“Attention. Attention.” Indra tapped her glass with a spoon as if they were at a wedding and it was time for the bride and groom to kiss. The white-coated waiters put down their trays, each taking up a place beside a painting. “We’re ready for the big reveal. Someone dim the main lights. The switch is beside the door.”
Zara looked over to make sure someone was covering the lights. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw Jay at the entrance with a friend. Tall and heavily muscled, the dude was Parvati’s type right down to the beachcomber hair and the lack of a tie.
At a wave from Indra, Jay lowered the lights until the only illumination in the gallery came from the spotlights directed at the sheet-covered paintings.
“We now present to you a study in the female form. A decadent rendering of the essence of a woman. Prepare to amazed, astounded, challenged, absorbed.” Indra raised an arm and the waiters pulled down the sheets. “I present . . . Vulva Fruit.”
Oh. My. God.
Zara couldn’t speak. Her breath was trapped in her lungs. She stared at the giant paintings of fruit cut in half and displayed as female genitalia. A papaya, dark seeds spilling from the center. A peach with soft pink flesh around a dark core. She would never be able to look at an orange again without thinking about the suggestive curve of juicy segments around a hollow center. And who would have thought a cantaloupe, a quarter sliced out to reveal the sweet and sticky center, could be so erotic? Worse were the fruits with fingers in them, gently resting on the lips of small openings, or thrust deeply into soft centers.
Bile rose in her throat. Her knees wobbled. She bent over heaving as her betraying lungs refused to let in any air.
“You’re okay.” Parvati rubbed her back. “It’s going to be okay.”
“My bosses . . .” She wheezed in a breath. “My bosses are here. My relatives. Friends. Even my hairdresser. I’m going to have to leave town. No one will ever speak to me again. I’ll be fired and who will hire me when they find out about”—she waved a hand in the air—“this?”
“It’s art.” Parvati yanked her up by the collar. “Get a grip. People are watching. They’re looking to you to see how to react. Pretend it’s all good, that you knew what was coming. If you aren’t surprised, they’ll think it’s okay.”
Zara straightened, her vision immediately assailed by a six-foot painting of a pomegranate dripping with cream. “He’s my dad,” she moaned. “I can handle dad dances or dad jokes or even dad jeans. This is all the dad humiliations on Earth rolled into one.”
“Isn’t it incredible!” Indra joined them, her voice lowered to a whisper. “The silence in the room says everything. They are in that moment of total submersion when words fail them. The patriarchy has been challenged today. We have reclaimed ourselves, our femininity, our very essence . . .”
“My dad painted these,” Zara pointed out. “He’s a man.”
“Your father understands women in a way few men do,” Indra said. “It really is quite remarkable.”
“Why does this always happen to me?” she asked Parvati after Indra breezed away to speak to someone who was examining the price tag beside the peach. “Why can’t I have a nice normal life? Why is it always chaos and disaster and . . .” She waved vaguely at the walls. “Vulva fruits?”
“Because you’re the kind of person who takes risks.” Parvati turned slowly, taking in the room. “And because you have a big heart. A normal person wouldn’t have invited everyone they knew to the gallery when they hadn’t seen the paintings, especially with your father’s history.”
“You’re talking about the shoes.” Zara sighed. Her father had gone through many phases in his artistic career, from the landscapes and villages of his youth to loud angry abstract forms, and from animals in shoes to people with office supplies for heads.
“I’m talking about you putting yourself out there to support your dad and to help two people find their special someone.”
A groan dropped from Zara’s lips. “I invited Jay. What was I thinking? He’s so uptight he’ll probably have a heart attack.”
“I don’t think he’s that worried about it,” Parvati pointed out as Jay and his friend studied a picture of a papaya. “In fact, I’d say he’s having a pretty good time.”
? 12 ?
Jay couldn’t remember when he’d had such an entertaining evening. When Zara had given him Indra’s business card, he’d tucked it away without giving it a second thought. He usually spent his evenings working, and with the lawsuit still moving ahead, solving the mystery of the hack was of vital importance. But how many desi artists were there in San Francisco? Why did Zara think a gallery owner would be a good match for him? And what was going to happen next?