The Singles Table, page 12
Parvati knew her too well to believe the lie. “There’s something else. What didn’t you tell me?”
Zara toed the ground with her shoe. “There was a moment on the dance floor when I was hugging him . . .” She shrugged it off. “It was nothing.” Another lie. She could still feel the raw heat of him, the muscles hard beneath her hands, the strong arms holding her tight, the warmth of his breath on her lips as he bent down to give her a—
“Obviously it wasn’t nothing or you wouldn’t have tried to hide it.” Parvati’s sharp voice pulled her out of the fantasy. “Spill.”
“There was a . . . bump.”
“A bump?”
Zara’s cheeks heated. “You know . . . when a guy is . . . liking . . . to be hugged.”
“An erection?” Parvati’s lips quivered in amusement. “Is that what you’re trying to say? I’m a doctor. I know what an erection is. What I don’t understand is what it was doing there. I thought you two didn’t get along, that you were complete opposites. Didn’t you call him cold, arrogant, egotistical, and cocky?”
“Yes . . . but there’s more to him than what’s on the outside.” What if she hadn’t run scared? What if she’d closed the distance between them and tasted those lips? Or what if she’d imagined it, and he’d been leaning down to tell her that their food was getting cold?
Parvati ordered her sandwich, a side of fries, macaroni-and-cheese egg rolls, and a soda.
“How are you going to eat all this before we get to the gallery?” Zara helped by carrying the second tray of food.
“Resident trick. Eat fast or die. It’s a known fact that anytime a resident sits down to eat, there’s a code blue or some other dire emergency.”
“I think the emergency is your total lack of nutrition. I don’t know anybody who eats worse than you. And you’re a doctor. What kind of message does that send to your patients?”
“They don’t know all my secrets.” Parvati grinned. “And they never will.”
* * *
• • •
Indra’s gallery was in a reclaimed brick building that had once been a garage. Plateglass windows had replaced the folding doors, and the concrete floor had been polished to a shine. Spotlights on the exposed ceiling were pointed at the sheet-covered paintings on the wall. It was her father’s biggest exhibition. Zara counted at least twenty paintings around her, and that didn’t include the overflow that was hanging in the annex out back.
“I’m worried about the big reveal,” Zara said as they walked into the gallery. “What if no one likes his new collection?” Her father’s paintings were mostly abstract images, loud and angry and fierce with color. They jarred her insides and made her brain hurt. She preferred the calm of landscapes and gentle colors—an escape from the chaos of her life, an anchor in the stormy sea.
“Then he’ll learn not to paint things like that for next time.” Parvati finished her soda and tossed the can in the bin.
“Zara. Darling.” Indra descended on them, all toned arms and twiglike legs, her dark hair twisted in a perfect chignon that made her look older than her thirty-two years. She wore an elegant, sleeveless, long black dress and a single strand of pearls. “Your father will be thrilled you came.”
“I couldn’t miss it for the world.” She air-kissed Indra while Parvati snickered beside her.
“Why all the sheets?” Parvati asked Indra after Zara had introduced them.
“We’re going for a feeling of total immersion, as if you jumped off a cliff into the ocean. The fear. The thrill. The take-your-breath-away moment when you are surrounded, absorbed, fearful, enraptured, and enthralled.” Hand against her forehead as if shading her eyes from bright sunshine, Indra turned from side to side with quick, jerky movements. “You are falling, sinking, enveloped. You look around. Searching. Questing for the surface. But the images are everywhere. Enfolding.” She extended her toned arms above her head. “You reach . . .” She kicked back, her dress moving to the side to expose a slim foot and a jewel-encrusted Manolo Blahnik stiletto. “Kick. Swim to the light.” Her arms moved in a mock breaststroke. “Your eyes clear. You are buoyant, supported, loved. And now you understand.”
“That makes absolutely no sense,” Parvati muttered under her breath.
Zara jabbed her with an elbow. She was used to Indra’s enthusiastic interpretations. “You want it to be a surprise,” she translated for Parvati.
“Exactly, darling.” Indra pressed her hands together, red-painted nails gleaming in the light. “I’ll go let your dad know you’re here.”
“This is who you picked for Jay?” Parvati shook her head, watching her go. “Babe, you’re losing your touch.”
“I haven’t seen her for a while. I forgot how excited she gets when there’s a show. But she’s got a master’s in art, good connections, and I’ve never once seen her with a hair out of place.” She looked around the bustling gallery for Jay. After their slightly awkward conversation at the restaurant, she wasn’t sure if he would show up tonight.
“I wonder what she’d be like in a hospital gown,” Parvati mused. “You’d be surprised how a person’s true nature is revealed once you strip away all the trimmings.”
“Not really interested in imagining anyone in a hospital gown, Parv.”
“Really?” Parvati’s voice rose in pitch. “That’s the first thing I think about when I meet someone new. What’s underneath? What are they trying to hide? How much ass is going to show through the crack that can’t be closed?”
“My two favorite girls.” Zara’s father came up behind them and wrapped his arms around their shoulders. He had always been the most affectionate in their little family of four. “I can’t believe how many people are here.” He released them to say hello to a couple nearby.
“You’re just such a perfect daughter,” Parvati whispered in her ear. She was the black sheep of her academic family, disappointing her parents because she’d become a doctor instead of getting a Ph.D.
“Just don’t tell him I invited everyone. I’ve never seen him this excited.” Her father’s shows were usually low-key affairs attended by family, critics, and a few of his loyal supporters. Although he sold enough to pay the bills, his work had never attracted the kind of attention Zara thought it deserved.
“I want to introduce you to the partners from my new law firm,” Zara said when her father rejoined them. She had been pleasantly surprised when they’d expressed an interest in coming to the show.
After a brief chat with Tony and Lewis, they worked their way around the room chatting with all the guests while Parvati waited at the makeshift bar for drinks. It warmed her heart to see her dad so happy. She could never forget how utterly devastated she’d been the day her mother asked him to leave. Even now she still felt a niggle of fear that someone would tear him out of her life again. They were a family; then they weren’t. Within days of his departure, every trace of her father had been removed from the house. His paintings stripped off the walls, cooking pots emptied from the cupboards, clothes ripped from their hangers. His outdoor studio disappeared one afternoon while she was at school, to be replaced by a garden box that never saw a single seed.
“Attention. Attention.” Indra tapped her glass with a spoon as if they were at a wedding and it was time for the bride and groom to kiss. The white-coated waiters put down their trays, each taking up a place beside a painting. “We’re ready for the big reveal. Someone dim the main lights. The switch is beside the door.”
Zara looked over to make sure someone was covering the lights. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw Jay at the entrance with a friend. Tall and heavily muscled, the dude was Parvati’s type right down to the beachcomber hair and the lack of a tie.
At a wave from Indra, Jay lowered the lights until the only illumination in the gallery came from the spotlights directed at the sheet-covered paintings.
“We now present to you a study in the female form. A decadent rendering of the essence of a woman. Prepare to amazed, astounded, challenged, absorbed.” Indra raised an arm and the waiters pulled down the sheets. “I present . . . Vulva Fruit.”
Oh. My. God.
Zara couldn’t speak. Her breath was trapped in her lungs. She stared at the giant paintings of fruit cut in half and displayed as female genitalia. A papaya, dark seeds spilling from the center. A peach with soft pink flesh around a dark core. She would never be able to look at an orange again without thinking about the suggestive curve of juicy segments around a hollow center. And who would have thought a cantaloupe, a quarter sliced out to reveal the sweet and sticky center, could be so erotic? Worse were the fruits with fingers in them, gently resting on the lips of small openings, or thrust deeply into soft centers.
Bile rose in her throat. Her knees wobbled. She bent over heaving as her betraying lungs refused to let in any air.
“You’re okay.” Parvati rubbed her back. “It’s going to be okay.”
“My bosses . . .” She wheezed in a breath. “My bosses are here. My relatives. Friends. Even my hairdresser. I’m going to have to leave town. No one will ever speak to me again. I’ll be fired and who will hire me when they find out about”—she waved a hand in the air—“this?”
“It’s art.” Parvati yanked her up by the collar. “Get a grip. People are watching. They’re looking to you to see how to react. Pretend it’s all good, that you knew what was coming. If you aren’t surprised, they’ll think it’s okay.”
Zara straightened, her vision immediately assailed by a six-foot painting of a pomegranate dripping with cream. “He’s my dad,” she moaned. “I can handle dad dances or dad jokes or even dad jeans. This is all the dad humiliations on Earth rolled into one.”
“Isn’t it incredible!” Indra joined them, her voice lowered to a whisper. “The silence in the room says everything. They are in that moment of total submersion when words fail them. The patriarchy has been challenged today. We have reclaimed ourselves, our femininity, our very essence . . .”
“My dad painted these,” Zara pointed out. “He’s a man.”
“Your father understands women in a way few men do,” Indra said. “It really is quite remarkable.”
“Why does this always happen to me?” she asked Parvati after Indra breezed away to speak to someone who was examining the price tag beside the peach. “Why can’t I have a nice normal life? Why is it always chaos and disaster and . . .” She waved vaguely at the walls. “Vulva fruits?”
“Because you’re the kind of person who takes risks.” Parvati turned slowly, taking in the room. “And because you have a big heart. A normal person wouldn’t have invited everyone they knew to the gallery when they hadn’t seen the paintings, especially with your father’s history.”
“You’re talking about the shoes.” Zara sighed. Her father had gone through many phases in his artistic career, from the landscapes and villages of his youth to loud angry abstract forms, and from animals in shoes to people with office supplies for heads.
“I’m talking about you putting yourself out there to support your dad and to help two people find their special someone.”
A groan dropped from Zara’s lips. “I invited Jay. What was I thinking? He’s so uptight he’ll probably have a heart attack.”
“I don’t think he’s that worried about it,” Parvati pointed out as Jay and his friend studied a picture of a papaya. “In fact, I’d say he’s having a pretty good time.”
• 12 •
Jay couldn’t remember when he’d had such an entertaining evening. When Zara had given him Indra’s business card, he’d tucked it away without giving it a second thought. He usually spent his evenings working, and with the lawsuit still moving ahead, solving the mystery of the hack was of vital importance. But how many desi artists were there in San Francisco? Why did Zara think a gallery owner would be a good match for him? And what was going to happen next?
As it turned out, it was far more than he had expected.
“This is the best.” Elias’s grin spread ear to ear. “When you invited me to an art show, I was thinking of splattered paint on canvas or boring landscapes. I’m surprised the police aren’t running in here to shut them down for public indecency.”
“It’s just fruit.” Jay couldn’t turn his gaze away. Everywhere he looked, another colorful, suggestive image assailed his senses. With no real experience of art shows to draw on, he tried to play it cool, but it was damn hard when every image made him think things he shouldn’t be thinking in a room full of art connoisseurs.
“C’mon, man.” Elias pointed to a split melon drizzled with cream. “That is not just a painting of fruit. And I would know. If there weren’t a risk we’d get hit with a sexual harassment suit, I’d buy one for my office. Who is this dude? How do you know him?”
“He’s the father of a woman I met at a wedding.” He searched for Zara in the mostly silent crowd. “She offered to set me up in return for a few introductions to our celebrity clients.”
“She must be something if she managed to get you out of the office.” Elias chuckled. “This place is smokin’. The women are hot. There’s free food and drinks. And I could look at these paintings all night.”
“Has anything caught your eye?” A tall, slim woman in a long black dress joined them near the door. She introduced herself as Indra, the gallery director. Elias gave Jay a subtle nod of approval before excusing himself to talk to two women engrossed in a painting of a split avocado.
“Not yet,” Jay said. “It’s a lot to take in.” Where was Zara? Wasn’t she supposed to be here making the introductions and smoothing things along?
“Come,” Indra said after a moment of awkward silence. “I’ll show you the banana. It’s more relatable for men.”
Fifteen minutes with Indra, and Jay knew she wasn’t the woman for him. Although on the outside she was everything he’d thought he wanted—cultured, sophisticated, poised, and elegant—he didn’t feel even a flicker of attraction. There was only one woman he wanted to talk to tonight and she was on the other side of the room, drinking like there was no tomorrow.
He excused himself the moment they were interrupted and joined Zara and Parvati at the bar.
“Look who it is.” Parvati blocked his path, glaring so fiercely he stopped in his tracks. “Where’s Indra?”
“She’s talking to someone who’s interested in buying the strawberry.”
“Maybe you should go and wait for her in the prickly fruit section,” she snapped. “Or better yet, go check out the lemon.”
“Parv. No. It’s okay.” Zara finished her drink in one gulp and gave Jay an uneasy smile. “So what do you think of her?”
He didn’t get a chance to answer before Indra swooped out of nowhere and clamped a hand around his arm. “Darling, come. I want to introduce you to the artist and his muse.”
“His muse?” Zara stared at Indra aghast. “Are you serious?”
“Oh yes.” Indra beamed. “She inspired this celebration of womanhood.”
A sound erupted from Zara’s lips. Half groan. Half moan. “No,” she said quietly. “No. No. No. No. No.” Without any warning, she bolted across the gallery to the entrance and hit the glass door at a dead run.
* * *
• • •
He found her in the alley, one hand on the brick wall, the other braced on her knees, body shuddering with every breath.
“Are you okay?” He reached for her hair and gently pulled it away from her face. The thick strands slid like silk across his palm. “You hit the door pretty hard. Parvati’s trying to find some ice.”
“I’m going to be sick.”
“You might have a concussion . . .”
“A concussion?” She straightened and frowned. “Are you kidding? I’ve run into glass doors before. That was nothing. I’ve knocked myself out twice, and once I even broke my nose. I’m very hindbrain driven. Very primal. The barest hint of danger and I’m gone. My prefrontal cortex doesn’t even have a chance. If there was a zombie apocalypse, I would definitely be a survivor.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” He ran a hand gently over her head, feeling for a bump as she rambled about instinct and the psychology of fear and something about jumping out of a moving car when she was a child.
“Yes. I mean, it was humiliating, but not as humiliating as inviting everyone you know to your father’s art exhibition only to discover it’s . . .” She shivered, her face crumpling. “Vulva fruit.”
He wasn’t used to seeing her like this—raw, unguarded, vulnerable, real. And cold. There was a chill in the air and he kicked himself for not noticing the goose bumps on her arms right away. “It’s not that bad. People seemed more intrigued than offended.” Jay slid his jacket off his shoulders and wrapped it around her.
“This is the kind of thing you see in movies.” Her face softened. “Old-school chivalry. I’ve never had a guy give me his jacket before.”
“You just haven’t met the right guy.” His hands were still on the lapels. He meant to bring them together. Instead, he drew her closer, so close he could almost see the electricity arc between them in the dimly lit alley, feel her energy ripple over the fine hair on his arms.
“What are you doing?” Her husky voice sent a shiver of desire down his spine.
He gave in to his protective urge and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his body. “Keeping you warm.”
With a sigh, she melted into his chest. “You give good hugs.” She burrowed closer and all he could think about was how perfectly she fit against him, her head tucked under his chin, soft curves molded against his body.
