The Benefit Season Page 9

  ‘An effect’, I suggest.

  ‘Yes, an effect on women that is…’ his emotions have overwhelmed him and he is incoherent.

  ‘Flowers have an effect on women that is at once magical and powerful; like therapy, like prayer…’

  ‘Exactly’, he snaps his fingers. ‘Funny- I don’t remember ordering them though.’

  I scrape the remnants of my nourishment with the spoon and avoid his searching gaze.

  He is slowly coming back to his senses after the emotional and carnal catharsis.

  ‘ Hey! You ordered them! You too! You too are in…’ he cups his mouth in horror, unable to speak the despicable thought.

  ‘No I am not. I am not in love with her- you are. I am already spoken for, child marriage and all that. Most amazing girl- you’ll see her tonight’.

  He shrinks back, grasping the armrests till his knuckles turn white. ‘ You mean you ordered them to…’ he mutters, still short on the verbal crutches.

  ‘No and yes. I ordered them because I knew you wouldn’t, though you should’ve. You guys feed me, clean after me, lean in on me and keep my house. So for the world I didn’t want her hurt this day. I had a clue of what she wanted- from you- so as a grateful friend I sent for them. Bringing you two nuts together was the collateral damage I was no doubt hoping for.’

  If Lele had a tail he would have wagged it then. He just got by with rolling his eyes, because Lily made an entry at that moment. She leaned against the sliding panels and like an indulgent tigress, looked upon Lele as if he was something that had been just plucked out of hiding and fed. At me she smiled wanly as at someone who’d missed the bus. For the first time she was dressed in shorts revealing pale long slender legs that ended in slim ankles and chubby toes. She reclaimed no underwear either, and her full breasts pushed against Lele’s check shirt tied carelessly at the rise of a curvy hip. I plucked my eyeballs with difficulty off the soft insides of her silky thighs and turned to the surging tides yonder, catching a jealous Lele glaring at her and me in turns. He didn’t have the balls to tell her to cover up and me to look down. Lily, with fruit, was aware of what was going on and seemed to revel in being the sudden cause of so much turmoil in men who had hitherto barely passed the geeky, spectacle-clad, homely girl a cordial glance. She yawned happily; her shirt knot rising a trifle to reveal a darling navel set in the midst of a smooth belly anointed with the oil of myrrh; and thither my shameful and his shamed eyes darted.

  ‘He got me the flowers; what did you get!’ she scolded, swinging a bent knee till the frayed insides of her shorts reached the ends of her lush cove; like denim flaps blowing in the wind against a dank opening. She knew my tongue was there, so she let me be smothered between her supple thighs. That was all a man with a flood in the loins and a ring on the third finger could take. Squaring the old Pasricha shoulders, I hooved myself erect, and avoiding all eye contact with her replied, ‘ I got us a dinner reservation at The Zodiac Grill tonight. Happy Birthday’; and slinked away before she could scald us both in a burning embrace.

  What is it with women, I wonder. There is no such thing as a faithful man or husband ‘tis true, but women…women like whoremongers must not lure and ravage and plunder the affections of men that are strangers to the beds of their husbands.

  ϖ

  An hour later, dressed in purple best, the four of us are seated in the hallowed wood-paneled womb of The Zodiac Grill- the epitome of celebrity dining in Colaba, where a meal for two can easily rack up to a cool 25,000 bucks. I have arranged for a Jaguar Meal for all of us; they sent Jaguars to pick up both the couples separately for the meal. We are seated under a large blue dome with sparkling stars and are ready to be spoiled with the famed personalized butler service that includes silver cloches, Barnadaud crockery, Christoffle cutlery and Reidel glassware. As the host, only I get the priced menu while the others have the prices blanked out. They believe it is beneath them to trifle their high culinary art by putting a price on it.

  Aarti wants to try their degustation menu to sample the chef’s specialties - only her, mind you- as a stern eyebrow slightly raised suggests. She seems unhappy that I am splurging so much on someone who’s just a roommate, and worse, a competitor at the work place. It doesn’t help that today the light within is illuminating Lily to a resplendent sheen. Aarti looks uncomfortable with the off-shoulder, low-hemline sequined top that keeps slipping off Lily’s dainty shoulders, revealing a delicious chasm keeping two rising swells from mingling their flavors. Leave alone fitting a filled champagne glass and a hungry mouth that goes along with it in that slippery gully, Aarti wouldn’t even let me park my eyeballs there; she is keenly observing how many times I glance at Lily and for how long. She undoes a button on her blouse and pushes up her breasts self-consciously when she thinks I am not watching. She tilts the chin, throws back the mane of her hair to present her best profile and the vision of her long, slender ivory neck. No matter the faint cleavage, the petite breasts, the athletic hips, she’s my girl and I love her. I like the ferocity with which she possesses me; I adore everything of her: the endless olive complexioned legs with the pointy knees, the slim wide shoulders, the fine delicate hands, her frank laughter and the warm embrace that makes me feel at home. I pump her hands and she’s glad and she knocks off her shoe and slides her toe up my legs till they’re planted reassuringly at my crotch- both checking and calculating if I’m affected by Lily’s immodesty. She tries to sneak away my priced menu but I have an elbow planted firmly on it; Mr. Khosla will surely have something to say on this vain outing, something that will dwell on faulty genes and wastrel instincts.

  Our butler, who has mysteriously teleported himself by my elbow, recommends French Goose Liver, Fresh Enoki and Caviar rounded off by Kahlua Mousse, and I am inclined to agree; considering that I have nothing to disagree with Escargots De Bourgogne, Chilled Asparagus Vinaigrette or Camembert Dariole either; all of them being equally Greek or French to me; languages that I have not had the pleasure of making acquaintance with as yet. He suggests Karl Lagerfeld edition for Dom Perignon, and I, proud master of the cold platinum card nestling assuredly in my wallet, accept the excellent suggestion, to the further chagrin of my number-crunching fiancé.

  A wait staff brings around data cards for all of us to fill.

  Lily who knows all, says,’ they maintain a client database here. They even know where your kids study. You get a homely feeling, of continuity; they treat you with familiarity and even make sure they get staff who have waited on you earlier to serve you again.’

  ‘Why should I fill this? I’m never coming back here again’, Lele, who regards eating Vada Pao by the wayside as fine dining, says. Lily tweaks his ear and he relents and attacks the card with the seriousness of one signing up for the meal ticket.

  Dom Perignon has done a hell of a job with the bubbly and after the tiger prawns have been washed down, a warm glow settles upon our table: Aarti puts the prices and Lily’s slippery blouse behind her and concentrates on teasing with her chubby toes my rising tent pole till it’s ready to burst, while Lily is sucking at Lele’s third finger, getting it ready to slip smoothly through a ring. Lele looks like he was far better off with Lily sucking on him elsewhere.

  ‘How come they didn’t send someone else to Mukut Chand’s native place’, Lele asks nobody in particular, to draw the ladies away from their single-minded pleasure seeking. ‘There are so many old hands who could have done the job’.

  ‘So now you want a hand job’, Lily, a little glad now with the heady wine, asks, raising her head. ‘I don’t think there is anybody who has her wrapped around the little finger like our desi stud here’.

  ‘What do you mean’, Aarti asks, withdrawing her foot and paying close attention to my office gossip now.

  ‘ Arjun has seen a meteoric rise in the company. I know he’s got a couple of lucky breaks, and he’s sincere; but a new apartment, company car, a raise, bonuses; so soon? Look where we’re sitting right now. We can’t affor
d to come here even in the next couple of years’, Lily says.

  ‘Are you saying it’s because his boss, a married lady, has fallen for him? That’s gross. Even for you’, Aarti says; a little more hotly than I would have her speaking to my guests when I’m hosting.

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse people that way,’ Lele says, coming to my rescue. ‘And certainly it’s not fair to either Arjun who has been doing a fantastic job, or to Monal who has a knack for smelling a success story and going all out to lend a shoulder to people who take big chances. But my question in the first place was; why Arjun, why a rookie, when there are so many experienced people already sitting around? He’s not the only guy built like a rock in our company, or the last man in a tearing hurry to stick his neck out for rapid promotions.’

  ‘Then why him’, Aarti asks.

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know; I wouldn’t have gone. Who goes into the UP badlands and stands up to a warlord all by himself? Or let’s say with two ladyfingers for backing?’

  ‘You mean they staked him out as the guinea pig?’ Aarti says.

  ‘ Hey, it wasn’t like that at all. It was my idea right from the beginning. She did not for once suggest I do anything foolhardy or stick my neck out’, I reply.

  ‘But she never stopped you from going ahead either, did she? She knew what a foolish plan it was in the first place to try and relieve a family from bondage, singlehandedly. What came over you Arjun? I have met her and I know she’s smart enough to fool you into believing her crazy plans were your ideas in the first place. You are such a simpleton, Arjun,’ Aarti says, concern writ large on her pretty face.

  ‘But I did manage it, didn’t I? Everything worked out fine, didn’t it? That’s why we’re sitting here; young people who’ve arrived early in life. Look around, you see only old folks’.

  ‘ I know, but when things go wrong, they go horribly wrong. I want us to be these old folks Arjun; don’t be in a hurry, please. Don’t let her fuck your mind Arjun. Don’t let her set you up again’, she says.

  ‘ I can take care of myself’, I reply, a little hot under the collar. If I had hoped for a little congratulatory word or two from my dear company on my last adventure, I know that word is not coming by any soon.

  ‘I know you can baby, I know you can. I am proud of you, papa bear’, Aarti says, sensing my hurt around my friends, circling her fingers softly around my nape, anxious to see me relax.

  I look across at her, and I know that from now on I will have to play it carefully, for both our sakes. For now there is another person I am accountable to, and I promise myself to take it easy from here on.

  But nothing happens as we plan, as the next few days show me.

  ϖ

  Neither had I expected Lele to offer to split the dinner bill with me, nor does he surprise me, even though it was for his girl that I had it arranged, on his behalf. But I’d owed them both a huge treat for taking care of me thus far, so I dismiss the thoughts of the expense. But Aarti Khosla, of fine bean-counting stock, is in no mood to waive the overheads. It is with a marked chill that she waves the limp wrist, with cold lips the faint kisses she blows in the thick air, at my two roommates who strut off with the cadeau d’anniversaire, arranged for by the courtesy of The Taj, and paid for by the beneficence of mine.

  She shrinks in the far corner away from me, as we ride home on the last course of our Jaguar Meal. Her pointy knees clasp tightly together, shutting out my wandering hand and lusty eye. With an ache in her heart and a tear in her curvy eyelash, she keeps twisting my ring on her finger, as if she were struggling with the choice of tossing it out of the purple Jag, or simply chucking it in my happy face- aglow in her warm nearness and blank in its oblivion.

  That Ms. Khosla cared little for the hand that gives freely and grows richer, I already knew: it is the clumsy allusion to my rise in the ranks- courtesy the glad eye of the much-married Monal, that appears to have shaken her rock solid faith in a match made in heaven. Prone to defending empirical facts and figures, her precise mind is wrought in the frenzy of totaling the buxom Lilys and lissome Monals that are likely to come into a collision trajectory with my career flight path.

  ‘If every careless remarks that flies your way is going to affect you, I’m afraid I’ll have a hard time lighting your fire, baby. Show me some love honey, touch me, don’t hurt me’.

  ‘I hate her, she’s so pretty’, she chokes.

  ‘Who? Monal? Or Lily?’

  She cranks up the war machines and fidgets for an answer. ‘Both. All of them! I can’t share you’, she says and firmly pushes the ring up her finger and covers it protectively with her long slim fingers. She bunches her shoulders and snuggles up to the window. I slide across the ample backseat and slide a wary arm over her shoulder. She doesn’t throw herself out the running car so I become bold enough to nuzzle at the hollow of her neck. I cup her chin in my hand and gently turn it towards me.

  ‘How can I be shared; you take up all of me. You are all of me and I am all of you. None of me is left. That’s how it was and that’s how it will be.’

  ‘I don’t care what they say. I can handle all the Lilys of this firmament, but I don’t want to lose you to the wily ways of that crazy scheming Monal. She is evil- I saw it in her eyes’.

  ‘All bosses are evil and all men are fools and all girls are right. So can we lick this tear like this and sip at these swollen lips…’ I reach across and with a thirsty tongue dive deep into her quavering soul.

  Aarti is no cold-blooded, frostbitten polar queen. When I call out and appeal nicely to her mating instincts, she does not turn ice-cold and blow bleak winds of the North Atlantic in my nostrils; her resistance thaws and the bellows pump out a strong blast of warm air to bring to a blazing life the red-hot embers in the loins. What she lacks in cleavage, she more than makes up for in the burning fires in her heaving bosom. When god substituted plump and bouncy fun-bags with athletic, no-nonsense front-trim for Aarti, he had a divine purpose in mind. When, as a junior athlete she clasped a carbon fiber pole close and vaulted easily with it over a four-meter high cross bar, he was making sure no unwieldy body parts came in her way. Though petite, her breasts are firm and round and her hard nipples arch up towards me through her blouse mocking me to bite hard and swing from them with my teeth till she sucks in her breath and begs me to release. She spreads her pointy knees wide and lets my hand slide up the moist thighs, part her meaty flaps, and glide to and fro her mushy cove. Her musky smells fill up the air in the car as her eyes roll up and her lips part in an intense, unavoidable urge to release in my hand. In one final heave, she overarches and then collapses in a heap in the seat, moaning softly, trying to squirm her hips out of the reach of my unrelenting hand. She grabs my hair and pulls my face out of her tits and crushes my lips on hers. She reaches out for my zip and pulls out my bald-headed yoghurt-slinger and yanks cruelly, unforgivingly at it till it bursts forth and casts the life-giving seed amongst the slimy pink thighs and the purple upholstery.

  We soon reach my new flat, where after showing her around her future station of work, worship and play, like good kids I intend heading us back to our respective homes. If she lets us, that is. In the lift she plants her palms firmly on the wall behind me on both sides of my face, and starts from where she’d left off in the car, suckling at my chafed lips and grinding her body into mine, pinning me against the wall.

  Her sudden aggression and possessiveness, no doubt stirred awake by the unwanted appearance at the doorstep of a predator in the person of Monal, is both endearing and a trifle…amusing.

  Both being of minimalistic flesh, our bones grind and grate against the aluminum trim. One of us has to put on some weight otherwise it will be like two skeletons rattling between the sheets. She is one demanding woman, and she wants to have it all. When we reach our floor I lift her and carry her to my apartment, as she won’t release her hold. And like that I dig out the keys and kick the door in. Once in she looks around
in frenzy for the bedroom and drags me on top of her on the bed. I try to rise and break away because I have saved this moment for the old fashioned wedding night; but she wants to hit the home run now and she’s not taking no for an answer.

  Who am I to contest god’s will; I take it as it comes. If she wants to get mounted, ride her I will, gallop hard till one of us begs to stop. She’s such a whirlwind of hands and knees and lips that she won’t even let me wriggle out of my pants and turn the joystick out.

  ‘Hey I can’t do it with my pants on’, I whisper.

  ‘Ok, but hurry up’, she says, still clutching at my collar as if I might slip away. As soon as my trousers slide off she clasps her knees around me, locks me in and starts thrusting with her hips.

  When I manage to pull my lips out of her mouth I say, ‘ I need yours off too’.

  ‘Ok’, she says, ‘but hurry up’, and starts wriggling her hips, arching up and sideways urgently. It almost seems funny.

  ‘And I have no protection’, I warn her, after I finally manage to drag the skirt and panties off her buttery legs. I want time out to admire her gorgeous form in its naked splendor, but the ref’s in no mood to delay the goal.

  ‘You are my protection! Why do you talk so much?’ She says and impatiently arches her hips up at me. ‘Why are you loitering at the gates Mr. Pasricha, come right in.’

  She starts giggling nervously, feeling suddenly shy, now that we are at the point of the act proper. ‘And be nice’, she whispers.

  So, politely I fold her legs, kiss her knees, grasp her silky thighs, and guide my long love shaft into the muzzle end of her birth cannon. She winces and bites her lip as I tear through the meaty flap and say ‘Bye Felicia’ to the virgin fairy. We heave as one, relishing the bounties of succulent flesh and roused senses. I wait long for her to shudder and peak, before I ease myself out and lie by her side. She slides a slim sweaty leg over me and keeps shaking as wave after wave of spasms wash over her spent body. She finds and strokes with her knee my love mast that once again has its sails full with strong, gusty winds, and then she swings her juicy buttocks and lowers herself on me. She’s awkward to begin with but soon finds her rhythm, and we salsa to the same music, which only the two of us can hear. With tingling nerve ends, this time she’s quicker at discovering her crests, and collapses on my chest, shaking uncontrollably. I hold her near and let her ride the waves. When she’s done, I roll her over and enter her again. This time I leave my manners at home and slap into her body till she’s rippling like a belly dancer. She whimpers loudly, keeping pace with my strokes, trying to rise and snap at my nipples with bared teeth. I grab her shoulders and shove her down on the bed, while she shakes her head, trying to break free and come back on top of me. When I’m about to come, I take my Meat Popsicle out and start slapping it hard on her wet belly. But she grabs it and shoves it back inside of her, shouting, ‘no no, inside, inside’. I explode with great violence somewhere inside the dark innards of her belly, and she grabs my buttocks, pinching them hard, and won’t let me withdraw and roll over till the last millionth soldier has been sucked and safely tucked inside her slushy gates.