by Sonali Dev
Samir handed her a plate. “See, you can already sit up by yourself. In a few days you’ll be using the crutches with ease.”
Only someone who had no idea how clumsy she was would say such a thing.
“This is beautiful,” she said reverently, and picked up the top slice to study the riot of color inside.
“Don’t worry, Mili, there’s no meat in it.” He raised an amused eyebrow at her as she poked the innards of the sandwich.
“Sorry, I have to check. It’s just a habit. I had a horrible incident at the union last month.” She thought about how awful that stuff had tasted and wiggled her shoulders to ward off the memory. “I told the person ‘no meat’ and he tells me: ‘It’s not meat, it’s fish.’ Yuck!” The memory almost made her lose her appetite. But who was she fooling? With a sandwich like this in her hands there was no real danger of that happening.
Samir laughed that low, understated laugh that didn’t belong on a pretty boy at all and took a bite of his own sandwich.
“Are you a vegetarian or a nonvegetarian?” she asked him, carefully laying the slice back in place.
“I do eat meat, but if you mention that in front of my mother, I’ll deny it. And then I’ll have to kill you for breaking her heart.”
Mili bit into the sandwich and almost passed out again. “What on earth did you put in this?” she said, chomping with all thirty-two teeth and thanking all the gods for every one of the ten thousand taste buds in her mouth. “This is delicious!”
He watched her eat, his smile disappearing behind a guarded expression, and pulled two envelopes out of his pocket. “Your mail.” He crossed his legs and settled into the mattress next to her.
Both envelopes had the university logo on them. Mili’s heart sank.
She took another bite before forcing herself to put the sandwich down and picked up the one from Snow Health Center first. Despite the flavors dancing on her tongue, nervousness trembled in the pit of her stomach. So much for being able to stretch the fifty dollars in her pocket.
She had tried to ask the nurse how much all those splints and medicines were going to cost but all she’d said was, “We’ll send you the bill in the mail.” At least Mili had assumed she was talking to her, because the nurse’s eyes had been glued on Samir. Just like the doctor’s eyes and the receptionist’s eyes. Just about every woman who’d walked into her room had had eyes only for him. He seemed perfectly comfortable with the attention. He gave every one of the drooling females the glad eye, and soaked up all the adulation without the least bit of an apology. How must it be? To be worshiped because of the way you looked. She glowered at him. Then felt like a terrible person because he had just fed her the best food she’d eaten in days, in months.
He chomped at his sandwich and tipped his chin at the bill, coaxing her to open it.
Mili squared her shoulders and ripped the envelope open. Her mouth went dry. The amount under the “To be Paid by Patient” column made it hard to breathe. He handed her a glass of water and she repaid him by almost choking to death on it.
He moved closer and rubbed her back. “What’s the matter, Mili?” Gentle up and down strokes.
She sidled away and glared at him. “You’re trying to choke me to death, that’s what’s the matter.” Dear Lord, she was an awful, terrible person.
Instead of rising to her bait, he took the paper out of her hand. “Is that your hospital bill?”
She thought about snatching it back but what was the point? She was letting a complete stranger practically live in her home and he had taken care of her more than any human being other than Naani ever had. There really was no point in standing on ceremony.
But then he looked at the figure on the paper and smiled. He smiled!
“It’s just a hundred and twenty dollars,” he said.
Samir kicked himself. Of all the dumb-assed things to say. Mili’s face deflated right before his eyes, as if he had taken a pin to that ridiculously upbeat spirit of hers.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. It’s just that with everything one hears about hospital bills in America I was expecting to see a larger amount.”
Her eyes widened in horror. But just for one second.
What was wrong with this girl? She had enough money to pay for a ticket to America and an education here and a hundred-and-twenty-dollar bill was giving her palpitations? He looked around the apartment. Shit, he was an idiot. Baiji was right, his brain totally shut everything out when he was working. There was no furniture, no food in her apartment. A sick sort of feeling twisted in his heart.
She took the bill back and looked at it again. Muscle by muscle she pulled herself together. God, if he could get his actors to show each and every emotion like this he’d be the best fucking director in the world.
“You’re right, it’s only one hundred and twenty. I must’ve misunderstood the number of zeroes. You must think I’m so stupid.” She topped off the act with a perfect self-deprecating grin and a smack on the forehead with her bandaged hand. Pathos, anyone?
And he thought he was the grand master of backtracking. She was totally kicking his ass in that department. “Not at all, an extra zero would scare me shitless too,” he said, and took a bite.
Her shoulders slumped. She looked absurdly relieved, her filter-less, expressive face at work again. Then suddenly she remembered the avocado-tomato-carrot-and-green-pepper sandwich on her lap and the tension evaporated for real. She dived into the sandwich. There really was no other word for it. Each bite seemed to make pleasure wash through her being. Her lips, her throat, her eyes, all of her got involved in the experience. Got lost in it.
He stood and backed out of the living room. He put the dish in the miniscule sink and glanced around the kitchen. Truly, how had he missed this? The entire apartment was marginally larger than his closet back home. Maybe all of four hundred square feet. The living room was the size of a large passageway with a niche to one side that served as a dining space and led into a kitchen that housed one noisy fridge, a cruddy cooking range, and two feet of counter space. At the other end of the passage-slash-living room, as Mili would call it, was a bedroom that could hold two mattresses, a crappy old dresser and desk, and enough space to tiptoe between those. The bathroom was the size of Samir’s linen cabinet, a stand-up shower that he would never fit in, a pot that had his knees knocking against a wall when he sat on it and a sink he could wash his hands in while sitting on the pot.
Okay, so the girl wasn’t exactly loaded and he should have seen it sooner. And if he hadn’t been writing like a crazed genius he might even have. He rinsed off the plate, letting steam rise from the sink, and forced himself not to think about the bliss on her face when she ate. He had to be careful, real careful with this one. For all her guileless innocence, for all her wretched condition, he had to remember that nothing justified sending a legal notice to a man lying in the hospital fighting for his life. Especially when that man was Bhai.
“DJ, this apartment is really and truly a piece of shit. Warm and fresh-from-the-ass shit. It smells like shit, it feels like shit, all the stuff in it is actually the color of diarrhea.” Samir looked around “his” apartment. Just the thought of calling it that made him cringe.
But for the next month it was his. He had made DJ rent the shithole because it was two doors down from Mili’s. Apparently it had been easy. Apparently more than half the building was empty. Big surprise.
“There’s a Hyatt two miles from you. I’ve had a suite booked there for the past week. Either get your ass over there or stop whining like a little baby.”
“I can’t go to the Hyatt, genius. Mili can’t leave the house. Someone needs to keep an eye on her. She doesn’t even have a cell phone. It’s like she’s living on Gilligan’s Island, only with no friends.”
“She has at least one friend, it would seem.” Swami DJ laced his voice generously with meaning.
“Yeah, I’m doing this for friendship, asshole. Not beca
use my brother is lying in bed with both legs in casts and a pregnant wife who may not be his wife at all. You think I like playing nursemaid?”
DJ answered that with some loaded silence. Whatever.
“Listen, there’s really no one else here to help her. Her roommate eloped the day I arrived.”
“The girl seems to have quite a penchant for drama.”
“No shit.”
“You still writing? You think you’ll get it in by the deadline?”
“I might just.” Truth was he was damn sure nothing was going to stop him from meeting his deadline. And it was a fucking miracle. They’d been back from the hospital just six days and Samir had already written more than he had in years.
Except he hadn’t written one single word of it in this shit-colored haven. All his writing had happened around her. He’d typed the words from the yellow pad into his laptop in her apartment the day they got back and then written like a madman all night and all morning while she slept. And then written some more for the past few days while she slept some more.
His laptop sat open on the battered carpet that naturally was the color of bacterial diarrhea. He’d tried to write before he called DJ but he’d been able to do nothing more than stare at the damn screen.
“I’ll let you know how things go. Can you at least find out if there’s an option in this building with less excretory accents?” After all, Mili’s apartment was smaller but not as hideous.
“Of course I will, boss. It’s what I do.”
Samir thought about giving writing in his own apartment another shot but he knew he would be wasting his time. He’d been pushing away the realization but he couldn’t anymore. By some damn trick of fate it had turned out that after that night in the hospital, being around Mili helped him write.
Fuck.
Someone up there was on her side. Until the script was done, he had no choice but to help her so he could keep writing. By the time the script was done she’d be so in his debt she’d sign the papers without so much as a whimper. Maybe someone up there was on his side too. Who was he to argue with a win-win situation like this?
He grabbed the laptop and headed back to Mili’s apartment.
Mili stumbled out of the bathroom on her crutches. This was the first time she’d been able to get to the bathroom by herself, thank heavens. But it had been more a combination of luck and momentum than any real skill. Samir had spent an entire hour that morning trying to help her figure the blasted things out, but with both a wrist and an ankle gone and her natural tendency to trip over thin air, it was a lost cause. He, on the other hand, seemed to possess enough strength in one powerful leg to support his own substantial bulk, balance her and her crutches on his head, and pull off a one-legged bhangra dance with his eyes closed. Maybe it had something to do with having feet the size of boats.
She tried to hop to her bedroom, teetering between the cursed aluminum prongs that somehow became tangled with one another and flew from her hands. One crashed to the ground and the other bounced off her bedroom door, flew back at her, and thwacked her on the head.
“Stupid donkey-faced piece of junk.” She clamped it grudgingly under her armpit and quite literally willed herself into the bedroom where she realized that the armpit in which she had shoved the poor crutch smelled pretty sour. She pulled her maroon T-shirt off without falling to the floor, which was nothing short of a miracle, and pulled a blue T-shirt from the drawer.
She had found the T-shirts at a street vendor outside Borivali station in Mumbai the day she got her visa. It had taken a marathon bargaining session but she’d badgered the shopkeeper into letting her have all six colors of the T-shirt for the price of three and then she’d seen the lace underwear and gathered the guts to make him throw it in for free. She had no idea what had got into her, but something about the black lace had made her feel hopeful and ready for her husband and she’d had to have it. Just her luck that the street vendor had turned out to be from her neighboring village and she had bought two pairs of jeans for full price to keep from dying of embarrassment.
Before that all she had ever worn were traditional Indian salwar suits, the long tunic blouses worn over loose flowing pants or tights. After buying the T-shirts she’d left all her salwar suits behind in a bid to make a true fresh start here in America. She loved the freedom her shirts and jeans gave her. No duppata scarves, no ironing and starching. And when she had the use of all her limbs they were really easy to get on and off.
Now, however, nothing was easy. Between balancing on the crutches and getting her arms into the armholes, the stupid shirt twisted around her head. She tried to yank it down, but her bad wrist snagged in the fabric and blinding pain shot through her. Even though, thanks to the shirt wrapped around her head, she was already as blind as an ostrich with its head in the sand.
The door clicked open. Mili froze in place. “I’m not decent,” she shouted as the door creaked open. Why-oh-why had she ever given Samir a key?
There was complete silence. She scrambled under the stretchy fabric, ignoring another jolt of pain, and tried to twist around. “Samir? Hello?”
No answer.
Oh no. It wasn’t Samir.
“Samir?” she shouted and yanked at the T-shirt. But the crutches and cast knotted her up even tighter. “Who is it?” She twisted around, struggling to stay upright. Her heart slammed in her chest. Oh God, please. “Who is it?” she tried to shout again, but it came out a sob.
“Shh. Mili, it’s okay. It’s just me.” His arms went around her, adjusting the T-shirt so it freed her shoulders and cleared her head.
Tears streamed from her eyes. Breath hiccupped in her lungs.
“I’m sorry, I should’ve knocked.” He tucked a loose curl behind her ear and had the gall to give her a calming, steadying glance as if he hadn’t just scared the life out of her. He wiped her cheek with one finger. She’d never seen his eyes so dark, so alive. His hands moved lower and he pulled the zipper of her jeans in place.
Anger exploded in her chest. She shoved him away, hard. But instead of budging him, she flung herself back. He caught her but her crutches crashed to the ground, leaving her with no support but his huge powerful body that radiated heat like a bonfire. Helpless anger surged through her, heightening the pain and making her tremble. He tightened his grip around her, his stupid, bulging arms so gentle she wanted to claw at them.
“Let me go.” She tried to throw off his arms but her hand hurt too much. She tried to scramble back but her foot wouldn’t take her weight.
“Mili. Relax. What’s wrong with you?” She hated the calm in that voice of his.
“You idiot!” She had never screamed at anyone in her life. “You scared me half to death. I thought someone had broken in. I thought . . .” A stupid sob escaped her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Color crested his cheeks. His arm was still too familiar around her, too possessive. His eyes were too gentle when they met hers. “I didn’t knock because I thought you were sleeping. I had just given you your painkiller. It knocks you out.”
How dare he use that against her. “I needed to use the bathroom. Can’t I use the bathroom in my own home? Why do you have to be here all the time anyway? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
His arms stiffened around her. The liquid heat in his eyes iced over. “Maybe because you can’t even pull your own damn clothes on by yourself. Excuse me for trying to help.”
Her heart was slamming again but it was with anger this time. “I didn’t ask for your help.”
“Of course you didn’t—there’s such a line of friends outside your door just waiting to help you.”
Shame slid like oil over the flames of her anger. “I can pull my own clothes on just fine when I’m not scared out of my mind.” His hands burned her skin. She wanted them off. “That doesn’t give you an excuse to touch me.”
His head snapped back. Anger so intense sparked in his eyes, she sucked in a breath. Very deliberately he remove
d his arms from around her. “Why the hell would I want an excuse for that?”
Her good leg wobbled, but she locked it in place and willed herself to stay standing. Not that it mattered. Without a backward glance, he stalked out of the room, out of the apartment. The door slammed behind him. The second the door shut Mili realized she couldn’t move. He had left her standing in the middle of the room on one leg, with her crutches on the floor, and not one blessed thing she could hold on to.
9
Samir wasn’t fuming. He wasn’t even remotely disturbed. The world was full of ungrateful people. If ten years in the industry had taught him anything it had taught him that. An excuse to touch her? Of all the ungrateful, presumptuous things to say to him. Who the fuck did she think he was?
He slammed his laptop shut. There was no point glaring at the words. He’d formatted the damned thing to death. Tagged all the characters, put in all the settings, titled all the scenes. But not one word of real writing. He put the laptop on the floor next to him and went to the kitchen to get a drink. But of course the shit-colored apartment was empty as an idiot’s head. Not a fucking thing in there. His stomach growled. He needed to get something to eat too. Real food, not just the cold sandwiches he’d been eating at Mili’s for a week.
He refused to recall the expression on her face when she ate. Refused to think about the warmth of her skin on his fingers, or the feel of her hair, or the way her waist had fit in his hands.
Shit.
He slammed the door of the empty fridge shut.