Salaam, Paris (18 page)

To me, confidentiality agreements didn’t apply to best friends. While the law might have stated otherwise, there was no way I could allow my best friend from home to think that I was actually dating a bad-boy rocker with a baby face and a tattoo that stretched from his elbow to his shoulder. Looking at Nilu’s face, I could tell that she didn’t believe it anyway, which was the fundamental benefit of having a friend who really knew you.

“Saif was still sending me magazines,” Nilu said, giggling as we left the restaurant and walked down the street toward where she was staying. She had her arm looped inside mine, the way we always walked back on the streets of Mahim. “I have read all about your love affair. He seems nice,” she said. “But I never would have pictured you with someone like that. I had thought, that even with all this, your glamorous life and all, that you might still want to wait. You know, until you found ‘the one’—someone who loves Allah like you do, someone your family would approve of. But I guess it’s hard, living here amidst all this, not to become a different person. He’s rich and good-looking and famous, and so are you. So what does it matter?”

I could tell that Nilu was trying hard to keep the judgment out of her voice. She had always been kind and tactful, and I somehow always imagined her working as a diplomat. Unlike Nana, she would never impose her beliefs on anyone.

“I’m not supposed to tell you this, but it’s not what you think,” I said, stopping, the warm air from a sidewalk grate sweeping up our skirts. “This whole thing with Kai, nothing is really happening there, no matter how it looks.”

She stood with her mouth slightly agape, her eyes wide behind her glasses, and listened as I told her about Felicia’s plan and Jamaica and the chasteness of my relationship with a rock star.

“We have kissed for the cameras, but that is all,” I said. “If we think a photographer has followed us, he will come to my apartment, then leave after drinking a cup of hot chocolate. People call our affair ‘sultry’ and ‘hot’ and God knows what else, but there is no such thing. In fact, it is really rather tame. We are like brother and sister. But I signed a piece of paper that said I could never tell a soul about this. So you must
promise
me that it goes no further. It doesn’t matter what people say about me, if, when you go home, they call me a whore and a hussy. You
must
be absolutely quiet about this, believing the same as them. Maybe one day, far in the future, the truth can come out. Just not now. OK?”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked. We continued walking, Nilu squeezing my hand, a light drizzle that had suddenly appeared merging with the tears on my face. “What purpose does it serve to have people think something about you that isn’t true?”

“You know, Nana never thought I was worth very much,” I said, my head bowed in sadness. “He thought that all I was good for was this face, that it would be the only thing to land me a rich and fine husband. But as it has turned out, my career—this thing I do—it’s all I have now. I have to make the most of it. It is my intention to be as successful as possible in a very short span of time, to earn and save as much as I can. And then I will take what I’ve made and do something significant with it, although I don’t know what yet. Maybe, in the end, it will help me to win my family back. Although maybe by then, also, the damage will have been too much. But the people who work with me, the people I trust, they have told me that if I do this, I will go from being a fairly famous fashion model to an extremely famous one.”

Nilu nodded, then was silent for a minute. “Tell me something,” she asked as we arrived at the entrance to her building. “After everything you’ve been through, do you think you would do it again, leaving India and all? With all that you’ve lost, I mean with your family and all, has it been worth it?”

I gave her a hug good-bye and, just as she was pulling away, whispered into her ear: “Yes.”

Chapter Twenty-three

For someone who had never had to manage money before, I had become rather good at it. I used to live on a weekly stipend—about the equivalent of five dollars—which would have bought me a coffee and a bagel on the streets of New York, but in Mahim allowed me to indulge in several movies a week from Book Nook, daily
dosas
at the neighborhood
dhaba,
and my monthly issues of
Stardust
and
Cine Blitz
, even if they were used. Occasionally I was able to save a few rupees at the end of the week, and when I had left for Paris, in addition to the small amount of money Nana had given me, this was what I had taken. It was a beautifully uncomplicated life. Money, for all I could care, was something to be spent on cold coffee and cotton candy. Before all this had happened, I figured that I would eventually be married someday, and to a man who would give me an allowance in order to purchase vegetables at the market and pay the
dhobi
to wash our clothes.

Stavros had helped me open a bank account shortly after I came to New York and helped me invest the money I had made in Paris. In addition to being my agent, he also called himself my manager, tending to what he described as my “business affairs.” The payments for everything I did, from the runway shows to the magazine shoots to the advertising campaigns to the makeup endorsement deals, would initially go to him. He would deduct his commission and then send me the rest. I had no cause to question the way he was doing things. Every so often, he would sit me down and tell me all the expenses that had to be paid—Felicia’s salary, my rent, cash for my personal expenses. He aimed, as much as possible, to ensure that I got as much as I could without paying for it: my clothes from Viva, for whom I still worked, more out of a sense of loyalty than anything else; my makeup from Blaze; and just about anything else I wanted by calling a stylist. He educated me about the power of demands, how I could use as leverage my growing fame, and that designers would fall over themselves getting me in one of their outfits if they thought it would result in more business for them. I eventually understood how this world worked, although I never felt comfortable just assuming that things were there for me, just for the asking. It was interesting that while Nana believed in hard work, and had had the same job as an airline pilot for more than two decades, he had never inculcated that in me. He had taught me the importance of saving money. But earning it, as far as he was concerned, was not something I ever had to worry about.

So just short of a year from the time I left India, now officially out of my teens, I was stunned to see the amount of money in my savings passbook. I took out a calculator and worked out what it was in rupees, then determined that in all the twenty-three years that my Nana worked as a pilot, he never made what I had accrued in twelve months. But I knew he would be as impressed by that as if I had told him that I had made the money selling my body as a prostitute. To him, it would all be the same thing.

 

“How about Parrot Cay? Turks and Caicos?” Kai asked me one afternoon as he lounged on the couch in my living room, scraping something out of his right ear. I smiled as I thought of how this was the same man, with his toenail infection and the retainer he put on every night before bed, that millions of girls all over the world lusted over. They bought T-shirts with the words MRS. KAI scrawled over the front, and had his face as their computer screensaver. They would envy me for everything I knew about him; for a fake relationship, we spent a lot of time together, perhaps because our profile made it hard for him to be seen with anybody else. In a sense, he was almost stuck with me.

“Huh?” I asked, rearranging the kitchen cabinets.

“To vacation in. Turks and Caicos Island, at the Parrot Cay Hotel over there. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of it,” he said, noticing the blank look on my face. “Oh girl, where have you been? It’s where Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner just got hitched, where Bruce Willis has a pad. It’s the vacation spot of the moment. It’ll be great for us to be seen there. Anyway, don’t you need a little break from all your shoots and shows and stuff? I know I do.”

“What, just the two of us?” I asked. “Why do we need to go away together? You can have a break here, sleep in late, don’t take on as many gigs.” I wanted suddenly to start quoting the terms of our contract to him, to point out that nowhere was anything written about romantic excursions.

“Well, I really want to go, and I obviously can’t be seen alone, because then the buzz will be that we’ve split up and all those gay rumors will start flying about again. So if I want to go, you don’t really have a choice but to come with me.”

 

I didn’t even bother packing, simply pulling out from under my bed the slim silver gray Samsonite I had just returned with after three days in Bermuda for
Sports Illustrated.
I was certain that everything I needed was in there: swimsuit with the appropriate cover-up, sandals, floppy hat, suntan lotion. In India, I had been to the beach exactly three times, the last being when Nana had taken me horseback riding when I was thirteen. I had fallen off the horse, my foot entangled in the reins, and it had dragged me along, my hair sweeping the sand, the animal’s warm, furry body flexing against my ears as it cantered along the water’s edge. I emerged shaken but safe, and Nana had said he would never again take me back, that beaches were bad luck for me. Ironically, these days, I felt like I was spending almost all my life on them.

I was hoping Felicia would find some excuse to tag along, but even she—who could always somehow dream up reasons to treat herself to a first-class airline ticket on me—couldn’t justify this.

“I have to say, I don’t know why he wants to take you off alone. It’s not like there’s some major event or film festival happening there,” she said. “Maybe he just wants to be alone with you. Maybe he’s, you know,
changed,
and is falling for you. Would you even know how to recognize the signs, you virgin you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Felicia,” I said, fiddling with the locks on my suitcase. “I think he just really wants to go, and could use the company. Just thought you might want to come along, but of course he doesn’t know that I’m asking you.”

“Sorry, my dear. It will look really odd; you, your alleged boyfriend, and your publicist, all on vacation together. But don’t worry. I hear from his old boyfriend that he’s romantic and attentive,” she said, laughing. “Maybe he just wants to love you up. Enjoy! And if nothing else, you’ll get a decent tan out of it. Oh, and hit him up for some beauty secrets. His skin always looks so great.”

Kai chartered a plane to take us from New York to Providenciales, the main island in Turks and Caicos. Even though I hadn’t been that keen about coming, I had to concede that the place was stunning. A water taxi took us from the airport on the forty-five-minute journey to Parrot Cay, which, from afar, looked unassuming, reminding me fleetingly of a Hyderabadi bungalow. But what was striking was the splendid blue-green of the sea and the blinding whiteness of the sand. There seemed something uniquely untouched about the place, and I began to relax and lose my resentment at being brought here, now looking forward to a few days of nothing to do but read the Harlequin novels I’d thrown in my bag, and listen to old Hindu classics on my iPod.

Kai was thrilled to be recognized as we were checking in, although I told him that it was his orange sequined scarf and purple pointed cowboy boots that gave him away.

“Welcome, Mr. Kai,” the manager said, greeting us warmly. “We’re so thrilled to have you. We’ve reserved one of our best villas.” He glanced over at me, smiled, then added, “We think you will be pleased.”

“Um, how many bedrooms?” I asked as Kai kicked me lightly in the foot.

“Oh, this villa in particular has just the one, miss. I’m assuming that you are
together
?”

“Yes, yes, we are,” I said hurriedly. “It’s just always nice to have a second room to put things in, stretch out.”

“Miss, our accommodations are spacious. I’m sure you will find plenty of room to do all you need to.”

 

The view was sumptuous, overlooking the translucent waters outside. There was something pure and uncomplicated about the bedroom, with its canopied four-poster bed covered in spotless white sheets, yards of muslin tied around each pole. For all its simplicity, it was, without a doubt, the centerpiece of the room, as if everything else had been built around it. It looked like it had been designed for genuine lovers, for people to spend all day in, eating off mother-of-pearl-inlaid trays that would be delivered by room service, stopping their caressing only for that.

For Kai and me, it was completely useless.

“You can have that,” I said to him, indicating the bedroom. “There’s plenty of room for me here in the sitting room.” I fully expected him to demur, to insist that now that he had dragged me all the way here, I should have the only bed in the villa.

“Oh, you sure?” he asked, tossing his luggage onto the floor as if to stake out his territory, then pressing a button to call for our private butler. “That’s great. I could really use the rest,” he said, stretching. “Of course, feel free to come in here whenever you want, maybe take a nap in the middle of the day when I’m not using it.”