Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) (10 page)

He turned, just slightly, wiping his face as if he was trying to brush off whatever had him in thrall. “
Nahin
. No, Rocky. Don’t ring
Bhaiya
. Don’t concern him. We will see him soon enough. I…I just lost myself for a moment. I have a lot on my mind,
na
?”

“Like what?” She knelt in front of him and took his hands in hers, wholly and completely aware that this was the second time a Khan brother was compelling her to her knees. “You can tell me, Ashraf. I won’t tell a soul. Are you and Taj having trouble? Is it…is it something else?”

“Something else?” He echoed the words, more darkly amused question than real answer. His eyes were still a little glazed and distant, his breathing shallow. When she brushed her thumb across his wrist and then held it there, his pulse was wild. “Rocky
bahen
, my somethings are things you do not want to know of. My somethings are things
I
do not want to know of.”

Bahen
. Sister. He was calling her his
sister
. Somehow that intimate kindness, more than anything, filled her with genuine terror. “Ashu…”

“Please.” He squeezed her fingers and then opened them, turning her palms up as if encouraging her to pray. “Don’t worry about me, Rocky. Look after yourself. Look after
Bhaiya
and
Nani
. You have made them your own.”

“If they’re my own, aren’t you, too?” she demanded, forcing the words past the lump in her throat. “You can’t call me your sister in one breath and then leave yourself out of the equation. And you
can
trust me.”

“
Chohro
, Rocky. Let it go.” He smiled at her. A tired smile. And it looked like a cracked reflection. One that she couldn’t put back together. “Now,
chalo
. Let’s go take it from the top.”

Chapter Seventeen

Taj felt her gaze upon him before he even caught her looking. He turned so he could return the favor, rather than reducing her to a half-blurred dark spot at his periphery. He’d made a thousand similar tiny adjustments over the past decade, all to compensate for what he’d lost. She could not possibly understand such concessions in less than ten weeks. “
Kya hai
, Rocky? What is it?”

“It’s Ashu,” she said bluntly. “I think something’s really wrong with him.”
When
had she begun using his little brother’s pet name? How had he not noticed? And why was he suddenly burning when, all along, he’d thought them a far better match? He struggled to push the flurry of impossible questions aside and focus on the second half of the declaration.

“What do you mean ‘something’s wrong’?” He frowned. “Is he sick? Did he injure himself in some way?” Surely Kamal and Usha would have come running with the tidings were that the case.

She shook her head. “No. At least, I don’t
think
so.”

He shifted on the sofa, angling himself so there was room should she want to sit. She came to his library without hesitation now. He’d been completely unsuccessful in pushing her away. Perhaps he had not tried very hard…or perhaps her determination was just that great. They met most frequently in the
haveli
’s public spaces—the dining table, the great room, the veranda, but still she invaded his private corners. As if she would simply wear down the distance between them. No doubt it was why she’d come to him now, with such a fragile claim. “Do you think to soften me to you by using my brother?” he wondered. “It won’t work, Rakhee. My mind is set.”

“Your mind is
lost
,” she shot back, instantly moving farther away rather than closer. Her arms crossed defensively over her chest. “Do you really think I would make up bullshit about Ashraf just to bond us together or something? I don’t need to resort to that.”

“
Nahin
. I know what you would resort to.” And just like that, they were returned to the garden. To her on her knees before him, the desire heavy in her eyes and her hands and her tongue.

Her cheeks darkened with a blush only her
gori
skin could display, and then her equally rosy lips curled into a bud of anger. “Don’t be a jerk. You can’t push me away over and over and then bring up
that
, Taj.”

He shrugged, hoping his smile was as ghastly and smug as it felt crawling across his face. “I can do whatever I want. It is my house.”

“Then make sure your brother is okay.” Suddenly, her distance from him expanded beyond meters, beyond four walls, beyond the grounds. “Someday, he’ll be the only person you have left.”

There were any number of things he could do. Arrange to have their phone number changed. Bar the household from answering when she rang. Report her to the police for harassment. But Ashu chose none of those options. In the end, he simply picked up. Each time. He listened to her laughter, to her heavy breaths, to her insults and intimations. He curled tight in a corner of his bed, knees drawn to his rough chin, and let her tell him what he already knew: that she had ruined him for other women, that he was nothing without her and that he was doomed to fail.

He couldn’t remember his life before her. What he’d wanted, who he’d been, what dreams he’d dreamed. Whether Julia Roberts and Madhuri Dixit or Tom Cruise and Akshay Kumar had starred in his fantasies. He only knew what she’d turned him into…

“I made you, Ashraf. I can un-make you, too,” she promised. And he did not tell her that the deconstruction was nearly complete.

Soon enough, another hungry young hero would take his place in
2 Luv in Delhi
. Mumbai was full of handsome men with talent—though the talent was frequently optional as long as they were handsome—and Chatterjee and his backers would, no doubt, find someone who would generate far more box office revenue than a retired action hero’s worthless brother. So, too, would Rahul Anand find someone else for
Be-Izzati
. Seats never stayed unfilled, spotlights never shined on an empty stage.

It was over.
He
was over.

Ashraf made certain that his dressing room was meticulous. He swept up all his crumpled shirts and a
chuddi
or two, so that Usha would not have to come into his rooms and clean his messes. And every morning he wished for courage.

Chapter Eighteen

He had never been one to hallucinate. Not until his brother’s phantom taunting had taken root in his brain and Nina’s oily threats had begun spreading like a slick down his spine. Now, those voices were almost deafening. With him always. And they all said the same thing:
You are worthless, Ashu. You are terrible. You are filthy and dirty and godless. No one will ever love you.
They roared over his dialogues, drowned out Rocky’s worried murmurs and Usha’s clucking that he should eat because he was growing too thin. They even deadened him to Kamal, who didn’t say anything at all.

And why should he? Kamal was good and decent and kind. Ashraf was not fit to breathe the same air. Surely the man had written him off, just like everyone else, and that was why they passed each other like strangers in the corridors and on the stairs.

The bottle of gin he’d smuggled into his room was small comfort. The burn of the liquor washed away the taste of tears clogging his throat and flushed his eyes with a red not born of grief. But it only made the jeers louder. They repeated themselves in stereo, surround sound.
You deserve to be alone
.
You should be alone. You’re disgusting.

Ashraf began to wonder what complete silence would be like…and then, eventually, he knew. Bliss. Peace. A nothingness where he would not constantly have to replay his sins on a cinema hall screen and relive the base, ugly existence that Nina had reduced him to. He would never have to set foot in front of a camera again. Never have to be recorded. Never have to become someone else because he himself was not good enough. He would no longer be a second-rate replacement for a hero. He would not have to flicker among the stars.

It was this thought that sent him up to the
chaath
, climbing the succession of stairs with one unsteady hand sliding along the stone banister and the other clutched round his Bombay Sapphire. It was still dark, dawn just brimming in the distance, and a handful of stars winked in the sky. All too soon he would have to meet Rocky and take the car to the shoot…or perhaps not.

Ashraf lurched to the edge of the roof and its waist-high wall. He and
Bhaiya
had played circus so often—the balancing act earning them soundly boxed ears from
Nana
and
Nani
both—and the view was still dizzying. Ahead of him were sparse treetops, endless lengths of sky and the roofs of mud-brick hovels in the village. Below were the gardens and the coarse, brown earth.

Taj loved his roses. They’d provided solace to him when nothing else, no one else, could. Perhaps Ashu should have tried gardening as well…but,
nahin
, he’d taken up
daru
, defying all custom to go numb with drink. But not numb enough.

The near-empty bottle slipped from his fingers, as if to punctuate the thought, and went tumbling several stories to the ground. The glass shattered. The noise made no impact upon him, not with Nina whispering at his back, but he watched the shards and slivers scatter across the back veranda like sharp little bugs.

Would he break into pieces, too? Or was he already broken?

He was hollow inside,
na
? As though someone had come in the night and carved out his guts.
Nahin
, not “someone”. Everyone. All of them. Even his parents’ and
Nana
-
ji
’s ghosts.

But what did a coward need with his innards? What use did a loser have for his heart? There was no one to give it to. There would never be anyone to give it to.

It was easy, in the end. Simple. The moment when it all became clear.

It was the noise that got her. In the pre-dawn hours, when there was little sound except for the chirp of the early bird or two and some unidentifiable critter growling, it was startling. A crash that jerked Rocky out of bed and had her bolting toward one of the windows. All she could see through the ancient iron grating was glass on the ground two stories below.

Nani
. Had the old woman fallen? Dropped something? Sleepwalked somewhere she shouldn’t wander to? Her heart leaped into her throat, and she barely remembered to grab her robe from the foot of her bed before running from her room and straight to the stairs that led to the roof.

She almost couldn’t breathe when she reached the top…and a few seconds after that, she
really
couldn’t breathe.

Ashu
.

Chapter Nineteen

He’d imagined Rakhee’s return to his bedroom, to his bed, a thousand times. Not once had it been like this, at the bare cracks of dawn, shaking him from the vestiges of what passed for sleep.

She was a blurred shape, out of focus, until she switched on the bedside lamp and flooded the room, flooded
him
, with light. His eye adjusted mutinously, even as his ears tuned to what she was saying as she half-dragged him from the sheets.

“It’s Ashraf. He’s on the roof. Oh, God, Taj, you have to do something.”

“What?” He stumbled, reaching instinctively for the wheelchair Kamal had left conveniently within reach. “What’s happened to Ashu? Slow down, Rakhee.”

“We don’t have
time
to slow down, Taj. You have to come
now
!” Her frantic gaze went from his face to his chair, her distress so clear that he understood just how vital the “now” was. “I think he’s trying to kill himself.”

He’s trying to kill himself.

Trying to kill himself.

To kill himself.

No.

The damned chair clattered to one side. Perhaps he kicked it. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the seconds he was wasting while Ashu suffered. Taj barely felt it as he bolted from the room and toward the stone stairs to the roof. The flights seemed to go by like blinks, any sensation in his legs drowned out by the thudding of his heart and the crashing of his pulse against his eardrums. Rakhee and Kamal were mere paces behind him, but it might as well have been leagues.

He burst onto the
chaath
with such ferocity that the ancient door nearly fell from its hinges. But his brother was still standing. Thank heaven his baby brother was still standing.

Swaying at the edge of the roof, half-tilted over the parapet.

“Ashu, what is this,
bhai
? What are you doing?”

“
Aatma hatya
. Suicide.
Khud-khushi
.” Ashraf’s black eyes were large in his face, haunted mirrors, revealing all of his ghosts and demons. He directed them over Taj’s shoulder for a moment. “You know what
khud-khushi
is translated to in English, Rocky? To ‘make yourself happy’. Do you think it will work? Will I truly be happier if I am dead?”

This was crazy talk. Dangerously crazy talk. Taj’s heart leaped up into his throat, and he tried to silence its rhythm with a laugh. “You’re the handsome one in the family,
na
? What happens if you die? Who will look upon only my ugly old face?”

It was precisely the wrong thing to say. Ashraf backed up, his eyes ringed with fatigue and madness. “
Yeh maazak nahin hain, Bhaiya.
Don’t joke. I am serious. I want this to be over. I want it to stop.”