Chapter 22 Everybody deserved one last chance… #2
“Because you do not want her there. And, because you want to win a second constituency.”
“I have Udhampur.”
“But you don’t have anything in Kashmir.” Sufiyaan pointed. “Take your pick from South Kashmir. My candidate will not stand from there. You will win. Make your clout outside of Jammu and these few lanes of Srinagar.”
“10 minutes are up,” Samar remarked, and got to his feet.
“Offer is open, Samar sahab. Think and answer. Nobody has earned any extra points by being a loyal dog to their Party President.”
Samar turned and thudded down the stairs.
Nobody had earned any extra points by being loyal to their Party President. But nobody had ever lived with themselves after trading people either.
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“Hello.”
“We found him.”
“Where?”
“In Shankracharya Forest Reserve,” Faris relayed. “Adil was there and Atharva came later. They talked about radio frequencies last night. There is static noise from their playback. Possibly old sound recordings.”
“What is happening now?”
“They are trying to recover the recordings.”
“They haven’t yet?”
“No. Adil worked all last night.”
If Adil was unable to retrieve the data in one night, then it was seriously tough to pry open. But if he was pulling all-nighters and going to these lengths to hide it from him, it meant there was something solid in there. About Aamir Haider.
“Should I send in a raid?”
“No.” Samar stepped out of his car and locked it. Both the houses were silent, dark. It was way past 2. The time for everybody, even the late-nighters, to sleep.
“Why?”
Samar walked towards the outhouse. “You will raid it and take it, then what will you do with it?”
Faris didn’t have an answer.
“Wait him out. He will crack it open. He won’t stop until he does. We will see then what to do.”
“Should I keep surveillance until then?”
“Hmm.”
“Always Hmming.”
Samar halted, turning his head to the right. To Amaal.
“Ok,” he said into his mobile and ended the call. Then turned to her — “What are you doing here?’
She was decked up. A dress and all. A coat over it all to cover it up. Even in the lamplight, he could see she had makeup on. Her hair was not down. It was wound up in some bun.
“Coming home.” She said, pulling her mobile out of her purse. “You?”
Samar eyed the mobile in her hand. If there was a surface available somewhere here, she was bound to forget it there.
“Where were you?”
“Where were you?” She retorted, resting her elbow on the sill of a closed hall window.
“I asked first.”
“So?”
“Answer.”
“No.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed. She was not this chirpy and grumpy in the same breath unless she was tipsy.
“I am not drunk. How can two beers get anybody drunk? I’m just slightly buzzed. And I shouldn’t be, it’s a workday tomorrow and I have to wake up at 7 for Atharva’s…”
“Who got you drunk? Where are the others?”
“Others? Big Brother will shoot them all in a line, starting with me, if we go out on a weekday.” She set her mobile on the windowsill and used that free hand to scratch her cheek. Samar kept his eye on the mobile, which she did not reach for again.
“Then who were you out with?”
“Kahl,” she answered distractedly, smoothening the skin she had just scratched. “Star’s North India Head.”
“What more do we need from him?”
“Lots! Until the election, and when we win, a lot more.” She straightened. “What about you?”
“I don’t need anything from him.”
She threw her head back in a silent huff. The dimple made its appearance.
“Do you not understand standard threads of conversation or do it purposefully?”
“Why are you making sense even when drunk?”
“I am not drunk, Samar. Stop it.” She stood straighter.
“Do you have your pepper spray?”
“Yes!” She pushed her hand inside her purse and came up with that old little bottle he had given her as the prize she had earned after winning them the Jammu Municipal Corporation. She shook it and opened the cap. And instantly aimed it at him.
He kept staring at her, unblinking.
“If I spray now, you will go blind?”
“Spray.”
She pouted. Then brought the nozzle close to her nose and sniffed. A sneeze tore through her tiny mouth. He found himself smirking.
“It’s not…” she coughed. “Expired. It’s still strong… see.” She pushed it to his nostrils. He inhaled.
“Hmm.”
“How are you not coughing?” She went to push her hair behind her ears, but all of it was already tucked away into her bun. And she sneezed again, the nozzle close to her face. Samar took it from her hand, capped it and dropped it back inside her purse.
“No, seriously, how did it not make you sneeze?”
“I am immune to it.”
“How?” Her eyes widened. “Have so many girls sprayed it at you?!”
An amused sound left his mouth.
“Say!”
“We’ve run drills in these gas chambers.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
He blinked a nod.
“But you were a doctor.”
“Platoon surgeon.”
“So they made even you go inside these gas chambers?”
“Hmm.”
“Why?”
“Atharva liked to keep everyone ready.”
“So… all of you?”
“Hmm.”
“Even Chaturvedi?”
All the good humour of the last few minutes fizzled away. Samar began to move away when her hand caught his elbow. “Sorry.”
He looked at her. She wasn’t buzzed or chirpy or grumpy anymore. Something had shifted in her eyes.
“I am sorry. About her, and all that you went through with her and your baby.”
She thought that was his baby?
“I know I said we would forget it after last night, and I swear I will forget it. I have forgotten it. Consider it forgotten. But I had to tell you this. Whatever is happening now, it’s ok if you come back to my window and yell.”
He did not utter another word. He was scared he would either blurt every single lash of his worst days or cut her so bad with his words about this impending closeness that she would not even look at him again. And right now, in a world spinning on its axis, she was the only stagnant star.
“Were you married?”
“No.”
“And in all these years, you have never thought about anything but her.”
Samar kept staring at her. Amaal’s small eyes went even smaller, the blue so dark that it was drowning.
He felt disgust rise up in his body. What was he doing?
Using her to hold onto his own sanity and pushing her back into the storm from where she had once barely escaped unscathed?
She was ten years younger than him, at the peak of her career, enjoying life.
“Is that why you walked away from me four years ago?”
She asked that question in such a small voice. Hiding a hundred questions inside that one. Is that why you spoke so brutally to me? Is that why you insulted my age? Is that why you never looked back?
Samar swallowed. And her eyes went to his throat.
He saw them darken. He felt her body sway closer.
He felt his neck bend. He felt her face tip up.
Slowly. Very slowly. Everything was so slow.
Her scent of lilies was in the air. Soft.
Softer than the flowers she grew. Her skin had a scent, too.
A scent he discovered he wanted more of as her cheek came close to his nose.
Her mouth was round, soft, red. Her tongue came out to moisten it. It was glowing now.
His gaze rose from her lips to her eyes, and found them on his mouth. Their breaths mingled. She pushed closer. He found his mouth automatically falling to hers when good sense suddenly prevailed.
Samar recoiled.
The saliva pooling in his mouth went straight down his throat like bitter poison as he realised what he was about to do. This girl had escaped him by an inch last time. She was standing here again, closer than ever before, looking more stricken than she had before.
Samar took three steps back, partly to establish space between them and partly to escape the bubble of her fragrance. He was a man used to the stench of blood. Lilies were for the Khalils of this world.
“Wh…” she stuttered. “You… I… I’m so sorry…”
“I am sorry,” he stated. “We are back where we started. It is my fault. It won’t happen again. Go inside.”
She gaped at him, half stricken, half enraged. But this time, he gave her the chance to walk away from him. He had torn through her pride once. He wouldn’t do it again. Couldn’t do it again.
And as he had expected of Amaal Durrani, she hoisted her purse higher on her shoulder and whirled to open the door.
“Amaal.”
She stilled.
Samar stepped up to the windowsill, plucked her mobile and pushed it into her field of vision. She took it from his fingers, opened the door quietly, stepped inside, then closed it quietly.
For a man who was used to walking away, Samar sat down on the threshold there.