Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
I t took Arjun twenty-seven hours to get back to San Francisco, and by the time he rolled his bags into his apartment and flopped onto the couch, the sun had long since set. He was fatigued from traveling, but he wasn’t sleepy. A week in India had reversed his circadian rhythm, and despite the late hour, he was wide awake.
Luckily, Dan and Erica were awake, too. When Arjun texted to ask what they were up to, Dan told him they were getting burritos from the taqueria below their apartment and asked if he wanted to join. Arjun had eaten nothing but airplane food all day, and the mere thought of a Mission-style burrito was enough to make him salivate like a dog. He called an Uber to their apartment and entered the taqueria on the ground floor.
Dan and Erica were in their usual spot, a booth tucked into the back corner, surrounded by metal shelving units laden with tortillas. “The conquering hero returns,” Dan said, rising to embrace Arjun.
“We figured you’d be hungry, so we got you food,” said Erica, handing Arjun a plate of tacos al pastor and a mandarin Jarritos.
“You are my favorite person in the world right now,” Arjun said gratefully, sliding into the booth next to Dan. He bit into one of the tacos, and the succulent orange meat was the best thing he’d ever tasted: hot and richly spiced, its steam perfuming his mouth. Since his encounter with Gokul Rathore, food and cooking were never far from his mind; now, he was wondering if there was some way to make Indian tacos. “Chicken tikka tacos” has a nice ring to it, he mused. That was probably a question for Kevin McPherson; on the plane ride back, Kevin had promised to whip up some new recipes for Arjun, should he ever need them for his restaurant.
“How was India?” asked Erica, dipping a cheesy birria taco into a bowl full of consommé. “Besides the sale, I mean.”
Arjun almost blurted out something about his meeting with Malini—then, he remembered that Dan and Erica still didn’t know that he was looking for an arranged marriage (or that he’d decided to pursue Indian American women exclusively from now on). He suddenly realized how odd it was to hide such a big secret from his best friends. Should I tell them? he wondered. Can I tell them?
“India was good,” he said instead, through a mouthful of meat. “Hot.”
“Did you get us anything?” asked Dan, glancing meaningfully at the tote bag Arjun had brought with him. Arjun produced a small wooden elephant for Dan and a dazzling red sari for Erica. She insisted on trying on the garment there and then, and she suggested that they ascend to the apartment. The three of them gathered up their food and headed upstairs.
“So, it was a huge sale, right?” Erica asked as they climbed. “Did your boss give you some kind of reward for pulling it off?”
Arjun nodded. “It was really interesting, actually. When Adam called me, he told me what this could mean for my career. I’m a VP now—but I could be Senior Vice President very soon, then Division Head. Adam said I could even be sitting in his chair in a few years. Imagine me, the CFO.”
“That’s great,” Dan said. “But there was still a commission check, right?”
Arjun laughed. “A big one.”
“What are you going to do with all of that money?”
He shrugged. “I was thinking of buying my condo.”
Erica frowned. “That place? It’s a bachelor pad, Arjun. Why not put a down payment on a family home?”
“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe I’ll find myself a new office.”
“What’s wrong with your old office?” asked Dan.
“A pipe burst in the ceiling,” Arjun explained. “I got moved to this dingy little spot in the basement of the San Francisco Current. ” He frowned. “And don’t even get me started on my new office mate.”
“You’re sharing an office?” Erica asked.
He nodded. Then, without thinking, he rattled off his list of ever-growing grievances concerning Nisha Nandan: her incessant phone calls, her loud laugh, the way she always oh-so-subtly pushed her mountain of books onto his side of the desk.
Dan laughed. “She sounds like the worst person ever,” he said. “Does she have an awful name, too? I’m picturing a ‘Prudence.’ Or maybe a ‘Bertha.’”
“That’s sexist,” Erica put in. “What if I was named Prudence?”
Dan shrugged. “Then I’d be writing you letters asking what to do about my terribly named fiancée.”
Erica gave him a playful shove. “Her name isn’t so bad,” Arjun admitted. “It’s Nisha Nandan.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “Nisha Nandan?” he repeated. They had arrived outside the apartment, and Erica turned the lock and let them inside. “Where have I heard that name before?”
“She’s a journalist,” offered Arjun, walking over to the kitchen table and taking a seat with his food. “Maybe you’ve seen her byline somewhere.”
Dan shook his head. “That’s not it.” He stood and walked to the rickety wooden bookshelf set beneath the window. He squatted down and scanned his finger across the rows of spines. His finger stopped on one book, a paperback with a bright-fuchsia cover. He pulled it off the shelf and brought it to the table. “Take a look,” he said, handing the book to Arjun.
Arjun examined the cover. It was one of those classic romance novel covers: two impossibly good-looking models locked in an embrace. Only the woman’s face was visible, and contorted with longing. Above the figures, in big, loopy letters, was the title: The Kiss of Eternity . “Right there,” Dan said, pointing to the bottom of the cover. “Nisha Nandan. She’s a writer.”
Arjun sipped on his soda. “Come on, Dan—there must be hundreds of Nisha Nandans in the world. Trust me: the Nisha I know is most definitely not a romance novelist.”
Dan opened the book and flipped to the back cover. “Is this her?” he asked, pointing to the author's photo.
Arjun nearly spit out his drink. The woman’s hair was straighter than Nisha’s, and she was wearing glasses—but she had the same sharp nose and dazzling green eyes. “Oh my God,” he said. “That’s her.”
Erica emerged from the bedroom, draped in her new sari . The garment fit her perfectly, and the sequins stitched into the silk glittered like diamonds. She leaned over Arjun’s shoulder and looked at the picture. “She’s pretty,” she said. “You should ask her out.”
“As if,” he scoffed.
“It’s just as well,” said Dan, reading the blurb. “It looks like she’s married.”
“No, she’s not,” said Arjun. “She doesn’t wear a wedding ring.”
“Lots of married people don’t wear wedding rings,” said Dan. He read aloud: “‘Nisha Nandan graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in English literature. She lives in Denver with her cat, Susan, and her husband, Parth.’”
Dan lent The Kiss of Eternity to Arjun, who fully expected an enjoyable hate-read. It would be fun to go through Nisha’s writing and tear it apart, then sit opposite her with the smug satisfaction that he’d read her book (and knew about her secret life peddling garbage to the masses).
The novel’s plot centered around a pair of childhood friends, the bullheaded Raymond and the bookish Adeline, who lived in neighboring country estates in 1900s England. At first, Raymond loathed Adeline, and she returned the feeling: Raymond thought her too meek, and she thought him too brash. Gradually, though, Adeline introduced Raymond to her favorite books, and Raymond helped her to stand up to her domineering father. They grew inseparable, and they shared their first kiss beneath an apple tree.
When they reached their teenage years, however, everything fell apart. Adeline’s father moved their family to Germany to start a textile factory, and she and Raymond fell out of touch. Ten years passed, and World War One began; after Raymond’s older brother was killed in the fighting, he decided to enlist, too. Raymond was blinded in battle and marched to a prison camp in Germany.
Unbeknownst to Raymond, one of the nurses at his camp was Adeline, though neither of them recognized the other. As Adeline tended to Raymond’s injuries, their love for one another rekindled. Eventually, she smuggled him out of the camp and hid him from the German army until the war ended. At the end of the novel, Raymond and Adeline each figured out who the other was, and they married and moved back to England.
Despite his generally low opinion of romance novels (not to mention his generally low opinion of Nisha Nandan), Arjun spent the weekend devouring the book. Much to his chagrin, she was a fantastic writer, deftly weaving scenes together and meticulously crafting the English countryside, the battlefield trenches, and Adeline’s small factory town with sparkling prose. Arjun found himself tearing through the last few chapters, hoping for the moment the two lovers recognized one another. When the reunion finally came, he felt his eyes grow misty. Damn it, he thought, setting the book down. There were many adjectives he’d wished he could apply to this book—but why was amazing the only one he could think of?
When Arjun arrived at work on Monday, he didn’t even stop upstairs to see if his office had been fixed, as he’d done every day since the pipe had burst. Instead, he made a beeline for the small office in the basement. The door was closed, and he pushed it open to find Nisha Nandan typing away at her computer.
She narrowed her eyes when she saw him. “Oh. I was beginning to hope that I’d just imagined you.”
“No such luck, I’m afraid,” he said, setting down his things. His eyes drifted to Nisha’s left hand. No, I’m not crazy , he told himself. She’s not wearing a ring.
He wanted desperately to ask her if she was married, as her blurb had indicated. The Kiss of Eternity had come out five years ago, though—perhaps she’d gotten a divorce? Of course, Arjun didn’t even know why this mattered. He was getting an arranged marriage, and whether or not Nisha had a husband was really none of his business, anyway (not that he would ever be remotely interested in her in that way, he reminded himself).
He sat down opposite her. He had a long list of tasks to complete for PSI that day, and he opened his laptop. Still, he could not concentrate. His mind was far away in the English countryside, with Adeline and Raymond. The Kiss of Eternity was such a romantic, life-affirming story. How could this beautiful, cynical woman have written such a thing? And why had she never written another novel? Arjun searched Nisha’s green eyes. Is she still in there? he wondered. Some other Nisha Nandan?
“ Ahem .” Nisha cleared her throat and looked expectantly at him.
“What is it?” asked Arjun, snapping out of his thoughts.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” she replied. “I thought I told you to stop staring at me.”
“Oh,” Arjun said. “Sorry.”
“Just...keep your eyes on your own paper, okay?”
He nodded, and Nisha resumed typing. “Wait,” he said. “I have something to tell you.”
She sighed with exasperation. “Arjun, unless you’re telling me that you’re finally letting me have this office all to myself?—”
“I read your book,” he said.
Her posture grew instantly defensive. She crossed her arms and seemed to lean as far away from him as was possible in the cramped space. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, averting her eyes.
“Maybe this will help,” Arjun said, reaching into his backpack. He drew out Dan’s copy of The Kiss of Eternity and set it on the desk between them. He opened it to the last page, where the author’s bio was stamped onto the back cover. “That’s you,” he said, pointing to the photo. “You wrote this book, Nisha.”
She shook her head. “So, what—you’re stalking me now?”
“No. I was telling someone about you, and he had read it, so…it doesn’t matter. Your book was really good, Nisha. Maybe one of the best I’ve ever read.”
She scoffed. Then, suddenly, she snatched the The Kiss of Eternity up from the table. With a single, fluid movement, she pitched it against the wall. The sound echoed through the office, as loud as a thunderclap.
Arjun stared at the book, which lay face-down on the floor like a dead bird. His mouth gaped open. “Nisha, what the hell?” he asked, looking back at her with wide eyes.
But Nisha Nandan didn’t reply. She buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook with soft little sobs.
For a moment, Arjun didn’t move. Then, without speaking, he went around the table and crouched beside her. He put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
He was almost surprised when she embraced him, held him tightly, and cried softly into his jacket. And he was even more surprised when he wrapped his arms around her, too.