Aarti Raman - Kingdom Come

“I am not coming back till someone can talk sense into that woman.”

That woman came storming behind him, whirled him by the shoulders and kissed him hard. Gripping the front of his shirt collar to keep him in place and plastering her body to his. Sam kissed her back with equal passion, not able to keep his hands or his lips to himself for even a single second.

Ziya looked at Krivi who looked at the passionate couple as if they were specimens at a zoo. A specimen he hadn’t ever encountered before.

When Noor dropped down to her feet, she said, “‘ Bye, Sam. Don’t come back unless we can talk like two rational adults who are madly in love and are willing to work on the future.”

Sam’s lips tightened and he nodded once, and wearing the trademark Ray-Bans that every military man owned, stalked out. His razor-straight back radiating tension.

Noor turned to look at Ziya with absolute misery on her face.

“I am going to have ice cream for breakfast. Chocolate ice cream,” she announced defiantly.

“I’ll get the bowls out in a second, OK?” Ziya said, gently.

“Yeah.” She sniffed once, and then gave a wobbly smile to Krivi. “Love sucks, K. Don’t ever fall into it.”

Krivi smiled at her, a strange stretching of his muscles that made the muscles in Ziya’s stomach jump. And she realized she’d never seen him smile before today. Not once. He had even white teeth that stood out against the dark tan of his face. A thundercloud of a face. And his smile was extraordinarily sweet despite the hard mouth it came out of.

“Don’t plan to, sweetie. Want me to beat the Major for you?” he offered, shoving both hands into his jeans pocket.

Noor sniffed again and shook her head. She laid her head on Ziya’s shoulder, which was sort of like seeing a giraffe lean on a gazelle, since Noor was a leggy five ten and Ziya barely topped five five in her bare feet.

“Not yet. We’ll keep that as the last resort.” Her dull eyes brightened and she fixed Ziya with an enthusiastic grin. “Maybe K can knock him unconscious and we can get him to the nikaah venue and then he won’t have any choice than to say Qubool hai .’’ I do, in Urdu.

“Yeah, good plan, Nuria.” Ziya used her nickname to good effect. “Get your future husband passed out to the wedding.”

Krivi shrugged his broad shoulders under his sheepskin jacket that was definitely not from the Hindukush region and said, “It’s as good a plan as any, I suppose. Just let me know an hour before, OK?”

Then he winked and Noor gasped and chuckled as he continued, “I promise I won’t even damage his face so you’ll get your perfect wedding pictures.”

“I’ll hold you to that, K. Zee, I’ll see you in my room. I don’t want Da to castigate me again when he finds out I fought with Sam. Da and Sam need to continue being buddies.” It was at times like these, that Ziya remembered that Noor was a warm, considerate woman who put other people’s feelings before her own and was not just a ditz holding out for a diamond ring.

Noor squeezed Ziya’s shoulder and shooting another bright smile in Krivi’s direction sashayed back into the kitchen.

Ziya looked at Krivi. Krivi tried to look back, but he only managed a left-of-center gaze and her lips tightened in annoyance. He’d winked not a minute ago. Not one damn minute ago! Was she such a troll that he couldn’t feel any kind of warmth towards her?

“Noor’s feeling bummed out. She doesn’t show it, but—”

“We can do this in the afternoon. Read up on the report by then.”

Krivi dropped a thick file in her general direction and she caught it with the same hand that held her phone. There was a little bit of juggling on her part when she tried to make sure she didn’t drop the papers inside the file. So she was frowning when she looked up to thank him.

And found only empty space where he had been a second ago.

“I don’t need this,” she announced to the empty air and stalked back into the kitchen.

It was the morning for an ice cream breakfast, after all.

Ziya put in a full hour with Noor, sympathizing, encouraging and alternating with sharp words that defended Sam’s actions before she escaped to the sanctuary of her own office. The two bowls of chocolate ice cream she’d had, sat heavy on her stomach and she knew ruefully that she’d have to forego lunch.

Since it was a remarkably beautiful day, she decided to bike it down to her office in Srinagar. Usually, she used the four-wheel drive Rover, but the ice cream had put her in the mood for some immediate exercise. And, she needed to burn off the steam of her anger against one Assistant Manager who moved like the goddamn air. Da was in his office, probably playing Internet poker against thirteen-year-olds, and so she left without informing him of her whereabouts.

The bike ride down the small hillock was bouncy but invigorating and, on flat land, there was a bike path that she was the only one who used with any consistency. People preferred walking in Kashmir, or driving. Because of the hilly, rough train.

She, with her Western lifestyle and her obsession with keeping the weight off, wanted to bike it up and down like Lance Armstrong. Not the best example, she acknowledged, as she chained up the three-speed outside the simple brownstone that housed Goonj Enterprises.

It was set in front of an apple orchard that produced award-winning apples every couple of seasons. There was an apple cidar unit in the back lot, and then, for miles on end on either side of the highway were timber lots owned by the Akhtar family. Some of the timber was cut down and sold to local manufacturers, small craftsmen who needed that special chinar , maple tree bark, for their carvings and carpentry. And the rest of it was used to manufacture cricket bats.

The first time Ziya had entered the workshop where the cricket bat was made, she’d been astounded by the easy precision and perfect syncing of the wood being cut and the final product.

The brownstone was divided into offices for Krivi and Ziya and a few other personnel and a souvenir and apple cidar tasting shop on the other hand.

And every day, when the store opened for business, like it had for the last year when she’d first decreed that it would, Ziya made it a point to walk through and greet the first few browsers and have an encouraging word with Poppy, the Australian girl who manned the store. She did the same today too, but she was late by almost two hours and the place was pretty deserted.

The store was called Goonj Curios and Souvenirs, because she’d wanted to reinforce the brand name of the family enterprise and it sounded powerful and mysterious. Goonj in Hindi meant echo, and it resonated with the warm feeling she wanted every customer who came in to leave with. Echoing in their hearts forever.

Poppy was showing a couple of Japanese tourists around the store, so Ziya quickly waved to her and kept moving forward to the back entrance and to her office.

The storeroom was next to the shop and her office was on the next floor. She quickly jogged up the stone steps and entered her office with a small sigh. Her legs were aching a little because she’d pedaled furiously in her anger and she uncapped a bottle of spring water she kept on the sideboard and drank it down thirstily. Then she dropped her messenger bag on her comfy desk and opened the file that Krivi had thrust at her.

A knock sounded on her door and she looked up to see Viven, her assistant come in with a tray of bottles.

“These came in by mail. You have to let them know by Friday latest, and they can get on to bulk manufacture in a week.”

Bottles for the apple cidar they produced in the back lot.