Chapter 22

"Your second car?"

Arif was looking around at the Volvo's interior, not seeming as dazzled as Merlyn had been, but clearly impressed. They were speeding along a deserted stretch of Cadell Road, midway to Bandra. He turned back to Merlyn, smiling faintly.

"If it's the replacement your garage gave you to use until your car's fixed, then you have to tell me the name of the garage you use!"

Merlyn laughed, surprised at the humour. "That's a good one!" She had dismissed Arif as one of those strong-silent types who were so obsessed with their careers and themselves that they didn't even have time to develop a sense of humour. Obviously, she was wrong.

He ran his palm along the leopard-pattern velvet on the car's ceiling. "The magazine that comes complimentary with my credit card had a rental offer on a car like this one. It was at a special reduced rate of Rs 8,000/- per day. Can you beat that? Eight grand was the reduced rate!"

He flashed a smile in the semi-darkness. "So tell me, did you use your Amex card to get this?"

She smiled back. "I don't even have an Amex card. AP Singh just asked Bobby, his driver, to drop me home. This is AP's car."

Arif frowned. "Name's familiar. Isn't he one of the owners of the place?"

"He and Lena Kapoor. They're the promoters of Sin City. I think they have about half a dozen managers who actually run the day to day affairs, but they're the people who poured the money in." That much at least she remembered from her daily scan of the media.

He nodded. "And poured buckets of it, from the looks of it. Barrels. Vats. Industrial-sized truckfuls of money. That place is massively ambitious."

"Isn't it? But if you think that's incredible, you should meet Lena. She's the creepiest thing on two legs I ever met in my life!"

He shot her a strange look. "Actually, I did meet her. Earlier this evening. I walked into her private room by mistake. Did you know she has this one-way mirror--."

"Through which she can see every part of the club? Yes!

It runs all around the place, like a secret corridor.

AP's private rooms are at the other end. He brought me to Lena's office to change."

"Change?" He gestured at her gown. "I did notice you were looking different. Do you usually change outfits so many times in one evening? Or only when you change men?"

She was dumbstruck.

He raised a hand to his face and slapped himself lightly.

"Arif, you idiot." He shrugged apologetically. "Sorry. My mouth is possessed by this evil avatar of a demon that was once cursed to total silence for 1000 years. It tends to shoot off at the worst possible moments."

"That's all right. I was just thinking that you were acting much too nice. I'm glad to see that it was just a passing phase."

He winced. "I guess I deserved that." He sighed. "I didn't really mean that crack about changing men. I was just trying to exercise my very rusty sense of humour."

She nodded, but didn't smile.

After another awkard moment, he turned towards her, clearly making an effort to patch up. "Look. I don't really know why I got in. I guess I just wanted to see if these things were as big on the inside as they look from the outside. If you've had second thoughts about sharing my company, I can get a cab from right here." He pointed out the window at the bank of cabs outside Hinduja Hospital.