The Side Effects of Marriage

Chapter 19

Vihaan stared at his watch.

He could wait. He'd mastered the waiting game, in fact, having spent his formative years testing his patience. Watching others from the sidelines, dreaming that one day, he'd be invited onto the playing field. He hadn't realized, in fact, that he would never be invited. At his tender age, he'd still held out hope that one day, he could join the players.

Eventually, he got tired of waiting. The metaphorical bleachers grew cold, the sunshine turned to rain, and the grass turned to mud. The metaphorical players packed up and went home to their warm beds and hot meals and mothers who dried their tears and kissed their heads. Vihaan, meanwhile, walked back to an unforgiving orphanage, a cot with a scratchy blanket, and a growing hatred of soccer.

He grew to realize that the game was only that: a game. There was no point in watching and waiting or hoping and haunting. He would make his own game, with real stakes, more than brightly coloured pinnies or mocking jeers. Losses would have real sacrifice. Simply joining the game would demand a real cost from you.

And winning? Well, that would demand your soul.

So, in short, Vihaan Bakshi was very good at the waiting game. He knew that if you waited long enough, you would outlast every impatient sucker who failed the marshmallow test and wouldn't understand the meaning of delayed gratification if it hit them in the face.

But none of that meant that he liked it.

You could be good at waiting, he'd learned. You could get good at a lot of things. But you didn't have to like them. And as the seconds ticked by on his Patek Philippe, he realized that he definitely didn't like waiting.

Especially not for so-called friends. Lionel Russell was a good forty-five minutes late. As the flashbulbs began shining bright lights outside the dingy area of the pub, the typical noise of traffic and pedestrians escalating into the sound of what could certainly be deemed a ruckus, Vihaan realized why. His old Harvard friend was now a quasi-celebrity.

Someone to be questioned, harassed, shaken down for a drop of gossip or fame or something to sell on the pages of TMZ and Page Six. Or, in his case, the talking heads at the View and the pages of WaPo. Lionel Russell's scandal, after all, was not one of the caught-with-pants-down variety, but one of legalese, contracts, and money moving discreetly between powerful men's bank accounts. Still, it was a scandal all the same, and he knew that the public hungered for them.

They longed to see the Michelangelo, but the darker part of them thirsted still to see it knocked off its pedestal for being larger-than-life and more highly exalted than any of the rats scurrying below could ever hope to be.

"Lionel, old chap." He got out of his leather club chair, admiring the looks of the disgruntled patrons who cast condemning or curious glances toward Lionel as the man entered, shaking off his black rain-streaked umbrella, which was promptly taken by one of the staff. The concierge ushered Lionel Russell toward the club chair opposite from Vihaan's, taking his coat and offering him a cigar, a whiskey, a good slug of brandy--anything to shake off the chill, but more precisely the taint of scandal. "How have you been?"

No matter his impatience and frustration, Vihaan wouldn't let it show in his face. Not when he was far too busy to let loose his anger on just anybody. It was better kept bottled, to be released like poison on the proper targets at the proper times.

"Well, I've been better." Lionel ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. "The paps have been after me. I didn't realize D.C. had suddenly become Hollywood. I've been mobbed by so-called journalists for a solid two weeks now, all thanks to your little stunt."