A Change of Heart (10 page)

“It's a manner of speaking when someone skinny eats a lot.”

Her lips quirked. “Really?”

“Oh.” She was teasing him? Maybe it was all that sugar. Or maybe it was the fact that he was being a patronizing jerk.

“And I'm not skinny,” she said. “At least not for my line of work.” As soon as she'd said it she stiffened, because of course she had let that slip without meaning to.

“What's your line of work?”

She waited a beat too long to answer him. “I'm a dancer.”

A dancer? That would definitely have been his very last guess. She was far too serious to be a dancer. With all those thorns sticking out of her and her discomfort with attracting attention, how did she ever get on a stage? Not to mention being a heart patient. That had to make it hard.

“You look like I just told you I'm a ghost whisperer or a psychic.” Wow, and there it was again, another tiny smile. Sugar and salt were magic on this girl.

“What kind of dance?” Maybe she was a ballet dancer. That whole Goddess of Darkness thing went with ballet, didn't it? He couldn't imagine it being any kind of happy dance.

The smile vanished in another one of those ninja flash moves of which she was master. Instead of answering, her eyes landed on the car and she started collecting the folded-up packets and stuffed them in a garbage can.

“Junk food and generating garbage. Welcome to America!” he said.

“Don't call it junk. It was delicious.” She surveyed the grass where they'd been sitting and picked up a chip she had missed. “And yes, I know ‘junk' is just a manner of speaking.”

Yup. Total patronizing jerk.

She poked the grass to make sure nothing had been left behind, but he had a feeling it was also because she couldn't make herself go back to the car.

“Is it all cars?” he asked.

She looked up at the car and gave the slightest headshake. “No.”

That's all the answer he would get.

She started toward the Jeep, shoulders squared for battle, and he had all the answers he needed.

“Will removing the top help?”

She started. “You can do that?”

He was crap at cars and machines, but how hard could it be? He got in the car, pushed around the edges of the soft top, and found a few levers. Fortunately, things popped and unsnapped and he was able to flip back the entire fabric roof covering the front seat. It wasn't the entire top but it was something, and he thanked the engineers at Jeep for not making him look like a fool.

She stood there, frozen, watching the late-afternoon sun flood through the cab. He got out and secured the flap in place and opened the car door for her, mostly to get her to move.

She looked up at him, her incredibly delicate jaw clenched, her eyes filled with something he hadn't seen there before. Something he did not care to define.

He hadn't realized how large her eyes were, their upward sweep unusual. She must be from one of the Northeast Indian states. Her irises were huge. Except you hardly got a look at them when she was holding herself in her meditative stance with her eyes heavily lidded.

They weren't heavily lidded now.

The long column of her throat worked, struggling with what she was trying to say.

“Nikhil?”

His stomach clenched in response to that tentative tone.

“Thank you.”

“For what? For starving you?”

He had heard of smiles being sad, but this one bled. And was so damn brave, he couldn't bear it.

“For everything.” She touched his shoulder, a whisper of a caress that lasted no more than a second, then she braced herself and sank into the car.

He slammed her door shut and took far too long to make the trip around to the driver's side. His arms and legs felt like water. Like melting ice. He touched his shoulder. “I don't want you to touch me,” he wanted to tell her, but they slid back inside the silence that had engulfed them on their drive out of Miami.

It wasn't the same silence as before. The open top meant far too much wind noise for conversation. She closed her eyes against it as they merged onto the freeway, but this time her body didn't go stiff enough to splinter.

Having some food in her system probably helped. The windswept silence stretched on, broken only by the flapping of the soft top he'd apparently not secured as well as he'd thought. Just when he was sure sleep had claimed her, her low voice floated through the wind and the flapping. “Jen was right. You are different from any man I've ever met.”

For the first time in two years, Nikhil had forgotten about his wife. The heavy, painful weight slammed back into his heart—which was hers and hers alone.

His body recognized the pain and restlessness and eased back into it. It wasn't relief exactly, not comfort either, but a feeling of being covered up again after someone had stripped him naked.

Cars whizzed past, flashing at him like the memories he would never be able to let go of. Hour after hour, they slashed through him, punishing him with their clarity.

Next to him, Jess's arms stayed wrapped around herself, her face peaceful in sleep. No,
peace
was too benign a word for her. She was placid, like the upper cool crust of lava. Under it she hid more than he wanted to know. Under it she hid the only thing about her that mattered. Jen's heart.

Jen, whose heart had hungered for life and justice and change. His wife had fixed things. Defeated them. But this impostor she'd chosen to bring into their lives was stone. Lava hardened and frozen so cold it could burn off your limbs.

How can you talk to her? Why her? When I'm still here.
He wanted to speak the words into the falling darkness, needed the grief to scrape his throat.

For as long as he had known her, his wife had always known what she wanted. She'd always had a plan. Why had she brought this stranger into his life?

She didn't answer.

But that didn't stop him from repeating the question over and over as they flew toward home.

12

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

T
he one thing Asif hated more than anything else was being threatened.

He was disappointed in the politician
chutiya
for treating him like some common criminal and trying to scare him. A common criminal wouldn't know how to recruit a computer genius away from India's most prestigious engineering college and get him to set up a system that matched up rich people who needed organs with poor people who happened to be lugging them around in their worthless bodies.

Even if the idiot was passed out half the time from not knowing when to stop with the smack. Youngsters these days didn't understand balance. He sank into the spaceship-style chair he had paid for, in front of the desk that was crammed with the millions of rupees' worth of toys he had bought the druggie bastard, and snapped his fingers at the bed where the lump of genius lay unmoving.

It was all the command Laloo needed. His most faithful dog grabbed the boy's skinny, passed-out arse and dragged him to the bathroom.

The sound of water turning on and the boy being shoved under the shower made Asif want to go in there and shove his head into the commode. Look at the house he had given the idiot. If he had stayed in his fancy engineering college, he wouldn't have been able to afford a place like this even after forty years of working his balls off.

Some people had no gratitude.

“Hi, Bhai!” the wet idiot grinned worshipfully at Asif, dragging water across the pure-white marble Asif was paying a minor fortune for.

“You trying to kill yourself on my time?” Asif asked.

“More like killing myself on your dime, Bhai.” He chuckled at his own fancy English humor. “You won't let me die, Bhai,” he said. “Especially not after you hear what I have for you.”

The bastard had never disappointed Asif and he didn't this time. Asif had been right. He was a fucking genius. Seven matches. He had found Asif seven matches.

That doctor bitch had already made Asif rich beyond his dreams with her registry database. With all those details about blood type and plasma and this and that enzyme that she had collected, she had practically handed him a menu card of organs from useless living bodies no one would miss, address and age and all. All he had to do was chop them up and serve them to the clients his druggie pet dog found him using all those computer skills, then put the leftover bodies through a shredder and dump the mess in construction sand. God knows there were more foundations being dug around Mumbai than even he would ever need.

Maybe he was wrong about these foreign bastards who thought they could come feed off India's sewers to assuage their own guilt for being born in mansions. Dr. Joshi had sure as shit changed his life. Like hell was he ever giving up any of it. There were still tens of thousands of names on there. It was his golden goose and he wasn't chopping off its head just because some politician
chutiya
thought he had something on him.

He already knew from the beauty parlor bitch that the politician had some chinky-looking woman dye her hair like Dr. Joshi.

Now, if it were him, he would only make someone dye their hair like someone else if he wanted that person to impersonate the other person. But why impersonate a dead woman? Unless you were trying to convince someone she wasn't dead.

Aha!

But whom would the politician need to convince of that in order to screw Asif Khan over? Only one person would know that for sure. The bitch who'd dyed her hair at Beauty's. She was his key. And there wasn't a lock in the city Asif Khan couldn't open if he wanted to. Finding keys was his favorite pastime.

The wet, grinning fool who was eyeing him for his reward like a hungry dog wasn't the only genius around. Asif threw the bag of goodies on the bed. “There's new syringes in there too. Don't reuse and don't share. Taking care of your family if you die isn't part of the deal.”

But the bastard wouldn't die, because Asif never left anything to chance. He never gave him enough to kill him, and if anyone else in the city sold to him they knew that Asif Khan would make sure they didn't live to sell to anyone else.

13

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

N
ikhil took the two keys the lady at the motel registration desk was holding out and shoved them into his pocket with a “thank you.” When he turned around, Jess was standing just inside the sliding glass doors, the floodlights from the porch behind her illuminating her no-longer-red hair. The brown strands that matched her eyes exactly fell in short wisps around her face and kissed her cheeks. Instead of walking toward her, he walked toward a table arranged with coffee and tea.

She had slept through most of the journey, stirring to wakefulness only as they pulled into the motel parking lot. He had spent the entire drive wondering what he was doing here. On solid ground with a stranger. Headed home after two years.

“Coffee? Tea?” he said over his shoulder, knowing she had joined him in staring at the table. The thick smell of dark-brewed coffee that had been sitting too long assaulted his senses.

“Tea,” she said, filing through the tea box. She picked out an orange packet that said
Chai
and held it up. “Do you know if this is any good?”

Such a mundane question. Yet the intimacy of it made his insides burn.

He filled a Styrofoam cup with hot water. “I don't drink tea. My mom always drinks either English Breakfast or Darjeeling. Those are the most like chai. Without spice or ginger.”

“Oh, I hate ginger in my chai.” She fished out a packet of English Breakfast.

He took it from her, unwrapped it, and dunked the tea bag into hot water and followed it with creamer.

When he looked up she was holding out a cup of coffee. Didn't even have to ask him how he took it or anything.

They exchanged cups and wary looks.

And it was too much.

That simple act was too much.

She took a sip of her tea, studying him over the rim. He couldn't bring his cup to his lips. He tossed it in the trash and extracted a room key from his pocket. “Room two-one-four. Can you find it?”

She gulped down the sip she had just taken. “If I focus really hard.” She tried her almost-smile but didn't make it.

Which was just as well because he couldn't do that weird, friendly tête-à-tête thing again.

“I'll see you in the morning then.” With nothing more than that he turned around and walked into the night.

He had left his bag in the car. She, of course, had hers strapped across her chest. The motel was located in the middle of the kind of neighborhood motels are often located in. Lots of flashing street signs. Many of the ones here bore the word
adult.

Just the kind of neighborhood his mother would have freaked out about. Just the kind of neighborhood Jen would have wanted to go exploring in. His hand went to his hair. The weeklong growth scraped his palm.

I love your hair, Spikey
.

He pulled his hand away and pushed it into his pocket. His jeans rode low on his hips. All of his clothes were too big. His mother was going to have a fit about it. For a moment he felt the sweet bite of anticipation at seeing his parents, at having Aie chew his head off about something. About anything.

But he knew she wouldn't say a word about it. Not the weight, not the hair, not Jen. She would treat him as if he were made of glass. Of shattered glass held together by sheer chance of pressure and weight. The way she'd done every time she and Baba came down to Miami to see him.
Such a nice ship,
beta
. Such a nice clinic.

No mention of the fact that he hadn't gone home in two years.

No mention of the woman he had lost two years ago.

Tomorrow he was going to be home, in the house where he had promised his wife a lifetime together the day before their wedding while entering her long and sweet on his childhood bed.

He broke into a run. He hadn't run in three days, hadn't touched a drink in four days. And today he had noticed the shape of another woman's eyes. He felt like someone had gouged out his skin and left his ripped-up flesh to fester.

A car honked at him as he ran across six lanes of traffic. He stuck his hand up and flipped it the bird. Two men stumbled out of a door. He looked up at the sign. B
EER AND
S
PIRITS
. That's all he needed to know.

* * *

She let herself into the room that opened straight into the night. Nothing but a covered verandah separated the rooms and the parking lot edged with a high, chain-link fence. There wasn't a soul in sight. Even the lobby had been isolated. She felt the strangest sensation in the pit of her stomach when she remembered waking up in the car and then making her way inside the hotel, her eyes searching for Nikhil's stark-white shirt.

He had been standing at the reception desk. Recognition had sparked in his eyes for just one second before disappearing, the Nikhil who had sat with her on the grass while she ate her way through the contents of an entire vending machine, gone. The Nikhil who had dipped a tea bag into her tea had been the Nikhil who had leaned over the railing and looked hungrily at the ocean, longing for the strength to let go, unable to find the strength to hold on.

She thought about him working to remove the top of the car, rolling up the fabric, pinning it back. It wasn't just the skill with which he had quickly and efficiently taken care of it that had struck her. It was the look in his eyes when he had asked her if it would help.

It was the look of someone cleaning up a wound. Singularly focused on making sure she felt no pain. As if the entire world had boiled down to him taking care of what hurt her. The sheer magnitude and purity of the empathy in those eyes, in those words, it was like nothing she'd ever experienced. This man, for all his brokenness, was a healer.

The tiny room was almost fully occupied by a bed. She dumped her bag on the floor, her shoulder cramping with relief. At the far end of the room was a mirror over a sink and a door that led to the bathroom. She stared at the thick hair that still took the place of her own wispy locks, each tacked-on strand a reminder of her actions. It was as if something alien had taken up residence on her head to make sure she didn't forget.

She threw the hair back and shook it out. The motion freed her neck. She rolled it around a few times more, then reached back and lifted the hair into a ponytail and bound it together between her fingers. Her limbs missed movement. She let the hair slip from her grasp and reached up and stretched out her arms. Fingers pointed. Reaching for something. Stretching every muscle. Her other hand trailed from her wrist to her shoulders. Then down her body to her toes. A beat thumped inside her head.
Dadum. Da da dum.
One foot came up. First the heel, then the arch, until only one toe remained on the floor. She dragged it up her calf.
Da dum.
Tracing the curve. Bringing her knee up and up until her leg kicked out.
Da da dum.

She brought her foot back down. Flipped the other heel up, her heels alternated, her feet following the beat that slammed inside her. One, two, three. One, two, three. Anger surged through her body. Lit her up like a current. Her spine curved over it. Her arms wrapped around it, then flew open as she spun and spun until her blood churned the anger out. Sadness. Then anger, sadness, then anger, her feet pounded it. Kicked at it.
Da da dum. Da da dum. Da da dum.

Her head rolled forward. Emptying everything out. Shaking it off. The rhythm was all she felt. The rhythm and her breathing. Her breath still carried that scent. Summer and life and sparkling-fresh cleanliness. Fake cleanliness. For all the pain blanketing his skin, wrapped around his limbs, pegged like spikes into his eyes, he still smelled clean. His eyes. God, his eyes. She spun until they disappeared, spinning around her head, but not fast enough to keep up with her. For all that pain, he smelled untouched, un-ravaged. Pure.

More smells came back. Sick, turgid sweat. Alcohol and cigarettes and car freshener. Sick and sweet like overripe mangoes. They had splashed it into her face, splashed it all over her. Just because her flailing hands had tipped it over.

She hadn't opened her mouth and they had flooded her face with it as they pounded. She had tried to scream.

As if she could have screamed. With hands cutting off her breath. A wet mouth eating up her screams. As if anyone would have heard her. If you were pathetic enough to scream for help, no one was going to help you. That was just the way the world worked. No help for screamers. No alms for beggars. No mercy.

She stopped spinning. In the span of an instant the room stopped spinning around her. She hated that, hated that all the practice spinning had taken the dizziness away. She slammed her hand into the door that led to the bathroom and turned on the shower. Then, without taking off her clothes, she stepped under the burning-hot spray.

* * *

Nikhil had really lucked out. Not only was the bar packed with the loudest crowd, but the entire rowdy horde seemed possessed by an insatiable hunger for heavy metal. The scream of the electric guitar tore through all the noise in his head. He slung back what was left in his glass and tapped it for a refill. One more time. Again and again. Until he had lost count. The bartender in his black golf shirt and preppy haircut looked like he'd just finished a full day of classes at the local MBA program. But the way he bobbed up and down as he moved from glass to glass, a splash here, a spray there, the way he kept his eagle eye trained on the dance floor, he could've been in the Secret Service, or the Mafia. Or both at the same time. He was what Jen would have called hardcore.

Hard. Core.

“These guys think they are so hardcore,” she would have said. “Imagine putting them on a minefield. They'd run whimpering.” She might've leaned into that guy with skull tattoos inked up and down his arm and his neck and asked him if he'd ever seen a baby with half its body blown off.

Yeah. She had loved being a buzzkill, his wife.

His wife.

“Who died?” A woman in a dress so tight he couldn't imagine how she wasn't asphyxiated leaned into the bar and stared at him from beneath some serious quantities of blue eyeshadow.

“Excuse me?”

“You looked so sad, I was just . . . I didn't mean someone had actually died. . . .” She trailed off.

“It's just a manner of speaking,” he wanted to say, but she hopped up on the stool next to him and pressed her thigh into his.

“I can make it better.”

He laughed into his drink. Like actually laughed until he was choking.

She started to rub his back, looking hurt and alarmed and too many things all at once. She was so young. Definitely too young for her eyes to be this exhausted. Too young to deal with his humorless laughing fit.

“How much?” he asked as the coughing subsided.

She tried to brighten her eyes, even attempted a pout. “Fifty bucks?” She said it as though it were a question. How young
was
she?

He shoved himself off the bar stool. She spun around him; the rest of the bar joined her. He dug into his wallet. There was a wad of cash he'd withdrawn at the airport. He slid a few notes under his empty glass and slipped the rest of the cash into her hands.

Her too-young, too-tired eyes widened. He almost snatched the money back from her. It would make no difference, not the money, not anything. Her life would stay exactly the same with or without his help.

“The bathroom is through there.” She pointed across the dance floor and actually batted her eyelashes over those too tired eyes.

“Take the day off. Go home and get some sleep,” he said, turning away before the sheen that sprang up in her eyes spilled over.

He stumbled across the spinning bar. Stumbled into the night and into the parking lot.

He had to lean into the cars as he passed them to keep from tasting the pavement.

Cars.

The woman who had his wife's heart hated driving in cars. Had she lost someone in a crash? Had she run someone over? But the way she had pushed him away when he tried to shake her out of her panic. He knew it was nothing that simple. The twin needs to know and not know what it was tore him in half.

He hated wanting to know. Hated that it mattered. He turned onto the road and started walking along the shoulder. The sky was an endless black. The only light in the night came from neon signs and cars zipping by. He swayed on his feet. All it would take was for him to lose his balance and stumble onto the road. Wind slapped his face. He veered toward the road. But escape no longer seemed that easy. Freedom no longer felt close.