As the chatter around me dissolved from words into sound, I ran through the cast list in my head and kept myself entertained inventing monikers for all the actors who were involved in the drama.
In addition to Shehnaz Saeed (enough of a star that her name was a moniker unto itself), there was The Mistress’s Issue (daughter of the ‘hand-job’ lady), Once-Leading, Now-Trailing Man (who had catapulated to fame when he had played Macbeth to Shehnaz Saeed’s Lady), Hero Number Zero (a former cricketer who played brilliantly in a single one-day tournament, was reported for suspect bowling action, and found himself in need of a new career at twenty-one), God of Small Things (a remarkable, beautiful actor endowed with all that is pleasing in a man except — if persistent rumour was to be believed — for one tiny, very, very, tragically, tiny detail), Battle-Axe and Couple Who’ll Get Written Out Soon.
But when I was done with the naming, the chatter about reshaping Hero Number Zero’s role still continued around me, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t help but think back to that cryptic note Shehnaz Saeed had received, and those even more cryptic encrypted lines. Even presuming the lines had been written years ago, by either my mother or the Poet attempting some elaborate script, why? And who had possession of it, and why had he — or she — sent it to Shehnaz Saeed? And now that she was acting again, would more encrypted pages follow?
None of it made any more sense than any of the senselessness I’d latched on to at various points over the years.
My ex calls the ochre winter ‘autumn’ as we queue to hear dock boys play jazz fugues in velvet dark.
Aasmaani, put it from your mind.
The Minions came again today.
Aasmaani, stop it!
Ffhaffon, hiku ni!
Stop!
Hiku!
I closed my eyes and started to run through the multiplication tables, starting with multiples of thirteen, just to keep things interesting. Somewhere in the multiples of sixteen I lost my way, but even though I realized that sixteen times seven could not be one hundred and twenty I kept going— sixteen eights are one thirty-six, sixteen nines are one fifty-two — until Kiran turned to me and said, ‘Why don’t you tell everyone your idea for Shehnaz’s entrance, Aasmaani?’
So I did. When I finished there was neither the approbation for which I had hoped, nor the derision which I had feared — who was I to walk in with no idea of plot and suggest an opening that would overturn so much the people in this room had worked to create? — but instead a slight pause and then a cascade of questions.
‘But where has she been all these years?’
‘And why is she coming back now?’
‘And what’s she like? I mean, the ex-wife as written for Bougainvillea was all about “must protect my daughter” and this one clearly is not.’
‘Yeah, this is my big problem with it. We want her to be a sympathetic character, right, for later if that black magic internet story is going to stay the way it is, which I’ll admit I’m willing to fight for, because that’s my baby. But now suddenly we’ve got this woman who just left her young daughter and took off. How are we going to make her anything but a monster? Ow! What?’
The woman next to the man who’d been speaking tried to lean her head in my direction with some subtlety.
‘OK, how’s this,’ said the second man in the room, raising his bony fingers for attention. ‘The mother left because of her daughter. She left because something happens which makes it necessary for her to leave, and stay away, in order to protect her daughter. Except, of course, the daughter doesn’t know this.’
The man willing to fight for the internet black magic story looked sceptical, but another woman — one of the twenty-somethings I’d seen on my first day — was nodding her head vigorously. ‘So now that the daughter is a little bit grown up, she’s decided to find out what happened to her mother. And somehow her mother comes to know of this, and that’s why she returns. Because now the only way for her to protect the daughter is by returning and keeping her daughter from uncovering the secret.’
‘Isn’t this getting a little too cloak and dagger?’
‘Oh, and black magic on the internet is so down-to-earth.’
Kiran Hilal raised her hands, and everyone fell silent. ‘What’s the secret?’ she asked.
What’s the secret? What could be the secret? What could keep her away for so long?
Bony Fingers shook his head. I looked down at the scratched wood of the table.
‘OK,’ Kiran said. ‘Never mind. I like that idea. We can work it in with either the industrialist slash criminal world story, or the black magic story. And it might just save the daughter from the Hole of Abject Boredom we’ve been digging for her.’ She smiled at me in a way that meant thank you, you can go now.
The room was silent as I stood up and made my way out, but just as I closed the door behind me — in the instant before the latch actually clicked — I heard someone in the room exaggeratedly release a breath.
There was something unbearable about appearing transparent to people who thought up story lines about black magic on the internet. Get yourself an on-line exorcism, go! I wanted to say to them through the closed door, but that just sounded silly, so I turned towards my office instead. My footsteps echoed in the quiet hallway. Ed stuck his head out of his own office and called out my name.
‘Aasmaani, listen!’ He started to make his way down the corridor towards me. He was walking like a man who would rather be running, but is trying to affect casualness. It made him seem insincere.
‘Hi,’ he said, coming to a stop as both of us reached my office door at the same time. He put his hand up to the door-handle and started fidgeting with it. It may have been a sign of nerves — what was he about to propose that was making him nervous? — but it also effectively barred me from entering my own office without physically pushing past him. ‘I just wondered. After work. How about getting a real cup of coffee? With me. I mean, us. Both. Going for coffee. Wait. Let’s start again. Aasmaani, would you care to accompany me to Café Aylanto for a coffee?’
I had thought he couldn’t appear boyish. I was wrong. Here he was, an awkward teenager in a man’s body, with nothing even remotely appealing about him.
‘I think it would be best to just keep things professional, Ed.’
‘What is it you’re afraid of?’ he said, moving a little bit closer.
‘Lizards. Snakes. Many sentences which start with the word “actually”.’
‘Come on, Aasmaani. No games, no masks. Just you and me and two cups of coffee. Would that be so terrible?’
‘Actually, yes. Now, could you move your hand? I have work to do.’
His hand lifted abruptly off the door-handle, and he turned on his heels and strode away. I pushed open the door, switched on the fan, and sat down at my computer to work on quiz show questions.
What’s the secret which made the mother leave?
a) a really bad nose job which can’t be fixed
b) she exchanged her legs for a scaled tail and went to live with her merman beneath the sea
c) she died. Someone who looks like her took her place, and finally grew sick of the deception
d) she doesn’t love her daughter any more
Answer:
The cursor blinked at me with steady patience, but I just sat there, unutterably weary, with no strength in my fingers even to press down on any one of the keys they were resting on. I sat there, watching the vertical line appear and disappear on the screen until time swallowed itself up in that repetitive motion and there was nothing in my mind but darkness.