“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.
Kai was thrilled to be recognized as we were checking in, although I told him that it was his orange sequined scarf and purple pointed cowboy boots that gave him away.
“Welcome, Mr. Kai,” the manager said, greeting us warmly. “We’re so thrilled to have you. We’ve reserved one of our best villas.” He glanced over at me, smiled, then added, “We think you will be pleased.”
“Um, how many bedrooms?” I asked as Kai kicked me lightly in the foot.
“Oh, this villa in particular has just the one, miss. I’m assuming that you are together?”
“Yes, yes, we are,” I said hurriedly. “It’s just always nice to have a second room to put things in, stretch out.”
“Miss, our accommodations are spacious. I’m sure you will find plenty of room to do all you need to.”
The view was sumptuous, overlooking the translucent waters outside. There was something pure and uncomplicated about the bedroom, with its canopied four-poster bed covered in spotless white sheets, yards of muslin tied around each pole. For all its simplicity, it was, without a doubt, the centerpiece of the room, as if everything else had been built around it. It looked like it had been designed for genuine lovers, for people to spend all day in, eating off mother-of-pearl-inlaid trays that would be delivered by room service, stopping their caressing only for that.
For Kai and me, it was completely useless.
“You can have that,” I said to him, indicating the bedroom. “There’s plenty of room for me here in the sitting room.” I fully expected him to demur, to insist that now that he had dragged me all the way here, I should have the only bed in the villa.
“Oh, you sure?” he asked, tossing his luggage onto the floor as if to stake out his territory, then pressing a button to call for our private butler. “That’s great. I could really use the rest,” he said, stretching. “Of course, feel free to come in here whenever you want, maybe take a nap in the middle of the day when I’m not using it.”
“Kind of you,” I said, shutting the paneled doors between us.
Kai spent most of his time scuba diving with a young mixed-race instructor named Trey, whose last job had been at the Club Med in Bali. Kai had been raving about his adventures beneath the ocean since the first day, citing for my edification how Jacques Cousteau had described the island as one of the top-ten best scuba spots in the world. He and Trey would frolic for hours beneath the sea, shimmying between strands of seaweed and past hordes of luminous, wriggling fish and coral reefs that Kai said were as intricate as carved Chinese mahogany furniture. Down in those depths, my boyfriend was assured that even the longest lens of the most persistent paparazzo would not be able to find him.
I, as always, spent time alone, reading in our room, swinging on the Balinese hammock on our veranda or walking down a sandy beach by myself, picking seashells as I went, just as I used to do when I was a young girl with my Nana in the Mumbai suburb of Juhu. I looked out over the ocean, blue and clear as far as the eye could see, and wondered if my grandfather ever thought of me, the way I thought of him.