Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
A rjun came into work the next day with a wicked hangover, which was not at all helped by Kevin McPherson, who burst into his office with a zeal that Arjun had never seen before. “I’m a little busy, Kev,” Arjun groaned, rubbing his temples.
Kelley appeared in the doorway. “If you’d like a meeting, you can schedule one,” she scolded.
“Too bad,” said Kevin, pushing past her and taking a seat unprompted. Kelley began to protest, but Kevin quickly opened his laptop and showed it to Arjun. “Look,” he said, jabbing at the screen with his stubby pointer finger. “ Look!”
Arjun leaned in closer to the screen. He rubbed his eyes. “I’m not dreaming, am I?” he asked. The effects of the hangover were ebbing away, as though someone had stuck a syringe into his arm and was draining all of the alcohol out of his bloodstream.
“You are not dreaming,” confirmed Kevin. His computer was open to the Amazon page for Raja’s Kitchen, Arjun’s cookbook. “You’ve gotten almost a hundred reviews. How many sales do you think you got?”
Arjun shook his head. His heart felt like it was about to vibrate out of his chest. “My phone,” he said. It had died overnight, and it rested face down on his desk, hooked up to the charger. He turned it over and logged into his seller page.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Can that be right?” He turned his phone over to Kevin. “I’ve sold almost two thousand copies.” A notification pinged on his screen. “Two thousand and five, now.”
He shot to his feet and began pacing behind his desk. He looked at Kevin’s laptop screen again, then refreshed the Amazon seller page to make sure that this wasn’t some fantasy. He opened his email and saw at least a dozen messages waiting in his inbox, all from bookstores around the Bay Area. “We loved Ravi’s Kitchen, and we’d love to stock it,” said one of the emails—along with a request to buy one hundred copies. Arjun felt the sudden urge to begin running, or to drop down and count off fifty push-ups. “How…how this happened?” he managed, too hopped up on adrenaline to form a coherent sentence.
“You got a review from a critic,” Kevin said. “It was published last night, and it looks like it got a ton of engagement. The article was really well-written, too. Hell, it almost made me want to go and buy another copy!”
Arjun’s fingers were shaking violently, and the string of words he typed into the search bar came out as gibberish. “Do you have the article?” he asked.
“Right here,” said Kevin, pulling his phone out of his back pocket. “I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. It was published in the San Francisco Current. ”
Arjun raised an eyebrow. “The Current? ” he asked. His heart began to pound in his ears, as insistent as the tide. “Who wrote it?”
Kevin squinted at his screen. “Uh…someone named Nisha Nandan.”
Arjun’s adrenaline rush came to an abrupt halt. “What did you say?” he asked, feeling the color draining from his face.
“Nisha Nandan,” repeated Kevin. “Do you know her?”
Arjun could not say anything. He turned his chair away from Kevin as he felt hot tears welling behind his eyes. “Yes,” he said, staring out the window. “I know her.”
Arjun met Sophia for lunch at a restaurant in Palo Alto, but he only had thoughts for Nisha. He had rejected her—so why had she done this monumental thing for him? At the bottom of her article, she’d written a short disclaimer: The author has a personal relationship with Arjun Chowdhury, the author of Raja’s Kitchen .
He was tempted to call her and ask: what was their relationship now? Not that she would answer, he thought with a sinking feeling. Still, as much as he knew that he could not be with her, he did not want to lose her from his life. But is that even possible anymore? he wondered. He’d noticed that Nisha had used the present tense— has a relationship—and he clung to that fact like a shipwrecked sailor might cling to a piece of floating debris.
“What’s the matter?” asked Sophia, noticing that Arjun had barely touched his salad. “You seem kind of distant.”
“I’m just tired,” said Arjun, absentmindedly spearing a cabbage leaf with his fork. “My book had a big day today.”
Sophia furrowed her brow. “Your book? What do you mean?”
“ Raja’s Kitchen ,” said Arjun, a bit surprised that she was asking. “I told you about it, didn’t I? It’s a cookbook that I’ve been working on for the past few months.”
She nodded. “That’s right. I’m sorry; it must have slipped my mind. What’s going on with the book, then?”
“I published it a week ago and had nothing to show for it. For a while, I thought it would die…but, overnight, it sold two thousand copies.” He checked his phone. “And it’s almost up to three thousand now. Honestly, I think it could even hit four thousand by the end of the day.”
Sophia smiled. “How impressive,” she said. “So, this book…is it just a hobby for you?”
He shrugged. “It was, before. My real goal was to open a restaurant, and the book was just a way of testing the water. But, honestly, given the growth I’ve seen today alone, I think I should just go for it. You know, leave PSI and devote all my time to starting my own restaurant.”
Sophia looked as though she had smelled something unpleasant. “What is it?” Arjun asked.
She sighed. “Look—I don’t mean to sound overbearing, but you’re not serious, are you? You wouldn’t really quit your job, right?”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“It’s not exactly very sensible,” said Sophia. “You make good money at PSI. Great money, actually. And, sure, your book is doing well—but that doesn’t mean your restaurant will. What happens when you open the restaurant and it fails?”
And there it is , thought Arjun. Not “if”— “when.” As though the collapse of his dream was a certainty. He felt indignation rising in his chest, and he turned away from Sophia before he could say something he would regret.
She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “As an economist, I can tell you that restaurants are the riskiest type of business to open. You can’t pursue something that uncertain as a newlywed. Promise me you won’t let this distract you from your real job.”
Arjun looked into those deep brown eyes of hers. He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I promise.”
In a way, he was almost relieved when he dropped Sophia back off at the apartment she was renting in Mission Bay. He felt aggrieved that she’d extracted this promise out of him, had tried to pry him away from something that was so clearly important to him. The bitterness only built as he recalled that Sophia hadn’t even remembered that he had written a book, despite them having discussed it half a dozen times.
He took a deep breath when he entered the PSI offices around three. It would do no good to start resenting Sophia now. After all, he decided, there was plenty to like about her. Indeed, from her perspective, her request was probably quite reasonable.
Without thinking, he opened the door leading to the basement and descended. He hoped he would see Nisha, so that he could thank her and explain to her that he still needed her in his life, needed her like grass needs the sun. When he opened the door, though, the office was dark and empty.
He climbed the stairs back up to the offices of the San Francisco Current . There was a secretary typing away near the front of the bullpen. Arjun walked up to her desk and tapped his fingers on the wood. “Hi,” he said. “Can you tell me where I can find Nisha Nandan?”
“She’s not in today,” the secretary replied. “In fact, she hasn’t been in all week.”
“Is she okay?” asked Arjun, immediately concerned.
“I think so; she took vacation, not sick leave. Maybe she’s in Fiji.”
He nodded, though this seemed to him to be an absurd notion. “Can you do me a favor?” he asked. He reached into his pocket for a business card and slid it across the desk. “When you see her, please give me a call.”