Bootie and the Beast

by Falguni Kothari

  They’d both decided complete nudity went very well with complete honesty. Only she couldn’t be completely nude because of her period, so she had a pair of miniscule gym shorts on.

  “Yeah, like anyone in busy, self-absorbed Mumbai has time to hear my woes,” he said with a snort.

  “What? How dare you say such a thing.” She ran a knuckle along the center of his foot to punish him. Krish was ticklish there.

  He jerked his foot away. “Stop that. It’s a fact that Mumbaiites are a selfish lot—like the citizens of any fast-paced city. Anyway, what would I have said when I didn’t know exactly what was wrong myself? That, despite an upwardly mobile lifestyle and a career that I was damn good at, I wasn’t happy? Do you know how stupid and ungrateful that sounds when millions of people around the world don’t have jobs—good or bad? I’ve surpassed my own goals for success—or what I considered was success. I am—was on the freaking board of a major food company. I’ve made a ton of money over the last decade. Stowed some of it away in solid investments—the flat in Mumbai, stocks, fixed deposits. If I don’t work for a couple of years, it won’t make a goddamn difference in my lifestyle. The thing is, I can’t not work. But I want to love what I do, Diya. I don’t want to do it just because I’m good at it. I don’t need to anymore.”

  She massaged his foot in soothing circles. “Relax. Don’t get defensive. We’re just updating our bios here.”

  “I am relaxed,” he growled. Then, he sighed. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  She nodded. “I think so. You’ve become very Amreekan in your thinking. A materialistic fatalist. Wait! Is that a paradox? Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  He sat up, frowning. She let go of his foot and crawled up the bed and into his lap.

  “I do get it.” She kissed his jaw, his chin. “A lot of people feel the same, Krish, even in India. Most just have to suck it up and keep doing their jobs because they have to provide for their families. But some have the luxury to make the change. And, out of those few, fewer still have the guts to take the leap. You do, and you have. And it’s great that you have. I’m not sitting here to judge you.”

  He pressed his forehead against hers, careful of his spectacles, and exhaled noisily, as if releasing some invisible tension.

  He’d been worried about her reaction, she realized with a start. Worried that she’d see it as quitting. Or downgrading his lifestyle.

  A few years ago, she would have. But not now. She truly got what he meant by wanting to improve the quality of his life. And, by that, Krish didn’t mean material wealth and success—or not only that. He didn’t mean living in a swanky apartment and buying a fast car and having a flush bank balance—all of which he did have. He wanted success on a more evolved scale, a humanitarian scale. He wanted to boost his moral worth in life.

  It was a good ideology. It was hers, too. Only she went about achieving it in an entirely different fashion.

  “So, you decided to Embrace the Change and invest in children’s education,” she said, letting him know she truly understood what he wanted out of life. That, in this respect, they weren’t so different.

  “Remember the kids you met here on Sunday? Usually, the lessons take place at the local community center, but last week, I had them come over here. I didn’t want to leave you alone to think up more mischief,” he said, smirking.

  She bit his shoulder. He tasted salty and slightly bitter. He needed a shower.

  He didn’t even wince and leaned back against the pillows again, taking her with him. She settled against him, her ear listening to his heart.

  “I got involved with the center two years ago as a tennis coach. Somehow, one thing led to another, and I ended up tutoring the kids as well. It was because of Alejandro … ah, he’s Maria’s son. The housekeeper,” he explained in fits and bursts, his heart doing the same against her ear.

  Diya planted a kiss on his chest. “I know who Alejandro is. What’s the matter? Why is your heart racing?”

  He started flapping a hand in dismissal and then paused. “Remind me to tell you about Alejandro later, okay?”

  Diya nodded, her eyes suddenly stinging with happy tears. He’d listened. He was doing what she’d asked. He was being honest.

  “Where was I? Ah, yes, I was tutoring at the center for a few months when, suddenly, an avalanche of kids began to pour in. Pretty soon, I had to rope in friends and colleagues to help out with the classes. Right now, there are close to a dozen volunteers—professors, bankers, lawyers, stay-at-home moms, anyone willing to part with their time really—who are on a weekly teaching schedule.”

  “How amazing.” Diya was suitably impressed.

  Krish beamed with pride. “Six months ago, two gentlemen by the names of Ricky Cruz and Jacob Marsden strolled in and asked if the center wanted to be a part of the Outreach School Project. They’d started it two years prior to that, and they were looking for partners. They wanted to expand their operations beyond the few schools they were affiliated with—both mainstream and alternate.” He tilted his head down, checking to see if she was paying attention or daydreaming.

  “I’m listening,” she murmured. “Go on.”

  “OSP needed an influx of capital to expand it to the next level where it could become a viable industry. They asked if we were interested. I was. I didn’t even have to think about it. Darren has been on board from the beginning, too. Rayna has some issues … but that’s between them.” He pursed his lips but went on, “With the right investments and endowments and nurturing, OSP can reach—should reach its potential. Imagine millions of kids from all over the world, logging in to take classes. With those numbers, it’ll make a tidy profit on application fees alone and pretty soon will start paying for itself.”

  “Again, amazing!” Diya wondered if it had struck him how like his mother he was, even while discussing numbers like his father.

  Krish kissed her cheek and then pushed her off him to sit up. “I want to go back to school, too. Get a master’s in education, just to solidify the teaching platform.”

  “You want to go back to school?” Diya scrunched up her nose. She hadn’t been able to stomach her first round of schooling. To do it a second smacked of masochism.

  “Not your glam, hmm?” He chuckled. Oh, he knew her too well in some ways. “I’m going to practice what I will be preaching and get my degree online.”

  “Cool,” Diya said while her mind flew in another direction. That would mean they could live anywhere in the world, right? Gah! They needed to discuss so many things in five days. “Where are you going?” she asked when he climbed out of bed.

  “To piss, if my lady permits.”

  He gave her a naked bow when she gave her permission. How did he not look foolish doing that? Sigh. She had it bad, didn’t she?

  Momentarily alone, she went over everything he’d revealed about himself and fell a little more in awe of him. He wasn’t claiming this was a purely altruistic venture—which would have been fine, too, if that were his goal. No, he was treating it like a business venture. One he hoped would flourish under his hand in more ways than one.

  More and more in this overgrown, overachieving world, humanity’s future was becoming a question mark. Education was one way to improve the human fate. Leading a conscientious life was another. Too many people disregarded one or the other, and too few adopted both. It was easier to live selfishly and in the present, get on with one’s life without any foresight into the future. Let the ones in the future deal with their problems, for we have plenty of our own. Insular thinking like that had brought the world to the mess it was in today.

  When she spoke of such things to her friends and colleagues, many took it the wrong way. She tried to explain that, to lead a life of moral quality, one didn’t need to become the Buddha or a Gandhi. Small bits and pieces of sagacity per individual were enough to freeze the Arctic back to a safer ice mass or feed the orphans of the world.

  “Now, there’s a sight I don�
�t see often. Beauty brooding,” Krish teased, coming out of the bathroom.

  Speaking of bits and pieces, she eyed Krish’s bits as he got into bed. “Oh, look! Your puppy shame has come out of hiding again.” Enough jabber and disclosures for the day, she thought, flipping her mood switch to sexy.

  “That’s no puppy shame, babe. It’s the Beast.” He roared with laughter at his own joke.

  Diya rolled her eyes. “Whatever it is, tell it that it’s time.”

  “Time for what?” Krish wheezed, wiping tears from his eyes.

  “Time to rise and shine.” She suggestively wiggled her eyebrows. They only had four and a half days left. She wanted to make the most of it.

  That set him off again. “We’re on a timetable now?”

  “Well, more like a contest. We have to beat Leesha and Aryan’s record of seven orgasms in twelve hours.”

  Krish’s laughter sputtered to a stop. His puppy shame went back into hiding again.

  He collapsed on the bed and covered his face with his hands. “Christ, Jesus. You can’t mention my sister and orgasms in the same sentence, Dee-Dumbs. You just can’t.”

  He blathered on about her triggering his nightmares and being scarred for life and needing to see a shrink and other bullshit until Diya took the Beast firmly in hand. After that, Krish forgot that he even had a sister.

  Chapter 18

  It was time for a reality check.

  Yes, there was a diamond ring on her finger, but Diya still couldn’t shake the feeling that the engagement was fake. Oh, outwardly, it seemed real enough. It had all the trappings of a valid engagement, like the congratulatory messages from family and friends. Complete strangers tweeting and posting about the happy event and direct-messaging her with their good wishes. Her fan pages looked like an Instagram account of a florist. And their home in Mumbai, her mother informed her, appeared and smelled like the Valley of Flowers. Then, there were the voice mails and the phone calls and the e-mails and … everything.

  The electronic world had infiltrated their little Adam and Eve paradise.

  Diya found she did not like it one bit. The media still harped about her pregnancy. Although, this time, they weren’t snide but more congratulatory toward the expectant, happily engaged couple, wishing them all the very best for their threesome—as in, engagement, marriage, and bundle of joy, all in one year. O-M-jeez! Talk about blinkered journalism.

  By Wednesday afternoon, Diya was ready to commit mass genocide on all technology. If there remained no electronic devices connecting the world, there would be no evil.

  Krish, never a dummy about her cabin fever, studiously kept her away from sharp objects. He also pocketed her smartphone for safekeeping and then took her out for lunch.

  After lunch, he took her shopping. Krish became Romeo to her Juliet—or no, not R and J because they died in the end. Diya didn’t want anyone to die. Krish wooed her like Veer wooed Zara in Veer Zara; like Ranveer Singh had courted his co-actor Deepika Padukone in real life until she said, “Yes!”

  Krish bought her bags full of sparkly things that didn’t break any rules in her contract. Some of the presents were utterly ridiculous, like the pair of pink plastic shoe earrings studded with Swarovski. Even her eleven-year-old self would have been embarrassed to wear those. But they made her giggle, just like he’d intended when he wore them. He bought her badass biker boots. Again, they were something she’d never wear in public—ever—limitations in her contract notwithstanding.

  “They’re not for a public screening anyway,” he said with a straight face, his eyes fiery with lust. “Wear them only for me and only with your tattoo.”

  He was charming her with his teasing and touching and smooching.

  He fed her tiny pieces of chocolate and cooked her low-fat meals—and rather well, Diya was shocked to admit. But then he’d been cooking for himself for a good long time. They watched a Bollywood flick or three on the Apple TV, and he sat through all the songs without fast-forwarding them or fidgeting or falling asleep or checking his e-mails.

  On two separate nights, they rocked two different nightclubs. They met up with Lovey and her sister, Shayna, and Miguel and a bunch of other friends. He introduced her as his fiancée to everyone. She had to bite her tongue to not contradict him.

  Thursday morning, they brunched with the Joneses at their ranch house, where Diya ended up cooking most of the meal with her personal knave acting as the sous chef.

  Throughout this courtship, Krish never lost his temper once. No matter what she said or how she dressed or how snappily she behaved. And, instead of soothing her reservations about their relationship, his easy commitment to it only increased the flutters in her stomach.

  “It’s like you’ve swallowed a Zen meditation kit and now only ooze out cosmic calmness,” she remarked, sipping on a Prosecco and feasting on the fruit, cheese, and bread spread before her.

  For heaven’s sake, Krish had planned a picnic for them. If that wasn’t alien behavior, she didn’t know what was.

  They hiked through the woods behind the house on Friday afternoon until they found a sunlit clearing for the picnic. The spot was something out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A brook gushed close by, birds chirped and danced, and raccoons skittered over exposed tree trunks, disappearing into their holey homes.

  “It’s part of my twelve-step program,” Krish said, watching her closely.

  He’d been trying to steer the conversation toward a serious note the whole morning, but she’d avoided it by flitting from task to task like a bumble bee. They’d poured their hearts out to each other over the last few days. He clearly thought it was time to bare their souls.

  Diya kept her expression neutral, but inside, she was properly scandalized by his confession. What did it mean that he was in a program? Was he a recovering alcoholic? She couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe control-freak Menon would ever lose control of himself like that.

  “Let me tell you where I met Alejandro.” Krish flicked an ant off his backpack, which was still half-full of yummy picnic food. The ant fell on the red-checkered picnic blanket and scrambled off to join its brethren, who were mounting a siege on the half grape that Krish had set aside for them.

  She’d forgotten to ask him about the kid. He’d asked her to remind him.

  “I met him at an AA meeting. Outside it,” he said.

  Alejandro had come to fetch his father, who’d lost his license in a DUI. There had been a scene between father and son. Krish didn’t give her specifics, but she could guess. There had been lots of scenes between Krish and Chandra Menon, too.

  Diya’s heart went out to the boys, both of them, Alejandro and Krish, as she listened to the story. Krish had been going to random AA meetings for a couple of years and believed it helped him come to terms with his fears.

  “What fears, Krish?” she interrupted. She’d known he was tormented about the past. She’d known he had issues, but she’d never thought he was afraid.

  “I’m not an alcoholic,” he said. “Not yet. But I could become one. I have the potential for it, the prerequisites, but I’d rather avoid it at all costs.”

  So would she. And there was her sensible, cautious, and caustic Beast. Frankly, the un-beastly version of Krish freaked her out. She wanted her Beast back. “So, you attend as a measure of prevention and not treatment?”

  He gave a slow nod.

  “You should stop drinking if it bothers you this much.” She’d never understood why he drank every day. She’d asked him a million times.

  “It’s a test,” was his perpetual reply.

  His control-freak disorder, she thought. Maybe he needed to be in a twelve-step program for that.

  “It is about control, Diya,” he said. Of course it was. “About setting limits and living within those limits.”

  “What happens when you cross the limit?” Why did he test himself this way? What did he want to prove and to whom?

  “You were right. I manipulated you to
break our engagement nine years ago. I pushed you away because I felt out of control around you. I didn’t want you to love me. I didn’t think I deserved you. I don’t deserve you even now. A good man would stay away from you. Stay the hell away. Clearly, I’m not that good or that strong.” His lips twisted in self-loathing. “You have to promise me you’ll walk away, if I ever cross that limit. Promise me, Diya.” His eyes pinned her in place. They wouldn’t let her look away, brush it off. “I won’t have you look at me the way my mother looked at my father in the end. I will not be able to bear it.”

  And there, she had her answers. Why Krish had hurt her, rejected her. Why he wanted her now and on what terms.

  He didn’t stop there. He didn’t just bare his soul; he slashed it open and forced her to examine it.

  Chandra Uncle’s disease and death had twisted Krish from a laughing prankster to a sullen, humorless boy. He’d loved his father and hated him at the same time. He’d turned the hurt into anger and the fear into recklessness. He’d been hell to reason with and impossible to handle. When his mother had accepted a permanent teacher’s position at the school in Pune and decided to put their Mumbai apartment up for sale, he’d said monstrous things to her. He’d flatly refused to leave Mumbai. Savitri Aunty had put aside all her misgivings and her own broken heart and had asked Diya’s parents to take Krish in. So, Krish had stayed with them and finished his schooling, and then he’d left India for further studies at her father’s prodding. Patiently but firmly, Daddy had coerced the old Krish back.

  Not completely though. The carefree boy Diya remembered had had dreams. Larger-than-life dreams of owning a safari in Africa, of becoming a veterinarian and saving the world’s animals, and of marrying a pretty girl he could order around and having an offspring or two to spoil rotten.

  The man Krish had become, while good, doubted his own goodness. That man kept secrets. He broke promises. He’d promised to come back to India after college. He hadn’t. He’d left their home. He’d left them. He’d left her. And never looked back.