The Zoya Factor (37 page)

I nodded. 'Maybe a good sleep will help your performance?' I suggested cunningly.

That fully backfired. He got all combative and demanded: 'You think you know more cricket than me?' I shook my head hastily but he just raged on. 'Actually, why only you
? Everybody
thinks they know more cricket than me! Even that
machchar
, Vikram Goyal, thinks he knows more cricket than me! That's why Hardin sir is saying
ki
"Okay okay, well tried Zahid, well tried." But inside he is thinking, "this boy can't take pressure,
badal do
, change him for Goyal..."'

'You're mad,' I said bluntly. 'Nobody thinks they know more cricket than you! And even if they do, the only way to shut their mouths is to play well tomorrow.' His eyes smouldered at this and he started to say something, but I didn't give him a chance. 'And
that's
why you should be in bed!' I finished.

He glared at me defiantly, swaying a little. 'Nothing happens by sleeping-veeping,' he said finally, his tone dismissive. 'Nothing happens by
discipline
and
diet
and
technique.'

Okay. Stupid me.

'Everything is
here!'
He banged one big fist into his chest. '
Here!
In the heart!' Then he dropped his hand to the washboard abs we'd all been admiring inside. 'Here! In the guts!' Then he dropped his hand even lower. 'Here! In the ba...' he stopped short, shook his head and raised his hand to pat mine reassuringly again. 'I will be
superb
tomorrow,' he said again, very gently. 'Not to worry, Zoyaji!'

I shook my head, stubbornly and repeated, 'You should be in bed, Zahid.'

'Go to the bloody hell,' he said with abrupt rudeness and turned around to glare down at the street again.

Faced with his back I had just started thinking
, okay, not my bloody problem
, when, with a lovely wafting whiff of perfume, Ritu Raina tick-tocked her way delicately onto the little balcony.

'Zoya?' she inquired softly.

Zahid turned around quickly, ready to snap, and then saw who it was and subsided.

Ritu walked in, prettily hesitant, and said, 'Oh, hi...' to him in a vague sort of way. Then she turned to me and said with a little laugh, 'I know it's silly, but I'm a little scared of driving back to the hotel alone, so late. Will you come with me?'

I opened my mouth stupidly to ask her what she was on about, but she didn't let me speak. 'I'm at the Hilton,' she said, enunciating her words very clearly for some reason. 'Nobody else seems to be putting up there...'

Huh?
I thought Ritu was staying with friends, not at a hotel. That's what she'd told me earlier in the evening. I started to say so but just then I heard Zahid say, very slowly,
'I'm
staying at the Hilton.'

Ritu turned around to face him, her face eager. '
Really?'
Then she looked doubtful. 'But you're having so much fun... you mustn't leave...I'll go alone...there are some dodgy characters outside the pub but'- she swallowed bravely and squared her shoulders - '...what's there? I'm a big girl!'

'
Arrey aise kaise
?' Zahid said, with weaving chivalrousness. 'I will 'scort you back. I will 'scort you to your hotel. It is my duty...You are an Indian girl...'

Hello? And what was I?
Namibian?

Ritu kept protesting, brushing her glossy hair off her shoulders, but he grabbed her arm and steered her gently off the balcony. A moment later, I saw the two of them emerge onto the car park down below, both looking tall and lithe and impossibly beautiful.

I saw her bundle him into his seat and click his seat-belt shut. He didn't protest once. She tick-tocked around to the driver's door, got in and slammed it shut. Then she cranked up the glass and drove off purposefully.

Feeling a peculiar mix of relief and regret, I made my way back to a much more sober-looking gang of lady revellers inside, settling the bill. I told them what had happened and they nodded, relieved.

'Chalo,
Zo
,'
Mon said. 'Let's go. Armaan always wakes up for water around two o'clock.'

Chachi nodded. 'Yes. And team breakfast at seven-thirty.'

'Seven forty-five,' I said crabbily. 'You think you know more cricket than
me
?'

***

I woke up the next morning to find a message from Ritu on my phone.
Zed in bed by two-fifteen
, she'd written.
Virgo intacta. Regretting it ever since
. I laughed and swung out of bed. I had a very, very good feeling about today's match.

Breakfast was at the team's hotel and when I ducked out of my car and into the lobby a few cameras clicked. Feeling pleasantly paparazzied I scuttled in through the entrance and went down to the coffee shop.

It was a bit early and Wes was the only person at the table when I entered, pottering around near the industrial sized toaster. I stopped and looked at him doubtfully, feeling awkward, but he smiled, his blue eyes twinkled, and he held his arms out wide. 'Zoya!' he went. 'Well done!'

Much relieved, I walked into his arms saying, 'I didn't do it on purpose, you know.'

'Of course you did!' he said comfortably, enveloping me in a huge hug and patting my back thoroughly. 'You can be honest with me! Ruthless little girl, you called up the Bombay underworld, dintchya, and took out a
soup-ar-rey
on him, you told them to take him down, tell the truth now...'

I shook my head, laughing, and then, thinking this was probably the only chance I'd ever get to chat with him alone I took a deep breath and said, 'Listen, I'm sorry I've been foisted on you like this, I -'

But he cut me off. 'Hush!' he said. 'I'm honoured to have you at our table. You're an official Girl in Blue!'

A stupid lump rose in my throat at the kind tone in his voice. I hadn't realized till that very moment how defensive I felt around him. A huge load seemed to lift and I smiled over-brightly, reaching blindly for the water jug and promptly knocking it over.

Nikhil entered just then and raised an eyebrow, 'New tradition?' he asked. 'What does that mean, that we'll
drown
the crowd in boundaries?' He shovelled large amounts of fruit onto his plate, sat down at his usual place and started to say something to me, but just then the doors swung open and the entire gang streamed in, chatting loudly, and the moment was lost.

I sneaked a quick concerned look at Zahid as he came in. He looked well rested, just
very
slightly red-eyed. He caught me looking at him and flushed, embarrassed. Then he grinned guiltily at the table, pushed his curls off his forehead and got into a serious-sounding conversation with Laakhi, the sportscaster-slapper. Nobody had snitched on him then, I thought, and relaxed. Thank God!

Hairy and Shivnath looked like they wanted to talk to me about the whole lucky-charm-breaks-an-arm incident, but I think Wes had warned them not to. So they just shook hands with me very meaningfully and kept offering me good stuff to eat right through the meal. Gargantuan watermelons, whole salmon with dead glaring eyes and a massive boiled ham, all offered to me with the most dramatically speaking looks possible. And if I passed
them
anything they went,
Thank you, Zoyaji, Oh thank you very much, ji
and
tussi great ho ji,
in these broken grateful voices till Wes looked around and glared and that shut them up.

They introduced me to Vikram Goyal too, whom Mon had seen on TV last night and called an infant with facial pubic hair. He smiled at me and said, in a slightly oily, just-broken voice, 'It's an honour.'

Of course, Navneet and Ali were still part of our fifteen member squad. They didn't look sulky or guilty, quite the opposite. They were being pretty boisterous and nobody was
not
speaking to them or anything.

They all ate quickly and sparely and were soon ready to troop into the elevator and leave.

I jumped up and hugged everybody in turn, and it seemed quite natural and unforced. I didn't feel unwanted or Durga Khote-ish any more. A little chat with the coach had done wonders for my comfort levels at this particular table.

I think Nikhil manoeuvred cleverly to be the last one out. As I finally turned to him, he gave me this really business-like look, cleared his throat and went, 'Umm...Zoya, a word with you in private, if you please.'

So I put on this blase,
whatever
expression and trailed behind him into the elevator. We stood side by side looking straight ahead at the door as it slid shut smoothly before us. Then he turned towards me, slid his large warm hands very deliberately into the back pockets of my jeans and drew me in towards him.

It was very, very intimate.

'Hey,' he said softly.

I looked up, shaking the hair off my face as nonchalantly as I could, my hands coming up to hook the collar of his blue tee shirt. 'What?' I asked his superbly muscled chest, as for some reason I couldn't quite meet his Boost-brown eyes.

'How about a lucky kiss?' he asked, his fingers warm as they raised my chin.

A lucky kiss?
I thought dazedly.
Nikhil Khoda's as
ki
ng me this?
I could instantly hear Zoravar's urgent voice going,
He's surrounded by hot women, why's he zeroing in on you
?

I said, 'I thought you didn't need luck to win a match?'

'Oh, I can manage without the
luck,
all right,' he said ruefully, pushing me up even closer against him, 'but I'm finding I can't manage without the kisses.'

***

They won. Easily.

Khoda demolished their attack by contemptuously slamming a hundred off 63 deliveries, and wound up being declared Man of the Match.

I should've been ecstatically happy I know, but I was really, really low.
See see,
my mind whispered.
Zoravar's right! He lured you into the elevator, kissed you thoroughly and went out there and scored.

Then when he'd called me right after the match and wanted to come over and see me I'd said yes, and now I was waiting for him, very wound up, scared of what might come out of my mouth when we met.

I sat curled up by the poolside, fiddling with my hair, trying to stay calm. And when he walked in, very lithely confident, flashed me a cocky, quizzical grin and opened his arms wide, I just looked at him stonily.

'Congratulations, Nikhil,' he hinted mock-reproachfully, dropping down on the deck chair beside me and nuzzling my neck. 'You played an awesome innings, you brute of a man, you!'

I shifted away from him, hugging my knees.

'Zoya?' he asked, his voice changing. 'Are you all right?'

I turned around to look up at him, tears brimming bright in my eyes and blurted out, 'Zoravar says you're pretending to like me because I'm lucky.'

There was a long silence.

The water lapped quietly against the pool walls, a gentle breeze blew, flies hummed busily around us, and the silence stretched out, like forever.

Nikhil sighed and leaned back against the deck chair. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes meditatively. 'How long,' he asked mildly, 'has this been on your mind?'

'How does that matter? It's true, isn't it?'

He shrugged. 'What do
you
think?' he asked, opening his eyes, not looking at me but at the cluster of frangipani trees in front of him. 'Do you really think I made a 103 out there today because you
kissed
me?
Really
?'

I couldn't talk. I was all wound up and shaking. The back of my throat hurt crazily with suppressed tears. I waited tensely for him to tell me it wasn't true, that my brother was nuts. I wanted reassurance like I'd never wanted it before in my life.

'You know, Zoya,' Nikhil said deliberately, still not looking at me, 'a lot of people might say you just like me because I'm the captain of the Indian cricket team.'

That struck me like a blow to the solar plexus. My mouth opened automatically to refute the allegation, even as my brain went reluctantly,
Well, he does have a point....