The air conditioning must have been on full blast, because the noiseless room was chilled, the cool air felt with every movement of the single body. It was ignored, however. The room was as informal as any room could possibly get, with a single potted, miniature palm tree providing the only other color besides blue, black and brown in the space.
The most predominate piece of furniture was the long oak table where many business meetings and contract signings took place, 8 chairs scattered spaciously around it, coated in black leather. In one of those chairs, at the head of the table, JC was seated, taking his normal position. He had a paper in front of him, a pencil in hand, and his head bent over it. He rarely moved.
Then the table began to vibrate with mini-earthquakes of movement. He looked up and was greeted by two large, green ovals, pudgy cheeks, and black curls.
“Hello.”
JC moved his head past the little girl standing on the table in front of him and saw a bigger version of the face that hovered above. “Hi. Who’s this?”
Kalika stepped closer and the child smiled, walking tentatively towards her. The older girl extended her finger, which the child took and tugged at, giggling accordingly. “This is Lalita, my sister.”
“Why did you bring her here?”
“Just to see something. Sit down Lali,” she addressed the young girl, who immediately obeyed and plopped herself down directly where she stood. Kalika put a piece of plain white paper in front of the child and took out a dull, thick pencil, the kind used in elementary schools. JC watched the girl take the pencil with mature hands, handling it expertly and almost instantly turning towards the paper. The face of innocence vanished and was overtaken by a serious gleam that first entered her eyes then shaped her mouth and then small eyebrows.
“I offered to take care of her while my mother attended some social event or another,” Kalika explained. “Today is the last day I’m here before I return to my apartment and I did promise to stop by. I hope you don’t mind.”
JC was watching Lalita. He could tell the girl no longer remembered the two adults in the room, or possibly even the room itself. She was drawing. Nothing else was of any importance. He felt an immediate respect and affection for her. “Not at all,” he answered. “I do have to finish these arrangements though.”
“I’ll sit here.” Kalika pulled out one of the leather chairs and positioned herself comfortably. She watched JC resume the work he had been doing before the interruption, his eyes slowly focusing on the paper, an expression of complete concentration shaping his face. Then she looked at her sister and saw that same expression reflected. She sat back and smiled.
~~
When the red corvette pulled up to the valet parking at Club Mango, the onlookers waiting in line expected a red carpet to magically roll out of the entrance. After the two girls emerged from inside the car, no one questioned any longer why the special treatment was required. Without any knowledge of who they were, one could tell that these two were exceptional.
Especially the darker one.
Karen walked ahead. “Honestly, Neal has got some nerve just showing up like that. You can’t even begin to imagine how infuriated I was, especially since I was on my way to the masseuse, and you know how difficult it is to schedule an appointment with Franco.”
Sita followed her inside. For once she took notice of the loud music and relished in the relief of having her own thoughts muffled for a minute. “Does Justin know you’re coming?” she asked.
“No,” Karen called back, walking up the steps to the bar.
“You broke up again?”
“Yup.”
“What was it this time?”
“Who can remember anymore?” She searched the crowd. “There he is.”
Sita followed Karen’s gaze and was barely able to see the boys that were surrounded by a group of people. She pressed her lips together, her body recognizing before she had even registered JC’s presence amongst the crowd. A thought occurred to her to run. It never reached her feet.
“Here they come,” Karen muttered, a hint of aggravation in her tone.
Justin was now looking their way and he lightly tapped Joey who stopped in mid-sentence to look up. He smiled at her. She looked down, then peaked up again. JC was still talking to Lance and had not seen or was not interested in regarding her. She made herself look away and saw Joey and Justin approaching them.
“It took you long enough to get here,” Justin said, skipping the introductions.
Karen feigned surprise. “Slick, the last time we talked, you told me to go to hell. I wouldn’t think you expected me to be here instead, and waiting for me no less.”
Justin rolled his eyes and reached for her hand, pulling her to join him on the dance floor. Sita watched them go, forgetting momentarily that she was not alone. She did not know other people were in the room. All she could feel was the solitary individual surrounding her, seeping into her skin and saturating her senses. She allowed her eyelids to close so her mind could absorb this tangible, invisible thing that filled the building and attacked her.
Then she felt something touch her arm.
Joey was eyeing her closely. “Sita, are you feeling all right?”
She cleared her throat and stood up tall. “Yes, I’m fine Joey.”
“We could go somewhere else if you’d like.”
“No. I’m fine here.”
“Oh, all right.” Deciding to ignore her unusually cold face, he stepped closer to her and put his arm over her shoulders. “This is turning out to be a great day. Did you see over there, it’s Lance and JC. I can’t believe they came out tonight.”
“They don’t usually go out with you guys?” she asked distantly.
“Nope. Lance sometimes, but lately he’s been in this weird mood. He’s got some internal issues with women lately.”
Her eyes were downcast. “And JC?”
He laughed. “JC surprised all of us. He never goes out with us, unless it’s for a friend’s party or something. Normally we have to beg him, and even then he won’t come. He’s addicted to the studio. I’ve got no clue why he agreed to come out tonight. I was hoping he’d invite your sister.”
“He did. She’s leaving tonight though, so she couldn’t come.”
“He did, huh? They must be hitting it off, just like you said.”
“Yea...just like I said.” Suddenly, she felt a dropping in her stomach, and she looked around, expecting to see herself falling. Her eyes drifted to the group across the club and she saw him watching her. He grinned when her eyes met his and then he began moving towards the back exit. “Joey, I’ll be right back,” she mumbled, following the head that was floating in the crowd of people.
“Where are you going?” he called after her, but she didn’t hear him.
The place was crowded but when the people saw the girl who was trying to pass, a pathway cleared almost magically and she walked by easily without noticing the looks of admiration and bewilderment she received. Outwardly, she still looked like the beautiful goddess that everyone wanted to know. They did not look into her eyes and see the girl who was stuck in a transition, being sucked into a vacuum of two worlds.
She confidently pushed open the heavy exit door and stepped out, immediately being grabbed and pulled over to the side before she was even able to get a look at her assailant. By the feel of the skin, she was able to make a pretty good assumption on who it was anyway.
He pulled her to a dimly lit alleyway, the lights of the street and the back parking lot surrounding them but never directly hitting them. The brick wall next to them vibrated from the music within, but other than that, there was no sound. No other people were around. For now, they were in a world by themselves.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed. He was so close to her, his scent and his blue eyes devouring her. His hand still held onto her bare forearm and she painfully savored the feel of his thumb moving up and down her skin. She was dimly afraid that if he were to remove his hand, the flesh beneath would go with it.
“I came to see you.”
“You act like there’s nothing wrong with that statement.”
“There isn’t.”
“There is,” she said sternly. “I’m here with Joey.”
“From what I could tell, you arrived here alone. Joey was just the first to come up to you. What? You’re surprised to know that I was watching you? I’ve been watching you the entire time Sita.”
She shook her head. “You invited my sister to come with you.”
“Yes. I enjoy talking to her. She knows a lot about producing.”
“You’re playing with her heart.”
“I’m not. She comes and asks if she can watch me or talk to me. I say yes. I never told her that I was interested in her.”
“And if she asks you?”
“Then I tell her that I want you.”
“No.” She yanked her arm free, even though he hadn’t been holding it tightly. She was relieved to find that none of her skin came off in the action, although now her arm felt cold where the warmth of his hand had touched it. “You can’t tell her anything.”
He leaned his back against the wall, facing forward. “What would you like me to say then? Would you like me to give your sister a chance?”
“No,” she answered automatically.
His head turned to her. “Why do you put yourself through so much suffering?”
“Because I don’t want to hurt anyone. My sister or Joey.”
“So you hurt yourself?”
She nodded and said, “You don’t want to hurt them either.”
“Yes. But I can’t spend my whole life cautioning and restricting myself in order to avoid hurting others. Everyone hurts somebody eventually, it’s just what happens in life. You can’t put yourself aside for others. It’s what you’ve been trained to do your whole life. Don’t you think it’s time you start living for yourself?” Stepping in front of her, he raised his hand to lay it on her neck, his thumb touching her cheek. “What do you want Sita?”
She wanted him. In the simplest, purest way she wanted him. “I…I don’t know.”
“Do you know what I would say if you asked me that question?”
“Yes.”
“What do I want?”
“To make music.”
He smiled. “And?”
“And me?”
“And you,” he confirmed.
She knew he was telling the truth and she knew he would not compromise. He was not a man made out of cruelty, he didn’t want to hurt his friends, but he had a desire, a goal, and he would achieve it. It was the only way he knew how to live. She understood in that moment what she lacked was that passion, that joy to have a clear, definable ultimatum on the view of life. He viewed life as a symphony that he could create. She saw life from other visions. Only when she was with him did she start seeing for herself, did she feel like she owned a place in the world.
“Yes,” he said to a question she hadn’t asked. “That’s why you have to be with me.” His eyes were like a giant blue wave looming above her, threatening to crash down and sweep her away. “You’re making me different to,” he said softly, a voice he rarely used. “I never thought I’d meet you.”
They heard the back door open, the music getting louder for a second and then mute again.
“JC, are you out here?”
She recognized the voice.
JC kept his eyes on her but removed his hand from her neck. “Yes Lance, I’m here.”
Lance appeared from the corner, smiling at them innocently. He suspected nothing, just assuming that they had come out to get a breath of fresh air probably, not to discuss the ways of the world and the affair they weren’t having. “Hey guys. Chris is looking everywhere for you JC, and I’m pretty sure Joey’s about to go haywire searching the place for you Sita.”
“I guess we can continue our discussion later.” JC brushed past her and, without looking back, entered the club.
Sita stood still for a while, the imprint that surely must have been visible on her cheek and arm where he had touched her lingering on her skin. She closed her eyes and waited until the feeling melted into her skin. Then her eyes opened and she stared at the place he had stood as if he was still there.
“Sita?”
She looked back and saw that Lance was still behind her. “Yes?”
“Are you coming back in?”
“Not yet.” She stepped towards the curb and took a seat. “I’m not in the mood tonight. Will you stay out here with me?”
Lance agreed and sat next to her.
“How are things?” she asked him.
“Things are ok. We’re trying to work things out for our next album and that’s been on my mind. It’s getting kind of chaotic down at the studio and with our management. On the other hand, I’m taking my first major steps with this act I’m managing.”
“You’re a manager?”
“Yup. It’s this side thing I’m doing.”
“Do you scout around looking for different talent?”
“I try. It’s so busy, especially since we have that summer tour coming up and I’ve had this killer cough during our whole vacation. But I’m getting out there and looking as much as possible.”
“You should carry around a paper and pen. You never know when you’re out on a night like tonight and you happen to stumble upon the next big thing.”
“Thanks,” he said, grinning. “I’ll definitely take that into consideration. How about you? How’s the life of semi-fame and fortune?”
“It’s a life,” she answered without enthusiasm.
He chuckled without humor. “That it is. I love my life, don’t get my wrong. But there are just times when…what I wouldn’t do to have someone else’s life.”
“What I wouldn’t do to know what it feels like to have mine.”
~~
You do it to yourself
You do
And that’s what really hurts
Is you do it to yourself
Just you
You and no one else
You do it to yourself
- Radiohead
For the next two days Sita did not leave her room.
Her parents couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. They tried summoning her down for dinner, but she would not come. Various friends had called on her, but she would not see them. They went to her room, speaking into the glass doors with the white sheet draped over them, and begged her to come down and eat something, to at least tell them what was wrong. She would not answer them.
Her behavior was completely out of character. Normally, Sita spent hardly any time in her room. She would always come down whenever her parents desired her to, she always answered when they spoke to her. As far as they could tell, before she had imprisoned herself onto the third floor, she had been absolutely fine. A little quiet, but still the perfect daughter they loved. Now she had cut herself from the world and showed no signs of emerging.
Out of sheer panic, her mother had telephoned Kalika.
“She won’t leave her room at all?” her sister had asked, astonished like the rest.
“No!” her mother exclaimed, unable to hide the fear and concern from her shaking voice. Nervously, she paced the den, twining the phone cord around her finger as Rama watching helplessly from the couch. “We try to talk to her, but she won’t say anything! As far as we know, she hasn’t even eaten. Oh Kal, please come and see what’s wrong. You’ve always been close. Maybe she’ll talk to you.”
Kalika had hopped into a taxi fifteen minutes later.
Forty –five minutes later, she was knocking on her sister’s door as her parents looked on from down the hallway. “Sita, it’s me, Kalika. Sita, open the door please. Everyone’s so worried about you.”
There was no answer.
Kalika didn’t know what to do. “Sita, please,” and now her tone had gone higher, her heart clutched in worries. “Won’t you please tell me what’s wrong. At least, tell me.”
Silence.
The next day, Karen pulled up the long driveway and parked her corvette at the entrance of the mansion. She walked up the steps, past the columns, and rang the doorbell, waiting patiently as the chimes rang through the house. The heavy door opened and a maid stood there and bowed as Karen entered. The house was darker, not just because hardly any light shone, but because it felt darker. There was something missing. The liveliness that usually habitated the rooms was absent that day, a suppressing gloom taking its place.
“Hello Karen.”
She looked up and saw Kalika gracefully walking down the stairs. It was the first time they had seen each other since the party. “Hello Kal. How have you been?”
Kalika forced a smile. “Great. Well, before all of this…” She faded off, her eyes overcome with a brash gray misery. She shook her head and resumed her forced smile. “Have you any idea why she’s acting this way?”
“I’m sorry Kal, but no. Sita was fine just a couple of days ago.”
Karen couldn’t remember ever seeing Kalika’s face so grave and emotional. The girl nodded to herself, the smile gradually fading away. “Shall we go upstairs then?”
“Yes, of course.” They began up the stairs. “I don’t know what help I’ll be though. I’ve tried calling, but she won’t answer the phone.”
“Yes, mother told me. But maybe she’ll see you now that you’re actually here.”
On the way to her room, Karen passed by Rama and Radha, both clutching onto each other, staring at her with hopeful eyes and faces that had something missing from them, the color sucked out of them. She politely smiled and kept following Kalika. They turned down a corridor and Karen saw the two glass doors. Kalika stopped halfway there and motioned for Karen to go ahead on her own. It was so dark.
Karen paused outside of the door. “Sita, it’s me. You remember me right? Karen. You know, the porn star in training.” Sita said nothing. “Could you open the door Sita dear. I have so much to talk to you about, and it’s rather difficult when there’s a white sheet and a couple of inches of glass in my way.”
Still, the door remained closed.
“Sita,” Karen said quietly. “Open the door and talk to me.” Desperately, she looked back at Kalika, who shook her head, unable to offer any assistance. Karen was about ready to walk back, and then suddenly, the door handle turned and the glass moved a couple of inches.
“Come in Karen,” a voice from the inside said. “Just you.”
She looked back again and Kalika nodded. “Go on.”
Pushing the glass doors open further, she walked into the room, and then shut the doors behind her. It was darker inside. A series of windows lined the wall, but all the shades had been drawn, except one that was closest to the modernistic bed made of wires and hanging white sheets. It was a beautiful room, expensive art hanging on the walls, a thin screen tv hanging on one of the walls as well, and even a mural painted onto the ceiling. The floors were a waxed, smooth wood and Karen’s heels clicked as she walked across it.
In front of her, a figure with white pajama’s and long black hair that followed like a shadow, moved towards the bed and sat back under the sheets. She was a gorgeous mess. Her eyes were wet, her skin marked with residues from tears, little strings of black sticking onto her delicate cheeks. She looked so young but at the same time so tired. Karen knew she was not looking at the same person she had met weeks ago.
Fearlessly, she approached the wall next to the bed and leaned on it. “Sita, what’s this all about? You’ve got the whole house in ruins over you. Your parents are a wreck and Kal is worried sick, as well as everyone else, including me. Joey keeps calling me, asking why you aren’t returning his calls either. What’s going on?”
Sita’s eyes weren’t looking at her, her attention focused outside of the window. “Karen,” she said in a remarkably clear voice, “Do you ever wonder what you would do if you weren’t wealthy?”
“What?” she asked, confused.
“If you had it all stripped from you. The cars, the clothes, the house, the people. If you had it all taken away except yourself, including the magazines and the opinions of who you’re supposed to be and how you are supposed to act. If you had none of the materialistic objects or the views of society, what do you think you’d have left? What do you think you would see in the mirror when it was all gone and you had to face your reflection?”
Karen’s eyebrows scrunched together, her expression askew and quizzical. “Sita, what on earth are you talking about?”
Sita shrugged, even that motion coming from someplace far away. “I’ve been thinking about it lately. The way I view the world, if I even view it at all. How do you view the world Karen?”
“I…I don’t really think of it too often, I guess.”
“Yes, neither did I. I just knew that I had to grow up and be successful, make sure I wore what I was supposed to and interacted with the people I was supposed to and grew up how I was supposed to, and really didn’t think of much else. As long as I had friends, money, and people I was happy. But what if those things get taken away? What will I be without them?” Her green eyes turned to her friend, shining even brighter than usual in contrast to the pale face. “I would be nothing. I have no substance, no thoughts of my own.”
“Sita!” Karen rushed to her, sitting down on the bed and taking her hands. “Why say such horrible things? You have everything!”
“To have everything isn’t what’s important though,” Sita said calmly. “Karen, what is everything if you have no sense of the person you truly are inside? Of the things you are capable of?”
Karen couldn’t comprehend what was being said to her. She didn’t understand what her friend was talking about, she didn’t know why she had to think of a world without money, without the things that made up who she was. But she heard the words, and a part of her knew that she had to listen and store the words away until she was able to clearly hear. “What’s happened to you?” she asked in a hushed tone.
There was no glamour attached to Sita any longer. No fancy dress, no expensive ornaments decorated her. The girl on the bed was not Sita Perne, it was just a simple girl with a strange ember glowing in her eyes. Karen no longer saw a girl who existed as everyone’s universal definition of perfect, a product of the elite to be shared with everyone. She saw a solid person who was starting to discover her own skin, her own being.
Sita opened her mouth to say something, but then shut it again and just stared at her. Karen looked at her face closely, searching for an answer, and then something clicked in her mind. She remembered a conversation that had happened not to long ago. “Sita,” she said, “It’s that boy, isn’t it?”
Sita’s eyes grew wide, but not alarmed. “What boy?”
“The one you were telling me about that night when you first met Joey. The one you said you were sort of seeing. He’s done this to you, hasn’t he?”
Slowly, she nodded. “Yes.”
“Who is he?”
“JC.”
It was a two letter word stated simply and with a tone of finality. Karen had to take a couple of minutes in order to speak. Sita quietly waited.
“What!” was what she was able to conjure up. “You mean, JC Chasez?”
“Yes.”
“The one who is in the group? The horrid one?”
“Yes.”
“The one who your sister is in love with?”
Sita paused, then said, “Yes.”
“Sita!” She rose to her feet. “How? How can he be the one? You hadn’t even met Joey then.”
“We met before that. It happened outside of my father’s office. I was passing by a window and I spotted him.” She smiled faintly at the memory. “He was sitting at a bus stop.”
“No,” Karen shook her head, “It just isn’t possible.”
“It is. Karen, I didn’t know who he was at the time. I had no idea that he and Joey knew each other. I had no idea who he was when I set him and Kal up on a date. I was only formally introduced to him at the party last Friday.”
“Did he know?”
“No.”
“What’s happened since you’ve discovered who you two are?”
“We’ve talked a couple of times, nothing more. I’m trying to avoid him, but it’s so hard.”
“Has he tried to avoid you?”
“No.”
Karen sharply sat back down. “Don’t you see what a bastard he is? He’s trying to have both you and your sister!”
“It’s not like that. He doesn’t even want to be with Kal. I know, it’s terrible, and you don’t understand what I would do to make it different, to make him love her, but I can’t. Even if I wanted to, I can’t. He won’t listen to reason. He has his own reason.”
“He loves you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You love him?”
Sita looked down. “I’m not sure. I’m trying not to.”
They were quiet for awhile. Then Karen said, “If you could, if you and Joey and he and Kal weren’t together, if it was just you two, would you still want to be with him?”
“More than anything.”
“Oh Sita.”
“Yes, I know.”
Karen took her hands again. “You must tell them the truth.”
She shook her head violently. “I can’t. Kal is so happy. I won’t destroy that.”
“But Sita, what are you going to do? You’re just going to keep this charade up and watch your sister fall in love with someone who can never love her back?”
“She doesn’t care about that,” Sita insisted. “She doesn’t care if they’re never together romantically.”
“How do you know?”
“Because, it’s how I feel to. With him, it’s almost like you don’t expect him to ever return your feelings, and it doesn’t matter because you’ve found him. I don’t care if he never loves me back, it doesn’t change the fact that I…care about him. She doesn’t need him to love her back. She’ll love him no matter what, especially Kal.”
“So what will you do?”
She pulled her hand away from Karen’s and leaned against the bedpost, her eyes cast to the side. “Stay away from him. Deny myself what I want to keep Kalika happy.”
“How can you be so selfless?”
“Trust me, this isn’t selflessness. This is the result of thousands of selfish moments and decisions. Every decision has a consequence. Now I must bear them all.”