Chapter 12 #2
Lal said, ‘Only if you concede that I won this one.’
Sampath rolled his eyes. ‘Of course I concede, you maniac. You were winning by miles.’
‘I hope you’re a better player than this guy, miss. It’s boring winning this easily.’
Kalpana grinned. ‘I doubt it. I don’t even know how to play.’
‘Okay then. We’ll have to teach you’
The two men put all the discs – black, white and a red one – on the board. Lal held up a different disc, made of plastic. ‘Right. This is the—’ He looked at Sampath. ‘What is it in English?’
‘Urgh …’ Sampath made a pained face. ‘Something like a … striker? You use it to hit the wooden discs.’
‘Striker,’ said Lal. ‘Yeah. So you put the striker here. It must always be behind this line, see?’
She saw. The board was square, with a pocket at each corner, like a colourful snooker table. The markings on the board showed where she could place the striker before she flicked it.
‘We’ll play it like billiards,’ said Lal. ‘Black ones are five points, white ones are ten, the red is twenty-five, but if you pot the red, you have to pot another disc immediately after or it gets put back in the middle …’
Sampath added a few other notes, but in general, it seemed to be quite easy.
She tried flicking the striker with her forefinger and thumb. Her aim was so wildly inaccurate, that it made Lal giggle helplessly.
‘Oh come on, it’s my first time,’ she protested.
The others took their turns. Lal managed to pot two discs.
Sampath leaned closer to her. ‘Don’t ever let this guy play you for money. I bet he’s a carrom hustler.’
He smelled faintly of shampoo and beer. She looked at him with amusement.
He was clearly in a much better mood than he had been when she’d last seen him.
He’d also clearly had a lot to drink. She glanced at Lal, who didn’t seem drunk at all.
They had both lowered the walls of professionalism that overlaid all their usual interactions with her.
For the first time in ages, she didn’t feel like she was intruding.
There was probably some social rule against being here, hanging out with her help, but there was no one else around to see and these two didn’t seem bothered by her, so what the hell.
After a few rounds, she got slightly less terrible at carrom.
‘Good’ would be an overstatement. When she potted a disc and they both high-fived her in celebration, the last of the formality seemed to melt away.
She felt comfortable, like she was among friends.
It was the most relaxed she’d felt all holiday.
She noticed that the two men had different styles of shot. ‘Show me how you do that,’ she said to Sampath.
‘What, this?’ He did something where he crossed his fingers and then flicked the striker so hard that it bounced off the opposite edge and hit a piece that he shouldn’t have been able to reach.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s easy, you just set your fingers like this …’ He raised his hand and showed her. She tried to copy him, crossing her middle and forefingers.
‘No. The other way.’
She tried again. He laughed. Shaking his head, he reached across and touched her fingers.
The moment their hands touched something rippled through her.
A sudden shock as though the world was rearranging itself around the sensation of his fingers against hers.
She raised her eyes. He was staring at her, no longer laughing, eyes wide, lips parted. Then he blinked and drew back sharply.
‘Then you just … flick like this.’ He demonstrated on the edge of the board, determinedly not looking at her.
She had a go, but her heart wasn’t in it. Her heart was too busy hammering in her chest. What was that? She was a taken woman, about to be married. She couldn’t have the hots for someone else.
Sampath leaned back. ‘I think,’ he said. ‘We should probably switch to drinking water now.’ He tilted his chin towards Lal. ‘You’ve got to drive tomorrow.’
‘I haven’t had much,’ said Lal. ‘But yeah. Sure. Let me get some bottles of water from the van.’
‘Pass me the keys. I’ll get them.’ Sampath stood up, caught the keys when Lal tossed them to him and walked off into the night, his slippers slapping against the polished floor.
Kalpana turned away, resisting the temptation to watch him leave. ‘Is he okay?’ she asked him. ‘He seemed a bit upset earlier.’
Beside her, Lal sighed. ‘Don’t worry about him, miss. He’ll be fine tomorrow. He’s just having a bad evening.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He … told me about his sister.’
All the laughter had dissolved from Lal’s face now.
‘I can’t imagine how much that must hurt, to lose a sister.
I mean, my brothers are very annoying, but I’d be upset if one of them died.
Imagine how much worse it must be if you actually liked them.
’ He picked a battered cardboard box off the floor and started to stack the little wooden discs into it.
‘I hope I managed to take his mind off things with the beer and the carrom.’
‘I’m sure you did,’ she said. ‘He seemed much more cheerful just now.’
The younger man looked pleased. ‘Good,’ he said.
She stood up. ‘I should go back to bed,’ she said. ‘It’s late.’
‘Yeah.’ Lal yawned. ‘I left my phone in the room, now I have no idea what time it is.’
Kalpana gave a soft laugh. ‘Goodnight, Lal. Tell Sampath I said goodnight to him too.’
‘I’ll tell him.’
She went back to her room, climbed into bed next to Marcus and tried to pretend that her fingers weren’t still tingling from Sampath’s brief touch.