Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) Page 6

  They shot out of order, scenes from the middle of the picture up first, along with two of the songs. By the time he and Rocky got back to the house each night, it was disgustingly late, and all he could do was fall into bed and pray the phone didn’t ring and wake him. It did, of course. At one a.m., at three a.m., at five. And when he fumbled for the receiver, hoping he caught it before Usha troubled herself or Taj called for his head, all that greeted him was the dial tone.

  You’re a fraud, it seemed to taunt him.

  And he agreed.

  He was a fraud, and the pretense of anything else was growing harder to play.

  If only he could simply…stop. If only it could all stop. What bliss that would be.

  Taj had no notion of just how sprawling the haveli was until she lost herself in it so that he would not find her. It became all too clear then just how small he’d made his world, consisting of only his library and his gardens. Rakhee spent hours with Nani, days in the kitchen, weeks practicing her dance steps on the roof. They hardly occupied the same space, though he would catch a hint of her perfume or the echo of her laughter as he wheeled from room to room or practiced a few unsteady steps.

  It was Ashraf who put an end to the game, storming into his rooms one evening and clicking off the televised singing competition Taj was subjecting himself to. “What did you do to Rocky?”

  He knew the answer to such a question. What had he not done to Rocky? I’m not the one with something to prove, Taj, she’d taunted him, with her enormous heart in her eyes. But he went on the defensive nonetheless. “Why do you assume I did something to her, Ashu?”

  “Because I know you so well.” Ashraf shoved at his feet, making a place for himself at the end of the sofa. Gone was his solicitous caring for his invalid brother’s limbs. “We are cut from the same ugly cloth, hai na?”

  “Is she unhappy?” The prospect filled him with unease. Why, when he had done his best to achieve exactly that state? “Has she said something to you?”

  “She thinks we are idiots.” There was a fond gleam in Ashraf’s eyes as he moved the TV remote control from hand to hand. “She may be correct.”

  Taj’s gut twisted like molten metal. Of course Ashu would become fond of her. They were forever in one another’s pockets, and what was there not to find enchanting about one another? They were young, whole and beautiful. If they had not come to Delhi infatuated with each other…no matter. They could leave it very much in love.

  “You like Rocky very much.” It was more accusation than observation, and it tasted like cola gone flat.

  “My ‘little Amrikan girlfriend’?” Ashu cast him a sidelong glance, mouth a smug upturn as he reminded Taj of that inauspicious first day. “Haan. What is not to like? She is a good scene partner. She is sweet. She loves Nani. Bahut aachi hain woh.”

  “If you fit so well…” It pained him to say it. Like glass sliding beneath his skin. “You should marry her.”

  “Me?” Ashraf’s mirth vanished at the suggestion. All of the color leached from his face, leaving it as white as sand. But his words were steady. Strong. “What nonsense, Bhaiya. Why should I marry her? Are you so blind that you can’t see she’s mad for you?”

  He flinched, for the arrow definitely met the mark. “Half-blind,” he whispered. His offending eye fluttered shut, and he drew a deep breath and exhaled. “Rocky is not for me, bhai. She belongs with someone like you.”

  Again Ashu looked sickly, but he shook his head as though it was Taj who was unwell. “Bakwas. You want her. She wants you. Why do you sit here like a stone? Patthar ho kya? Go to her. Be with her. Who will have peace if you stay apart?”

  Who would be at peace if they came together? Not Taj. Not ever.

  Still he waved Ashu away with rough promises that he would make things right. And then he pulled his chair close and clambered into it, fitting his bare feet into the lightly padded rests. He had a vast house to cross. Deserts. Oceans. Mountains. But he would find her. He would follow her laugh, trace her footsteps and breathe in her khushboo. For, yes, he was an idiot…and he liked her very, very much.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ashraf watched them in the garden negotiating their temporary peace. Whatever had driven her from the house in a frantic rage just days ago, Rocky had put aside. Burying it amid the old stones of the Red Fort. And Taj had hewn at his own rock-solid heart, finally leaving his cage to seek her out. She held the back of his chair as though it were the reins of a particularly skittish horse, bending over him as he held up a branch full of pale, pink blossoms. Ashu could see it in her face when she inhaled the intoxicating scent, the magic spell shutting her eyes and parting her lips with pleasure.

  His elder brother was a fool for not taking her to bed.

  And Ashraf was a fool for bothering to climb out of his own.

  He would never have what they had. Never take delight in someone’s nearness. Love wasn’t a flower for him. Nahin, it was a poisonous plant with its roots spread throughout his entire body.

  Envy clawed at his gut, bile crept up his throat and he lurched away, back toward the cool, dark haven of the veranda. He passed Kamal, still and silent, on the stair and nearly stumbled in surprise. Though why he should be surprised was anyone’s guess. Kamal was everywhere. He existed in always, slept in forever.

  Kamal reached out, warrior swift, steadying him with a hand on his arm. Nahin, barely a hand. Two fingers. Such was his strength. Such was his damnable, mystical understanding that a firmer touch would only make Ashraf’s meager breakfast come up and meet the flagstones. “Is everything all right, Chote Saab?”

  Kamal’s eyes, as pure and enveloping as a room without light, always saw too much. And in his low, melodious voice, “little sir” sounded almost like an endearment.

  “If I wasn’t all right, what would you do, Kamal? Hmm?” he spat in English. “Heal me as you’ve so successfully healed Taj?”

  Kamal didn’t rise to the bait. He never did. All pride and defiance and secrets, he had no patience for the Khan brothers’ rages, for their sentiment. He simply let Ashraf go and stepped back, allowing him to pass. “When you need my healing, Chote, you will come to me.”

  That, too, was an endearment…and a curse.

  “These are gorgeous,” she sighed, breathing in the light, exotic scent of the hybrid roses.

  Taj gave her as close to a smile as he was willing to part with. “I know.” The pride in his voice he didn’t skimp on at all. “They just opened. I think they were waiting for you.”

  “Like you? Blossoming from the sunshine of my personality?” The teasing came surprisingly easy, considering how wilted she still felt from that wonderful, terrible afternoon in his room. “It’s amazing I haven’t lit up the whole house.”

  “But you have.” Taj twisted in his chair, looking her full in the face, no flinching, no hiding behind his long, razor-sharp hair. “You’ve brought Diwali into this place, where none of us want light or joy or evidence of God. You lit every corner, every shadow. Why? What’s in it for you, Rakhee?”

  It was the nicest thing he’d ever said to her. Maybe the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. And she had to take a second to sift through each nuance…to keep her knees from buckling. “Why does something have to be in it for me?” she wondered, slowly crouching down at his feet. “Hasn’t anyone ever just been…nice to you? Can’t I like laughing and dancing and making people feel good? It’s why I’m an actress, Taj. Because I want to brighten lives. Even yours.”

  “Even mine,” he echoed, something like humor in his guarded countenance. “It’s too dark, sweet Rocky, for a woman as bright as you.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. Look at how much care you put into your garden. If you showed one-tenth of that in the rest of your life, imagine what you could accomplish.” Her palms slid up his calves, then his legs and thighs. Hewn solid from exercise, even if he didn’t trust them to carry him. “You could make me bloom, Taj Khan,” she whispered, suddenly the sedu
ctress. Knowing he could throw it back in her face but playing the role anyway. “Don’t you think I’d open for you, too?”

  Except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest, he was still. Solid as stone. Everywhere. Her fingertips brushed the rise of his zipper, and it was only then that he jerked in his seat, biting out her name like an expletive and chasing it with “Stop!”

  “You didn’t when I asked,” she reminded him, rising so they were face-to-face. “What makes you think I will? What makes you think I’m any less cruel than you?”

  He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers, leaning close enough to devastate her with a kiss or a condemnation. His mouth brushed over hers with the quiet, regret-laden words. “Because I’ve heard you crying.”

  And then he wheeled backward, leaving her kneeling alone in the grass.

  “You wouldn’t bloom with me, Rakhee. You would die on the vine.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Again, Kamal was watching him, those ink-black eyes taking in everything and missing nothing. Ashraf tried not to acknowledge it, bent over his mobile as he answered a SMS from Priya Roy Anand, who wanted to know how he was faring. But Kamal was steady, constant, impossible to ignore. He’d been the immovable rock in their lives since Bhaiya’s accident. Those first few years, he’d cleansed Taj’s wounds, bathed him, fed him, dressed him, given him morphine injections when the pain was too great—daily, hourly, it seemed. As Taj grew strong, and so very angry and solitary, Kamal proved just as much nurse to his soul as his body.

  What was he now? Not a servant. Not quite family. A tall, forbidding hulk of a man with a close-shaven beard and mustache and a chest full of secrets. “Why haven’t you left, Kamal? Don’t you have other patients?” Ashu wondered aloud.

  As was his habit, Kamal replied mostly in that ridiculously formal Urdu. “I have all that I need here. Why, and where, should I go?”

  Ashu was almost jealous of Kamal’s cloak of mystery, his fine kurta of spider webs. The man could haunt this haveli like a noble ghost, never having to set foot outside, to expose his innards on celluloid. Now there was a thought… “Are you dead, Kamal? A spirit tied to this wreck of a house?”

  It was an impertinent enough question to actually penetrate the man’s implacable cool. His eyes widened, and his lips quivered with mirth under the neat bow of his mustache. “Nahin, Chote Saab. I am no ghost,” he assured him. “I am only a man.”

  Only a man…and yet he seemed like so much more. Ashraf shut off his mobile phone, setting it down on the tabletop. “That day you said to me that I would come to you for healing. What did you mean?”

  But it was too late: Kamal’s mask was back in place. No nonsense. Untouchable. “It is for you to understand, Chote. Not for me to explain.”

  He vanished into the hall with almost soundless steps. But they echoed. To Ashu, they most certainly echoed.

  As did the harsh, blaring ring of the house phone. It roused him from his stupor of confusion, and he reached for the old-fashioned white receiver of the princess phone his mother had bought a lifetime ago. A decision he instantly regretted.

  If Kamal’s voice was music, Nina’s was the worst sort of noise pollution. “Ashraf, darling, you miss me, don’t you?”

  Poison stirred in his belly. “No.” He’d known the hang-up calls were from her, of course. With everyone else in the industry aligned against her like a silver curtain, she thought he was her last connection. Her gap in the cloth. The boy she’d cultivated. Molded. Warped. “Go to hell, Nina.”

  “And why should I go alone? You’re no different from me, Ashraf. But you’re a man. More easily forgiven for selling your soul. So you can profit from your Be-Izzati while I starve because of mine.”

  She wasn’t starving. Her divorce settlement from Rahul Anand’s father was massive. But Ashraf flinched anyway. “We’re nothing alike. Everything I have done, I have done for Taj. For my brother and what he lost.”

  “Everything?” Her voice dropped low, reminding him of the slide of her viper’s tongue round his cock. “Vah! Shabbash! What a generous brother you are.”

  Ashraf was dizzy. Weightless. He struggled to stay upright as he wrapped both hands round the receiver like it was her throat. “What do you want?”

  “What I always have, sweetie: to be on top.”

  He didn’t even wait for the buzzing of the dial tone before he tossed the phone aside and bolted for the washroom. There was nothing to cough up, but still he retched and retched. As if he could expel the memory of her from his body. Grow up, Ashu, whispered Bhaiya in his head. Handle this like a whole man, not a half man, like me.

  How could he handle Nina when he could not even handle himself? When he did not even know himself?

  “It is for you to understand, Chote. Not for me to explain.”

  Learn-at-home Hindi CDs weren’t exactly as easy as the infomercials claimed. Rocky slumped against the sofa cushions, nearly ready to throw her ancient CD player across the room. Why, oh why, did verbs have gender? How were you supposed to know if a train was feminine and a car was masculine? Why wouldn’t they arrive with the same conjugation? “Ugh!” Pronunciation, she’d learned early on, was easy. She was a decent mimic, with a good ear for accents, so pretending she spoke Hindi onscreen wasn’t hard. It was being tested by the public at large that was her problem. The public, the private…

  Taj had warmed to her—more than warmed to her—but she still saw the questions on his face, the reservations. Nani deserved more than her halting, pathetic attempts to make conversation. And was it fair to keep playing charades with Usha just to figure out where she kept the sugar and how to tell the dhobi to put less starch in her clothes? So she had to step up her learning, prove she was serious about improving her craft and about respecting India as her new home.

  Rocky wasn’t a spoiled Amrikan princess, here to steal roles from hardworking Indian actresses. And even if the assumption was what had landed her here, she wasn’t a silly city girl just slumming it in an industry veteran’s spooky haveli to keep from causing more trouble.

  Besides, she’d found trouble anyway.

  Six feet of it, dark and so dangerous.

  You wouldn’t bloom with me, Rakhee. You would die on the vine.

  She had to prove him wrong. She had to show him she could flourish, no matter what he threw at her. She had to be strong for him. The realization had stunned her in the garden, after he’d wheeled away, and it was no less awful and painful now. It hurt to take a breath when she thought of his face, his voice…when she relived that soft dusting of his mouth that barely registered as a kiss yet seemed to cost them everything. And she ached for what they’d left unfinished.

  “Rakhee? Bacche?” The tap-tap of Nani’s cane followed the plaintive call.

  “I’m here,” she replied, though it was re-stating the obvious as Nani gingerly tottered into the parlor and greeted her with a delighted smile.

  Far more comfortable on her feet than Taj, she insisted on taking the stairs by herself, even if the trek from her rooms took a half hour. “I came to this house on my own power, and I will leave it only when every drop of that power has left my body,” she’d said to Rocky the first time the question cropped up…and it had taken the better parts of her power to parse the philosophical words.

  She slipped off her earbuds, folding the wires up and patting a space on the sofa beside her. “Kaise ho, Nani?” Her “How are you?” was probably informal instead of formal and conjugated totally wrong, but it was the effort that counted, right?

  “As fine as these old bones are ever going to be.” Nani spoke emphatically and punctuated with a chuckle, the twinkle in her eyes almost a match for Ashraf’s. “How are you, child?”

  “I’m so tired.” It was an easy Hindi phrase, and Rocky held up the case for the language CD for emphasis, hoping that spoke volumes.

  Nani’s snow-white eyebrows rose in response, and she shook her head. “What is the need for this nonsense? The heart
knows the heart’s words. It needs no translation.” She touched her chest to reinforce the message, just in case Rocky didn’t get the gist.

  She did. Oh, man, did she get the gist. She squeezed Nani’s hand, not trusting herself to speak…likely not needing to, since her heart was apparently expositing all over the place.

  Taj didn’t need her to be proficient in Hindi. He needed hope.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The open living room often felt cramped by the sheer size of Bhaiya’s presence. As if he were still projecting every emotion for the cameras, squeezing blood from a stone for the career that had already ravaged his body. Tonight, like so many recent nights, he only had an audience of two. But, still, Taj seemed tall enough to fill a movie screen, even slouched as he was in his chair.

  Ashraf was surrounded by men with an overabundance of charisma…and too much mystery as well. He cupped his hands round his cooling cup of chai, slouching forward. “Do you think Kamal has a family?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Taj’s frown telegraphed that it was a stupid one. “Did he spring from the earth fully grown? Of course he has a family. You know they have been in Punjab for three generations, and his distant relations live just outside Lahore. I think his mother and father are still alive.”

  “No, I mean a wife. Or girlfriend. Or—” he waggled his eyebrows suggestively, not even knowing where the next word came from, “—a boyfriend?”

  “Shut up.” The words were a crack gunshot. Taj’s eye flashed fire. “He’s not like us, Ashu. He doesn’t have our name or our reputation or the protection of the industry. Even a whisper like that could ruin him, nahin?”

  Even a whisper. Ashraf swallowed the words that would surely be louder than that. Naming the names of men he’d worked with who were gays. Speaking of how the world was changing, how India was changing. They seemed like feeble arguments where Kamal’s personal affairs were concerned. After all, did he not have his own damning secrets? Things that had ruined him already?