“Such drama.” I shook my head. “What do you want, then?”
He flung the bent crescent moon from his hair to the ground. “I want out of this paper pushing, meeting-holding, five-year-planning job and back on a horse. I hate this.”
“Too bad,” I said coolly. “The only thing you can do is wait for the pyramid to die, and rebuild.”
“But that’s my whole religion! I’m on every continent on the planet now! I can’t throw away centuries of hard work! Anyway,” Shiva added sulkily, “what do you think you can do about it?”
“I think we can do better than nothing.” I sent Kama my get-with-the-program look. “I think we agree that your sexual austerity program has not met with success?”
“A lot of sex-starved Indian women would argue with you there,” Shiva growled.
“No, I think they would argue with you,” I said smoothly, not willing to be lured into blasting him with another dousing. “Worse, they would ignore you. No one is currently the anointed Hindu god or goddess of sensual love. The cardboard figure of spiritual love, which you set up in my husband’s place, is not satisfying customer demand. In consequence, you are losing devotees by the thousands. And whom do they worship instead? Bollywood stars. Rock musicians. Supermodels and athletes. Persons,” I said, for I saw that Shiva, ever impatient when someone else was talking, was getting restless, “persons who do not bow down to Shiva.”
“Rub it in,” he said grumpily.
“Now consider my offer. Return us to our roles as deities of sensual love. What do you gain?”
“A pain in the ass.”
“What’s one more pain in the ass to the advantage of retaining all those wandering devotees? Now they make offerings to the newcomers by buying records and going to the cinema. These are offerings to gods who owe you nothing. Anoint us again, and your devotees will make offerings in your temples to gods who bear your imprimatur, gods who acknowledge—after the manner of major shareholders on the board of your corporation—your leadership as Chief Executive.”
The god of destruction eyed me narrowly. “Two pains in the ass.”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I’m a lawyer. They have to pay to call me names.”
“And you get what out of this? A wedding ring?” Shiva said scornfully.
“I get godhood on equal footing with the god of sensual love.”
He scowled. “And a seat on the board. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it?”
“Hey,” Kama said in a worried voice behind me. “If you think for one minute I’ll put on a monkey suit—”
“Quiet, darling,” I muttered. “I like wearing suits.” To Shiva I said, “Of course. We will be heading up a new division—sacred sensual love. The priests will love it,” I added cynically. “Imagine what they can charge for blessed lubricating oils and sanctified handcuffs.”
“And copies of the Kama Sutra,” Kamadeva said behind me.
I turned to him. “Am I doing this or are you?”
He put his hand on my arm. “Move over, honey.”
“We have a Kama Sutra already,” Shiva said.
My eyes flashed. “The Ananga Ranga, yes. Full of instructions on how to suppress women.”
“The new Kama Sutra,” Kamadeva interrupted, “is fully updated, with instructions on safe sex, photos, an encyclopedia of new kinks for the twenty-first century, and…” He winked at me. “The ebook version has a soundtrack and embedded links to video. Smoking hot?” He made a very old, vulgar Indian gesture. “Trust me.”
I eyed him perplexedly. “What—”
“I’ve been working on it for a week,” Kama confessed. “You seemed to like the idea when I brought it up.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “You’re really rewriting it?”
“Completely. For example, the old strap-ons chapter is a mess.”
“Are we done here?” Shiva said briskly. He flicked his wrist up and a watch appeared on it.
I returned my attention to him. “I’ll forward the papers to your office in the morning. You can messenger the ashes back with them when they’re signed…within twenty-four hours, if you please.”
Shiva sent me an unpleasant look that encompassed my lawyer clothes from head to toe. “Fine. See you in board meetings,” he said and slouched back into the temple.
We watched him shrink until he could walk through the mighty temple doors and disappear inside.
I was trembling from head to foot.
“Are we done?” Kama said. “That was amazing.”
I took a long breath that came in shaky and went out steady. “Thank you.” I looked at him and found him beaming wearily at me. “It won’t be the same, Kama. I won’t be your sidekick. And someone has to sit in meetings and keep the board honest.”
He shook his head, smiling, and shrugged. “What, me worry?”
I socked him hard on the shoulder.
“Hey, take it easy,” said my husband. “Where did you leave your car?”
I whistled. My pigeon vahana swooped down off an upper tier of temple carvings and landed at my feet. Suka lit beside her and began preening her, bumping up against her, and making macho parrot noises.
Kama laughed. “Okay then. Back to your place? I want to show you what we can do in the shower.”
I caught my breath. “Good grief, yes. You smell like an asphalt mixer.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and brought his lips close to mine. I shivered all the way down to the soles of my feet. My toes curled. Goose bumps rose on my nape. Heat rushed over me and left me limp and eager.
Against my lips, my husband whispered, “And you love it.”
We got our shower, but we barely had time to mess up the sheets in my bedroom when I heard my laptop ringing.
“It’s my mother,” I said apologetically, sitting up.
“No! Call her later!” His hand came up to drag me back.
I was already sliding off the bed. “I’ll just be a minute!” I promised.
The laptop rang and rang and rang. I stumbled through the jungle that was my living room, stubbing my toes in the dark because the ceiling fixture was covered with vines. When I finally located the laptop and hauled it out from under a bush, it had stopped ringing.
Mummy had left a long message. I listened to it twice, my eyes filling with tears, and went back to my husband in bed.
“She’s planning a big wedding.”
“She’s—what?”
“I sent her a quick e-mail reply. I said it has to be before three weeks or after six weeks. Shiva should deliver those ashes soon, and I’ll want to be sure you are fully put back together. I won’t run any risk of you going foom while I’m gone.”
“While you’re—dammit, Rathi, where are you going?” He sat up looking adorably tousled and grumpy.
“Back to Delhi, of course. You can come in a week or so. The wedding itself will take at least five days. Longer if Mummy can talk Papa into it. Dresses—flowers—invitations—all these things take time. And I want to pay for some of it. It will take me ages to talk her into that. She’s been saving up to marry me off, but I know that woman. Her eyes are bigger than her stomach.”
He groaned. “Five days?”
I giggled at his expression. “Elephants at the very least.”
He sent me a long gloomy look. “I suppose they won’t let me touch you while we’re waiting to get hitched.”
I swallowed. “’Fraid not.”
“Can’t we get married here at the courthouse? You can invite all your lawyer friends.” He seemed to struggle and finally added, “You can invite your crazy apsaras.”
They were his crazy apsaras, but I didn’t say so.
“My generous love.” I straightened the hair falling into his eyes. “I want a wedding too. My mother needs it. It will totally reconcile her to all this.” I leaned toward him, pleading. “I need her. I need my family. They want to feel that this is going to be a happy ending for me, to be proud of me as the
y have always been proud of me. I can’t take that away from them.”
He made a long, whiny, dramatic noise and threw himself onto his back, staring tragically at the ceiling. “I’m gonna die if you don’t fuck me!” he wailed.
The laptop rang again in the next room.
I got up and closed the bedroom door. Then I climbed into bed beside my once and future bridegroom. I snuggled close to him where he lay glaring at the ceiling with resentment.
I kissed his neck tenderly and whispered, “I’ll save you.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Homecoming. I realized, as my plane landed in Delhi, that I had not prepared myself for this moment. Clouds hung over the squat tenements around the airport, and the monsoon season’s new grass lay flat beside the runway as the wind of the plane’s passage pressed it down. I felt utterly helpless. I had deliberately pretended that it wasn’t happening, for fear that my parents would reject me when I arrived, for fear that they would find new reasons for sending me away. As the plane emptied, I realized what a fool I had been. Coach passengers exited past me while I pretended I couldn’t find my handbag under the seat in front of me. The flight attendant hovered. I found my bag. Then I shoved it back under the seat and covered my face.
I felt a touch on my shoulder. “Miss? Is everything all right?” The flight attendant stood over me, holding out his hand as if to help me up. On his wrist, I saw a tattoo of a green parrot with a scarlet beak and a ring around its neck. I looked up wildly. He was a thin young Indian with old eyes.
I swallowed. “Suka?”
“I will help you go wherever you wish to go,” he said, bobbing his head like a bird.
I’m not alone.
I realized I had never been alone. The only thing that had made me feel alone was the lack of my husband.
“Just nerves,” I said, and twitched a smile. I fished my bag out, marched off the plane, and onto Indian soil for the first time in twenty-five years. The lofty windows of IGI Terminal 3, new since I was a child, poured light down on me. My ears rang with Hindi and Punjabi and all the voices of home. Fried samosas sat in neat golden rows in their stainless steel trays right next to McDonald’s. Quite a change from the smells of hot chili and fresh-squeezed lime I had left behind all those years ago. I walked, stunned and starving, through the airport.
Mummy and Papa met me at baggage claim. By then I had smelled too much, seen too much, heard too much. Already tears ran down my face. What would they think? I would seem so weak to them. Mummy looked thinner than she did on Skype. She opened her arms to me, and I fell upon her like a rag doll.
“Oh my love,” she kept saying, petting my hair. “Forgive me. I have waited so long. I was so afraid for you. Forgive me, forgive me.” I pulled loose and bent to her feet, and she raised me into her arms again. “Come, come, you must greet Papaji before he expires from missing you.”
I turned and nearly collapsed before my Papa, and he too raised me and clutched me fiercely. “Welcome home, little swan,” he whispered.
Mummy outdid herself. She had set the wedding for two months away. I knew she’d been saving, but I ordered an electronic bank draft for twenty thousand dollars to help out. I have no idea what Kama sent. Whatever it was, Papaji was beside himself with satisfaction and Mummy hired the Imperial Scarlet Delhi Military Band and an elephant for the procession. I was guaranteed the biggest, fattest Hindu wedding they could afford.
I flew back to Chicago twice to make sure Kama was protected from spontaneous combustion—all right, to protect myself as well. His ashes had been delivered and Auntie Lakshmi had sent advice on how to reconstruct his body fully, so that he would never burn up like that again. That took a whole glorious day. And I had my own needs to consider. It seemed that once I…tasted them, I couldn’t let mangos alone any more. When I returned to India, we had phone sex every night.
I visited the temple numerous times with my parents. They said they wanted to show me off, and of course we had pre-wedding preparations, puja and conferences with the priests. But I think really they wanted to be quite, quite sure that I would be received. I wore my goddess aspect and kept my eyes on the floor the whole time. That confused everybody and impressed the priests, and my mother strutted like a peacock, so I felt a bit less guilty for making her crazy all those years.
I also used my mother’s temple as a doorway into heaven for the board meeting. The less said about that the better. Kama did exactly as I had for my mother: dressed nicely, kept his mouth shut, and bulked up his aura until he could barely fit through doorways. I did the talking. My mother-in-law Lakshmi also came, a silent, flashing-eyed presence at my back, which was a great comfort to me. Older gods of the pantheon nodded to us guardedly. The younger ones just shrugged. Shiva treated us much the way Irene Bentwater had treated me on my first day at the firm. Everyone gave a bit of a sigh when I made my speech about reinstating women’s legal and sexual rights. I think they were unsurprised. It was simply an acknowledgement of what was already happening on Earth—which Kama called “the field.” I nearly laughed when I realized that things really had changed for women, at least a little bit.
The Chicago wedding guest list was less trouble than I expected. Kama invited a number of roommates and ex-roommates. He agreed that Lolly’s apsaras and gandharvas should be invited too, as well as everyone from Bentwater Coralaine. I was more than happy to have them present. If I was to continue working there, I wanted it crystal clear that I had married their most eligible bachelor.
Kama wanted to use the temple on the river to bring our guests from the United States. Apparently this would be allowed—there was precedent, as some army was moved that way in ancient history—but I wasn’t comfortable using magic to move our mortal guests across the world. We compromised. His sex demon roommates and Lolly’s corps of devotees were to travel magically, and we would fly the law firm over.
Apart from my parents, I think that was the biggest shock anyone got—the look on Irene Bentwater’s face when she realized her slacker mail-room clerk had rented a Lear jet to bring them all to India.
My parents didn’t take Kama well at first.
Mummy’s jaw dropped as I introduced them all on the front doorstep.
“Beti, he’s just a baby!” she hissed to me.
“But old in sin,” I said.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was wearing an Indian man’s suit, a dark sherwani with a bronze sheen and gold embroidery nearly as pimpy as his favorite gangsta satin jacket. His eyes were very bright. His dimples made him look twenty. Seeing him through her eyes, I felt a shock. I was getting married. Little Rathi, the lawyer, the mouse under the mountain, would have to rethink her self-image quite a bit. This adorable boy was mine.
As for the goddess part of me, I felt lighter every day. I was back in the world of ordinary women and it felt great. I wallowed in it. We went through the ceremonial shoe-and-sari shopping with my female relatives. Everyone got fitted for bangles. Next day, shagun was perfunctory because Kama had no relatives per se coming to the wedding. I think his oldest roommate accepted gifts from my parents, and Auntie Lakshmi stood on the side and smiled, because nobody was admitting she was the groom’s mother as well as the bride’s aunt. The women spent the rest of the day on the henna ceremony, which made me giggle, because unlike most of those present, I knew the meaning of every figure and curlicue being drawn on my hands. We drank and danced and sang old songs that made me weep. A few close male relatives sneaked in toward the end of the evening, and we all sang and danced and got very maudlin.
These ordinary, joyful moments eased something in me that had become terribly heavy over the centuries. I think I may have been letting go of anger. I wept a lot. Everyone was very pleased. A bride is supposed to weep.
The Sangeet took place at the hotel. Mummy had invited nineteen hundred people. The noise!
In all the chaos, I had a chance to speak with Kama alone for the first time in days.
He brough
t me champagne and led me behind a curtain in the ballroom, and we clung to one another in the musty darkness with the deafening noise of the band and dancing and shouted conversations and singing just a few feet away. We drank our champagne. We tossed the glasses into deeper darkness under the stage and held each other, swaying to the music.
“Are you still sorry we let Mummy have her hoopla?” I said into his ear.
“Uh-uh.” He held me and we swayed western style, cheek to cheek, to the thumping beat.
“How many times have we had a wedding?” I said.
“Don’t you know?” He squeezed me a little tighter and swung me around, his feet making little taps against mine.
I snuggled closer into his arms. “Little Rathi doesn’t know.”
“Mouse Rathi,” he said against my neck, and snuffled until I wriggled. “Lawyer Rathi. But you do remember.”
I wasn’t the mouse at the moment. “Kind of. I’m pretty drunk,” I admitted. I didn’t feel much like a mountain, either.
He pulled away to look at me. Fingers of pink strobe light bounced off the mirror ball outside and poked into our hideaway. By their brief flashes I could see his dimples. He was smiling at me.
I hung my arms loosely around his neck, swaying with him. His body was strong and sweaty and very close. “It’s going to take time. Can you wait for me to become fully myself?”
He stopped moving. His forehead touched mine. His eyes were two dark gleams in the shadows. “Yes.”
I kissed his mouth briefly. “Think of it as a marriage of inconvenience.”
He seized me and mashed me. This was so unlike his usual patient seduction that I shivered all over. The wine melted my legs. I felt myself crumple against him. I tightened my hands on his neck to keep from sliding to the floor, going dizzy, but his strong arms held me up. He lifted his mouth from mine. I gasped for breath. He kissed me hard again, swinging my whole body back and forth in his arms. Imperceptibly his kisses became more gentle. This went on some time, until I was light-headed for lack of air. Then he bit my lower lip very lightly.
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