Ravaged (3 page)

Prachi seemed to love him. She spooned rice onto her plate. “Is this the sort of crusade where the knights rescue the princess or the sort where the Christians attack the infidels?”

Roman looked up from his plate. “What do you think, Ash? Is Sunnyvale a princess or a temple?”

“Neither,” she said. “It’s just Sunnyvale.”

“I think Sunnyvale is the castle,” Roman said to Prachi and Arvind. “Ashley is riding out on horseback to rally her troops so she can prevent the foreign hordes from razing it to the ground.”

“The foreign hordes do have a tendency to rape and pillage,” Ashley pointed out.

A frown puckered Prachi’s forehead. “Who are the hordes in this scenario?”

Roman lifted his fork and ducked his head modestly. “That would be me, ma’am.”

“I never called you a horde,” Ashley protested.

“You just implied that he’s a rapist,” Prachi scolded.

“I did not! All I was trying to say was—”

“It’s all right,” Roman interrupted with another one of his awful smiles. “It’s just perspective anyway. To you, I’m the barbarian who’s busted his way into your keep. From my perspective, you’re the backward one, clinging to the old ways while I bring advanced technologies and other gifts of civilization.”

“Starbucks coffee is not a gift of civilization.”

“I beg to differ,” Arvind said. “Starbucks would be a distinct improvement over the coffee at the grocery store on Little Torch.”

“Tell us more about these advanced technologies, Roman,” Prachi said smoothly. “Do they include Wi-Fi?”

Ashley inhaled deeply, reminding herself that it wouldn’t help to give in and argue with Roman at the dinner table. She was supposed to be showing him what she loved about Sunnyvale. To get her friends reminiscing, to demonstrate the strength of their bond.

“Of course,” Roman was saying. “We’ll have free Wi-Fi in every room at the hotel, as well as in the shopping area. It will be similar to the one you have here at Chatham—in fact, the development will be like this one in a lot of ways. Mixed residential and rental properties, a hotel, common areas that all the guests can enjoy.”

“That sounds quite nice, actually.”

Ashley wanted to reply that it sounded like plastic soul-death, but she couldn’t say that without insulting the completely soul-dead community where Prachi and Arvind had chosen to live, or the plastic-wrapped home around her, with its Corian countertops and floral-patterned valences, its piano room and polished wood floors.

There wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the living room that was comfortable to sit on. She’d tried them all.

“I’d be happy to show you the website,” Roman said. “We’re in the earliest phase right now, but in a few years I hope to be offering a conversion program for home owners—something like a trade-in. Say the two of you wanted to move to Little Torch Key, for example. You could sell your home here in North Carolina to my development group, and we’d give you title to a property on Little Torch in exchange. We would make sure what you got in the Keys was at least equivalent in value to what you’d be leaving behind, if not better. Then our real estate office would manage the sale of this property, and the burden would be entirely off your shoulders.”

Arvind gave Prachi a meaningful look. She cleared her throat and glanced guiltily at Ashley before turning her attention back to Roman. “What about … say the owner had a property to sell in a market where housing prices were depressed,” she asked. “How would you establish equivalent value?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Roman said. “A situation like that is difficult for the individual home owner, but it’s actually a tax advantage for the development group to carry those properties on the books. We’re happy to wait for the right moment to sell the home for what it’s really worth. And if we need to pay for certain improvements to make a home more attractive for sale,
we have deep enough coffers to do that.” His gaze swept over the kitchen and into the living room. “Of course, no improvements would be necessary with a place like this. You have a beautiful home, Mr. and Mrs. Kapoor.”

Prachi smiled. “Thank you.”

Ashley’s armpits felt damp, her cheeks hot despite the cold. “I thought you guys would—I thought—you
love
Sunnyvale. Five years in a row, you’ve come back, and Prachi, you learned to knit from Esther. Arvind has the fishing boat. You said you’d always wanted a fishing boat. You spent
hours
out on the water.”

Arvind shoved a crab rangoon in his mouth.

“We do like Sunnyvale,” Prachi said soothingly. “We wouldn’t have visited so many times if we didn’t like it. But—”

“But what? There’s no but!”

“But,” Prachi continued evenly, “this new place Roman is planning sounds good, too.”

Ashley couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even sputter. She hurt too much.

“Will it have a gym?” Arvind spoke with his mouth full.

“Yes, a full gym,” Roman said. “Weight room, treadmills, ellipticals, studio space for classes in yoga, Pilates, the works.”

“How about—”

“They can’t
both
sound good,” Ashley interrupted. She heard the whine in her voice and tried to tone it down. “They’re
opposites
, right? Sunnyvale is heart and soul and community, and this development Roman wants to do—this dead, cheap thing—”

“I’m planning to call it Coral Key.”

“There’s no coral! Not anywhere nearby.”

He shrugged, a loose roll of his shoulders. “It sounds nice, though. That’s
key
spelled
c-a-y
.”

“I
hate
that,” Ashley spat. “I hate
key
spelled
c-a-y
.”

“Really? I’ve always thought it looked classier that way,” Prachi said.

“We’ll have excellent sport fishing,” Roman said to Arvind. “Have you ever tried sport fishing?”

“Can’t say that I have. What kind of boat do you use?”

Leave it to Roman to tap into Arvind’s love of boats.
She
was the one who knew how
Arvind felt about boats.
She
was the one who’d heard his stories of living near the ocean as a boy. Ashley knew all about Prachi, too—how much she enjoyed her work, how hard she found it to relax on vacation. She and Grandma and Prachi had fun developing relaxation strategies for Prachi’s visits, trying out spa days, shopping, hiking, finally discovering that knitting was the thing that took Prachi out of her work head-space and into vacation mode. They’d spent hours by the pool, drinking and talking and laughing while Prachi knit scarves, baby blankets, and—her latest passion—socks.

Roman didn’t know any of that. He didn’t know Prachi and Arvind at all. He only knew what he wanted. He knew what he saw when he looked at their house and how to use it to manipulate them.

He was callous and self-serving. Why were they smiling at him?

“Is your dinner all right, Ashley?” Prachi asked.

“It’s delicious.”

“Are you sure? Because you haven’t touched the tofu. I can get you something else, if you’d prefer.”

“No, this is great.” She picked up the egg roll again, shoved it in her mouth, and chewed.

It tasted like pork. She gagged.

“I was sorry to hear about Susan,” Prachi said. “It seemed so sudden.”

Ashley couldn’t speak. Her mouth was full of this foul taste, and even when she grabbed her water glass and forced the food down her throat, an invisible fist gripped it, filling her sinuses with pressure.

“It was sudden,” Roman said. “But painless, I think. The hospice workers kept her comfortable.”

“How do you know that?” Ashley’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

“I visited.”

She closed her eyes for a second, looking for her center. Searching for peace, for a spark of starlight or a deep breath that would help her push the pain down, back into the well where it belonged.

The conversation continued around her, Prachi saying something, Roman responding, but the pain roared, and she couldn’t hear over it. Wood chair legs scraped over the floor. She stumbled, which was how she knew she was standing. Her palms found silver and linen—the
tablecloth.

“Ashley?” Prachi.

“Ashley, are you all right?” Roman.

“You don’t understand,” she said. Three pairs of eyes gazed up at her. She hit the tabletop with her fist, making the red-paper-wrapped chopsticks jump. Arvind and Prachi looked startled. Roman went blank.

“All of you are just
deliberately
missing the point.” She tried to find the words to tell them what the point was, but she couldn’t find any she hadn’t already said. Sunnyvale had made them happy. They needed it, because …

She couldn’t finish the sentence.

“What Roman wants to do there—it’s wrong,” she said. “It won’t feed your spirit, because there’s no place for that in his vision. He’s just throwing everything good about the Keys away. That’s not what you want, is it? To spit on my grandmother’s memory so you can go
sport fishing
?”

She flung the last words at Arvind, a curse and an imprecation, but he’d stopped looking at her around the time she’d banged on his table, and Prachi’s mouth was pursed in displeasure.

Roman stood up. His warm hand enveloped her shoulder.

“I’d like to speak to you. Privately.”

Ashley shook him off. She looked across the table at her friends. “Just tell me you’re on my side,” she said to Prachi. “Please.”

Prachi’s fingers rose to sweep a stray lock of hair back, tucking it into place with a dip of her hand. She looked uncomfortable, unhappy. “I’m on your side, Ashley,” she said. “Of course I’m on your side. But to be perfectly honest with you, I think …” Her eyes flicked to Arvind’s again, and she took a deep breath. “I think if your grandmother had wanted you to spend the rest of your life at Sunnyvale, she would have made it possible for you to do that.”

The room fell silent, but there was this sound inside her head. This far-away, high-pitched keening that kept getting louder.

When Roman touched her arm again, she slapped his fingers away.

“Excuse me,” she said to Prachi. “I have to …”

Go
.

She ran from the room, thundered up the steps, and locked herself in the upstairs
bathroom, where she turned her face into the nook where the wall met the shower, pressed her hand against cool plaster, and tried to push everything she felt down where it belonged.

There was so much resistance. Too much. Sorrow kept climbing up her throat, wanting to escape in noise, tears, exclamations, self-pitying speeches that did nothing to help her.

She couldn’t push hard enough, so she took a shower, even though she’d already taken one. She shampooed and conditioned her hair, soaped her skin, turned her face up into the spray and let it beat against her forehead.

When the hot water ran out, she dried off and put her clothes back on, still restless. The need to escape, to
move
, pounded through her, but what were her options, really? She was a stranger in this place.

“Ashley?” Prachi said from the hallway. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she called back. “I’ll be out soon.”

Under the sink, she found sponge, toilet brush, cleanser, paper towels.

She piled them into her arms and opened the bathroom door. From the kitchen, murmured voices and running water told her that Roman was with Prachi and Arvind, sucking up.

Ashley went outside and started cleaning the Airstream. She scrubbed the toilet, wiped down the shower and sink, swept dust out of drawers. She cleaned the linoleum bathroom floor tile by tile until there were no tiles left, and then she laid on her back, head on the disintegrating bathmat, and tried not to think about the cardboard boxes in the main room of the trailer.

She tried not to think about anything.

Ashley couldn’t sleep.

Prachi had put her in the guest room, right next door to Roman. He was sleeping on a pullout sofa in the craft room. Every time he moved, something creaked.

She listened for it. Twelve after ten. Eleven-thirty. Twelve-oh-five.

Creak
.

The guest bed was a tall prison with a white ruffled canopy. Ashley kept twisting around, trying to find a comfortable position, but the pillow pushed too hard against her neck. The top sheet tangled in her legs.

She hated top sheets. As far as she was concerned, top sheets were purposeless and irritating. Purely decorative, overly civilized, far too fussy. They pissed her off. She spent an hour fuming about top sheets and then another half an hour constructing a mental list of all the other products that drove her up the wall.

Fabric softener. Washcloths. Those plastic net things you were supposed to use to scrub your skin with in the shower
instead
of a washcloth.

Scented lotion. Panty liners. Scented panty liners.

Scented panty liners made her want to punch the pillow, so she did. She punched it several times, but it didn’t help, so she went back to list-making.

Seasoning packets. MSG. Jokes about tofu made by people who’d never even tried it. Roman’s sunglasses. Bucolic planned villages with scenic cows and winding streets and guest rooms that were too cold and too stifling.

She flipped from one side to the other, thrashed her feet around beneath the covers, and thought about things that made her angry until she got too hot and had to stick her leg out.

Then she got too cold. Frigid air blasted from a vent beside the bed, and for crying out loud, what did they set the thermostat to, 45? It was fucking
freezing
.

Hoping for a reprieve, she got out of the bed and opened the door, but when she climbed back into the tall guest bed it was even worse. Like the princess and the pea, she couldn’t get comfortable—only the problem wasn’t something under the bed, it was her. She was a kernel of
kinetic heat in a room where she couldn’t find stillness, and Roman was right on the other side of that wall, just
there
, awake. Creaking.

It didn’t make sense for him to be awake. Insomnia was for people with a conscience, people with feelings. Robots like Roman put on their old-man pajamas and initiated their shutdown routine, and then they didn’t open their eyes again until their processors came awake with a beep in the morning.