The Problem with Being Slightly Heroic

by Uma Krishnaswami

  “Just to take a look,” he says.

  “Do you think . . . ? Oh, Chickoo!” cries Dolly, echoing her KHSV character, who began to regain hope after tragedy in just this way.

  “Dolly,” says Chickoo Uncle, stepping up to his role, “don’t you worry.”

  “Oh, Chickoo, how can I not?” Dolly returns unexpectedly from filmi to real. The switch causes Chickoo to flinch, but Dini can see that he’s holding his ground.

  “I feel . . . restrained!” Dolly wails. “Restricted. Impeded and inhibited without my passport. Maybe they won’t let me leave to go home! How can I make it through the opening with this big worry hanging over my head?”

  Her voice rises steadily, threatens to fly right off the edge. Dini’s sure she can hear the light fixtures rattling from the vibrations. “Maybe someone found it,” she ventures.

  “That’s terrible!” Dolly cries. “A stolen passport is much worse than a lost one, no? A hundred times worse. A thousand times, ten thousand!”

  Dini has to admit she’s a little foggy on the matter of lost versus stolen passports. “Can’t we get you another one?” she asks.

  “I should think so,” Dad pipes up, “from the embassy. But it’s Saturday now, and late, so they’ll be closed.” Which is not, after all, quite so helpful. Dini can see he’s trying, but reality has a way of bungling up the best intentions. It’s Dolly’s song all over again—yes-yes-yes, no-no.

  Chickoo Uncle takes both Dolly’s hands in his. “Dolly, meri jaan, can you remember when you saw it last? Where?”

  Dolly wrinkles her fine brow in the effort to remember. Dini finds herself doing some brow wrinkling too, in sympathy or admiration, or both.

  “That Customs place,” Dolly says at last. She thinks maybe she left the passport at the counter, or maybe it fell out of her purse on the way to the curb.

  “It’ll show up,” Maddie says. “I bet the people at the airport are holding it for you.”

  “Maybe they have a lost and found,” Dini agrees. She wishes she could do something real to help, but right at this moment she can’t think what. The nasty thought assails her of someone stealing that passport—maybe even pretending to be Dolly . . . and . . . and . . . Dini forces that thought out of her mind.

  Maddie gives Dini a look that says, clear as clear, This is not good, what I’m thinking.

  “Come on, I’ll take you to the airport,” Dad says to Chickoo Uncle. “Let’s go. We’re burnin’ daylight here.”

  “Why’s your dad talking like an old cowboy movie?” Maddie whispers.

  “He’s been reading Westerns,” Dini explains. “Cowboys and lawmen and stuff.”

  “In India?” says Maddie.

  Dini rolls her eyes. Who would believe it? In Swapnagiri in the Blue Mountains of south India, Dad found a stash of old Westerns once willed to the library by an American expat tea planter, now regrettably deceased. Dini waits to see if Chickoo Uncle gets the obscure idioms that so delight Dad.

  But, “Ha, ha! Burning up daylight. Very clever,” says Chickoo Uncle, apparently needing no translation.

  They march out, Dad and Chickoo, on their heroic errand. Well, marching would work, or perhaps saddling up a couple of fine horses and riding off into the sunset.

  In truth, they neither march nor saddle. They stroll out of the room, which is very bad pacing. Real life could be a filmi dance, Dini thinks, if only people could get their movements properly in sync.

  Chapter Twelve

  Who Will Bake the Cake?

  JUST IN TIME (BECAUSE DINI is starting to feel a bit dizzy from watching her), Dolly quits pacing. This is because her phone has begun to sing. Yes, that is correct. Dolly’s phone does not ring. It sings, Haan-haan-haan, nahin-nahin! Dolly’s ringtone is a syncopated strings-and-synthesizer version of the lead song from KHSV.

  “Yes?” says Dolly, pulling herself together as she answers the phone. “Who’s that? Oh, Mr. Mani!” She gestures to the girls to sit, sit. “It’s only Mr. Mani,” she tells them.

  “The baker,” Dini explains to Maddie as they perch on the edge of the green velvet sofa. “From Dreamycakes Bakery.”

  “Oh yeah, the one who’s scared of monkeys.” Maddie catches on fast. Dini has told her all about the owner of Dreamycakes Bakery in Swapnagiri, a fine pastry chef who yearns for fame and glory and has nightmares about marauding monkeys getting in his way.

  “I didn’t quite hear that,” Dolly says on the phone.

  Mr. Mani’s voice spills out of the cell phone in an inaudible hum, across thousands of miles.

  A pause. Dolly takes a breath. Then, “You mustn’t think of it,” she says. “Of course you must go to London for your shake-off. By the way, what’s a . . . ? Oh, bake-off. Yes, of course you must go bake off, Mr. Mani.” She listens, then says, “Yes, I know. It’s your baby. I do . . . understand. Bye.” She clicks the call to an end and sets the phone down.

  “Good news,” she says, but is that a quiver in her voice? A shiver? A shake? Because her face is not registering good news.

  “Tell us!” Maddie cries, clutching at the soft arms of the green couch.

  The good news is that Mr. Mani has made it into the Guinness World Records in the extra-large confections (with chocolate and floral ingredients) category. He was calling Dolly to apologize. That is because, like the ointment with a fly in it that Dini’s dad sometimes likes to go on about, there is a bad-news part to this good news. Mr. Mani can’t attend the American premiere of KHSV. He has been invited to London for a demonstration bake-off using the secret recipe that has been in his family since the time of his great-grandfather.

  “My grand opening!” Dolly is pacing once more, to and fro and back again. “He was going to bake a cake for it. With rose petals and everything.”

  Here it is again. Yes and no pulling in opposite directions in a great tug-of-war. How wonderful that Mr. Mani’s cake has earned him fame and an invitation to take part in a ritzy-snazzy bake-off demo. How terrible that there’s now no cake for the KHSV grand reception.

  “It’s all ruined,” Dolly says, parting ways with an earring. “So many hopes and dreams. So many fans I’m going to let down.”

  “Oh no!” says Maddie.

  “Oh, Dolly,” says Dini.

  The tension is broken by a knock on the door. Maddie answers it.

  “Room service.” The rose petal milk shakes have arrived.

  Dolly says, “What could I say? He says to me, ‘That cake recipe is my baby! The chance of a lifetime. You’ll understand.’ I tell you, what could I say?”

  “A baby?” says the room service man, setting down the tray with the milk shakes. “My wife’s going to have one. Our first. Oh, I’m so nervous.”

  “Dolly, we still have time,” Dini says, offering her a milk shake.

  “I’m learning to breathe,” says the room service man.

  “It’s just too much,” Dolly protests. “First the passport and now this.” She clutches the milk shake with a strangled cry, like a drowning person clutching a life raft, or possibly like someone who has swallowed her tonsils.

  “So who’s having the baby?” says the room service man.

  “What baby?” Maddie says. “Whose baby?”

  Dolly sips the milk shake and begins to revive. “Nobody’s,” she says. She still sounds a bit strangled, but her tonsils seem to be wandering back to where they belong.

  “An orphan?” Maddie says, alarmed.

  “No, no, no,” says Dini, sinking back into the couch. “Nobody’s having a baby. Dolly was talking about Mr. Mani’s cake.”

  “No baby?” says the room service man.

  “But who will bake the cake for my reception?” demands Dolly.

  “A cake?” says the room service man. “Is that all?” He accepts Dolly’s tip and leaves, disappointed.

  “This is great,” Maddie says, and hurries to add, “the milk shake, I mean.”

  “Yes it is,” Dolly admits.

  Dini sips he
rs. It’s delicious. A little different from Mr. Mani’s but very good.

  Surely the very good milk shake is a sign. The story will turn. Dad and Chickoo Uncle will find that pesky passport, and then they’ll just have to find someone who can bake a really nice cake.

  The phone sings again. “Yes,” says Dolly, but with out her usual sparkle. “What?” she says. “Don’t bother me now. I’m upset and undone. No, no. Auction? Do whatever you like. Am I giving you permission? Of course. Auction the thing, whatever it is. Why not?”

  She hangs up. “Why are so many people bothering me about so many things?” she says plaintively. “What time is it? Is it lunchtime?”

  It is way past lunchtime. “Dolly, shall we get you something to eat?” Dini asks.

  “Just a little something, if you don’t mind,” Dolly says. “I’m too tired to go down.”

  Dini leaps up. “Sure,” she says. “Coming, Maddie?”

  “Thank you, my darlings,” says Dolly. She clicks her cell phone on again. “Soli? Are you there?”

  She’s calling Mr. Soli Dustup, the manager and owner of Starlite Studios, far away in India.

  From the way Dolly carries on talking, it’s clear that she has been unable to reach Mr. Dustup. A person talking to another person sounds very different from one who is doing the necessary but distasteful thing, leaving a voice mail message.

  Dini and Maddie talk their way down in the elevator and out the front door. “I have an idea,” Dini says, “about that cake.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “Why can’t they make it right here, in this restaurant?”

  “Sure. If they can do rose petal milk shakes, . . .”

  “Let’s ask them,” says Dini.

  “Stunning idea,” says Maddie.

  Through the rose garden and around the hotel they go, until they come to a small door all the way in the back. Dini tries it. Closed. Feels locked.

  “Are you sure this is the kitchen?” she says.

  Maddie says, “Yup. Back door. If we go the other way, they’ll just make us sit down and take our order, right? We need to go back in the kitchen to talk to someone.”

  “Good thinking,” says Dini. She herself never knows which way to turn to get somewhere. Maddie’s so good at finding her way around, it’s like she has a compass in her brain. That is useful, as there are so many things to find just now—a cake, a passport, an elephant. It is all quite dizzying.

  “Mmm, smell that?” Maddie says. “That’s the kitchen, all right.”

  Delicious scents curl and waft out into the air. Something frying. Onions? Potatoes? And something tomatoey. Food. Now voices sound from behind the door, accompanied by the clatter of pots and pans. Definitely food.

  “I’m starving,” Dini says. “Aren’t you?”

  Maddie nods. “Stunningly starving,” she says, which makes them laugh. They laugh together, and Dini finds she is unable to stop. Laughter takes over her whole body, so she’s doubled over from it, and she thinks she may be crying next.

  Okay. Enough. Oh! She collects herself. She takes a breath. She knocks-knocks-knocks sharply on that closed, locked door.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Little Nervous

  IN THE KITCHEN OF THE promenade hotel’s Urban Delight Restaurant, where Chef Armend generally rules with an iron ladle, the pace is more relaxed than usual. This is because the chef with the volatile temper and the exacting standards is away. He is in Chicago at a culinary convention, whose attendees he is at this moment probably terrorizing. As a result, Dolly’s order of rose petal milk shakes was peaceably processed, much to the hotel manager’s relief.

  Now, during the dinner shift, the phone rings merrily. Room service orders come in at a brisk clip. Alana, the sous-chef, calls them out as she stirs the soup du jour—cream of fennel—while turning off the oven at the same time so the rolls don’t burn.

  Despite her fancy title, Alana is what people in the everyday world would call an assistant, but today she is in charge. When the knock sounds, she calls, “Get it, Ollie,” without missing a stir.

  Ollie opens the door. Two girls dance in.

  “Sorry,” Alana says, “restaurant entrance is that way.”

  But the girls aren’t leaving. One of them swishes her ponytail in a take-charge kind of way. The other one sticks close to her, in the manner of infantry backup.

  Ollie suspects the ponytail swisher may be a sort of junior Alana. An Alana on training wheels. The world needs such people, to be sure, but they make Ollie a little nervous.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Real Surreal

  “COULD WE GET SOMETHING TO eat?” Dini asks. “Room five oh three?”

  “Call room service.” The woman in the chef’s hat sounds annoyed. “They’ll take your order.”

  She waits for them to leave, but Dini’s not done. Not yet. “And three rose petal milk shakes,” she says, adding, “Please.” She does not mean to be unpleasant, she’s just hungry. Her stomach is sending growly signals to her brain.

  “Ah,” the woman says, “you’re the ones with the milk shake order. How’d you like those shakes?”

  “Great!” say Maddie and Dini together.

  Maddie says, “Dolly’s the one who needs those milk shakes.”

  “Dolly? Are you Dolly?” She turns to Dini.

  “No,” Dini says. “Dolly’s a movie star. She’s totally amazing.”

  “But jet-lagged,” says Maddie. “And tired. And she just lost her passport.”

  “Alana, I heard we had a famous movie star in five oh three,” says the guy unexpectedly.

  “No kidding.” Alana appears to decide that Dini is mostly harmless. “Okay,” she says, “so what do you want to eat with those milk shakes?”

  The sidekick gulps. “But, Alana . . .”

  “What?” she snaps.

  “Chef. Chef Armend. He doesn’t like it when—you know . . . ”

  “Guests wander into the kitchen to place orders?” she demands. “Yes, I know. But, Ollie, I don’t see Chef here right this minute. Do you?” Leaving him to battle his weak knees, she turns to Dini. “So? Know what you want?”

  “Some of that soup,” Dini says. “But can you add some more spices? Dolly likes her soups spicy.”

  “I’ll have some too,” says Maddie. “Not too spicy. And a grilled cheese.”

  “Grilled cheese for me, too,” says Dini. “Can you grate a little chocolate into the soup?”

  Ollie stares at them as if his eyeballs are about to pop out of his head.

  “Move it, Ollie,” says Alana briskly. “There’s a bag of rose petals in the fridge.” She turns to Dini with interest. “Did you say chocolate?”

  “Just a little.” Dini tells her about Mr. Mani, that talented pastry chef in faraway Swapnagiri who puts a little touch of chocolate into everything he makes, including curry puffs.

  “In-teresting,” Alana says.

  “I don’t know, Alana,” Ollie says, tripping over his feet between fridge and counter. “He’ll be—you know—back on Monday.”

  “Who?” says Dini.

  “Chef Armend,” says Ollie, as if she’s supposed to know that. “What’s he going to say?”

  Alana looks at Ollie as if he’s an inchworm peering up at her from a head of cauliflower. “Monday,” she says, grating chocolate into the soup with energy. “Yeah. Well, there’s a whole day between now and Monday, Ollie. Prep those shakes!”

  She spoons some soup into a smaller pot, dusts it with powdered ginger. She considers it, then adds cayenne pepper and cumin. “There,” she says, “now it’s curried fennel soup, woohoo! With a secret ingredient.”

  Ollie gets to work. “Chef’s not going to be wild about rose petal milk shakes.” Or curried fennel soup with secrets. He does not say that, but the thought works its way into the chrome and tile kitchen and hangs in the air.

  The blender whirs sweetly. “Wild?” Alana says over the sound of the motor. “I think wild is
exactly what he’ll be.”

  They are looking at each other in a sparky kind of way. Dini tries to assess that sparkiness. Is it love in the air, or is Alana going to rap Ollie on the side of the head with a spatula? It’s hard to say. Could go either way.

  Dini hesitates. Should she mention the cake? She decides to forge ahead. “There’s one more thing,” she says. “We need a cake.”

  “Now?” Ollie squawks, splattering milk shake onto the counter.

  “No, on the nineteenth,” Dini says.

  “For the grand opening of Dolly’s movie,” Maddie explains.

  Ollie and Alana are back to looking at each other again in that is-it-love-or-not way.

  “So?” Dini urges. “About the cake . . .”

  They say together, “We’ll have to ask Chef Armend.”

  Outside and on their way back, Maddie says, “That chef must be a scary kind of guy.”

  “No kidding,” Dini says. “Sounds surreal, if you ask me.”

  “Totally surreal,” Maddie agrees.

  Surreal. It’s a word they both learned from a DVD special interview with Dolly. She said the movie business was that way. Beyond real, kind of super-real, which is what Dolly herself is, for sure. Really, Dini has to admit, it is quite surreal to think that she, Dini Kumaran—girl who loves movies but still in other ways an ordinary, everyday kind of girl—is now friends with a Number One Star like Dolly.

  But surreal could be good, after all, she thinks, with the dance in rhythmic step and the sound pleasingly pitched and lights transforming ordinary into magical. This could be the real surreal.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Urgent

  From: recall1438@trustuswithyourlife.com.us

  To: kvincenti@ntnlzoo.si.educ, supply@ntnlzoo.si.educ, admin@ntnlzoo.si.educ . . . and 24 others

  Subject: Recall Notice

  Date: Friday, April 8, 2011, 18:23:12 EDT

  Status:!! Urgent

  Please confirm receipt of Recall Notice #05B76T8, attached.

  Remember, workplace security is your friend!