Spice and Secrets

by Suleikha Snyder

  Rahul rose from his office chair, striding toward the hall—and locking his door behind him.

  I’m blind, Priya thought, squeezing her eyes shut. I’m never going to see properly again. She backed up over the threshold of the office, wondering if it was too late to pretend she’d never presented herself for this meeting. It had only seemed polite to say sorry to Ashraf for what Rahul had done…but, clearly, Ashraf did not stand on ceremony. Na—she stifled a hysterical laugh—he didn’t prefer to stand at all. Sprawled beneath Nina Manjrekar like a fur rug, he had priorities above and beyond a lost role in KK’s picture.

  Oh. The tube light flickered in Priya’s brain as she wrenched away from the door and stumbled down the hall. This was why Ashraf had asked to meet at Anandaloka’s offices. Because he would be finishing up his tryst. Bile rose in her throat and she shuddered. Rahul’s stepmother was like a villainess from a serial. Overly made-up, overdressed and over-the-top. The kind of character that made Shona laugh and laugh. But applied to reality, Nina didn’t inspire so much haasi. Nahin, just looking at the woman froze the bits of Priya that weren’t already ice.

  So traumatized was she that as she hastened down the hallway and away from the hideous visuals, she didn’t realize she was on a collision course. She smacked straight center into someone coming round the corner. “Oof!”

  “Sorry!” Sam Khanna exclaimed, grabbing at her to keep them both upright, his narrow features lit with concern. “Arré, Priya!”

  “Nahin, nahin, it’s okay.” Barely taller than her but solid like bricks, Sam packed quite the punch. Like her, he embodied that saying about small packages…and he’d been in a terrible state the last time she saw him, that night at China House. She’d barely paid attention, only knowing that she had to run from Rahul before he saw just how closely her determination and her hunger were wrapped. But Sam had been cursing his ex-wife up one side and down the other…something about his son. About losing his son. And that, she understood without having to pay any attention at all. “Are you okay?” she asked, before she could think better of it.

  Sam didn’t so much as flinch, instead offering an easy shrug. “It is what it is, hain na? Life happens. Sorry you had to see me that way. I’m trying to be on my best behavior lately. After…after The Raj.”

  The oblique reference to the fight he and Vikram had engaged in after her item number was enough to make her squeeze his hand in empathy. Lucky for the boys, that loud, public scene had ultimately led to a happy reunion. A luxury she couldn’t allow herself. He looked at her and saw innocence—just as they all did—but Sam did not realize just how alike they were…how the court of public opinion would happily condemn them both. Her, for being a woman of loose character, for having a child without a husband, and him for being an abomination. Mumbai was not Hollywood, where a gay man could star in hit films openly and a woman could raise six children with her lover and be the most desired actress in the world.

  So they lied. They kept their secrets. And she erased all traces of being Shona’s mother from her face, her body, her soul. In Kolkata, Ma and Baba helped make the illusion a reality, so thorough were their lies to their friends and neighbors. “Don’t change yourself completely, Sam. No one will recognize you. Least of all yourself.” The words were a bit too relevant, a bit too close and a bit too pompous. Priya shook her head, forcing a lighter smile to her lips. “Besides, I’m more used to naughtiness than you think.” She dropped her voice theatrically. “I even know bad words.”

  He widened his eyes in faux horror. “I’m shocked, Priya-ji, shocked. I’m going to ring the Censor Board straightaway!” They shared an easy laugh, before Sam’s expression sobered. “Listen, I don’t know what happened between you and Rahul…but he gave me a chance when no one else would. He believed in me, and I believe in him. Whatever he is doing with this movie…see it through, okay?”

  She couldn’t promise that. She couldn’t promise anything that had to do with Rahul. “Jo hoga so hoga. Life happens, na?”

  Sam reached out, covering her hand with his and giving it a squeeze. Suddenly, he was the one offering comfort and words of advice. “Nahin, Priya-ji, we make life happen. We fight for it and defend it and never let it go. I had to learn that the hard way. So, if you want this comeback, if you want to make something of yourself…you make it happen. Samjhe?”

  Yes. She understood. Far better than Sam Khanna, or anyone else, could possibly imagine.

  Chapter Nine

  Rahul’s place in Bandra was a monstrosity, a sprawling multilevel affair that would’ve bordered on obnoxious had he not redecorated after his father took off to Delhi. He lived along Bandstand, within a rock’s throw of a dozen A-Listers, all of whom had entirely more beastly mansions. Some with floor-to-ceiling pictures of themselves on the walls. He had ego in spades, but he drew a line at staring at his own shakal all day long. Nahin, his favorite thing about the house was the ultramodern kitchen. It was purely his domain. He didn’t keep a cook and only trusted his housekeeper to clean and shop for groceries. If he wasn’t dining out, he made his own meals.

  Tonight, it was dinner for both him and Davey, who was perfectly content to sit at the center island with a glass of Pinot Noir and critique his methods. “It’s so gauche to cook for yourself,” he mocked. “You’re putting some poor thakur out of work, you know.”

  Rahul stopped chopping cilantro just long enough to gesture emphatically with his knife. “Says the man with the Domino’s number committed to memory. Yaar, it’s not just American pizza in India, it’s shite American pizza in India. You’re pathetic.”

  “I’m pathetic? I’m not the one upsetting the Bollywood apple cart just so I can be in movies with my ex-girlfriend. There’s one enormous snag in your cunning plan, by the way: Priya’s secretary told us to sod off.”

  His brows rose in amusement. From what he knew of Kabir, the man was far too well mannered for such inventive directions. “Those exact words? Really?”

  “Creative license.” Shaw smiled the thin-lipped smile that had always made their university professors nervous, because it usually preceded some brazen act of mischief. “Suffice it to say, your heartwarming onscreen reunion is off the table.”

  “For now.” He shrugged and tapped his fingers on the countertop, thoughtfully. Rahul was a long-range planner, not so concerned with the short-term successes and failures. For instance, when he was in second year and Davey in his last term, hadn’t they spent four months plotting how to get the vice-chancellor’s desk out into the cricket pitch? They’d managed, of course. Brilliantly. “Remember old Grossy’s desk?”

  Shaw chuckled, sipping at his wine. “Oh, so it’s to be that sort of a rout, is it? My deepest sympathies to Ms. Roy. She hasn’t got a chance. I hate cilantro, by the way.”

  “Who hates dhania? That’s just unnatural.” Rahul knew Davey was just taking the piss out of him but couldn’t resist repaying it in kind, scowling at him like a disapproving parent. “You’ll eat it, and you’ll damn well like it.”

  The simmering rogan josh just needed the artistic garnish, the bulk of its flavor from the ground dhania he’d put in the lamb curry’s initial spice mix. In any form, coriander was Rahul’s favorite spice. It was rich and earthy, but with a surprising kick. Like Priya…

  “Oh, do stop mooning over her.” Shaw shuddered. “You’ll make me lose my appetite.”

  “As if you’re not lighting incense at your Sunita shrine every morning? And, since I’m on the subject, what about her? What are those chances, yaar?”

  “She loves me. Naturally. Who wouldn’t?” Sarcasm weighed down the answer like rocks sending it to the bottom of the sea. “Sunita’s got walls as high as the Qutb Minar, Rahul. I’m damned lucky that I’m a climber and used to the challenge. That husband of hers must’ve really done a number on her.”

  “Sam’s not all bad,” Rahul defended instinctively. He had school ties with both men from different parts of his life, and he hated to have to pick sides
. He wouldn’t pick sides. “Now, he’s downright decent. Practically domestic. Do you want to meet him?” He made a show of reaching for his mobile, which lay a safe distance from the range. “I can ring him right now and ask him to come round. We can be one big happy family.”

  “Bollocks.” Davey made a face. “I don’t need to make nice with the ex. Not yet. Sunny already thinks I’m the second coming of the British conquest. No need for her to think I’m in league with the enemy as well.”

  “Third coming,” he corrected, smoothly. “The Stones and the Beatles were the second. The important question here, yaar, is if she wants you“

  “Oh, she wants me, all right. About as bloody much as I want her. It practically burns. Being in a room with her is like touching fire.”

  “Then go get her. Because, God knows, someone needs a heartwarming reunion.”

  Chapter Ten

  He hadn’t really thought she would do it, come round to his place. He’d expected tart remarks about how she didn’t answer summonses and a follow-up SMS about how she’d see him at the studio on Monday, assuming he’d successfully removed his head from his arse by then. But, for all his scripting, all she’d said was “I’ll be there,” and, lo, two hours later she’d appeared on his doorstep.

  Davey’s rooms were the drab, colorless tones of temporary housing. There was nothing personal about the beige furnishings, the straw mats on the walls that were the Indian equivalent of starving artist hotel paintings. In her two-toned salwar suit, Sunita stood out like a bird of paradise, all brightness and energy. “Go and get her,” Rahul had said, but it was so much more satisfying to have her come to him. To realize that, with her here, he finally felt like he was home.

  “What do you want, Mr. Shaw?” She was pacing the floor like a caged lioness, the metaphor all the more apropos due to the orange-yellow hues of her clothes. A lioness, a sunset, an inferno. God, just looking at her drove him to poetic heights. And to madness. “Why did you call me over here?”

  There was no way she didn’t already know. It was in the way she held herself, the way she’d looked at him when she stepped over the threshold and the way she was trying not to look at him now. Likely she’d drawn up all sorts of scenarios on the drive over…and every single one of them was probably spot-on.

  “You really have to ask?” he forced past the sudden thickness of his tongue.

  “Yes. I do.” Her brows snapped together like curtains being pulled shut, and her body stopped its restless motion. This wasn’t the volcanic fury he was used to, those delicious daily eruptions that fired the blood. No, it was something else, just as volatile but leashed tight. “Tell me your terms. What do you expect? Public ya private? Dinner dates or just the dessert? Just…fun?” Her voice caught on the word, and what was going through that beautiful brain of hers, he couldn’t have guessed on pain of death.

  Davey had all sorts of answers for her, each one filthier than the last. But he reined in his baser impulses…at least the voluntary ones, if not the ones straining at the fly of his trousers. “I expect whatever you’re willing to give me.” For now. “For God’s sake, Rani Sahiba, don’t tell me you don’t feel this, too.” He’d given her space when she first walked in, but now he closed it, metaphorical whip and chair at the ready. “Don’t tell me you don’t need this…that you haven’t been thinking of it every day since we met.”

  “I don’t. I haven’t. I’ve learned all too well the flaws of men. I know you are weak, and if an affair keeps you on point at the office, then who am I to argue?” Her shrug wasn’t as carefree as she wanted him to believe. There was a tremor behind it, and her fists were clenched, knuckles white. “I can make love to you if it means keeping our show running smooth, but that is all it is. A deal. A time-pass.”

  Liar. He smiled at her, the smug, officious smile that he knew drove her crazy. “Then you have two choices, darling: You can walk out that door and pretend we didn’t just break every law on the books about sexual harassment in the workplace…or you can take the left into my bedroom, where you’ve precisely one minute before I come in and tear your clothes off.”

  She wasn’t quite good enough to hide the flinch, the widening of her eyes…and the sharp intake of breath that told him she wanted him just as desperately as he wanted her. And she knew it. So she swiftly turned away from him—and turned left.

  She’d done it. She’d actually gone and bloody done it…and now she was standing in Davey Shaw’s bedroom, staring at the smokes on his night table instead of the wide expanse of his bed. Sunita didn’t know what demon had possessed her: making her come to his flat and then speaking from her throat as calmly as if they were discussing a business arrangement and not the prospect of having sex.

  Jai had begged her to get a life, to have fun, to make room. What she was more than likely making was the world’s second biggest mistake—the first being Sam. But she hadn’t chosen the door, had she? Bas. The decision was done. Sunny lit a cigarette with a shaking hand before placing the pack and matches back on the nightstand. She counted in her head to thirty, inhaling and exhaling so frenetically that she was nearly down to the filter before twenty-five. Before the last number was even a thought, the bedroom door banged like a gunshot.

  “Sunita.” Davey stood there on the threshold, that damned handsome, English face of his so smug and beautiful and his voice a husky growl. The way he said her name was maddening. It skipped off his tongue in three distinct syllables, like Lolita. Sue-knee-ta. So completely wrong, so lacking in flow and softness, and yet it made her pulse heat.

  She stubbed out the cigarette in the waiting ashtray, wondering with a sudden bit of internal hysteria if she should pop a Chiclet before she kissed him. She’d never bothered with Sam…they’d both done plenty of damage to their lungs before doing damage to each other…and it had been so long since she’d slept with anyone else that she’d given no thought to the occasional nervous smoke. God, she was nervous now. And he was so…so British.

  He crossed the room in two strides. “Sunita, you’re going to think yourself right out of this. Stop it.” His fingers closed around the end of her dupatta, pulling the cloth from her shoulders. Despite his earlier threat, he didn’t tear it; he only tugged, letting the scarf fall across the floor like a wave of yellow silk. And he didn’t let her hesitate, or allow her to continue puzzling over more irrelevant details. He just wrapped her in his arms and bent to kiss her, laughing softly when he tasted the smoke. He, too, tasted faintly of ash. “They are, after all, mine, darling…and, tonight, so are you.”

  I’m no one’s, a faint voice in the back of her head cried out. But the harder, wilder press of his mouth silenced it. And, all of a sudden, it was not Davey Shaw doing the ripping of clothes. Nahin. It was her. Sunny pulled his shirt from its loose tuck into his waistband, practically popping the buttons from their threads as she undid it and pushed it off his shoulders. He was broad-shouldered but otherwise lean, tanned by the Mumbai sun. A light dusting of fair hair clung to the muscled expanse of his chest. Sunny wanted to mark him, to bite him and claw him, stamping him as her hunt for the night, but doing so would mean breaking their kisses…and that was impossible. Davey kissed her like he honestly meant it. Like he cared.

  It had been so long since she’d felt cared for. Cherished. Wanted. Sunita fumbled at the fall of his trousers, eager for more of the dangerously addictive sensation. But Davey batted her hands away, backing her against the bed and tumbling them both to the mattress. “My turn, Rani Sahiba. Let me keep my promise.”

  Only, again, he acted with tenderness instead of violence. He didn’t rend her kurta in a brutish haste to get to her. He took his sweet time, unknotting the ties of her pyjama and sliding it down over her hips…stroking and kissing every millimeter of skin he uncovered. He pushed up her tunic with an equally unhurried pace, tracing the curve of her belly with his tongue before unhooking her bra and helping himself to that bounty. He touched her until she was mad for it. Mad for him. And only
when she was half out of her mind with needing him—begging in Hindi and Gujurati and odd bits of Marathi—did he reach for a condom.

  “Just a time-pass?” he murmured as he sank into her. “Not. Bloody. Likely.”

  Chapter Eleven

  With the bulk of the rains behind it and the cool air coming in off the sea, Mumbai didn’t smell so much like wet decay. Nahin, to Priya it almost smelled like hope. Walking along Chowpatty Beach, past all the food stalls with their fragrant wares, all she could imagine was sharing some pau bhaji with Shona and running down to the sand to immerse their feet in the water. That was what a mother did: spent time with her child. Not this foolish folly she’d embarked upon, looking over the revised dialogues for Khoon and trying to avoid Rahul’s searing gaze and Ashraf’s bitter judgment.

  Role thievery was not so uncommon in the industry. It was like a party game, taking gifts from the table and then stealing them from one another’s laps. But Ashraf had won his stardom, na? He’d worked for it, just as she was working for hers. Only to have Rahul storm in and take it as though he was owed it. Would he take Shona from her in the same fashion?

  She would be helpless to stop him. For even with all of her glamour and increasing industry currency, she was still just a woman. At the mercy of a society that saw her as nothing, even as they worshipped their many-armed goddesses. Anita Didi did the best she could to prepare her schoolgirls for the future, to teach them and shape them and strengthen them…but it was impossible to fight the inevitable.

  Priya could think of only two women who had truly flouted Indian convention: Indira Gandhi and Phoolan Devi, the Bandit Queen. Both had been assassinated. What did that say for all other bold women? Film actress or seamstress…it didn’t matter. They were prisoners, and her measure of freedom here in Bombay…it had come with a devastating price.