The lovebirds twittered, filling the house with elegant crystals of sound. Someone at the door. She wiped her hands carefully on the kitchen towel so as to not ruin her ‘Storm over the Sea’ blue nails, took off the cherry-pink frilly apron, and stopped to check how she looked in the hallway mirror. A few careless strands of glossy dark-brown hair made a bewitching contrast to the paleness of her face, picked out the molten gold-browns of her eyes. She test-smiled at herself, adjusted a strand of hair. You never knew who came to the door, best be prepared.
It was the UPS man, Greg, with his all-American good looks – square jaw, bronzed skin, white teeth, radiant smile, muscled calves. Dishy, as they said in the books.
‘Hi, Greg,’ she said, made a little breathless by the early morning display of male splendour. God, he was cute.
‘Hi, Miss Mad-u,’ he said, his smile crinkling up his blue eyes, seemingly unaware of the impression he was making. ‘You look … wonderful … this morning!’
She bridled with pleasure. ‘Oh, get away with you! What could a young man like you see in an old lady like myself!’ She shook out her curls while he cast a slow look over her entire body in the ritual dance they had both choreographed. ‘What do you have for me today?’
He shook the heavy box as if it was full of feathers, put his ear to it to pretend to listen to what was inside. ‘I’m guessing – books?’
‘Books, it is,’ she said, taking the box from him, sagging under its sudden weight. She put it down, careful not to break a nail. She pushed it just inside the door, signed the papers and waved goodbye, then stood there watching him drive the little brown truck down the road.
A perfect treat for the weekend. When they came back from the picnic she had planned on the beach – complete with luscious purple-brown Washington plums and bottle of Oregon Pinot Noir the magazines assured her was the most seductive of wines – she would lie on her soft deep peach silk daybed, as she liked to call it, in the sun room and read. Ooooh!
Vinod wasn’t down yet. It was only eight o’clock but she had got up early to drop Tara off. It had been a nice change, having her here. She pushed the box bit by bit towards the study with her feet. From the desk, she took a paper knife and slit through the tape. Twenty-five books, said the invoice right on top, listing each by name. Sweet Surprise. Sealed Tenders. Passion Flowers. Rhapsody at 7/11. Even Monsoon Masti! She pulled that one out to check whether it was set in India, settled in the beige leather upholstered antique armchair in the study, put her feet up on the matching ottoman, and began reading, just a little.
She walked along the cemented path near the parapet, then decided to go closer to the calm blue waters of the Bay of Bengal. Taking off her hot-pink six-inch stilettos, she walked towards the water. The sand squelched invitingly under her feet, warm, and rough as a pumice stone. As she passed by, she could feel male eyes trained on her. She ignored them, knowing they would belong to people of no consequence, fishermen probably, or roadside Romeos, as they were called. The salty breeze lifted her hair, blew it about a bit. She patted the back pocket of her dazzling white trousers. Yes, she had remembered to bring her small pink comb. Wouldn’t do to be caught looking unkempt.
The water came up. She decided to walk along its edge, on the smooth wet pressed sand where the waves lapped. She rolled up the bottoms of her trousers to mid-calf. From time to time, a small wave passed teasingly over her feet. A small smile played over her face when she thought of how people would see her, a young charming virginal beauty. A biggish wave caught her by surprise, wet the bottoms of her rolled-up trousers. She felt irritated. Now they would get coated with sand. She looked down at her feet as the wave retreated. Through the water, they looked like bloated, dead yellow-white fish, her orange toe-nails bizarre points of colour. Her irritation rose till she became aware that the expression on her face was less than picturesque. She decided to let her feet dry out and walked a little higher up the shore. As she approached Schmidt Memorial, testament to one man’s courage and self-sacrifice, a ripped male figure detached itself from the shadows. She quickly patted her hair into place and wished she had remembered to bring her lip gloss along. It was the man with whom she locked eyes every morning as she stood waiting for her bus, while he went past on his motorbike. Her whole body horripilated in anticipation, like the womanly women of the epics, who made chastity so desirable. Maybe this was the moment her whole feminine life had been poised to meet.
Vinod walked into the study. She looked up from her book, startled to see him in work clothes. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all.
‘You’re working today?’ she said.
‘I told you some extra work needed to be done this weekend, Madhu,’ he said.
God, he was in a mood.
‘Yes, but I’ve been planning this picnic to Cannon Beach for weeks! I have sandwiches and plums and wine and everything.’
He looked her up and down. She had on denim cut-offs with a sheer blue-green, frothy, floral, off-the-shoulder, knee-length top of the type that was the rage this season. His eyes lingered a second more than necessary on her shoulders, and his own seem to shake ever so slightly. She thought she heard him mutter ‘Venus rising from the sea’ under his breath but could not be quite sure.
‘You were going to wear those clothes to the beach?’ he said in that careless way of his.
She nodded, distracted at hearing the ‘Venus’ part. She wasn’t quite sure it was a compliment. Okay, she wasn’t the thinnest but so what? This was America.
‘But can’t you go in later at least?’
‘I’m sorry but work’s work,’ he said, enunciating each word carefully as though to a slow child. ‘As a matter of fact, I might have to go in tomorrow as well.’
‘What, on a Sunday? We never seem to spend any quality time together these days!’
‘Well, one can’t ignore work, Madhu. Think of all the Indians who are losing their jobs! Why don’t you get one of your friends to go with you to the beach? You know, Vani or Nandita?’
‘They’re all busy with their own families!’
‘Well, why not go down to the mall or something? Buy yourself some stuff. You’ll enjoy that.’ He noticed the eBay box on the floor. ‘You seem to have a new bunch of books as well. That should keep you occupied, I would think. See you later, then.’
He gave her a casual two-fingered salute and walked out of the study. She could hear him pick up his keys and mobile phone and go into the garage. A few minutes later, she heard the Taurus starting up.
When she walked out into the hallway, the woody fragrance of his cologne still hung in the air. He seemed to have changed the brand he had used for years to this new thing. On the whole, this was both more male and more subtle, she decided.
She took out the plums in the fridge, began popping them into her mouth one by one. They were bursting with juice and fragrance. Her stomach rumbled. She pulled out a bag of potato chips. Better than the chocolates. Forget a real breakfast, she would eat a brunch of sorts later. May as well go down to the mall. She looked at the clock. Too early for that. Maybe she could go and try on the ghagra-cholis she had ordered from Jaswinder if she was free. They had been ready for a couple of days. But even Jaswinder probably had plans. She would call and see.
She emptied the chips into a bowl, went back into the study, picked up Monsoon Masti, and decided to stretch out on the couch with its heap of colourful Indian mirror-work throw pillows – lime green, aquamarine, chrome yellow, flame orange, indigo. She settled herself with the chips to hand, pulled the throw over her feet. Then she pushed it off, and got up to turn the Home Improvement channel on to cut the silence a bit, and climbed back onto the couch.
The music came on, and Shahrukh walked through the door, his glorious brown-black mane catching both the light from the windows on the far side of the room and off the burnished Brazilian wooden floor (more expensive than real wood). He was the picture of elegance in dark-blue jeans and sheer black kurta. She took in his perfectly toned, graceful body, the classic ‘V’ it made, the bead choker with its pendant, a cross, which nestled in the hollow at the base of his throat.
What a man he was! A man’s man, yet a woman’s man, too…
Shahrukh stretched his hand out to her, pulled her to her feet. She felt a shiver go through her. She almost swooned at his closeness, his expensive fragrance. He caught her as she swayed. They stood for a moment, radiant under the skylight. Then, hands clasped, they stepped through the open French windows with their peach velvet drapes with a self-embossed pattern of nautilus shells to an outdoor location.
Who had opened the windows and when?
They found themselves in a vast Alpine meadow, the green, green grass yielding luxuriously under their feet like the best pile carpets. Behind them were snow-clad volcanoes: Mount Rainier, Mount St Helens and Mount Hood, all standing next to each other. Special effects of some kind? Beyond the forests of graceful conifer, she could hear the silver sound of cascading waters. She lifted her head to take in the pure mountain air…
Before she knew it, Shahrukh had let go of her hand gently and run forty feet away. She reached yearningly after him, tried to stop him. But he had climbed to the crest of the ridge, his silhouette lone and stylish against the cloudless azure of the mid-morning sky. The light glinted on his designer Longines watch. She looked down at herself, smooth and sleek as a seal in her ice-blue mark-down Vera Wang, corset in place. The Spanish guitars started playing…
Shahrukh paused a moment, then stretched his hands out in the characteristic move that made every Indian girl of marriageable age (and beyond) grow dizzy with longing, the move which embraced the land, the sky, the very earth itself…
Ah, Shahrukh! Be mine! Be mine!
But he was hers, hadn’t he chosen her?
The next second, he ran towards her in slo-mo, hair aflame with sunlight, gliding over the grass, so light and lithe was he. A fire tore through the very fibre of her being as she waited for him, hardly daring to breathe. Then Shahrukh took her hand, stared deep into her eyes. She wondered if he would notice that she had a very slight squint. What profound passion and torment she could see in the depths of his eyes!
The music swelled up, and Shahrukh began to sing in Abhijit’s voice.
‘Tumhein jo maine dekha, tumhein jo maine jaana
Jo hosh tha, woh toh gaya…’
Shahrukh whirled her and twirled her and hurled her (at 4’9”, 145 lb), singing melodiously all the while. She found her steps had got as light and graceful as his, and was about to sing back to him in Shreya Ghoshal’s voice when the doorbell rang, then the sound of someone trying to open the front door with a key.
Intruders!
She jumped off the couch, scattering the pillows and almost tripping over the throw in her rush to get to the shoe closet underneath the stairs where Vinod kept his golfing irons. She snatched up the nine iron and raised it menacingly by the door, ready to bring it down on whoever’s head.
A mild-looking Mexican couple stumbled in, and cried out a warning to her. ‘Ma’am, Miz Maddu, it’s only us, Pedro and Juanita! Don’t you remember, we called you at work to ask if we could come in on Saturday instead of next Tuesday?’
Her heart stopped pounding. ‘Sorry, guys,’ she said, still shaking a bit from all the adrenaline and the dancing. ‘I completely forgot.’ She replaced the nine iron, then went to get a drink of water, changed her mind and opened a can of Diet Coke. ‘I’ll be in the study for a while, then I’m going out,’ she called after them as they went out to fetch the cleaning things from their shabby car.
‘Okay,’ they said.
‘And Pedro, Juanita, could you pay some extra attention to the tub in the upstairs bathroom? It wasn’t done quite perfectly the last time, I noticed.’
‘Sure, ma’am, sorry, ma’am,’ they said, smiling and nodding as they came back in through the door, their hands full of brushes and brooms and cleaning liquids.
‘So who’s looking after the baby today?’ she asked, noticing that they had not brought him along as they did usually. She liked to look at him, with his perfectly round head and shiny black hair and eyes, his perfect little feet – little Pedro or Pablo.
‘Oh, the other kids are home today,’ Juanita said. ‘Michelle, our eldest, she’s taking care of the baby.’
‘Oh, good,’ she said, walking off, barely listening. She shut the study door to keep out the sound of the vacuum cleaner, tossed back the fallen cushions on to the couch. Monsoon Masti had fallen to the floor, its pages slightly crushed. She picked it up, smoothed out the pages, decided she would read it later. She turned on her laptop. There were several messages from eBay about things she had bid for: drapes, bathroom accessories, a painting by Thomas Kinkade, America’s most collected living artist, so his website claimed (a safe bet for someone who didn’t know art but knew what she liked). There was a catalogue from Madras Gold House. They probably had some new stuff in. Something to go with the outfits. She double-clicked the catalogue. There was a lot of clunky gold jewellery, southern style. No one wore stuff like that any more. Why did they even bother? Ah, here was stuff more her style. She pursed her lips, trying to remember the exact colours of the ghagra-cholis. Okay, there was the baby pink with intricate silver hand-done embroidery. Oxidized silver was so out; it would look too heavy, anyway. Maybe she should check out the platinum jewellery, a dainty touch or two at the neck and the hands, maybe chandelier earrings if they had those. Or should she go with pearl? People always remarked on her accessories at the Indian parties. The red-and-gold outfit was, of course, much easier to match. If she switched around some of her older things, that would probably do – or maybe she could pick up just one delicate necklace – oh, this one was darling!
The necklace ordered, she decided she might as well step out, there was nothing else to do. If Vinod had warned her a little earlier, she could have called around to see if anyone would come with her to the mall. But it was so far into Saturday morning that no one was likely to be home. She went up to the bedroom, touched up her makeup, pulled out her Jimmy Choo lookalikes and matching blue bag from the closet. She called out to the cleaning people to tell them she was off.