Chapter Forty-One
Dimple awoke to a pounding migraine and bright white lights. This was too familiar. She closed her eyes for a moment, collecting herself before trying again. It only made her headache worse, but Dimple needed to find her. She turned to her right.
Nothing.
Then left.
There was someone there, but not Saffi, like Dimple had been hoping. Instead, it was Julie sitting in a black chair. Noticing that she was awake, her manager rose and came to stand beside her, arms crossed.
“Good news,” Julie said. “Bullet didn’t hit anything vital. You passed out from blood loss, though, and they had to do a transfusion. You might need help walking for a while, but other than that you’ll make a full recovery.”
“What are you doing here?” Dimple’s voice came out hoarse.
“You’re the one who put me down as your emergency contact,” Julie said, eyebrows raised.
There was a question in her tone, one that Dimple didn’t waste her energy answering. The hospital staff had forced her to complete the form after she’d fallen from the balcony. Not expecting to ever need to put them to use, Dimple had put down Julie and Priyal.
“Just so you know,” Julie said, pushing up her red glasses, “I would’ve come either way. You’ve been through a lot this year, haven’t you? Poor girl.”
In all the years they’d worked together, Dimple had never heard Julie say something like that. Still, she’d somehow managed to make poor girl sound like corporate lingo.
“I’ve been meaning to ask if you want to hire a security team,” Julie said. “You can afford it.”
Dimple tried to shake her head, but it only made the migraine worse. “Priyal—” she began but her throat closed up before she could say anything else.
Julie nodded knowingly, taking a seat at the corner of Dimple’s cot. “Did she tell you she was planning on quitting before she—?”
“Yes,” Dimple said. “I don’t want another assistant.”
Julie folded her hands together and made a motion as though resting them atop her desk before remembering where she was.
Instead, she placed them in her lap and stared at Dimple consideringly.
She seemed to deliberate back and forth over something before asking, “Do you know why I pushed you to hire Priyal?”
Dimple sucked in a shaky breath. “Because I am useless when it comes to social media.” It was an almost exact recitation of what Julie had told her when Dimple had asked her the same question.
“You’re forgetting that you could barely afford one at the time,” Julie quipped. “I could’ve forced you to learn how to use the applications yourself. With how driven you are, I know you would’ve done it. No use in wasting the money.”
“Then why?” Dimple asked.
“Because, Dimple, you were depressed. Don’t give me that look—it’s true. You’d been in the industry for five years and made plenty of enemies, but no friends. You were lonely. And I happened to know a girl who needed work, yes, but who was also lonely. I thought you might be good for each other.”
When she’d killed her aunt and uncle all those years ago, Dimple had relived their abuse in her nightmares for a long time afterward. Sometimes, on her worst nights, she still saw them now. With Irene, Dimple felt only guilt when she watched her bleed out in her nightmares.
With Priyal, however, Dimple just felt numb. She hadn’t cried. Images of Priyal’s body didn’t haunt her every waking moment. There was just…nothing. Perhaps someone like her wasn’t capable of emotions any longer.
“Priyal had been in LA for a couple years already and she had no friends,” Julie continued. “She was worse off than you even, since she wasn’t getting any roles.”
“You’ve always liked taking in strays,” Dimple commented absentmindedly. Julie glared at her, but she didn’t refute the point.
“I wasn’t in the position to accept more clients, but I figured I could help her in other ways. Help both of you.”
“That’s—” Dimple couldn’t suppress the flash of indignation in response to that. “You overstepped. That’s not your job. You’re my manager, not my mother.”
“Do you wish I hadn’t done it?” Julie demanded.
Dimple faltered, closing her mouth. “That’s what I thought.
And don’t give me that, Dimple. Look at where we are now.
I’ve always been more than just your manager and you know that.
I care about you, and I want you to succeed.
I didn’t want to drop you, so I did what I thought was best.”
Dimple had nothing to say to that. Priyal was dead. If she’d never worked for Dimple, that wouldn’t be the case.
No, the worst part was, if Dimple could go back and do it all over again, she wasn’t sure she’d do anything different.
Would she have landed a lead role had it not been for Irene’s death?
Would she have gone to her first film festival or continued to book the roles of her dreams? Would Julie have kept her as a client?
Would she have met Saffi?
“The thing about life is that you never know how long someone is going to be a part of yours,” Julie said.
“When you get to my age, you start realizing that when you meet someone you genuinely care about, you have to seize every moment you get with them and make them count. Priyal is gone, but you’ll always have the good memories to look back on.
She shaped you as a person. That piece of her that lives on inside you will never die. ”
This was too much. Dimple could still see Priyal’s limp body bleeding out right under her fingertips. That was the only version of her that she could seem to remember.
“But my point is, you and Priyal were better off for having met each other. And I think you’ll be just fine not hiring another assistant,” Julie said, eyes twinkling.
“You know me, I won’t ask any questions, but there’s someone who’s been waiting in the hospital for the entire time you’ve been unconscious. ”
Saffi. Ignoring the pounding in her skull, Dimple rose slowly to her elbows.
Julie’s arms hovered nearby, as though afraid Dimple would fall. “Lean back, you need to rest.”
Something cold pressed into her hand.
Dimple’s confusion must’ve shown because Julie explained, “It might be a little watered down now, but you must be thirsty.”
Tentatively, Dimple took a sip. Cold and bitter with a hint of sweetness.
Iced coffee.
Dimple heaved, suddenly unable to inhale enough breath to fill up her lungs. She hiccuped. It was almost a relief when she began sobbing.
“Oh shit, what now?” Julie muttered. “Don’t tell me you’re vegan and I forgot to make it oat milk or whatever the fuck?”
Dimple found herself laughing through the sobs. She wiped at her tears, but they just kept falling. Her chest seized and it felt like her heart was ripping in two and she couldn’t articulate why, not even to her own mind.
Matcha had been growing on her.