Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) Read online

  Ashu.

  Chapter Nineteen

  He’d imagined Rakhee’s return to his bedroom, to his bed, a thousand times. Not once had it been like this, at the bare cracks of dawn, shaking him from the vestiges of what passed for sleep.

  She was a blurred shape, out of focus, until she switched on the bedside lamp and flooded the room, flooded him, with light. His eye adjusted mutinously, even as his ears tuned to what she was saying as she half-dragged him from the sheets.

  “It’s Ashraf. He’s on the roof. Oh, God, Taj, you have to do something.”

  “What?” He stumbled, reaching instinctively for the wheelchair Kamal had left conveniently within reach. “What’s happened to Ashu? Slow down, Rakhee.”

  “We don’t have time to slow down, Taj. You have to come now!” Her frantic gaze went from his face to his chair, her distress so clear that he understood just how vital the “now” was. “I think he’s trying to kill himself.”

  He’s trying to kill himself.

  Trying to kill himself.

  To kill himself.

  No.

  The damned chair clattered to one side. Perhaps he kicked it. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the seconds he was wasting while Ashu suffered. Taj barely felt it as he bolted from the room and toward the stone stairs to the roof. The flights seemed to go by like blinks, any sensation in his legs drowned out by the thudding of his heart and the crashing of his pulse against his eardrums. Rakhee and Kamal were mere paces behind him, but it might as well have been leagues.

  He burst onto the chaath with such ferocity that the ancient door nearly fell from its hinges. But his brother was still standing. Thank heaven his baby brother was still standing.

  Swaying at the edge of the roof, half-tilted over the parapet.

  “Ashu, what is this, bhai? What are you doing?”

  “Aatma hatya. Suicide. Khud-khushi.” Ashraf’s black eyes were large in his face, haunted mirrors, revealing all of his ghosts and demons. He directed them over Taj’s shoulder for a moment. “You know what khud-khushi is translated to in English, Rocky? To ‘make yourself happy’. Do you think it will work? Will I truly be happier if I am dead?”

  This was crazy talk. Dangerously crazy talk. Taj’s heart leaped up into his throat, and he tried to silence its rhythm with a laugh. “You’re the handsome one in the family, na? What happens if you die? Who will look upon only my ugly old face?”

  It was precisely the wrong thing to say. Ashraf backed up, his eyes ringed with fatigue and madness. “Yeh maazak nahin hain, Bhaiya. Don’t joke. I am serious. I want this to be over. I want it to stop.”

  Why? When he was whole and successful and had the world at his fingertips? “I can’t stand tall—I’ve forgotten how—but you still have it all at your feet, little brother. No matter what has happened, there is still a place for you in the world.”

  “It’s not my place, Taj. It’s yours. All of it is yours. I’m the fraud, na? Pretending what’s rightfully yours is mine. Ten years, I’ve been pretending. Trying to be you.”

  “Yeh kya bakwas? Ashu, you’re you. Not a fraud. Not a replacement. Rahul Anand didn’t sign me for his picture. I don’t even know him. Everything you have, you’ve earned. For yourself.”

  Everything belonged to Ashu fair and square but one thing. And she was wholly Taj’s. Her, he would not credit to his brother. Not even on pain of a thousand deaths would he give Rakhee away.

  “Nahin.” Ashu shook his head, knuckles whitening on the edge of the parapet. “Not for me. For you. Don’t you know, Bhaiya? My first three films were all on your slate. You were still recovering. I was not even eighteen yet, and they told me to take your place in the spotlight. So I did. I tried. For all these years, I’ve tried. But I’ve failed. I’m not a hero. I’m a puppet. Speaking other’s lines, dancing on strings. Doing what you want, what she wants…” He shuddered violently. “Now no one will want me. Because she…because she…”

  Because Nina had forced him. Nina. That bitch. Taj understood immediately, and the constant greenish cast to Ashraf’s features suddenly made sense. The secrets, which were never secrets in a desi house. The nightmares that rivaled his own. “That wasn’t your fault, Ashu. That was her ugliness. We’ve all made mistakes, trusted the wrong people. She took advantage, yaar. Don’t let her take any more from you.”

  He took a step. Then another. His traitorous legs had never been steadier, nor had his hand as he reached out and caught his brother by the wrist. “Come down. Come home. Sab tik ho jayega. It will all be all right.”

  Ashraf looked like a little boy. The little boy who’d held his hand to take his own tottering first steps. “How do you know, Bhaiya? How can you be certain that this can be fixed?” There was…hope in his voice, a plea for reassurance. “That anyone will love me?”

  “Because I love you, Ashu.” Taj could have cried with relief, were he capable of it. But he kept his words even, reasonable, as he tugged Ashraf step-by-step farther and farther from the ledge. “Because it was all right for me. I did not die that day in the car like Ammi and Abba. I came back. I fought.” He risked a glance back at Rocky, who stood next to Kamal, pale and drawn with worry, her knuckles pressed to her mouth. “I’m still fighting, na? So don’t you give up now.”

  Don’t you give up now.

  The gin was still buzzing in his head. The ground still seemed entirely too close. But Taj’s arms were tight and warm and solid. Ashu held on, taking in great gulps of air, wet with tears and tasting of alcohol…distantly aware that they were not alone. That he’d put on one last grand show for a crowd.

  Rocky was just over Bhaiya’s shoulder. Kamal stood back, shaking—with fury or with fear, Ashraf couldn’t begin to guess. But when Bhaiya finally released him from his ferocious hug, they were drawn together like magnets. Nahin, warped magnets. Not a tight snap but a tentative one.

  Kamal towered over him, taller, bigger, stronger than ever before. But weaker, too. Bewildered. “Why?” he asked, something that sounded almost like hurt lacing his low voice. “Why did you not come to me, Chote Saab?”

  It was an odd question now. Here. But still he tried to answer. “I didn’t think you wanted me to. I thought it would be better if I…if I…”

  “Chote,” Kamal whispered raggedly, reaching out to knuckle Ashraf’s jaw. “When I have stayed with you for ten years, why would you think you can leave me behind?”

  These words made even less sense. Ashu clung to them anyway. “Y-you stayed for me? What about Taj?”

  “He is my duty. You, Chote Saab, are my heart.” As Kamal spoke, he took Ashraf’s hand, flattening it over the organ in question, which pounded like a drum.

  His own heart seemed to follow the same erratic rhythm, still racing from his reckless dance on the ledge. And perhaps something more. But he couldn’t know what that something was. Not with daru and death still sloshing in his veins. So he just gripped Kamal’s forearms like the railings of a staircase leading him back down from the precipice. “I won’t go,” he whispered, in barely passable Urdu. The kind that would never be set down as poetry. “Not…not like this.” A nervous glance back at the parapet was his only punctuation. “I cannot promise you I will succeed. But I will try. Is it acceptable if I try?”

  “Good.” Kamal replied in English. Of course the beautiful bastard spoke English. “That is very, very good.

  Chapter Twenty

  “He needs a doctor, Taj. A psychiatrist. You know that, right? A couple of hugs and Kamal promising to be the Sam to his Frodo isn’t going to cure him.”

  “I know.” Braced against the window, framed in sunlight, Taj looked almost like a different man. Tall, strong, flawless…because the light softened his scars, made them just another part of his achingly familiar face. “I’m not so stupid and backwards, Rocky. I’m only blind enough to have missed my brother’s troubles. With my good eye, I do see what must be done to fix it.”

  She made a rude noise, shaking her head. “You
know you didn’t miss Ashu’s problems because of your injuries. You missed them because you’ve been a selfish asshole who doesn’t let anyone in. Well, we’re in now, and you have to love us. You have to take care of us. And you have to take care of you.”

  “What is this ‘us’?” He arched his eyebrow, smug and imperious to the hilt.

  “You know exactly what I mean,” she huffed. She didn’t bother to feign coyness. Why start now? “And you said I was the one who needed lessons? You need them, Taj. So many lessons: honesty, trust, love. And when you learn them all, you are going to be unstoppable. Just like you were today on the roof with your brother.”

  “Is that how I transform? I thought you were going to kiss me and turn me into a prince?”

  “I already kissed you, and you stayed you: a gorgeous Beast who drives us all completely crazy. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  He looked surprised. Genuinely, honestly surprised. What could she do but kiss him again? Rocky closed the few feet between them and took his face between her palms, stroking scar tissue and smoothness with equal abandon. She pressed her lips to the depression where his left eye should have been, and he shuddered, hands coming up to clutch at her shoulders and shove her away.

  “Nahin. Don’t, Rakhee. You don’t have to…”

  She held on. She knew now that she would always hold on. “This is you. I don’t have to, I want to.” She feathered another kiss over his permanently closed eyelid, her chest constricting as he shook like a man electrified. “Taj,” she whispered, “you’ve looked at me with more honesty than anyone I’ve ever met. You’ve made me feel beautiful. Let me return the favor.”

  He couldn’t, of course. He had to take charge. He crushed her to him, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, as he conquered her mouth. His lips demanded, his tongue took. He stole her words, her breath, her promises and converted them into lust. Now she was the one electrified, not with fear or shame but desire. He fell back against the window, settling onto the sill and taking her with him, locking her legs round his lean hips.

  Taj was all coiled power and energy, bigger in life than he’d ever been onscreen. In more ways than one. She barely recognized the sounds he drew from her throat as he rocked into her, as he kissed her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks…all before returning to her mouth with a husky plea. “Teach me, sweet Rocky. Teach me how to be human again.”

  She wanted to. She would. Gladly.

  If not for the rustle of cloth. The clearing of a throat. Deliberate sound from someone who practically moved like a ninja. “Sir? Rocky Mem?”

  Oh God.

  Taj was slow to release her—reluctant—and she practically crawled down the length of his body until her feet hit the ground. She couldn’t look at Kamal, certain her cheeks were bright red.

  Taj, of course, had no such shyness. “What is it, Kamal?” he asked with his typical brusqueness. As if they’d been chatting about the weather when Kamal walked in.

  Whatever thought of propriety or distance had kept Kamal speaking Urdu this whole time was gone, because he responded in English—crisp, British-accented English that beat Rocky’s casual American drawl by a mile. “It’s Chote. Ram Lal has brought the car round to take him to the hospital, and I’ve made certain the assistant on the film knows he will not be filming this week or the following. Nani-ji has been informed. All the preparations are in place. I thought you would like to be told.”

  Rocky had to look then, because the quiet intensity in his voice was that arresting. Kamal’s show of emotion from the roof had been banked, but there was no less affection on display. It was obvious that he cared about Ashraf. That he would lay down his life for him and probably even kill for him. How had they missed it all this time? A house full of actors, and the most poignant, authentic performance had been going on under their noses.

  And maybe Taj recognized that, too. Because he said “thank you” and separated from her until only their hands remained linked. Except there was no “only” about it, because she felt his touch in every part of her. A promise that this was only the intermission, and the second half of their erotic picture was yet to come. “Thank you for telling us…and for everything else,” he said gruffly. “You’re a good man.”

  Kamal smiled—almost as shocking as Taj doing the same—and the gentle turn of his lips vaulted his somberly handsome features into hero-level charisma. “As are you, sir. As are you.”

  Rocky couldn’t agree more. She hoped that someday Taj would believe it, too.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The windows had bars on them. For all its benefits as a mental hospital, at the end of the day Ashraf was locked in a very expensive cage. They had confiscated his mobile. He couldn’t watch TV or films. Every meal was monitored. Every pill counted, lest he swallow too many in an effort to recreate his rooftop tango. Visitors had to be approved by his doctor—a tiny Bengali woman, Dr. Ghosh—and were only allowed on the premises on Saturdays and Sundays. He had time. He had silence. He had nothing to do but dream clean, bright dreams.

  It was the most free he’d been since he was a stupid boy of sixteen.

  Everything you have, you’ve earned. For yourself.

  Everything he had, he’d never wanted. Now…now, perhaps he could discover what it was to really live.

  The knock was gentle. Faux prison or no, they were unfailingly polite here. The top of Dr. Ghosh’s head was barely visible in the tiny window cut into the door. The person behind her was easier to mark, even before the door swung inward. Kamal was tall and dark and fearsome, even when lit by the soft, soothing bulbs of the ward. His pale green kurta was free of wrinkles, almost razor-cut in its perfection, his slim trousers black and devoid of mud splatters. He seemed to span the entire doorway with the breadth of his shoulders. It was still ajib to see him outside the haveli, like he’d stepped out from a black-and-white film. Of course, he’d accompanied Ashraf here that first day, not leaving his side until the doctors whisked Ashu away for observation and then sedated him for good measure. But now, three days later, it was different. Strange. Uncomfortable. Nahin, too comfortable.

  “You, Chote Saab, are my heart.”

  Perfect dialogue for a perfect moment. What did it mean now? A blush heated Ashu’s cheeks, and he dropped his gaze, pretending to pluck at the patterned bedspread tossed over his legs.

  Dr. Ghosh either didn’t notice or was too professional to call attention to it. “Your friend may stay one hour,” she said briskly. “You may exchange news from home, chitter-chatter, etcetera. And, afterward, you will come talk to me, okay? Tik aache?”

  Friend. Was that what Kamal was after all this time? Had he not asked himself that question many times before? “He’s family,” he found himself saying automatically. “Kamal is family, Doctor-sahiba. More than just a friend.”

  The slight incline of Kamal’s head was the only acknowledgment in front of the psychiatrist, along with a rumbling murmur that he would be vigilant of the clock. It was only after the door shut behind her that his severe face turned radiant. So absurdly handsome that Ashraf wondered why he had not chosen a career as a screen idol. “Chote,” he whispered in a way that said “little” was, in actuality, something so very, very vast. “Are you well?”

  He almost shrugged. But something about Kamal had always made him want to mind his manners. To stand up straight. To use his best Hindi and his second-best Urdu. To be honest. “I’m…better. I am liking it here. But I know it’s not reality, samjhe? I know I have to go back.”

  Kamal crossed his wrists behind his back, looking almost deferential if it weren’t for the arrogant confidence in every line of his body. Taj called it his “Mughal courtier” pose. “You will go forward, not back, Chote Saab, and we will all be waiting for you there.”

  “Why?” His lines came out far more bewildered and weak than he wanted them to. “Why do you believe in me, Kamal? I have done nothing to earn it.”

  “Faith is not earned, Chote. Faith simply is.
I trust that the sun will rise, that the tides will flow and that you will find your way back home.”

  Kamal didn’t move, didn’t reach out, and yet it felt as though he held Ashraf in the palm of his hand.

  Faith simply is.

  Ashraf could not remember the last time he’d believed in something, in someone, so strongly. Kamal made it sound easy. Kamal made him want to try. Perhaps there was a freedom in this, too. In such unshakable faith.

  He kicked away the bright bedspread, swung his legs over the side of the bed and took his first step forward.

  “How is Ashu really?” Rocky pushed his chair toward the arbor, as though they were simply two lovers out for a stroll among the flowers. But nothing was truly that simple, was it?

  “Kamal says that Ashu is improving every hour, every day. Soon, he will be healing and going back to his life. That will make one of us.”

  Taj laughed, flinching as she lightly slapped the back of his head and cried, “Stop that! It’s not funny!”

  But it was. A cosmic joke. There was a map of scar tissue, both burns and cuts, across much of his left side from how he’d been pinned inside the wreckage of the sleek Italian sports car. Would she follow the trail, thinking to heal his hurts with her hands? Her lips? Taj knew such a journey was folly.

  As if she read his mind, she came round to stand in front of him. Her toffee-brown eyes focused on the small scrap of skin bared by the open collar of his kurta. “I’m not naïve,” she reminded him. “I don’t think I can kiss your boo-boos and make them better. Only you can do that.”

  He laughed again, deliberately dismissing her psychobabble. “Kiss myself? Circus freak I may be, but I am not a contortionist, Rakhee.”

  The toffee melted from the sudden flare of heat in her eyes. She was genuinely angered by his words. “I said stop it. Don’t ever talk about yourself that way again. It’s not sexy.”

  “Oh…because I am so very concerned with my sex appeal?” he scoffed.