Kavita Daswani - Salaam Paris

I gave her a hug good-bye and, just as she was pulling away, whispered into her ear: “Yes.”

For someone who had never had to manage money before, I had become rather good at it. I used to live on a weekly stipend-about the equivalent of five dollars-which would have bought me a coffee and a bagel on the streets of New York, but in Mahim allowed me to indulge in several movies a week from Book Nook, daily dosas at the neighborhood dhaba, and my monthly issues of Stardust and Cine Blitz, even if they were used. Occasionally I was able to save a few rupees at the end of the week, and when I had left for Paris, in addition to the small amount of money Nana had given me, this was what I had taken. It was a beautifully uncomplicated life. Money, for all I could care, was something to be spent on cold coffee and cotton candy. Before all this had happened, I figured that I would eventually be married someday, and to a man who would give me an allowance in order to purchase vegetables at the market and pay the dhobi to wash our clothes.

Stavros had helped me open a bank account shortly after I came to New York and helped me invest the money I had made in Paris. In addition to being my agent, he also called himself my manager, tending to what he described as my “business affairs.” The payments for everything I did, from the runway shows to the magazine shoots to the advertising campaigns to the makeup endorsement deals, would initially go to him. He would deduct his commission and then send me the rest. I had no cause to question the way he was doing things. Every so often, he would sit me down and tell me all the expenses that had to be paid-Felicia’s salary, my rent, cash for my personal expenses. He aimed, as much as possible, to ensure that I got as much as I could without paying for it: my clothes from Viva, for whom I still worked, more out of a sense of loyalty than anything else; my makeup from Blaze; and just about anything else I wanted by calling a stylist. He educated me about the power of demands, how I could use as leverage my growing fame, and that designers would fall over themselves getting me in one of their outfits if they thought it would result in more business for them. I eventually understood how this world worked, although I never felt comfortable just assuming that things were there for me, just for the asking. It was interesting that while Nana believed in hard work, and had had the same job as an airline pilot for more than two decades, he had never inculcated that in me. He had taught me the importance of saving money. But earning it, as far as he was concerned, was not something I ever had to worry about.

So just short of a year from the time I left India, now officially out of my teens, I was stunned to see the amount of money in my savings passbook. I took out a calculator and worked out what it was in rupees, then determined that in all the twenty-three years that my Nana worked as a pilot, he never made what I had accrued in twelve months. But I knew he would be as impressed by that as if I had told him that I had made the money selling my body as a prostitute. To him, it would all be the same thing.

“How about Parrot Cay? Turks and Caicos?” Kai asked me one afternoon as he lounged on the couch in my living room, scraping something out of his right ear. I smiled as I thought of how this was the same man, with his toenail infection and the retainer he put on every night before bed, that millions of girls all over the world lusted over. They bought T-shirts with the words MRS. KAI scrawled over the front, and had his face as their computer screensaver. They would envy me for everything I knew about him; for a fake relationship, we spent a lot of time together, perhaps because our profile made it hard for him to be seen with anybody else. In a sense, he was almost stuck with me.

“Huh?” I asked, rearranging the kitchen cabinets.

“To vacation in. Turks and Caicos Island, at the Parrot Cay Hotel over there. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of it,” he said, noticing the blank look on my face. “Oh girl, where have you been? It’s where Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner just got hitched, where Bruce Willis has a pad. It’s the vacation spot of the moment. It’ll be great for us to be seen there. Anyway, don’t you need a little break from all your shoots and shows and stuff? I know I do.”

“What, just the two of us?” I asked. “Why do we need to go away together? You can have a break here, sleep in late, don’t take on as many gigs.” I wanted suddenly to start quoting the terms of our contract to him, to point out that nowhere was anything written about romantic excursions.

“Well, I really want to go, and I obviously can’t be seen alone, because then the buzz will be that we’ve split up and all those gay rumors will start flying about again. So if I want to go, you don’t really have a choice but to come with me.”

I didn’t even bother packing, simply pulling out from under my bed the slim silver gray Samsonite I had just returned with after three days in Bermuda for Sports Illustrated. I was certain that everything I needed was in there: swimsuit with the appropriate cover-up, sandals, floppy hat, suntan lotion. In India, I had been to the beach exactly three times, the last being when Nana had taken me horseback riding when I was thirteen. I had fallen off the horse, my foot entangled in the reins, and it had dragged me along, my hair sweeping the sand, the animal’s warm, furry body flexing against my ears as it cantered along the water’s edge. I emerged shaken but safe, and Nana had said he would never again take me back, that beaches were bad luck for me. Ironically, these days, I felt like I was spending almost all my life on them.

I was hoping Felicia would find some excuse to tag along, but even she-who could always somehow dream up reasons to treat herself to a first-class airline ticket on me-couldn’t justify this.

“I have to say, I don’t know why he wants to take you off alone. It’s not like there’s some major event or film festival happening there,” she said. “Maybe he just wants to be alone with you. Maybe he’s, you know, changed, and is falling for you. Would you even know how to recognize the signs, you virgin you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Felicia,” I said, fiddling with the locks on my suitcase. “I think he just really wants to go, and could use the company. Just thought you might want to come along, but of course he doesn’t know that I’m asking you.”

“Sorry, my dear. It will look really odd; you, your alleged boyfriend, and your publicist, all on vacation together. But don’t worry. I hear from his old boyfriend that he’s romantic and attentive,” she said, laughing. “Maybe he just wants to love you up. Enjoy! And if nothing else, you’ll get a decent tan out of it. Oh, and hit him up for some beauty secrets. His skin always looks so great.”

Kai chartered a plane to take us from New York to Providenciales, the main island in Turks and Caicos. Even though I hadn’t been that keen about coming, I had to concede that the place was stunning. A water taxi took us from the airport on the forty-five-minute journey to Parrot Cay, which, from afar, looked unassuming, reminding me fleetingly of a Hyderabadi bungalow. But what was striking was the splendid blue-green of the sea and the blinding whiteness of the sand. There seemed something uniquely untouched about the place, and I began to relax and lose my resentment at being brought here, now looking forward to a few days of nothing to do but read the Harlequin novels I’d thrown in my bag, and listen to old Hindu classics on my iPod.