A Distant Heart by Sonali Dev (18)

18

Rahul
Present day

 

Kimi had this way of always getting him to do what she wanted. It almost made Rahul laugh how she had played him like one of her bloody video games. He should have known she had a plan when she’d been suspiciously undemanding after he picked her up at the airport. Even though her face had virtually collapsed in despair upon seeing him, not a word of protest had crossed her lips.

Rahul had assumed it was because Asif was at large, and she was going to do whatever she had to do to get through things. That was exactly what Rahul had expected. It was exactly what everyone always expected of her. For her to adjust what she wanted to meet what needed to be done. But with him, at least, she had always been able to protest.

All the way to Nikhil and Nikki’s, however, she had sat there with her ill-fitting calm shell burying the storm he knew was swirling in her head. Then she had been her usual warm, wide-open self with Nikhil, Nikki, and Joy. There hadn’t been a hint of bitterness about the fact that they were escaping while she was stuck with Rahul, whom she had done everything to avoid for the past year, and with a psycho bent on hunting her down.

One part of him wished she would go to Chicago with Nikhil and Nikki. He could prevent Asif Khan from leaving the country. The airports were the most realistically controllable public places. But he was incapable of letting her out of his sight right now.

Not to mention the fact that Kimi would not go. No matter what he did. She had this way of letting everyone around her take control while somehow holding on to enough that essentially she retained the heart of the thing. It’s what she had been doing in all the time that she had let him drive her around today. She’d had a plan, and here he was unable to find a reason not to follow along, and feeling a bit rabid in his need to do something, anything, to make this easier on her.

Next to him she sat silent. She hadn’t even asked him where he was taking her. It was almost as though she wasn’t speaking to him again after demanding the impossible. Again. At least her silence wasn’t the defeated silence that said, “I want this to be over so I can get away from you.” Instead, her silence said, “I’m not speaking to you because I want to torture you into doing something I want.” And what did it say about him that he preferred this option?

Saying no to her was a skill he had never quite mastered. Which was probably why the one time he had said it, he had made such a colossal mess of things. But every single time she pushed him to go along with what she wanted, something terrible happened. This was not the best thought to have right now, when he was on the verge of letting her turn all his plans upside down again.

To be fair, someone in his department leaking the safehouse location is what had turned his plans upside down, not her. And she had a solution which for all its craziness made sense. How the hell did she manage to always put him in these situations, his back against a wall with no idea how not to want what she wanted? Her stupid mirror eyes and mirror face, reflecting all the best and worst of him, leaving him with no escape.

Why couldn’t he say no? Why couldn’t he put things she said out of his mind? He wasn’t nineteen years old anymore, he was thirty years old, for shit’s sake. And when she snapped her fingers and said, “Sit,” he had the instant and infuriatingly insistent urge to sink down at her feet, and kiss them for good measure. Figuratively, of course. He would never think about really kissing her feet. Because letting himself think about the time he had kissed them, kissed her all over, would mean he was certifiably insane.

He slid a gaze at her and she looked away. She was back to not wanting to meet his eyes, which only made his inability to keep his eyes off her that much more of a problem. He had to stop this. They were stuck together until she was safe again, and he needed to keep his focus.

He reminded himself that every single time he had let himself slip, let his control slip, disaster had followed.

Her mother had been right. He would do well to not forget her words.

He had only seen Rupa Patil outside her temple room a few times, but she had always put things in perspective for him. Kimi had been fighting off another infection, and Rahul had arrived at her room door hoping it had passed. Fortunately, he had heard her parents’ hushed voices before walking in on them.

“Something about that boy is cursed,” Rupa Patil had said. “No child loses a father and a sibling so randomly unless his stars are truly misaligned. I can see the anger in his eyes. He has bad energy. Every time he gets close to Kimi, something bad happens to her.”

“Calm down, darling. Something bad has been happening to our Kimi long before she met Rahul,” Kirit Patil had told his wife, and despite his endearment there was a coldness in his voice that had surprised Rahul. “She’s blossomed since she’s befriended him. She’s smiling and laughing again. She’s so much more than just her sickness. How can you not see that? She’s come back to herself, and I will not take that away from her because you don’t like his energy.”

Rupa Patil had been dead right in her judgment. Something terrible had happened to Kimi’s health every time Rahul got carried away and did something he wasn’t supposed to. The first time he had taken her to his rock on the beach, the second time he had put his hands through those gloves and touched her, and the third time—No, he couldn’t think about that. Not now, with her close enough to touch. Not now, when she could be hurt again.

He had known what he was doing was wrong all three times, but he’d let Kimi goad him into it. Even though he had promised Kirit he wouldn’t do it, he’d done it. Even though deep inside he had known his curse, he’d done it. And the curse had never failed him.

After overhearing the conversation between her parents, Rahul had left without seeing Kimi, determined never to return. His determination had lasted two days. All he’d meant to do was peep into her room to make sure she was all right. He had even checked with Sarika first to make sure Kimi was asleep. He hadn’t meant to let her see him.

She’d been livid when she caught him. She’d told him she hated him for not coming to see her when she was sick. It was the first time she’d asked him to go away and never speak to her again.

Instead of listening to her, he had gone back the next day, expecting her to throw him out again. But she had looked so relieved and acted so deliberately normal, it was the only way he had ever reacted to those words after that.

Except today. Today he knew she had meant it even without that note in his pocket. When he had shown up at the airport she had been anything but relieved.

They weren’t children anymore. It was time to stop acting like they were. He’d sworn to act like an adult after The Great Escape. When you were an adult and someone told you to go away because they never wanted to see you again, you did it. You respected their wishes. You respected yourself.

This time he was only disregarding those words because she was in danger. The thought made him squeeze his hand around the pistol in his holster. He had put her in danger. The worst kind of bastard had been plaguing him for years, and somehow he had allowed Kimi to become caught up in the crossfire.

She believed she knew how to solve this mess. On one hand were her instincts—she was more perceptive than anyone he knew. On the other hand was the fact that letting her talk him into things always backfired.

Around them another monster traffic jam clogged the streets. Cars, rickshaws, bicycles, and motorbikes scrambled toward an opening in the dug-up road like ants on a carcass, no lanes, no rules, just hands on horns, spinning tires, and the stubborn multitude of hope that somehow the entire quagmire would clear by magic. It was times like this when he really missed Tina. Thinking about Tina brought alive the memory of Kimi’s soft body pressed against his back with Tina purring under them and Rahul felt like the steering wheel would snap in his hands.

What was wrong with him?

Unable to navigate the car through the knot of traffic, he forced all his energy on navigating his mind through all the reasons why it was imperative that he stop fantasizing about Kimi on his bike. Because, what the hell?

They were stopped in the middle of traffic and all his focus had to be on keeping an eye on the crowds around them. A magazine seller climbed over the hood of a car next to him, and the driver stuck his head out of the window and let out a stream of expletives so virulent it couldn’t have had anything to do with the fact that his car had just been violated. Tempers were starting to flare as high as the afternoon heat. They needed to be indoors. For a moment he regretted not having his siren in Maney’s wife’s car, but that would attract far too much attention and the point was to lie low.

Maybe Kimi was right. Leaving the country for a couple of days might be the only way to make sure a bastard with a gun didn’t jump out from around a corner.

She was staring out of the window, her jaw set, her demeanor quietly confident. She knew he was going to come around to doing what she wanted.

Rahul caught the eye of a passing traffic cop and flashed his badge. The man ran over. It took another half hour and three more traffic constables to dismantle the deadlock and they were on their way.

The right thing to do would be to tell her they were going to the chawl. But he needed some time to adjust to the idea. Because the thought of Kimi in the chawl was so preposterous it made him want to change his mind and make another U-turn.

Instead, he turned into the narrow lane lined with open sewers that led to his home, and that ancient tug between shame and pride at where he came from twisted inside him. They drove across the muddy playground where preschoolers ran around playing ball in their underwear. The older children were in school. Once they came home, the little ones would have to make way for the big kids’ cricket and football. He thought of all the times he had gone home with a bloody knee after a particularly grueling game. He still played football on a league with some officers, but it wasn’t anywhere near as satisfying as playing with the neighborhood boys had been. The healing force of teenagers trying to get their aggression out had no parallel in adulthood.

He pulled over in one corner of the muddy playground, raising a cloud of dust, and turned to Kimi, who still refused to ask where they were.

“This is where I live,” he said.

That made her sit up and forget all her sullenness in her excitement. She studied the decrepit buildings edging the ground on three sides. The viewing gallery was out in full force today. The entire population of the chawl seemed to be leaning on the veranda railings and watching the car.

She looked down at herself. “I’ve never met your aie. Will she be there?” She chewed on a hangnail and patted her impeccably neat hair into place. She had retied it at Nikki’s place after the bomb experience had messed it up.

“You look beautiful.” That’s what he wanted to say. But he had never said those words to her, even though she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever met. Baby-doe eyes and crooked teeth smile, and all.

“I wish you could stay in the car, but I can’t leave you here. You’re going to have to come up with me.”

Her eyes widened with hurt, then they got all indifferent again. What had he said now?

“No one knows we’re here. I can stay here if you don’t want me to go inside with you.”

Of course he didn’t want her to go inside. Why would she want to? Not like there was a choice. He couldn’t leave her in the car with a psycho at large. It wasn’t going to be quick either. Getting tickets and coming up with a plan was going to take some time. But this was the safest place to be right now. No one he worked with knew that he still lived here and not in his government-issued police housing.

He did another sweep of the surroundings before opening the door for her. “I’ll try to make this quick,” he said and led her to the dingy timber stairway of Building Number Three. The tenants’ association had put in new cement tiles on the lower-floor veranda last year, and he had thought it looked really nice, but not when you compared it to marble so white it was disconcerting to walk on.

She followed quietly, taking in every inch of the peeling paint on the walls, the ancient fading varnish on the wood railings. He rarely stopped to notice the dank, mildly dusty smell, but now it blasted his senses. Thankfully, the red betel leaf and tobacco juice sprayed into corners from his childhood had been cleaned and painted over. Not too many of the adults in the chawl chewed betel leaves and spat onto walls anymore. Progress was a beautiful thing.

They turned off on the second floor, her purple bag a beacon in his hands. And he was right—every one of their neighbors was out on the veranda studying them.

A chorus of “Hello, Rahul beta!” “What, at home in the afternoon today?” “Who’s your friend?” engulfed them as they made their way to his housing block.

Kimi was wearing spotless white jeans that stopped at her calves and an embroidered kurti that looked like it cost his month’s salary. Her thick, blond-highlighted ponytail cascaded down from the top of her head. Diamonds the size of peas shone in her ears. Her usually pristine appearance multiplied tenfold when surrounded by Ramu kaka in his yellowing ganji-tank and faded lungi and Shanta kaku and all the other kakus in their cotton saris, which God help him, were stained with spices. Just his luck that today was spice grinding day.

Twice a year all the kakus on their floor gathered to grind the mounds of red chilies and yellow turmeric pods that they had been drying for weeks along the veranda on white sheets. The huge brass mortar and tall wooden pestle they used to pound the spices into powder stood like proud sentries in their path.

Kimi studied the mortar and pestle as though she had never seen anything more fascinating. Rahul had loved pounding down on the spices as a child and having the fine turmeric and chili powder tickle at his nose. It scented the air and Kimi breathed it in, and it made her smile widen.

He looked around but didn’t see Aie and wondered why she wasn’t here. Everyone else was. And they studied Kimi with unabashedly curious eyes.

“Not going to help us today, Rahul?” Shanta kaku asked, wiping her spice stained hands on her sari.

He caught Kimi’s eye and nodded in the direction of his block, urging her along. “Next time, Shanta kaku. Busy today.”

“At least introduce us to your friend before you run off,” one of the other kakus said.

“I’m Kimaya, how do you do?” Kimi said to the kaku, who smiled as if she hadn’t expected an answer.

Shanta kaku pinched Rahul’s arm and slapped a hand to her cheek. “Arrey wah, the girl speaks Marathi!”

Everyone nodded in appreciation.

“Of course I speak Marathi!” Kimi said indignantly, smiling her too-wide smile so those crooked canines made an appearance. “Is this turmeric?”

One of the grandmas picked up a piece of dried turmeric root and thrust it into Kimi’s hand. “You rub it on your face for facial!” She said the word facial in English and rubbed her own cheek.

“And what do you know about facials, Aji?” a little girl Rahul had never seen before said through giggles, and everyone laughed, including Kimi.

“What does she need a facial for? She already looks like a Bollywood heroine, what, Rahul?”

His cheeks warmed as though he were fourteen again, and he grabbed Kimi’s arm. “Let’s go. Everyone needs to get back to work.”

Kimi waved to everyone and burst into giggles when someone behind them exclaimed that her nails were painted blue!

He wanted to laugh. Really, he did. But this was his home, and the fact that she looked like a string of pearls that had fallen into a muddy puddle made him feel dirty himself, as though he were on his hands and knees trying to dig the pearls out of the mud but they kept slipping from his fingers. He needed to get her out of here and back where she belonged fast.

Kimi was still grinning and waving at the giggling gallery when he knocked on the door, which was locked. It was only ever locked when it was time for bed. The doors in the chawl tended to stay open and they were most certainly never locked.

The latch clattered and Aie pulled the door open a crack, then pressed her hand to her mouth when she saw him. She looked utterly horrified when her gaze landed on Kimi.

“Who’s this?” she asked, and completely uncharacteristically, she didn’t move out of the way and ask them to come inside.

“I’m Kimaya Patil,” Kimi said and touched Aie’s feet, keeping with the traditional gesture of respect even through the crack in the door.

Now Aie looked mortified. She patted Kimi on the head. “Bless you. May you live long. Wait, are you Patil-saheb’s daughter?”

Kimi nodded.

Aie studied Kimi. “How is your health now?” The door remained unopened.

“Very good, thank you,” Kimi said as if they weren’t still waiting out on the veranda.

Rahul shuffled his feet. He was about to ask Aie to let them in when she looked over his shoulder at the staring neighbors, and finally, with all the reluctance befitting a last resort, she ushered them inside.