Chapter 12

Aadhya Khan’s diary, Kerala—translated from Hindi, written the evening before Roman and Kaalia arrive

I have been reading reviews of Kerala on a tourism website to see what foreigners think of us.

One says: “romantic destination, perfect for couples.” One says: “the monsoon season adds a certain magic.” One says: “we got completely soaked in a rainstorm and it was the best night of our entire trip.”

Roman Alvarez arrives tomorrow with her assistant editor.

I have prepared the good guest room.

I have also, just in case, prepared only the one good guest room.

Dadi does not know I have done this. Dadi would be furious if she knew I had done this. Dadi will also, I think, thank me eventually.

I have been reading their emails. Not snooping—Roman CC’d me on the logistics thread and then kept replying to it even when she was only talking to Kaalia. She did not seem to notice she was still CC’ing me. I noticed.

Tomorrow should be very interesting.

***

Aadhya continued talking as we wound deeper into the gold-whorled, high-ceilinged hallways. Sunlight streamed in through the windows. Birds perched on the glass dome ceiling above, chirping. This woman is filthy rich, I thought.

“—and I wish I could say my grandmother, Priya, will be happy to see you,” she continued, “but she’s really upset about this. She’s a very grumpy old lady. It’s just us now, you know, living here together. I love her so dearly. But she doesn’t trust the publishing industry. And so you must understand she won’t trust you two at first, either. Though it helps neither of you are white.” She winked at us and led us into another hallway. This one glimmered golden and ivory. What looked like hand-carved wood swirled around each door and lined the walls in stands for vases and sunset-orange paintings. 

Aadhya was pointing out her grandmother’s taste in orange, pink, and deep red hues (suspiciously similar to the palette of the lesbian flag) when I asked, “It’s just you two?” 

“Yeah,” she said. “My grandfather died of a heart attack twenty years ago. My parents moved further north to be with my siblings. But I stayed.” 

She seemed to sense the question on the tip of my tongue.

“I stayed because I love her,” Aadhya explained simply. “I love her more than anything. Dadi is dearer to me than even my own mother and father.”

I had a feeling we would get along well. 

“Anyways, here, this is the spare room!” She led us to the end of the corridor. An arched window illuminated the single wooden door, delicate flowers carved into its surface. 

“Room?” Roman asked before I could. Room, singular? 

My heart had begun racing at the thought of sharing a room with Roman. 

Aadhya’s cheerful expression dimmed slightly. “Yes, room. You’ve been planning to come meet me and Dadi here since last year, was it, Roman? You told me about Kaalia so last-minute I thought . . .”

Roman and I glanced at each other. 

“You thought?” Roman prodded. 

“I thought you two were together,” Aadhya said in a hushed voice. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed that . . .”

“We’re not—” 

“I mean, I’m not—” I said at the same time. “She’s my boss.” 

“She’s my employee,” Roman added.

Aadhya looked between both us, some kind of understanding seeming to dawn on her face.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, we have another spare room, but it needs to be cleaned out by our maids and I’m not sure when that’ll happen—they’re busy as it is. But, um, there’s a couch in the sitting room over here.” She gestured to a doorless opening we’d passed by seconds ago, revealing a lushly carpeted room and a large velvet-sateen-looking couch.

“I’ll sleep here,” I offered. “I mean, I’m the last-minute add-on.” 

“No,” Roman said. Her voice was so firm, so sharp. “You take the room, Kaalia.” 

“Really, I don’t mind—it looks very cozy—” 

“I said no, Kaalia. You’re going to take the spare room. Don’t argue with me.” 

The way she said it—don’t argue with me—made my knees feel weak. I felt what her business opponents must have felt: the sheer force of her assertiveness, her determination. Her unwavering command. 

I didn’t mind being ordered around by her. I just wished it weren’t so sexy at the same time.

“Okay,” I said. 

Aadhya watched this happen with a thoughtful expression. She grabbed my hand again and led me back into the corridor. Luckily, she didn’t say anything to me about Roman, even out of her earshot. She pushed open the door to the spare room—my room for the next three weeks or three months.

My lips parted. My heart clenched. It was like something out of a dream or a fantasy book. The white marble floors gleamed bright, the shade of clouds, and the wooden-framed bed was large enough to fit three or four of me. The paintings were gilded, each depicting otherworldly scenes: Kali slaying her enemies on the battlefield, Lakshmi emerging from the primordial ocean. Hindu statues glistened in the sunlight: Saraswati, Parvati, Durga. The window to the left revealed more palm trees and grass and sand and that blue, blue ocean. To the right, the room even had its own bathroom and . . . 

“Tea room,” Aadhya said, laughing when she saw my expression. It was another room even more beautifully decorated. An intricately patterned rug had been laid on the floor, beautiful wooden-crafted and velvet-plushed couches surrounding it.

“How . . .” I blinked several times, as if the room might disappear. Even three months wouldn’t be long enough. I wanted to live here forever. “How did you get your fortune?” 

Aadhya grinned, as if she was used to this question. “My grandfather. He was old money rich—I think that’s what Americans call it. Old money, right? His great-great-great grandfather was an important guy in a kingdom in North India and bought thousands of acres worth of land. His great-great grandfather was corrupt and hoarded his fortune. Long story short, my grandfather was corrupt too.”

The grin on her face faded.

“But don’t blame my grandmother for marrying him,” she said, sounding almost worried. “She did it to keep her family out of poverty. She was a good woman with terrible choices. Her beauty made her worth something—so she sold herself.”

Any hint of a smile had disappeared altogether. Aadhya stared at a spot on the wall, for minutes or centuries, I couldn’t tell. “But that’s for later. My grandmother’s not a very talkative woman. I know a lot of this from reading her poetry. So you’ll see for yourself, soon enough.” 

“Later?” I asked. I had assumed we would get started the moment we got here. At least, according to Roman’s schedule.

“Yes, later.” Aadhya laughed. A bright, bubbly sound. “You Westerners are all so capitalist. You have to be productive all the time. What’s productive is resting. Especially after that long journey you just had.”

She was right: I hadn’t thought of how our work flow would—could—change once we were no longer in the U.S., capitalism-central. Maybe Roman’s Google Calendar would loosen up when she heard Aadhya phrase it like that.

“Shouldn’t we at least meet your grandmother first?” 

“No, you’ll want to handle that rested. I wasn’t kidding when I said she was grumpy. Do you speak Hindi?” 

“No, only Tamil.” 

“She can speak limited English. But what she can say is often rude. Just don’t listen to her. She will try to scare you off.” 

“Is there a reason she’s so . . .” 

Aadhya sighed and touched my shoulder. She was a lot more physically affectionate than most people in New York. I loved it. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? No, I have no idea why she’s grumpy. She’s been like this my whole life.” 

“But she’s not grumpy to you?” 

“No, mostly not. Of course I still see that side of her. But she’s more affectionate with me than she was with her own children—my mother said that herself. Maybe you can tell me after you’ve read her poetry. There are some things I just can’t decipher. Maybe you’ll have a different interpretation.” 

“Her poetry’s really that vulnerable?” Roman had said it was, and also that it was brilliant and beautiful too. I ached to read it. 

Aadhya nodded. “A woman who doesn’t talk much needs somewhere to express herself. Dadi does that through her poetry.” 

Once Aadhya left us to settle in, I went to find Roman in the sitting room. She was cross-legged on the couch with her laptop propped on her lap. She typed away furiously.

“You already have notes for the anthology?” I asked. 

“No, I’m writing emails to my lawyers,” she said. She looked up at me but her fingers never stopped typing. The dexterity . . . “We’re trying to plan our course of action for the next court date.” 

“Oh,” I said. I noticed she hadn’t touched her two suitcases (one filled with books, the other with clothes) to unpack them. Even if this wasn’t a bedroom, there was still a wardrobe and dresser space for her Aadhya had told her to use. “Are you sure you don’t want . . .”

I hadn’t even finished my question: the spare room? This time, she didn’t even look up. Her answer was, sharply, “No.” 

“I feel really bad. I’m intruding on your trip. You’ve had this planned for a year, like Aadhya said.” 

“And who invited you, Kaalia? Who said she needed your help?” 

“You did?” It sounded more like a question.

“I did,” Roman repeated. She harshly clicked something on her laptop—probably the send button—and then shut it. “So don’t you dare feel bad. It’s my fault I didn’t clarify we weren’t a . . .”

The word couple hung in the air unspoken.

Roman definitely hadn’t called us a couple to Aadhya, so why had she assumed we were?

“Though of course I shouldn’t have needed to clarify that. I don’t understand why she thought that. It must’ve been the way I spoke about you over the phone,” Roman said, as if to herself. 

How did you speak about me over the phone? 

“But it’s no worries,” she continued. “It’s only a little bit of time until another room becomes free. And this room is lovely enough itself.” 

I wanted to say that a little bit of time could be a long bit of time, considering Aadhya hadn’t specified when another room would be available. But Roman seemed to be talking to herself more than me. I didn’t interrupt her. 

“We should go meet Priya,” Roman said. “That’s what I have planned next for us.”

“But Aadhya said we should rest after our long trip.”

“It’s in the calendar. Have you looked at the calendar?” 

I’d forgotten entirely about the calendar she had mentioned in her office this week. 

“Yes, I looked at it.”

“So you know we have to meet Priya now. And then work on the poetry compilation.” 

“Right,” I lied, “but I think what Aadhya said is a good idea—” 

“It’s on the Google Calendar,” Roman said, rubbing her forehead as if she were talking to a disobedient child. “That means we have to do it.” 

“Since when is the Google Calendar a prophet?”

“Since I made it,” Roman snapped back. 

“Do you think you’re a prophet?”

“No, I don’t think I’m a—Kaalia, let’s just go meet Priya, okay? I really want to meet her.” Her voice increasingly crept toward sarcastic territory. “Is that okay? Is that fine with you?” 

“This is why we should rest,” I said under my breath. But not so low she couldn’t hear me. “Someone is irritable.” 

“I’m not irritable,” Roman gritted out. 

“Define irritable.” 

“Being easily annoyed or angry, I don’t know.” 

“Oh, you don’t know? You’re so jet-lagged you don’t know what irritable means and you want to go meet Priya Banerjee, the poet whose work we’re going to make a book out of, who’s supposed to be a grumpy, mean old lady herself.” 

“This conversation is making me irritable. I didn’t know you had such a gift for getting on my nerves.” 

“That’s your mistake,” I said. My anger was feeding on her anger. “I showed you just how bad of a temper I have that day in the office when I quit on the spot.” 

“If I had a paperweight again I’d throw it at your head right now.” 

“If I find your fox spray, I’m going to spray the shit out of your foxy little attitude.” 

“My foxy little attitude?” 

“You heard me.” 

“You know, you brought up Zootopia earlier. Maybe you’re the one obsessed with that movie.” 

“I’m not obsessed with that movie. Are all fox-related things Zootopia-related?” 

Roman pretended to ponder this question. “Tale as old as time. Are all Zootopia-related things foxy? Did the chicken come from the egg? Did the earth start with a Big Bang?” 

“I can tell you have two younger brothers because you’re really starting to get on my nerves!” 

“What’s the matter? Going to quit again?” 

“Don’t tempt me,” I growled. “Better yet, I’ll kill you and go back to the office. ‘Where’s Roman? Where’s Roman?’ everyone will ask me. To which I’ll say, ‘I don’t know. She disappeared one day. Local authorities never found her.’ And I’ll keep your brain as a trophy and study it.” 

“My brain? Thought about this before, have you? You want to dissect my intelligence because I’m just so brilliant.” 

That was exactly what my subconscious had been thinking. Instead, I retorted, “No, I want to figure out how someone can be so goddamn enraging and I’ll give the data to your evil geneticist ex-girlfriend so she can eugenics-wipe annoying people like you off the planet!” 

“Who, Black people?” 

“That’s not what I meant and you know it!” 

Roman’s mouth opened, then closed. I thought I had won the argument until I realized she was staring at someone behind me. 

Please don’t be Roman’s evil geneticist ex-girlfriend . . . 

It was Priya. Old and beautiful, her deep-set dark eyes betrayed nothing. I had no idea how long she had been watching us fight. Probably far too long.

“So. You two are the ones who want my poems.” Her voice was accented, but unbearably clear and unbearably cold. 

“Yes, they’re extraordinary,” Roman said. Immediately returning to her calm, authoritative CEO self.

“Of course they are,” Priya snapped. “Why should I give them to you?” 

Her eyes fell on me. I felt obligated to respond. “Because—Bloom Press is—”

“American. Rich. Started with white man money, wasn’t it?”

Roman and I didn’t dare glance at each other. But I knew we were both taken aback by the force of this woman’s voice, the assertiveness with which she carried herself. She had a more commanding presence than even Roman. 

“You’ll publish me in English for white people to feel cultured,” Priya continued, ruthless.

I thought of Melamed’s Racial Capitalism. “You’re right,” I couldn’t help saying. My voice was quiet.

I immediately regretted agreeing with her. Roman was going to kill me. And I was more afraid of Roman than Priya, at least right now.

Her head swivelled in my direction. She glared at me, looking betrayed. But it was true. We both knew Priya was right. 

“You. I like you.” Priya’s sharp mouth didn’t curve—but it twitched, so briefly, the suggestion of a suggestion of a smile. “You’re smarter than your friend.” 

“She’s not my—I’m her—I mean, she’s my boss—”

Priya’s expression remained cold and blank for a moment. Then she began laughing. Full, hearty, bone-deep laughter. 

“You’re in love with her,” she said. “How exhausting.” 

***

Hope you guys liked this one <333

Love,
Meera