Ishq Factors

by Suleikha Snyder

  “What’s your name?” he’d murmured in Bengali as her spine stiffened in alarm. Or maybe something else—a tingling, dangerous feeling that she hadn’t gotten more than once all through high school.

  Good boys weren’t so blatant, so forward. Neither were good girls. But Shams—her nickname couldn’t be any more appropriate—had never really fit that mold. Just like she didn’t fit in the traditional clothes her parents stuffed her into whenever they came to India in the summers. She’d been American too long. It showed in the way she walked, tumbled out of her lips with every word of her accented Bengali and glistened as the sunlight bounced off the rims of her Lens Crafters glasses.

  She’d turned to her oldest didi, meeting the faint disapproval of her cousin’s dark eyes as she answered, “Shams. Shammoli.”

  “Where are you from? How long are you staying? Can I see you again?” He peppered her with questions, and she sprinkled careful salt in return, pretending to chat happily with her cousins as she revealed she wasn’t from the neighborhood, would be gone by August and…and, yes, he could see her again.

  Azad had sensed the Other, the wildness, in her from across the crowded market…but she, not nearly as savvy, didn’t understand his wildness until he told her his name. Until her cousin sisters’ footsteps faltered, and they whisked her past the neighborhood soccer field, toward home.

  Azad. It wasn’t a Hindu name. Not even a little bit. And this wasn’t okay. Not even a little bit. Tilo didi and Pinky didi and Uma didi, who were her constant companions, her buffer between the older India and the emerging modern one, fluttered around her like bright birds, saying that the conservative side of their family wouldn’t approve such an “affair.” They lectured her about how this was bad and wrong and completely against the rules. Like telling a guy your name was something so scandalous. Like it was “Romeo and Juliet” after a five-minute non-conversation on a dirt path.

  “So what?” she’d told her flock of birds. “I don’t care. It’s not like we’re getting married. I’ll probably never see him again.”

  Two and a half weeks later, in a movie theater on the other side of the para so no one who knew her family could possibly catch her out on a date, Shammoli understood. She got it. Her knees were covered, but everything else was stripped totally naked. Her blood was roaring in her ears, drowning out the dialogue. She couldn’t see anything on the screen, only aware of Azad’s profile through her peripheral vision. He looked good, smelled even better…first date cologne, applied a little too liberally in deference to the heat.

  Shams wanted to lick him, to clamber out of her seat, join him in his and find out if his inky black hair was as soft as it looked.

  All she could actually do was hold his hand like an awkward kid at a 6th grade dance…except it wasn’t awkward, she wasn’t a kid, and the dance…the dance was skin to skin, their fingers entangling with a sensual slide—below the armrest, so nobody could see it if they were to glance down the aisle. It wasn’t even touching. Most other 18 year olds wouldn’t consider this the dugout, much less a base, but Shams could barely breathe. Her whole body felt flushed and feverish. The lustful frenzy was all inside her. Strange and forbidden and hungry. Too slick and too wet and too much. She couldn’t move, because the friction of her thighs was almost as much torture as their hands linking.

  This was what they hadn’t spelled out when she read “R&J” in 9th grade: that being with someone she shouldn’t even talk to would fry her circuits, knock out her power lines and make her want nothing but Azad every minute of every day. This was terrifying and exhilarating all at once. This was an affair. Shams bit back a moan—really, sincerely bit, because she tasted blood—and tried not to fidget. She tried not to feel…everything. But Azad’s fingers were like silk wrapped in velvet wrapped in sex, and when he tilted his head toward hers and whispered her name, she gasped like he’d kissed her full on the mouth.

  They would never get to kiss, of course. Never hug. Never drink too many cheap beers and wind up in the backseat of a car. They would never exchange letters. Never even think of each other, except in black and white, out-of-focus “what if” memories. But Shams knew she’d always remember being this turned on: crazy and panting and squirming in her seat, letting her head spill back against the theater seat as her lower body swirled like drizzles of honey. She’d never come before—not if this was how it honest to God felt to do it for real—and here, now, she was doing it without prompting, without foreplay, without Azad and a theater full of people even knowing.

  I don’t care. It’s not like we’re getting married. I’ll probably never see him again.

  She was drowning in wonder—gorgeous, insane, unreal wonder—but not in surprise. Azad, her cousins had warned her, meant “freedom.”

  Last Call

  To: Undisclosed Recipients

  From: administrator@collective.org

  Subject: The Lottery

  Dear New Yorker,

  It is our duty to inform you that your number has been pulled in the Lottery for this month. You are a winner. Your bank accounts will be frozen, your belongings repossessed. Prepare for the inevitable as per the instructions in previous communications.

  Never forget that you are an asset to the Collective and a boon to our community. Your sacrifice will not go unmarked.

  Together, we are creating a better, cleaner New York.

  The bar was dark. Empty. Even in Hell’s Kitchen, closing up after last call on a Tuesday night was the graveyard shift. Appropriate for Nisha, if nothing else. She stifled a weary laugh, hunching low on the barstool and wondering, for what felt like the umpteenth time, if she was making a huge mistake. She’d run through this evening a million times in her head — practically written a script for it — ever since getting the e-mail from The Collective. Now, as it ticked down toward zero hour, she wasn’t sure she could take it all the way.

  You have to, said the voice that was too selfish to be her conscience. This is your only shot. It was horrible. She was horrible. Don’t be such a martyr. Take what you want, before it’s too late. That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Those four little words? “Before it’s too late”? Some killed because of it, some died because of it… the only thing that was certain was that The Collective’s will was inevitable. She was 28 years old, not entirely sure she was going to see 29, and there was a day that desperately needed to be seized. A day. A night. A man.

  She watched Josh wipe down the wells, rearrange the mats, and put the wine bottles back in the wooden slots on the walls. He waved away Perez, the bus boy, and then checked his Blackberry, thumbing through the messages with a somber set to his jaw. He hadn’t asked her to go, even though the door had long since slammed behind the last real patron. Instead, they occupied a kind of companionable silence as he went about the business of tallying up his checks.

  Occasionally he looked up at her, thick-lashed blue eyes coming around to her face like a lighthouse beam. As if she needed him to guide her to safe harbor. Maybe she did. The bar napkin before her — all that was left of her slowly savored single malt — was shredded into a pile of confetti. Her chest was heavy. Her throat was tight, unwilling to release the words she’d been rehearsing for days.

  “Nish?” he prompted finally, coming to a stop before the spot she’d carved out for herself by the draft taps. “Are you okay?”

  No. But how did you tell someone that? How did you confide in someone who was, and yet wasn’t, a stranger? My number is up. I’m scared. I want you to hold me. “I have a bucket list,” was what eventually came out of her mouth.

  “I’m sorry, what?” In the dimness, his sudden shade of pale was like a floodlight.

  “I have a bucket list,” she repeated, like someone might say ‘I have a Golden Retriever.’ And she made herself get out the rest just as benignly. “You’re at the top of it.”

  He was an actor when he wasn’t bartending, and a pretty good one if his reaction was anything to go by. He didn’t flinch. Didn�
�t look horrified. All he did was reach for her hand. His grip was as firm and reassuring as his voice was light. “Shouldn’t that spot be reserved for George Clooney?”

  “Uh-uh. Ryan Gosling… and then you.”

  “I’m flattered.” Josh’s thumb caressed the side of her hand. She wondered if he’d learned it in a class on blocking… how to look like you’re comforting someone in one easy step. “What’s this really about?”

  “I’ve been coming here every Friday and Saturday for two years. What do you think it’s about?” His eyes were too blue this close. Too ‘I think you might be crazy so I’m treading carefully.’ She picked a safer spot to look: over his shoulder at the neatly lined bottles of flavored vodka. “Have you ever seen me with anyone? Heard me and the girls talk about our boyfriends?” Of course he hadn’t. Nish, Liza, and Carly… they were all single, with Nish’s condition even more rare. “Jesus was 33 when he died, you know. And probably a virgin. By all accounts, I’m going to follow in his footsteps.”

  Josh’s sharp intake of breath echoed through the room. “Stop it. You’re not dying.”

  “I could be.” Haltingly, she explained herself. The lottery. The test. The sacrifice. He knew those three words. Everybody in the city did, even if they pretended to bury the syllables beneath the crackle of MTA conductor announcements or the blare of a car horn. Everybody knew that their time would come, that their time did come. “And if this is what’s ahead for me, I want to have one good memory to hold onto. I want it to be you.”

  She felt the loss of Josh’s touch like a physical ache. He rocked backward, against the polished oak of the shelves, rubbing his knuckles against his jaw. “Nisha…” It was as if he were trying to remember his dialogue, desperate to call, “Line!” She was cruel to do this to him. To ask it of him. She knew that. But the alternative was to never know what it would be like to kiss him. To be with him. To be with anyone. And she couldn’t bear it. Not on top of everything else.

  When he found his words, they were simple. Quiet. “I have a girlfriend,” he reminded.

  Sara, who worked at the Met. She hung around for a lot of Josh’s shifts, friendly but territorial. Nisha couldn’t fault her for that. If Josh were hers, she’d be territorial, too. “So call and ask for permission,” she suggested, not entirely serious. “Surely she’ll give you a free pass to fulfill a girl’s dying wish?”

  Josh flinched. “That’s not funny, Nisha.”

  She picked at bits of shredded napkin, forcing a smile. “I have to laugh. Otherwise I’ll cry and scare you even more.”

  “I know what The Collective means. I know what it demands.” He was painfully gentle. “You’re not scaring me. You’re worrying me.”

  “I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever you can give me. Even if it’s a ‘no.’ I just… I had to try, you know?” And it was there, in that moment, that Nisha’s whisky-fueled bravado shattered. On the word “try.” She shifted on the barstool, away, shutting her wet eyes and choking raw noise against her palm.

  In the history of pickup lines, “fuck me, because I might die” had to be the worst. But when had she ever succeeded at something like this? Hadn’t her whole love life so far been a failure? Why should now be any different? Her shoulders shook with a mess of anger and humiliation and ghastly gallows humor. Her head was buzzing with exit strategies: a list of new bars to try, backup plans for a pity fuck.

  She didn’t register that he’d moved out from around the bar to her side until his hands came down on her shoulders.

  “Why me? Of all people? We barely know each other.”

  “We know each other better than most people who hook up in a bar,” she pointed out. “I know you’re kind and you’re sweet and you’re funny. Be my sacrifice, Josh. That’s all I’m asking.”

  He pulled her flush against him then, fitting her head just below his chin. His black button down was soft against her cheek, faded from multiple washings. It was the kind of hug perfect for the end of the night, fond and comforting and edged with the car bomb he’d done with a customer an hour ago. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Nish,” he said. “You’re reacting to a terrible situation. Grabbing for the closest thing… and I’m not sure it should be me.”

  There was a bare patch of skin at the open vee of his collar, begging to be kissed. So she did. She pressed her mouth to it. “I’m sure,” she whispered. “It’s the only thing I’m sure of right now.” My number is up. I’m scared. I want you to hold me. She said all these things aloud… and then she added one more thing. “Fuck me because I might die, Josh… and because I’ve wanted you to since the day I met you.”

  He made a noise that was part groan and part swear… and then he cupped her face and lowered his lips to hers, kissing her so soft, so sweetly, it was barely a kiss at all. “I won’t break,” she assured.

  “I might,” he laughed, shakily. Then, he kissed her again, as if a script told him. ‘Harder’ and a director’s notes ordered, ‘Be confident.’

  Nisha arched up into him, winding one hand in his hair. The weight in her chest, the pit in her stomach, gave way to delightful little tremors and a coiling heat. It was like the first sip of a Macallan 18: smooth and honeyed. But she knew that, for him, she could very well be the over-tart sweetness of a bad apple martini. Something he was drinking because the situation demanded it, not by choice. “It’s okay.” She began working the buttons of his shirt, sliding her fingers beneath the cloth to stroke his bare skin. “Pretend I’m Sara if you have to. I won’t know the difference.”

  He shuddered. Maybe from her touch. Maybe from her words. “Jesus, Nisha. I’m not pretending you’re Sara.” His mouth ghosted across her temple, her cheek, her jaw, before returning to hover just above hers. “I know who you are,” he said, like it was a promise. Or a curse. And then he was lifting her up, off of the bar stool and depositing her on top of the bar itself, sitting her on the edge so he could move between her legs.

  He started the scene anew, with motivation she didn’t have to feed him, shrugging out of his shirt and then coming back to her with an intensity that belied his everyday even temperament. Every touch, every caress of his lips against her skin, was hungry. Nisha couldn’t catch her breath, and didn’t want to. She didn’t want to think, to second-guess. She’d put this in motion — okay, the Collective had — and there was no turning back. She gave herself up to the kisses, to the cautious exploration of his body. She’d never touched so much bare skin, never been held this close… and likely never would be again.

  Numbers were meat; they were blood and bone for the harvest. She would reap what the Collective had sown when they took over the city. So now she let passion take her over. Reckless, shameless, ill-advised… it didn’t matter. All that mattered was Josh tugging up the skirt of her carefully considered slip dress to reveal her even more carefully considered silk underwear. She’d dressed with hope she didn’t have a right to. Hope that had, somehow, borne fruit.

  “Oh, man. Oh, Nish.” There was reverence and regret tied up in how his fingers slipped under the waistband of her panties and found her heat.

  She palmed him through his jeans, acclimating herself to the length and breadth of his cock. She’d never touched one before; she’d never done any of this… never trusted anyone enough. This was a study in both firsts and lasts. “Josh… Josh, I…”

  “It’s okay. It’s okay, I’ve got this,” he reassured, like what she wanted was as simple as a drink order. He swept her up, carrying her into the back room. The bar’s small office was just big enough for the manager’s desk, a chair and a truly ugly loveseat. It was then and only then that he unbuckled his belt, unzipped his jeans and made the final moves to fulfill her insane request.

  “Josh, if you don’t want to…” She offered him one last out.

  “Stop it. I want to,” he interrupted. “I will totally see this through.” He pulled her close against him, pushing her panties aside — tearing the cloth to get to her — and pressing hi
mself against her. Hot. Hard. Ready. And then it was his turn to give her an out… to pause and do one last status check. “Don’t you want romance, Nish? Do you really want to do this here?”

  “I’ve been waiting for romance my whole life. It’s how I got here.” She dragged him back down to her, fisting her hand in his soft, dark hair and locking her legs around his hips. Her forward momentum pushed him into her, past the pain and the very last second-guess.

  “Fuck,” he gasped out.

  “Exactly.”

  Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes, into hours, while their foreheads touched and their bodies took measure. It hurt, but it was a bearable ache — like the insistent buzz of a tattoo artist’s needle. Then Josh began to move. It was slow at first. Excruciatingly, wonderfully, slow. She didn’t know anyone could have so much self-control, so much compassion… but, after all, hadn’t he agreed to this in the first place? This mercy mission, this act of charity?

  The sofa was threadbare against her back, as soft as he was firm and reassuring. She sank into it, into him, wrapping her arms around his broad back and telling him all the things she’d never get to say to anyone else. Yes. I need you. Don’t leave me. And as the heat coiled inside her like a gradually tightening knot, she held on to the one thing that she didn’t dare say aloud: that she could love him if she were allowed the years for it.

  I was right about you. You were worth it.

  He sped up the tempo of his thrusts, and she met them instinctively, wanting to ease the ache, the tension that locked her breath and her bones. He reached between them, stroking where they were joined, pushing her towards the edge. This was what she’d come for. This was what she’d craved. This was what she would take with her when the Collective took their due.