The Zoya Factor (39 page)

I muttered something idiotic and spooned some soup into my face.

'Sit with us, sit with us,' Armaan prattled on at Khoda. I gave him a dirty look.

'Actually, why
don't
you, Nikhil?' Reita said, putting one hand on his arm appealingly. 'This is a working dinner for me, anyway!'

Nikhil hesitated, his hand on the back of Armaan's chair, and I - smarting from the fact that I must have called him at least
six
times only to hear his stupid voicemail message - said, 'Hey, Armaan, you said you're
my
date tonight!'

Nikhil's face hardened instantly. 'I'll be with the rest of the guys by the bar,' he said and stalked off.

Reita smiled unsurely at us, then said, 'Okay, enjoy!' with a nervous little laugh and hurried away too.

Leaving me to face three reproachful faces.

'What is your
problem,
Zoya?' Chachi said.

'Nothing,' I said defiantly. 'What's
yours?'

The encounter with Nikhil made me completely lose my appetite. I pushed back my chair and headed towards the washroom where I banged into Lokey. He drew back and grinned at me. 'Joyaji! Where are you hiding? I am calling and calling you every day.'

'I'm here only, Lokey,' I said, smiling back at him, happy to see a cheerful face.

'Well, we have to have a serious chat soon, y'know!' he said, fishing out about half a kilo of shelled pista from his pocket and offering it to me. 'Please have.'

'No thanks,' I said.

He registered astonishment at this lack of good taste, then shrugged and tossed the entire consignment into his capacious mouth and chewed on it thoroughly. Then he beamed at me. 'I have some papers for you to sign.'

'Lokey, I've been meaning to tell you,' I said, 'I'm not very sure about doing Tauji's ad.'

'Hain?'
His ears cocked instantly. 'Why why why?'

I shrugged. 'I think my doing an ad, claiming credit for India's World Cup victory will do neither me nor the team any good.'

Lokey looked completely scandalized. 'Why are you kicking your foot into my stomach like this?' he protested. 'If people like you take this kind of approach then how will I earn my livelihood?'

I just looked at him, wondering if I was being too moralistic.

Sensing my ambiguity, he looked here and there, then put one burly arm around me. 'Think it over carefully, Joyaji,' he said hoarsely. 'Tauji may even be persuaded to up to fifty.
'
He waggled all five meaty digits of his left hand at me tantalizingly.

Fifty
lakhs, I thought dreamily. Fifty
lakhs
before I was even twenty-eight years old? Fifty lakhs was a pretty good consolation prize for a broken heart.

'And we can arrange it so you have to pay
minimum
taxes,' Lokey said. 'We'll give the government just one tiny little bite, eh?'

'And what about you, eh?' I asked, getting into the mood of the thing. 'You'll take a big fat bite out of it, won't you?'

He rubbed his hands together, with happy glee. '
Now
you're talking!' he said, chuckling fatly. '
Now
you're talking business, Joyaji!'

'Thank you,' I said. 'Now can I go to the loo, Lokey?'

'By all means ji, why hold it back?' he said and oiled away.

I was walking back to my table, when suddenly, a large pink person waylaid me and shouted out my name. I blinked up at him, mystified, and by listening with great concentration, managed to decode that he was 'Butch' and that he knew me from the IPL match, where he'd played for Kings XI, Punjab.

'Butch' led me triumphantly to 'the guys in the bar' Nikhil had mentioned earlier, who turned out to be most of the Aussie team plus half the Miss Universe contestants crop of the year.

The Aussies set up a loud cheer when Butch announced who I was, while the babes in the group looked at me curiously, obviously wondering
what is this short fluffy person doing in our fabulous midst?
I couldn't speak much (having been hit by a sudden relapse of an oh-my-God-white-people attack) but I smiled benignly at all of them as they shook my hand like it was made of glass, and tried to talk to me in the broken Hindi they'd picked up from the crowds who routinely hurled abuses at them in Eden Garden. Then some song they all liked came on and they took to the tiny wooden dance floor, leaving me alone with Nikhil.

He was frowning down into his cellphone, looking like he didn't want to talk, so I hoisted my red rucksack onto my shoulder and muttered 'bye' and started slinking away.

He looked up suddenly, startling me, and I was so jumpy that I promptly dropped my rucksack and it crashed against the table and fell to the floor, taking his fancy phone down with it.

'What is
wrong
with you?' he said exasperatedly as we both knelt down to the floor scrambling for our stuff and suddenly I was back at the Tera Numbar gate, groping through the scattered madhumalati blossom for a pair of red plastic back-scratcher-cum-fly-swatters.

Sudden, stupid tears stung the back of my eyes.

And then I saw to my total horror that my rucksack had snapped open and my well-thumbed copy of the Nikhil Khoda pocket biography
In Good Nick
was staring him right in the face. He reached for it slowly, held it up, and looked at me, one eyebrow raised. 'Yours?' he inquired smugly.

'Monita's, actually,' I lied quickly, totally mortified, and reached for it, looking anywhere but at him. But then I spotted something on the floor and this thrilling, giddy wave of triumph washed right through me from head to toe. I reached down, and in full slow motion, picked up his fancy phone and held it up for him to see. A smiling, not entirely unattractive image of
me
was the screen saver on it.

'Yours?' I inquired smugly.

He closed his eyes, coming very close (I think) to cursing under his breath. Then opened them again. 'Uh huh,' he muttered.

I nodded triumphantly, going from crushed to cocky in two seconds flat. 'So!' I said, reclaiming my seat with an important air. 'You guys are doing great, congratulations!'

'All thanks to you, of course,' he answered sarcastically, not at all like somebody who was talking to the girl whose picture he'd saved in a very lover-like way on his phone.

I had this sudden urge to snatch his phone back and check if the picture was really of me. But of course that would've looked a little desperate, so I didn't. Instead, I raised my chin and said, 'Well, I seem to be doing more good than harm.'

He shook his head in disbelief. 'You really believe this Zoya Devi stuff!
You really believe you're lucky
! An educated girl like you! It's
amazing!
'

'And you don't?' I asked accusingly.

'Of course, I don't!' he said, sounding genuinely insulted. 'Zoya, you little idiot, luck has nothing to do with my liking you!' He glanced away towards the dancing Aussies, lowered his voice, and added, his eyes urgently appealing, 'You had me in Dhaka, the moment I smelled the gunsmoke in your hair.'

'No, I didn't,' I said instantly, my voice shaking slightly. 'You thought I was
stupid.
You said so!'

He glared at me, fully frustrated, like I was an idiot fielder who'd just let a big one through.

'Well?' I said challengingly.

He shrugged his shoulders and said dryly, 'You know, this may come as a bit of surprise to you, but guys don't always say what they think...'

But I didn't want to hear what he was saying. 'Ya-ya, whatever,' I said, heatedly. 'I've thought about all this okay, you didn't start being nice to me till
after
the IPL and you didn't - my voice broke a little, how humiliating - 'kiss me till after the Benito's guy ran Rawal over.'

There was a long silence. 'Look, I'm not going to get into a stupid argument about this,' he said finally. 'I simply don't have the time.'

'Oh, I'm really busy too,' I said instantly, just in case he thought I had nothing better to do than hang around and talkto him.

He flashed me a wry smile. 'Aren't you here on an all-expenses-paid holiday?'

'I have an interview with Channel Seven,' I said airily, hitching my bag higher on my shoulder. 'People from all over Australia are going to call me up and ask me questions.'

'About what?' he asked snidely. 'Astrology? Predictions? Or are you holding a seance?'

I didn't say anything. Of course there was no interview. I was being contrary for no good reason again. He seemed to bring that out in me.

He said, 'I see you're still wearing that bracelet.'

My heart gave an absurd jump. 'Oh this,' I said casually, almost as if I'd forgotten it was there. 'Yes, I am.'

He leaned forward, his eyes glinting, 'So, Zoya, did you think about what I said?' he asked. 'Would you still wear my bracelet if I was an account executive at AWB, say?'

I looked up startled. The guy seemed to have this incredible ability to read my mind.

'Well?'

I took a deep breath and decided to be honest. 'Yes, I did think about it,' I admitted steadily. 'And, yes, I
think
I would.'

'No, you wouldn't!' he lashed out, drawing back from me, his voice surprisingly bitter. Then he wrinkled his forehead and switched to a high little voice, 'Because
I've
thought about all this okay, (was he actually
copying
me?) and you didn't start being nice to me till
after
I got made captain!'

What kind of crap conversation was this?
I pulled off his stupid bracelet and handed it back to him. 'I was only wearing it,' I hissed, 'because I wanted to give it back to you tonight.'

'Oh, so you came here hoping to meet me, then?' he said, grinning obnoxiously and putting his hand out for the bracelet.

'Oh yes,' I said sarcastically, my voice shaking just a little, 'you're
all
I ever think about, day or night, waking or sleeping!'

I dropped his stupid bracelet into his stupid hand and walked away.

'See you at breakfast,' he called after me as the Aussies traipsed back to his table. 'Your
Luckiness
!'

***

17

But he didn't. See me at breakfast, I mean. Because, late that night, I got wretchedly ill. I tossed and turned all night, red-eyed and feverish. Rinku Chachi insisted the Aussies had poisoned me. '
Soch, beta,'
she said. 'Did you eat and drink anything they gave?'

'Of course I did, Chachi,' I said crossly. 'Don't act so paranoid. Of course they didn't poison me!'

'What about that Reita Sing babe, then?' Mon said from the doorway. She was staying away from me, worried about Armaan catching my bug. 'Maybe she poisoned you, huh, Zo?'

'What is wrong with you people?' I said exasperatedly, massaging my throbbing temples. 'I've caught a viral, that's all. Go to sleep.'

They did go to bed, but the first thing Mon did in the morning was call Dieter Rund and tell him to do something about me. So then Dieter brought over this bald Aussie doctor. They fussed over me, checked me out thoroughly, and then the baldie proclaimed I had some kind of forty-eight-hour flu and would be infectious for the next three days.

Dieter nodded and said, 'Better not come for breakfast tomorrow, Zoya.'

'Okay,' I croaked miserably, crawling back into bed and pulling the covers over my throbbing head. 'Tell the boys best of luck for me.'

My dad called me in the afternoon and clucked on the phone in a most uncharacteristic manner. 'Look after yourself, beta,' he said urgently. 'We need you till the finals.'
Ya right. After that, of course, I could keel over and die for all he cared.
I assured him that I'd look after myself and hung up.

I slept through most of the day and when I woke up Rinku Chachi told me Nikhil had called. He'd sounded concerned, apparently. Well, I sure wasn't going to call him back.
This is your dream, baby,
I thought crabbily, blowing huge quantities of hot snot into my pajama sleeve.
Win tomorrow against Australia and make me redundant if you can!