Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) (17 page)

There was something almost unearthly about him. And not just the ninja-like way he moved. It was his calm and his confidence, and how he seemed to know so many things intuitively. Kamal was somehow…
more
. But he was human. She knew that. Because how he felt about Ashu was visceral and mortal and real. It was how she loved Taj. With everything. With too much. “I don’t need finding,” she assured him. “I know exactly where I am.”

He stared down at her, remote and unapproachable. A statue made of flesh. And then he flinched. “Then you are the only one of the two of us, Rocky
Mem
.”

“Just Rocky,” she corrected, not liking the formality of
Mem
and how it repeatedly marked her as an outsider. And that wasn’t her only correction. Her assessment of him as an enigma was completely wrong. With just one small gesture, just a few embittered words, Kamal was an open book. A romance novel, actually. She could totally relate. “Aren’t you happy that Ashraf’s home? That he’s safe and getting better?”

For a moment, it looked like he wasn’t going to answer. Then he laughed, raising one unsteady hand to shake the salt and pepper of his hair. “Nothing brings me more joy,” he confided in a near-whisper. “It is all that I wished for.”

“Then why do you look so miserable?” Miserable. Tired. Older than a handsome man in his prime ought to look. She had a strange, sudden impulse to hug him that she had to rein in.

Especially since Kamal turned away, moving restlessly down the row of rosebushes and forcing her to follow if she wanted to hear what he was saying. “Affection is a cage, is it not?” he asked rhetorically as he stopped at the entrance to the arbor. Again, like he just
knew
where her thoughts lived. “It binds us. It does not set us free. To stay with me,
Chote
must lock himself away. To stay with Taj,
you
must lock yourself away. How is that bearable?”

The intricate latticework, draped with greenery, didn’t look like a cell to her. But she went with his analogy. “Because we love our fellow prisoners, right? I mean, that’s why they call marriage a life sentence.”

If the mention of marriage—something illegal for Kamal in this country—seemed incongruous, he showed no sign of it. He just sighed. “It is not enough, Rakhee. He should want to set you free.”

“He
does
want to set me free.” Every time he’d pushed her away. Every cruel thing he’d said. The entire conversation about Dev Anand and Suraiya. That’s what it all meant. “But I can’t control what he wants, Kamal. I can only control me. And I want to stay.”

He looked at her, both eyebrows raised imperiously. “Indefinitely?”

No. She didn’t even have to say it. It was just there. Obvious. She loved the
haveli
, loved the garden and
Nani
and Usha and driving past that stupid Saxena mansion every day on the way to the set. But this wasn’t her home. She didn’t want to be here forever, trapped in a fairy tale. She wanted to go back to Mumbai and home to Chicago and visit Bali and Berlin and Botswana. She still had so many things to do and to see.

Kamal nodded, coming to the same conclusion. “
Haan. Yehi hai asli baath
. This is the whole truth, Rakhee. You need more than this prison to heal and grow. As does he.”

Some part of her knew that Kamal’s “he” was Ashu. The rest of her shoved it aside and latched on to one crystal-clear realization: Taj needed more than this prison, too. But he would never leave.

“Ashu seems better, don’t you think?” It was overstating the obvious, but the tentative note in her voice gave him pause—began an annoying buzzing in his belly, like mosquitoes caught in the netting of his gut.

He shifted away from the window, facing her. “
Haan
. Much improved.”

One of her eyebrows rose in challenge, but she slid her palms down her thighs as if rubbing away nervous sweat. “It’s amazing what medication and regular therapy can do.”

Ah. So
that
was her game…one he had no intention of playing. “They will not do for me.” He hoped the ominous finality closed the subject before it began.

His hope was futile in the face of her brash
Amrikan
determination to push forward. She huffed her disapproval, shaking her head. “How do you know, Taj? Have you ever tried? Did you ever have Kamal bring someone in for you to talk to? Take anything besides painkillers? You don’t have to be on a ledge to need help.”

She meant to evoke the unforgettable image of his brother’s agony, and it worked—casting the magnified picture across his eyelid like an IMAX film. He shuddered, pushing away from the wall at last and stalking toward her. “You foreigners always want to fix everything with doctors and pills,
na
?
Bas
.
Chohro
. Leave it alone, Rakhee. I’ve been poked and prodded enough in my life.”

Hurt flashed in her eyes, tightened her body as though she was bracing herself for further impact. But her voice carried nothing but frustration. “I’m a foreigner now? Because I’m making a rational suggestion?” She shoved at his chest. “Because you’re so
normal
holed up in this house like a villain in a gothic melodrama? Do you know how many people actually
need
wheelchairs? They don’t just use them as a security blanket or for theatrical effect. Come on, Taj. Get over yourself. Get
outside
yourself. Haven’t you ever wondered what happened to the world while you were shut away? Haven’t you wanted to see the ocean again?”

Yes.
No
. He caught her hand, pressed it flat over his heart. “I have TV. I know what the world has become.” What it always was: a place of progress, violence and increasingly shorter skirts. “And I do not need the ocean when I have you to drown myself in.”

Her fingers flexed against the material of his shirt. She swallowed. What did he need of the outside world when he could feel her smallest movements and watch her subtle tics? She slid her palm up, resting it along the jagged column of his throat. “That’s not flattering, Taj. And it’s not enough. You can’t just assume I’m going to be your conduit to the outside and it’s all going to be okay. You have to work for it. You have to work for
me
.”

“Why? Because you will leave me? Is that not already set?”

He laughed.

She didn’t.

“No. When I leave, it’s because you won’t give me any other choice.”

The stone staircase to the roof seemed to extend high into the heavens. Certainly, they had almost ushered him to his eternal reward. Ashraf was torn between returning to the scene and turning tail and running as far as his legs could carry him. In the end, the choice was taken out of his hands: He did neither.

The sharp clicks of heels against the veranda floor turned his head. He would’ve thought it Rocky, but she had long since begun wearing
chappals
at home instead of unwieldy, expensive shoes.
Nahin
, it could only be—and
was
—her mother.
Bhaiya
had characterized her as a marvelous bitch, a woman of shrewdness and strength, not to be trifled with. All Ashu saw was a pale, tired
memsahib
in a pretty dress completely unsuited to the Delhi heat.

“You must be Ashraf,” she murmured, clearly taking his measure in the same way.

“My reputation precedes me. As usual.” He didn’t know where the impulse to joke came from, hadn’t known he
could
make light of something that had plagued him for so long.

“Are you all right now?” Her frown was…maternal. Strange, when he had been without a mother for most of his life. “Taking your meds? On a schedule?”

“Yes. I am not a hundred percent, but perhaps…eighty?” Again his answer was half in jest, half-serious. And when her frown deepened, pulling lines from her smooth forehead, he shifted on his feet like a schoolboy caught smoking. “I am better, madam. Much improved. I…I want to live,” he felt compelled to assure her.

Saying it almost made it feel true. As though he had made great strides since the last time he’d climbed the stairs ahead. As if it wasn’t only the pill he took each morning keeping the demons at bay. But he knew it was not so easily fixed. You could not close gaping wounds with cello tape and expect them to heal.

Caroline’s voice intruded on the thought…with a painfully appropriate subject of discussion. “What that woman did to you? It was disgusting.” She shuddered, pale fingers clenching into fists. “If someone took advantage of my Rocky that way…I don’t know what I would do. I’d…I’d probably kill her. I don’t know how your brother resisted.”

“Death is an end to the suffering,” he pointed out, since he knew that from personal experience. She flinched at the reminder, and he wanted to reach out—to place a hand on her arm—but he couldn’t make his fingers move. He was not ready to. “We know opportunists, Mrs. Varma. To deny them the life they desire is a better revenge. My brother is
not
such an opportunist,” he couldn’t help but add. “Taj will not hurt Rakhee willingly.”

“It’s never willingly when you love someone.” Caroline laughed, moving past him to stare out and down, at the green grass and the flagstone path to the garden. “It’s
always
accidental. Asking too much. Not asking enough. Thinking you know what the other person needs, forgetting your own. Taking a step when you should’ve put your foot down. Before you know it, you’re uprooting your entire life and changing yourself to fit the new one. I don’t want Rocky to change, Ashraf. I like her just the way she is.”

“But what if
she
wants to change? That is her choice,
hai na
? And if they can change and grow together…is that not what love is?” He had little experience with it, but he knew that when Kamal had pulled away from him at the sanitarium, denying Ashu
and
himself, it had not been willingly either. And the only step he truly wanted to take was not a step up to the roof.
Nahin
. All he wanted was one small step forward with Kamal.

Caroline sighed, as if his questions were terribly naïve, terribly young. Perhaps they were…though he felt like he knew enough for lifetimes. “We’re supposed to go back to Bombay tomorrow,” she said softly. “I think it’s going to break her heart.”

And Taj’s as well. Of this, he had no doubt. In fact, several hearts were likely to line up in the coming days, ready for the smashing.

Ashraf forced himself to turn and paste on a perfect smile. The one he wore for cameras and hoped to, soon, never put on again. “So you’ll go. But first? You must pay respects to
Nani
. Come, I will take you to her.”

She made a startled sound as he herded her without touching. Like a dog pacing cows and sheep. “But…but, Ashraf, I’ve already met your grandmother…”

“Doesn’t matter. Meet her again. She will love you.” As he led Rocky’s mother to the front staircase, Ashu recognized that this sentimental picture he was headlining was no longer about his near-ascent to the heavens. Perhaps it never had been. Perhaps it had always been about his beloved
Bhaiya
’s long journey to hell.

Chapter Thirty

She packed before she went into the library. It was the only way to ensure she’d actually
leave
: carrying the bags down the staircase and putting them by the door, next to the neat teak cabinet that hid the shoe rack. Her location scenes were done. Her time here was done. And she and Taj were…what?

“What do you want from me, Rocky? What do you want me to say? That we will have our happily ever after?”

“No. Because I can’t break this spell, Taj. I love you, but I
can’t
. You made your curse. You built this prison. I don’t have the magical powers to break you free. It’s on you to do that.”

They both knew what she was really saying:
come with me
.

And they both knew he couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

She turned to go, to walk out of his precious cage one last time, but he stopped her with a look, a word. Two. “Please. Rakhee.”

“Don’t.” She shook her head, even as he reached her in two long strides. “Don’t say ‘please’.” Even as he pulled her close and she struggled against him. “You’ve been trying to push me away since I met you. And I fought and I fought and I fought.” She punctuated each word with a strike at his chest, before letting her hand fall to her side. Open. Powerless. “I can’t do it anymore, Taj. I can’t do it all alone. You have to fight, too.
For me
.”

Maybe it fell on deaf ears. Maybe it didn’t. He was too proud, too certain of his own martyrdom, to let her know either way. He sighed her name, fingers sliding around her throat as he cupped the back of her head and tilted her up for his kiss. It was like he was choking the life out of her even as he gave her breath. That was Taj. That was loving him. And she wouldn’t regret a single moment.

His mouth moved over hers slowly, with a kind of reverence that felt almost…new. He tasted of cloves and coffee, sweet and dark, and when he lifted her and carried her the short distance to his bed, she drank him up. There was no use in saving anything for later. There would be no later. So she touched him all over, every patch of skin she could reach, until he grabbed her hands and pinned them over her head.

“Taj?” His grip didn’t hurt. But the look in his eye…so focused, so intense, was enough to discomfit her just a little. “What are you doing?”

“Shh, Rocky.
Shaanth
. Be calm.” He unwound her
dupatta
with his free hand, using it to bind her wrists to slats of the old wooden headboard. Tight enough to hold her. Loose enough that the silk didn’t cut. He sat back on his heels, looking entirely too pleased with his handiwork. Especially when she tested the knot.