Hello people...am here again...but with conjuctivitis in my eyes...i can hardly see anything due to the swelling. still am updating ..
CHAPTER 15
THE next week was a curious mixture of good and bad. For two days after Tanveer left zoya didn't see hide nor hair of Asad, but she did see a great deal of his hairy companion, prince
"What's the matter, Prince, is he ignoring you, too?" she asked on the third morning, putting down a plastic bowl of the meat she had cooked the previous night, mixed with some boiled rice.
"You should tell your owner that all work and no play makes Asad a very dull boy," she suggested to Prince as he wolfed down the food in two bites and overturned the bowl to make sure he hadn"t missed anything.
She wondered if she had made a mistake in thinking that Asad's confidences of the other day might herald a promising new phase in their relationship.
"But dull is relative, I suppose," she told the dog.
No doubt Asad was deeply engaged in some death-defying heroics via his latest alter-ego. His thrillers weren't written as a series linked by the same central characters, as many other, highly successful thriller-writers chose to do. Asad rebuilt his world from the ground up with every book. Each featured a new cast, new country, new conflict...and a new girlfriend to betray the hero, or to be kidnapped, tortured, murdered or otherwise threatened in an attempt to subvert his desperate cause. Innocence was no defence in Asad Ahmed Khan" novels. It always seemed to presage disaster for the woman when any of Asad's cynical heroes began developing tender feelings towards her, and making plans for the future.
The way he dumps his girlfriends in real life when they start getting too close, and demanding too much of his attention, she mused.
"Perhaps I"m better off with him being wary and suspicious," she said to Prince. "Do you think I should just tell him about being pregnant and brazen it out, or lead up to it gradually and risk him accusing me of trying to trick him?"
Prince thought she should wear a plastic bowl on her head and roll around on the grass, and then dash down to the beach and dig holes.
zoya declined, but she did allow him to tag along when she went for her afternoon walk, and on the way back around the flat, rocky point she met Asad coming towards her.
"So this is where you are!" he declared, halting. He was wearing faded khaki hiking shorts and a Hawaiian shirt hanging open over his tanned chest, the sheen of perspiration on his skin indicating that he had been walking briskly.
"Are you talking to the dog, or to me?" said zoya, looking up at him from the shade of her straw hat. "I thought you were busy working."
"I've been working since six a.m. I'm taking a short break." He picked up a stick of driftwood and threw it towards the sea. Prince sat and watched it arc over and hit the wet sand just in front of the waves, then trotted over and gummed it up, delivering it back to Asad with an air of patient long-suffering that made zoya snicker.
"I've never seen a dog be sarcastic before. I didn"t ask him to come, you know, he just followed me," she said, warmed by the thought that he had missed either of them.
Asad turned and fell in beside her as she picked her way through the scattered stones. "You don't "ask" Prince to do anything, he"ll do just what he damned well pleases"how do you think he got his name?"
"I thought it was because of his regal bearing," she said, as Prince "wuffed" into a pile of rotting seaweed, his three legs scrabbling madly as he skated on the slimy mass.
Asad laughed. "You wouldn't believe it now but he can actually look almost respectable when that coat has just been groomed. The problem is, it only lasts five minutes"until he can find the nearest pile of dirt."
"That's because he doesn't want to be respectable, he wants to have fun."
"Don't we all?" said Asad with a silky nuance, sliding his hand down his bare chest in a way that reminded her of that day in the car. Her temperature shot up and she failed to look where she was going.
"Careful!" Asad caught her elbow as her sneakered foot skidded into a rock pool.
"Oh!" zoya lifted her dripping foot and then looked into a pool. "Oh, look"hermit crabs." Her sundress fluttered around her knees as she crouched down for a closer look at the tiny creatures, humping their houses on their backs. "They remind me of you," she teased, testing one with her finger and watching him retreat back into the depths of the spiral shell.
"Clever, adaptive survivalists?" "Hard-shelled and soft-centred."
"You think I"m soft-centred?" He sounded as if he didn"t know whether to be amused or appalled, his hand remain ing on her elbow as he tugged her back to her feet to resume their walking.
"You must be, or you wouldn't need such a hard shell," she teased. "Well, semi-soft, anyway," she amended to hide the shock as she realised the stunning truth of her words. As cynical and tough as he made himself out to be, at his core Asad felt himself vulnerable; that was why he erected so many defences.
"Actually, at the moment, I"d class myself as semi-hard," he said, pointedly looking at the sway of her breasts against the low-cut dress.
"Asad!" She looked furtively around the beach, resisting the urge to place her hands across her chest like a Victorian maiden.
"Oh, look, cat's eyes!" He diverted her from her confusion, stooping to pick one of the convex shells up from a shallow pool, holding it for her to see the iridescent trapdoor at the bottom pulling into place, before gently putting it back in the water. "It reminds me of you," he mimicked her teasing tone.
She wrinkled her nose. "Great, I"m like a sea-snail." "Beautiful and functional, what more can you ask?" "I"m not beautiful," she denied. "Not like my mother."
"No, thank God"she"s like a perfect line drawing, sharp and flat, whereas you're like a watercolour"delicate and subtle, yet vibrant with colour and life, with deeper shades of meaning than appear at first glance."
"You are quick with your similes this afternoon," she said, trying to prick the dangerous bubble of joy that threatened her determinedly casual faade. "Does that mean you're still working? I hope you brought your notebook with you." She tilted her head back to see and laughed, because"sure enough"there was a tell-tale rectangle outlined in the back pocket of his shorts.
His fingers intertwined with hers, giving them a faint pun ishing squeeze.
"You don"t like being compared to your mother, do you?" "We"re all a product of our parents; I suppose we can't avoid it," said zoya, her voice softening as she thought of their
baby. Was this the moment to broach the subject?
"But, as Shakespeare said, "comparisons are odorous"""
"I thought they were odious." zoya was pleased to have caught him out, still smarting from her drubbing at Scrabble.
"That was John Donne, not Shakespeare," he topped her for smugness. "He actually said: "She, and comparisons are odious", which sums up your mother even better!"
"For someone who's dyslexic, you sure read a lot,"she complained,
He grinned. "I cheat. I have a book of quotations lying on my desk. Some of my heroes have fought some very erudite villains," he informed her.
zoya laughed and he continued, after a slight pause, to say offhandedly: "I never had any help with my dyslexia as a kid"we moved around too much, and after the drug-taking started my mother never bothered whether I was at school. But when I was older I found out for myself how to get around the barriers, and I read whatever and wherever I could."
"Is your dyslexia inherited from your mother or your father?" she asked without thinking.
There was only a brief falter in his stride. "I have no idea." "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to pry," she said, feeling the mental shutters start to come down.
"I don"t remember being read to as a child, if that means anything," he said abruptly. "But there were plenty of other explanations for that"my mother always scurrying around, frantically making sure we had everything just so for her husband, so that he wouldn't lose his temper when he got home, tired out from work and found that everything wasn't perfect"or, rather, he was tired out from his mistress as my mother found out on the day he left"" He came to a dead stop in the sand, stiffening, and zoya thought he was angry at having said more than he had meant to and was about to storm off, but then she saw he was watching Prince, who had rushed into the chilly sea to snap at the small rush of waves generated by the wake of a passing launch, and was now heading back towards them at a rolling clip.
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Kabhi Neem Neem Kabhi Shahad Shahad
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