Incense and Sensibility

by Sonali Dev

  “Okay.”

  “Doesn’t everyone want to?”

  “Yes, but not everyone believes they can.”

  “If you don’t control your own destiny aren’t you just a puppet?”

  “That depends on what you mean by ‘controlling your destiny.’ Controlling your actions and controlling the world’s reaction to your actions are two very different things.”

  He sat up. “You’re quoting the Bhagavad Gita to me.”

  “I’m just answering your question.”

  “How can I just let him die?”

  “Do you really believe that you have a say in that?”

  He opened and closed his mouth, then tried again. “Will you go somewhere with me? Please. There’s something I want to show you.”

  India stepped back. He’d said those words to her before. That night long ago she’d been willing to follow him anywhere.

  “Yash, please.” There’s nothing you want to show me that I want to see. But she couldn’t say those words. She wasn’t a liar, but she was no longer the girl who gave everything away without any thought to self-preservation either.

  “If you go with me now, I’ll leave. I promise. I’ll let you get back to your life. I’ll get back to my own.”

  The fact that he meant for that to be an inducement proved he didn’t understand her at all, and that’s what made her nod her head.

  The walk to Stanford Hospital took twenty minutes. In less than half an hour they were at the registration desk of the critical care unit. The nurse at the desk recognized Yash and asked how he was doing.

  It was long past visiting hours, but she let them through with a whispered, “Just five minutes, then you have to move to the waiting area.” Obviously, she and Yash had a pattern.

  Yash thanked her, and led India to Abdul’s room where he lay motionless and hooked up to too many machines.

  For a long time they just stood there, India watching Yash as darkness wrapped tight around him, mottling his aura to a rusty brown. The need for his aura to return to its golden splendor was a prayer inside her. All she wanted was for him to have peace.

  “How can I live with myself if he dies?” Someone had left a framed picture of a baby next to Abdul’s bed, Yash stroked it with a finger. “He has a little girl. She’s just a few weeks old. And please, please don’t tell me again that I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger.”

  “Okay.” She wanted to, though. Before she could say more, there was a sound by the door, then a familiar voice filtered in. Trisha’s distinct voice speaking to someone.

  Yash pushed India behind a curtain, hiding them from view just as Trisha hurried into the room.

  “Hello, there, Mr. Khan. How are you this fine evening?” Trisha said, her voice so deliberately light it only made the emotion it was laced with starker.

  A shudder went through Yash’s body. India’s own body traced it because he was pressed flush against her, sandwiching her between the cold wall and lean muscle that emitted heat like a furnace. Her face was a whisper away from his neck, just where his shirt was buttoned all the way up. One breath and her lips would kiss his exposed throat.

  His smell, like his aura, was bright and warm, a perfume commercial given human form, powerful, luxuriant, more vibrant than any human had the right to be. If her knees gave way beneath her she would never forgive herself. If he felt her trembling she would never forgive herself.

  “Did I say thank you?” Trisha said on the other side of the curtain, and Yash’s hands tightened on India’s arms. All of him tightened, sadness radiating from his body like a tangible thing.

  Before she could stop herself, India’s hands went around him and stroked his back, unable to keep from soothing him. He sagged into her, the weight of the world too heavy on his shoulders. Warm breath blew at her hair sending tingles skittering down her spine. If she sagged into him the way he was sagging into her, she would never forgive herself.

  Her body soaked him up, shameless about how starved it was for him, aware that this was all it could get. Ever. This accidental reminder of what it had once wanted with blinding desire.

  Sounds of Trisha moving got closer, the sliding of a stool, the clicking of a keyboard. A sigh. “You have to hurry up and wake up. We’re running out of time,” she said. “Please.”

  In the silence that followed, Yash’s body trembled in India’s arms. She held him there. Nothing else mattered but the fact that he was where she could touch him. Her hands flattened into his back, absorbing the tremors, letting all her energy flow into his pain, directing it at unraveling the knots where he’d gathered his guilt and helplessness.

  Time melted around them, swelled, and stood still. A lifetime. A blink. His body melted into hers. Arousal swelled and raged through her blood, every inch where they touched throbbed. Then a stool scraped the floor again, and footsteps hurried away. There was silence again, broken only by the staccato hissing of the ventilator and monitors.

  Yash didn’t move, not until India dropped her arms and sagged into the wall behind her, because her legs had ignored her and forgotten how to stand. Her hands felt empty, her palms cold.

  His pulling away was an abomination of the way he had held her. One had sewn her together, the other ripped apart. She was not strong enough for this. She really wasn’t. What was she even doing?

  Nothing.

  They’d been hiding. That’s all.

  The moment he gave her space she slipped past him, and with one last look at Abdul and one last prayer she hurried out the door. Her hands pressed into her chest, as much a ritual as a pathetic attempt to hold something inside.

  By the time Yash caught up with her she had taken the elevator down and was out of the building and hurrying down the palm-tree-lined road, half hoping he wouldn’t follow her.

  He fell in step next to her, only slightly out of breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t.”

  If she cried now, with him watching, she’d never forgive herself.

  She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t give him what he needed. She was wrong about her own strength.

  “You were right,” she said, forcing herself to keep her voice calm. “You weren’t the one who pulled the trigger. But you are the one who can do something to change a world where that happens.” She didn’t look at him, she couldn’t, she just kept walking.

  “I no longer know how to do that.”

  When they were in preschool, China regularly pushed anyone who pissed her off to the ground. It was a terrible thing to do and she always got in trouble. Sometimes, when India was angry, she wished she was more like her sister. She wished she could shove Yash to the ground now.

  “When did you start believing that you could control everything?”

  He didn’t answer. He just kept pace with her step for step. It was her fault, because she’d phrased the question wrong. She tried again. “Will you honestly answer something for me?”

  He nodded, eager for answers.

  “When was the first time you experienced feeling powerless in your life?”

  It took him a moment to file through the significant events of his life. He stopped. “The accident.” Two words. Spoken like he’d never said them before.

  She kept walking and he followed again. “Do you remember anything about it?”

  “Yes.” They walked in silence for a while. Then he spoke again. “I remember being thrown. A sense of suspension, my organs feeling weightless. And . . .”

  Without slowing her steps, she waited.

  “And a lot of blood. A lot.” His face went pale, and his aura dulled enough to match it, as though all that blood from his accident and the shooting mixed and became indistinguishable as it drained from his body. “Powerless would about describe it.”

  She didn’t let him linger in those feelings. “And what did you do with that?”

  “Nothing.” He’d obviously buried the memory until this moment. “The next thing I remember is the doctor telling me
that I would never walk again.” His voice was stronger now. This was the part he was comfortable with.

  “And what was your response?”

  “To prove him wrong. Naturally. Wouldn’t that be anyone’s response?”

  “No. You already know that’s not everyone’s response.” She picked up the pace and he did the same. “So, you’ve never considered the role that forces outside your control—the universe—played in your recovery?”

  They arrived at an intersection and waited for the light to turn green.

  “If I had left things to the universe”—yes, he used air quotes—“after my accident, where would that have left me? Still in a wheelchair, that’s where.”

  The light turned green and she started walking again. For the next few minutes they walked in silence, responses flooding her brain, but she needed to get this right.

  “Consider for a moment another side of what you’re saying. Don’t you think there was any element of luck in the fact that your efforts paid off? Yes, you gave getting out of that wheelchair your all. The reason you were able to heal yourself was that your injuries responded to the retraining therapies you used. Yes, there was a really small chance of them working and you worked really hard to give that chance a chance. But there was a chance.”

  He followed her in silence until the studio came into view.

  She stopped and turned to him. “If your injury had involved destroyed spinal nerves or something like that, then no amount of effort would have mattered. There was an element out of your control that worked in your favor. You put everything into it. But things out of your control supported that. You did your best and trusted the universe to do the rest and you didn’t even know it. You just have to do the same thing again.”

  He was gazing down at her in that way he had as though she had all the answers, as though she were, in fact, all the answers he’d ever sought. “But how can I do something that I did without knowing I was doing it? Don’t you see, I don’t know how to.”

  “You do. You do know. You’re just afraid you won’t get the result you want.”

  A small smile touched his lips, but not his eyes. “So I’m a coward on top of being a control freak.”

  “Being afraid doesn’t make you a coward. We’re all afraid of not getting what we want. But to get what we want we have to combine both—doing our part and trusting the universe with the rest. You of all people cannot refuse to do your part because you’ve suddenly realized that there are parts outside your control. You don’t have that luxury. Too many people trust you to have courage. Too many people have put their faith in you to fix the things they’re afraid of.”

  “What if I’m not worthy of that faith?”

  “Do you know how I know that you’re worthy? Because when you told me you wanted to be a public servant and not a politician I believed you. I believed you because I saw how much you believed it yourself. You promised the people who believe in you that you’d fix things. A politician can stop running for election, but a public servant can’t stop serving. Abdul did his job, you need to do yours. You might be afraid, but I know you’re not a liar.”

  The storm in his eyes went darker. I am a liar, his eyes said when he couldn’t say the words. There were too many things he wanted to say but couldn’t. Which was exactly why she had to say the words.

  “I kept my end. I went to the hospital with you. Now it’s time for you to keep your end of it.”

  “Okay.” But he didn’t move.

  For a while they stood there, something larger than themselves looming between them. Two bugs stuck in glue. A physical bond holding them together even as it kept them apart.

  Turn around and walk away. You can do this.

  The way he looked at her meant she couldn’t. He had more to say. Maybe if he said it, they could both leave.

  “I made a promise. I don’t know how to break it.” He was no longer talking about Abdul, or the election, or the promise he’d made to the people of California. He was talking about them. Him and her, and Naina, who stood between them.

  Those words were what gave her the strength to step away. He did the same, then turned away from her and started down the street.

  Pressing her back into the glass-paned door of her home, she tried to stop herself from calling after him. And failed. “Yash.”

  He spun around, face overrun with relief at getting to see her again. She knew exactly how he felt, and it made her livid.

  “You’re already breaking it. You being here.” She moved her hands between them, tracing the thing that danced between them. “This. You’re already breaking your promise. A promise isn’t what you say. It’s what you do. Otherwise, you’re just Yudishtiring it.” With that, she let herself back into the studio.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Why everything in a hospital cafeteria smelled deep-fried and unhealthy, Yash would never know. Why he had never before noticed this, he had no interest in digging into. Grabbing his food from the smiling cafeteria server, he took the bowl to a corner table. The lunch rush had finally passed and the cafeteria was almost empty. For the past two hours, Yash had taken selfies and shaken hands and talked to the staff about the issues that were closest to their hearts. His own heart had stayed even keeled, no racing about, no emulating a cardiac episode. India Dashwood had proven worthy of the trust his sisters had placed in her.

  He hadn’t met Trisha for lunch at her hospital in years. The fact that being in the hospital reminded him of having his body pressed against India’s should have set off alarm bells, but everything reminded him of that. Of that moment when she’d held him and everything had felt right.

  It had been a week since he’d seen her, but the smell of sandalwood-laced incense wouldn’t stop tapping at his senses. For Yash physical attraction had always been accompanied by discomfort and the urge to suppress it. Now desire wouldn’t stop sparking like electricity through his veins at the memories of holding her. Of her pressing into him, her arousal tangible in her breath as it kissed his throat.

  You’re already breaking your promise. A promise isn’t what you say. It’s what you do.

  The sense of loss in her eyes when she’d said the words was the reason he had to stop this. He’d walked away once without thinking about what it would do to her because he’d been able to convince himself that she hadn’t felt what he’d felt. Now her eyes left no doubt about how wrong he’d been.

  More than anything he wanted to tell her that the promise he was breaking wasn’t what she thought, what everyone thought. The only promise he’d ever made to Naina was that they would always keep their arrangement to themselves. He’d never promised her any part of him. He’d never had the urge to promise all of himself to anyone until now.

  None of that changed the fact that he’d promised India that he’d leave her alone.

  “Congratulations!” Trisha said, sweeping into the cafeteria and wrapping her arms around him so tightly that she freaked herself out. “I’m sorry, did that hurt? Ugh, I’m such a knob.”

  “Knob? Are we all talking like your boyfriend now?” Trisha’s boyfriend, DJ, was as English as they came.

  She punched his arm, the unhurt one, obviously.

  “Okay, now, that did hurt. So, I won’t argue about the ‘knob’ thing.”

  She punched him again. “So, oh my god, the debate. You usurped that stage the way the Brits usurped our ancestors.”

  “Trisha, beta!” he said, imitating their mother. “Does your tongue have no bone?” And he got a delighted laugh from her.

  “You’re so going to win.”

  He’d gained another five points. He now had a historically unprecedented lead. “Uncatchable,” the media kept calling it. “This election is yours to lose,” everyone kept telling him.

  The morning after leaving India, he’d finally gone back to his campaign office. His staff’s excitement at having him back had made him feel an inch tall. Every one of them had teared up, and he’d realized how unfair he’
d been in leaving them to fend for themselves while he licked his wounds.

  But you’re back now.

  That’s what India would’ve said. Yes, she’d taken to saying things inside his head. All. The. Time.

  The past week, he’d gone back to his usual pace of work. Drowned himself in prepping for the debate, and getting caught up with his staff. Their purpose had multiplied manifold. They were raring to win this, to set things straight, to change the world. They’d all been the best in their fields when they’d given up everything to join his campaign.

  Nadia had quit her job as a Kaiser surgeon. Xio had let go of her position as employee number six at a pre-IPO start-up. Xilong and Smita had given up hefty paychecks at law firms. Hari had given up partnership in his PR firm. The Fabulous Five, as they called themselves, had been working around the clock toward his victory for a year.

  Every one of them had one thing in common. They had come to him and made the case to work on his campaign. They’d told him that they’d been waiting all their lives for someone like him, someone who’d made them believe again when they’d lost faith in the system.

  How had he forgotten about them?

  They had celebrated his debate performance—spectacular, even if he said so himself—with salted caramel ice cream from Bi-Rite and Bob’s Donuts. The family had all been there too. HRH had hugged every one of the staff and told them he loved them, which was so out of character that it had creeped the hell out of everyone and made Ma laugh until she cried.

  Trisha had been in surgery and missed it.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there last night,” she said.

  “Don’t apologize for doing your job.”

  Abdul did his job. Now you do yours.

  Was this going to be his life now? Having India’s voice run in his head all the time?

  The week had felt like a year. Her words, her presence, it was all lodged inside him, but all it did was make him feel empty.

  She had wrapped her arms around herself as she called him out for cheating on Naina. After the words left her, her long, perfectly sculpted arms unwrapped from around herself and fell to her sides. A letting-go.