows bile and draws up on his horse’s reins. Across the ridge is chaos. He can feel it in his blood, in his marrow…and in his soul.

They were staring at him. Sam could feel four sets of eyes taking measure of him from across the courtyard, and he had to fight to breathe, to remain still, instead of twitching like he was in desperate need of another smoke. His outburst had panicked the whole crew. In retrospect, some hours later, he would recognize it hadn’t been wise to go off on Joshi in front of everyone. In fact, just
how
unwise was being outlined to him yet again by Rahul Anand. “Sam, you know our terms, yeah? You must be one hundred percent sober on this set.”

One hundred percent sober. A few years ago, it would have been a foreign concept, like, “Sam, you must now be a French poodle; come let us put a pink bow in your hair.” But today, tomorrow, and the day after, it was his life. He said as much to Rahul, who looked relieved but not entirely convinced.

“Okay. Okay,
yaar
. As long as you are sure.”

“I am. I have to be.” He smiled, attempting for friendly but knowing what he achieved was actually “mildly sinister”. The curse of not having a beautiful face.

Rahul squeezed his arm, his expression boyish and open…but not so innocent that he reminded Sam of Jai. There was still hardness in Rahul’s dark eyes, and a firm note of business in his voice. “Don’t worry, Sam. We are here for you.”

The producer was a friend, sort of. The entire reason he’d been given this chance. They’d been at the same boarding school together some twenty years ago, and Sam was actually grateful that Rahul had been three or four classes behind. He’d missed out on being part of Sam’s crew…smoking up and partying every chance they got…and had actually made something of himself as a result.

Sam glanced back across the yard, this time catching the gazes of his costars outright. Trishna Chaudhury, Avinash Kumar, Michael Gill and Harsh Mathur. He didn’t look away. This was
his
chance to make something of himself, and he was not going to blow it.

After his initial establishing shots, production shut down for three days due to the rain. Sam couldn’t stand the sound of the downpour. It drowned out everything else: the buzzing of the mosquitoes, the music from his iPod and even his own thoughts. The rest of the principal cast seemed happy to be exiled to their rooms. More than happy, he’d realized, since his suite was right next to Michael Gill’s, and the walls weren’t exactly thick.

Shit.
That was all he needed, man. To have a front-row seat for someone else’s love story, when
his
leading man was probably checking in at the front desk.
Nahin
, no, not his leading man. His fucking nemesis, the
khalnayak
in the epic picture that was his life.

Sam’s hands trembled as he lit his cigarette, and he heard Jai’s voice in his head, warning him that one bad thing would just lead to another. That was the last thing his son had said to him the day he checked out of rehab…staring up at him with those big, dark eyes that were just like his mother’s. “Papa, you shouldn’t smoke. One bad thing will just lead to another.”

At fourteen, Jaidev was better than any overpriced counselor telling him that smoking was a short walk to hash and a donkey cart ride down the rocky path back to coke. Jai was handsome and smart and responsible and
so
ahead of him. He was the best thing in his life, the only bright spot of that self-deluding period in Sam’s early twenties when he’d fucked every woman he met in the hopes that it would make him quit wanting men.

He’d been married to Sunita for a hot minute, just long enough to repair his reputation and his career, and give his son a last name. Most of the time he figured he hadn’t done Jaidev any favors. He would have been better off without Sam as a father. But Sam would’ve been a mess without a son…dead at twenty-one or twenty-five or thirty, instead of on his fifth chance at redemption at the ripe old age of thirty-four.

One bad thing will just lead to another.

Jai couldn’t know how right he was. One bad choice after another had led Sam right back to Vikram. Viki was the drug he’d never kicked.

But he wasn’t going to screw this up. He couldn’t. He’d only had a handful of offers since he left the center, and Joshi had not only given him this role…but given him a role that
wasn’t
a negative one. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t a villain. He was a good guy. Sam was determined to live up to it.

Trishna had thought living with one man was challenging. That was before she’d suddenly become the sidekick to
three
of them, and she began feeling more like Draupadi from
The Mahabharata
, with her five husbands and thousand headaches. As she sorted through a few of her saris, bent on choosing one for a dinner with Rahul and a few of his producer cronies, Avi, Michael and Harsh were all sprawled out on the bed, tossing a cricket ball between them and gossiping.

“Men don’t gossip, darling,” Avi denied, leaning against the bedpost, poking at Michael’s bent knee with his toes. “We
discuss
.”

She tossed her cotton petticoat at him, hitting him full in the face. “Where I come from, chatting about Vikram Malhotra and Sam Khanna and who will shag whom first is
definitely
gossip.”

“Personally I think they will kill each other first.”

“I’m voting shag
and
kill.”

Harsh and Michael, who she’d quickly realized were just as wicked as her husband despite their sweet faces, each got their own underclothing missile.

“Who says they’ll kill each other? After all,
you’re
still alive,” Avi pointed out to Harsh, adding the cricket ball to the attack.

“That’s because you’re starting to like me,” Harsh said with a good amount of cheer. “Also because of Trishna and Michael. But I don’t want to donate their talents to Viki and Sam. I am not
that
nice.”

“Yes, you are.” Michael laughed. “But Sam Khanna’s another story. He’s a nightmare.”

“
Chee!
” she chided. “Would you like them to be talking about us in such fashion?”

“Nahin,
bhabi
. I’d like them to not cause any more drama. I’ve had plenty for my lifetime between you and your mister.” Michael had taken to calling her “sister-in-law” after their foursome’s night together. It was sweet, if a little strange…but no one on set questioned the endearment. Trishna knew that it was Michael’s way of accepting her and Avi’s marriage for what it was: something that made them family.

“Then maybe you should go play
chowkidar
outside their rooms, pace back and forth like a night’s watchman and make sure they are behaving,” she suggested. When Harsh laughed, she arched an imperious, “I am your goddess” eyebrow. “And you can go also,
meri jaan
. I would not want Michael to perform such hard work alone.”

Avi huffed, crossing his arms. “Hey, what about me? Can’t I go with him?”