To me, confidentiality agreements didn’t apply to best friends. While the law might have stated otherwise, there was no way I could allow my best friend from home to think that I was actually dating a bad-boy rocker with a baby face and a tattoo that stretched from his elbow to his shoulder. Looking at Nilu’s face, I could tell that she didn’t believe it anyway, which was the fundamental benefit of having a friend who really knew you.
“Saif was still sending me magazines,” Nilu said, giggling as we left the restaurant and walked down the street toward where she was staying. She had her arm looped inside mine, the way we always walked back on the streets of Mahim. “I have read all about your love affair. He seems nice,” she said. “But I never would have pictured you with someone like that. I had thought, that even with all this, your glamorous life and all, that you might still want to wait. You know, until you found ‘the one’-someone who loves Allah like you do, someone your family would approve of. But I guess it’s hard, living here amidst all this, not to become a different person. He’s rich and good-looking and famous, and so are you. So what does it matter?”
I could tell that Nilu was trying hard to keep the judgment out of her voice. She had always been kind and tactful, and I somehow always imagined her working as a diplomat. Unlike Nana, she would never impose her beliefs on anyone.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this, but it’s not what you think,” I said, stopping, the warm air from a sidewalk grate sweeping up our skirts. “This whole thing with Kai, nothing is really happening there, no matter how it looks.”
She stood with her mouth slightly agape, her eyes wide behind her glasses, and listened as I told her about Felicia’s plan and Jamaica and the chasteness of my relationship with a rock star.
“We have kissed for the cameras, but that is all,” I said. “If we think a photographer has followed us, he will come to my apartment, then leave after drinking a cup of hot chocolate. People call our affair ‘sultry’ and ‘hot’ and God knows what else, but there is no such thing. In fact, it is really rather tame. We are like brother and sister. But I signed a piece of paper that said I could never tell a soul about this. So you must promise me that it goes no further. It doesn’t matter what people say about me, if, when you go home, they call me a whore and a hussy. You must be absolutely quiet about this, believing the same as them. Maybe one day, far in the future, the truth can come out. Just not now. OK?”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. We continued walking, Nilu squeezing my hand, a light drizzle that had suddenly appeared merging with the tears on my face. “What purpose does it serve to have people think something about you that isn’t true?”
“You know, Nana never thought I was worth very much,” I said, my head bowed in sadness. “He thought that all I was good for was this face, that it would be the only thing to land me a rich and fine husband. But as it has turned out, my career-this thing I do-it’s all I have now. I have to make the most of it. It is my intention to be as successful as possible in a very short span of time, to earn and save as much as I can. And then I will take what I’ve made and do something significant with it, although I don’t know what yet. Maybe, in the end, it will help me to win my family back. Although maybe by then, also, the damage will have been too much. But the people who work with me, the people I trust, they have told me that if I do this, I will go from being a fairly famous fashion model to an extremely famous one.”
Nilu nodded, then was silent for a minute. “Tell me something,” she asked as we arrived at the entrance to her building. “After everything you’ve been through, do you think you would do it again, leaving India and all? With all that you’ve lost, I mean with your family and all, has it been worth it?”
I gave her a hug good-bye and, just as she was pulling away, whispered into her ear: “Yes.”