The disapproval that had lingered on Tariq’s face the past couple of times I had seen him was now gone. His jaw relaxed; his eyes regained their brightness.

“It was a charade,” I said to him. “This thing with Kai.

My career. I don’t know what I was seeking, but in the end, I didn’t discover what I thought I would. I never had my Sabrina moment. Right now, I feel like I have nothing but heartache.”

He put his hand on top of mine.

“We may not have married,” he said. “But because of what our grandfathers once had, I would like very much to be your friend.”

At home, an hour later, Tariq back at his hotel, I sat on my couch. My high-heeled sandals lay under the coffee table, a red light flashing on my answering machine. It was probably Stavros. And Felicia. And Kai. I didn’t want to see anyone.

I went into the bedroom, opened my closet, and pulled out my tattered brown suitcase.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Damn that Page Six. Or thank Allah for it. I wasn’t quite sure, two mornings later, as I lay in bed with the newspapers, Felicia at the foot of the bed like a minder in boarding school, her arms crossed in front of her bosom, her left foot tapping on the ground.

“Disaster,” she said, shaking her head. “Absolute, bloody unmitigated disaster.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said, reaching over for my bowl of cornflakes. “At least now the truth is out.”

Right there, as the lead item, was a little story about Kai, the hot new British rock star, being caught in a rather compromising position with his bass player, a lovely fellow named Jerome, in an alley outside Chimera.

“You know, it’s all because you weren’t there,” she said. “This whole thing could have been avoided if you had just shown up as promised. His career is probably in tatters now. But I couldn’t really care less about that. It’s you I’m worried about. What is going on?”

“Nothing,” I said as I threw off the covers and put my feet on the floor.

“Well, now that Stavros is done fixing the mess you made with those German filmmakers, we can start from scratch. I know I’m your publicist and not your business manager, but a few opportunities have come up that we can look at. You’ve gone pretty much as far as you can go with your modeling career, so I really do think it’s time to move on. You’ve made it clear that acting isn’t for you. You’ve got the beauty endorsement. So what else? What else shall we do?” she asked, lowering herself onto my bed.

I could see what she was getting at, but at this point in time, my work, my career, this thing I did, was meaningless.

Felicia’s eye fell on a photograph that was lying flat on my bedside table. It was the picture my mother had sent to me, the one of her and my father on their sad wedding day, the one with which she effectively said good-bye.

“Who are all these people?” Felicia asked, glancing at it. Her finger rested on top of my mother’s semiveiled head. “And who’s that? She could be a candidate for Extreme Makeover,” she said.

“That’s my mother,” I answered, my voice now brittle.

“Oh, my, I’m sorry,” Felicia said, now contrite. “That was really insensitive of me. I think I overdid it with the caffeine this morning, and this whole thing with Kai and Page Six has really gotten me wound up. I wasn’t thinking. Of course it would have to be a family picture. Why else would you have it? But,” she continued, “has anyone ever told you that you look nothing like your mother?”

“Everyone,” I replied.

“Anyhoo, back to business,” she said, getting up and pacing around the room. “I’m thinking your own fragrance line, you know, à la Naomi Campbell. Or perhaps a really sexy and exotic ready-to-wear collection, something that has haute bohemia written all over it. You’re perfect for that kind of look. People would expect it from you. What do you think?” she asked, oblivious to the fact that I was opening drawers and pulling clothes out from them.

“I think I’m done,” I said.

“You can’t leave!” she shrieked. “Not now! Not with all this going on! You’ve peaked! You’re the hottest you’ll ever be, especially with the new scandal!”

She was waving newspaper clippings in the air again. She knew that her phone would be ringing off the hook all day today, from In Touch and Star and the all the entertainment news shows, desperate for a quote or an interview and more insight into the spectacular revelation that one of the hottest men in rock, in a supposedly sultry affair with a luscious exotic model, was, in fact, gayer than Christmas.

“You will emerge from this smelling of roses,” she said, her voice now calmer. “You’ll have everyone’s sympathy. Everyone will be throwing deals at you. You could open any business you want, with as much backing as you need. You could become an empire!” she said, raising her voice to the sky as if summoning some majestic power.

I sat down on the bed again.

“Felicia, if any of this had ever been important to me to begin with, I would be thrilled at what you are telling me right now. If all I ever wanted in my whole life was fame and riches and a beautiful wardrobe, I would be kissing your feet in gratitude. But you’ve known me long enough to know that this is not what drives me.”

“Then what does?” Felicia sat down on the bed next to me. “What’s going to get you excited?”

“I don’t know,” I said softly. “All this time, with all the amazing opportunities and experiences, a part of me has felt dead. There have been moments when I’ve been absolutely thrilled, like that first time on Pasha de Hautner’s catwalk. But mostly, I have been too guilty to enjoy it. I feel as if in claiming my life, I have taken away somebody else’s.”

“So how long are you going for?” Felicia asked when I stood up again and resumed packing. “You do realize that once you’ve been out of the public eye for a while, you run the risk of not being hot anymore. A thousand girls will be waiting in the wings, ready to pounce.”

“Let them,” I said.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Whoever decided to name Mumbai’s international airport Chhatrapati Shivaji should maybe have thought about it for a bit longer. In the days when Nana journeyed in and out through the building as if it were his home, it used to be called Sahar-sweet and simple. By the time I finally got around to seeing it, it had been given a name, which while easy to say if a subcontinental dialect was your first tongue, was monstrous to enunciate if you spoke anything but.

I considered this as I heard the American flight attendant try to announce our destination over the speaker, and I smiled at her efforts. I realized then that it had been a few days since I had allowed a smile to cross my lips, so immersed had I been in anxiety over my grandfather. My biggest fear was that he would die right before I got there, which typically happened in many of the Hindi movies I had seen: The heroine makes a mad dash across crowded thoroughfares to see a long-lost and very ill relative, but life leaves him just as she’s entering the doorway.

Roll credits.

I didn’t want that to be my ending.

Of course, I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting. I knew there would be no open arms to welcome me; of that I could be certain. But I was hoping that my mother would at least let me into the house and stop long enough to listen to me. And that my grandfather would be so happy to see me and would be so appreciative that I had come to him in his moment of need, he would forgive all. That he would stroke me on the head like only grandfathers can, and tell me that both he and Allah would overlook my sins.