Kavita Daswani - Salaam Paris

But it was too late to do anything about it. Before Kai and I boarded the flight earlier that day, we both signed documents stipulating the terms of our relationship. There were confidentiality clauses and endless paragraphs devoted to financial details. I was amazed at how the people who worked with us managed to get it all together-legalese intact-less than twelve hours after first discussing it.

I hadn’t fully read all of the small print, quite happy to take Felicia’s word for it that everything was in order. I had skimmed over the section that outlined how we would both respond to queries from magazine editors and talk-show hosts about how we met, and if we were in love, and where the relationship was headed. We were to be seen a certain number of times together every week, the exact nature of which meetings were to be determined by us, but would definitely have to include awards shows or nightclub openings. We had to be photographed kissing wherever and whenever possible. We had to have the appearance of living together, even if we both maintained our own apartments. And we had to keep it going no less than a year, at which time we could release a statement saying we had split amicably. By then, both our careers would be soaring.

If my nana hadn’t died of shock by now, this would definitely do it.

Our plane landed on a private airstrip just outside New York. As the stairs lowered, Kai grabbed his bag with one hand, and took my hand in the other. He had put on a pair of dark glasses, pulled out his shirt from his pants, removed his socks. He looked scruffy, relaxed, sexy. He suggested I leave my sunglasses off, that they needed to get a really good look at my face, and I agreed.

As we descended the stairs, I noticed that the airstrip was completely bare, except for a car that was there to pick us up. And then, popping out from behind a van like a gopher, I spotted a photographer, a camera slung around his neck, a cell phone attached to his belt loop. He smiled, took the picture, gave us a thumbs-up, and drove off.

Felicia, as always, knew just who to call. We were the lead item on Page Six the next morning, on the inside page of USA Today, and on seven different Internet gossip sites.

MUSLIM SUPERMODEL FINALLY HOOKS UP! screamed one headline.

ROCK DUDE SWEEPS AWAY FASHION’S LATEST HOTTIE! said another.

KAI AND TANAYA: FORBIDDEN LOVE? speculated an online column.

At my apartment, alone, I slammed shut my laptop, set the newspapers aside, and took the phone off the hook. I went into my bedroom and opened the top drawer in my bedside table. I rummaged around for something that Stavros had given me not long after I got here. I finally found it, held it tight in the palm of my hand, and went back outside to the living room.

Staring at the compass, I located the direction that, thousands of miles away across oceans, lay Mecca, our big, glorious, historic place of worship. Then, for the first time in months, I lowered myself to the ground, closed my eyes, and prayed.

Shazia, an avid reader of all things gossipy, was on the phone in no time. She was always fascinated by where I had gone the previous night, whom I’d had lunch with, what I was wearing, which country I was traveling to next. She had asked me to lobby Stavros to find me something in Los Angeles. She said she really missed me and wanted to see me again, but I think she wanted me around so she could latch on to the vague aura of stardom that seemed to have enveloped me.

“Kai… you’re going out with Kai?” she asked, sounding more excited about it than I was. “He’s so yummy! How’d you score that? Come on, seriously, tell me. Oh, and what’s he like in the sack? I’m dying to know. I told the girls at work I’d find out from you.”

“How’s your mother?” I asked, sidelining her questions completely. “And have you been back to Paris recently? I’ll be going, in a couple of months, for couture. You should meet me there,” I said, wishing immediately that I could have taken the words back.

“Oooh, I’d love it!” she squealed. “Will you get me a front-row seat? Can I come to the parties with you? Will there be gift bags? Oh my God, will Kai be there?”

I realized then that the only thing worse than being a groupie, was having one in the family.

As my “relationship” was proceeding as planned, it wasn’t too hard to stick to the terms of our agreement. By this point, Kai and I had repeated our story so many times, it had become rote. And yet we somehow both managed to sound as excited, as if it were all true. It was a story shrouded in glamour, enfolded in allure. I was on a magazine shoot in Jamaica; he was there on vacation. He had vaguely known who I was. He saw me as I emerged from the pool and watched stealthily as I wrapped myself in a pareo. He sent over a cocktail, and I turned it down because I didn’t drink. He was charmed, he said, and hooked. He played his guitar to me as we sat on a rock by the beach, under the moonlight. He sang of lost love and dashed desires, his number-one song that summer. The chemistry was unforgettable, he told everyone. By the time he was done telling the story, me blushing at his side, even I believed him.

The voice on the phone was faint at first, vaguely recognizable. She repeated my name over and over, as I stopped breathing, wondering if it could really be…

“Nilu?” I said. “Is that you?”

“Yes! Tanaya!” She sounded thrilled. “I’m in New York. I had to look you up.”

Getting my number was a long and arduous process, apparently-beginning with calling the switchboard at Blaze, a makeup line with whom I had just signed an endorsement deal. Five different connections later, she had reached Stavros, who recognized her name from my stories and had immediately passed on my number. I stood in my apartment, the phone to my ear, trembling, delighted to hear the voice of someone who knew me before all this started.

She was only in town for a few days, so we made plans to meet immediately. Her brother, a systems analyst in London, had come to New York for a job interview and had asked his sister to join him for a few days. He was making enough money to get her a visa and buy her a plane ticket, so she didn’t hesitate.

We met outside a restaurant in Greenwich Village, close to the apartment she was staying in with her brother and a friend of his. I saw her approaching, turning a corner at the far end of the street, and I ran toward her, my heels clicking along the pavement. I stood in front of her, saw my ecstatic face in those small round glasses of hers, and flung my arms around her.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you,” I whispered in her ear, trying to stifle my tears. “I can’t tell you what it’s been like not to have my friend.”

She hugged me back, tightly.

“I’m here now, Tanaya!” she said, brightly. “For a few days, anyway; it will be like old times.”

I couldn’t even wait for the menus to arrive before bar-raging her with questions-about Mahim and Mumbai and the weather and the latest movies. She told me that I had been the subject of a recent profile in the Times of India, a generally positive feature about a Mumbai Muslim who had made it big in the world of modeling.

“On our street, everyone is so proud of you,” she said, breaking off a piece of bread and wiping the crumbs away on her napkin. “The paanwalla tells me everything, that people stop by and complain about the economy and the rain, but always say, ‘Hah, but that pretty Shah girl from Ram Mahal, now she is doing very vell.’ ” “I laughed at Nilu’s rendition, but could imagine the chatter on the street, the claims to fame at the corner stall.

“Really,” Nilu said, now serious. “You’ve done something great, Tanaya. You know, I am now at Mrs. Mehra’s School of Domestics? Where else would I go? But you have escaped all that. You are doing what I knew you always could. You are making your own money and creating your own name, no more just Zakir Shah’s beautiful granddaughter from flat 1B. Do not be ashamed,” she said. “Be proud. I am very proud of you.”