The Chai Factor Page 4

  “It’s a quartet. There may be two gay couples. Anyway, I doubt Nanima knows Sameer’s orientation. Neelam asked Sameer not to tell anyone in his family. His grandmother is your grandmother’s friend.”

  “Well, obviously news got out if you know.”

  Reena’s nose wrinkled. “Yeah, I know. I told Saira not to spread gossip, but you know my sister. Juicy dirt before conscientiousness.”

  “But now you’re spreading it, too!”

  “You have to live with him, so you should know the truth. Besides, you said you’re looking for an Indian boyfriend. I’d hate for you to make a move on Sameer before finding out he’s sleeping with your lumberjack.”

  “I’m not going to make a move on any of them! I just want a quiet place to finish my work!”

  Reena giggled again. “All right, all right, sorry, Meer. No boyfriend, just school work. But you have to admit, this is funny. A gay, Muslim, lumberjack barbershop quartet living in your basement. You couldn’t make this up if you tried. Anyway, I’d offer up my place for you to study in if they’re too noisy, but you know Saira’s home all day. I think a barbershop quartet would be less disruptive than my sister blending kale smoothies every two minutes.”

  Amira stilled. “Did she eat anything today?”

  The smile on Reena’s face instantly evaporated. “Not really. Three blueberries and half a bunch of Swiss chard. I swear, her skin’s starting to turn green.”

  “That’s messed up, Ree. She can’t live on that.”

  Reena looked at the table, her fingers drawing stripes on the beaded condensation on her pint glass. “I know.” She frowned. “I made kuku paka yesterday since she used to love it when we were growing up. And all she did was complain about the smell of chicken all night. She didn’t eat a bit.”

  “What’s kuku paka?” Amira asked. Reena’s family was Gujarati Indian via East Africa, just like Amira’s father. But Amira’s mother was directly from Gujarat, India. Reena was obsessed with anything food related and was a fabulous cook, but Amira wasn’t that familiar with the East African dishes she made, since at home, Mum or Nanima always did the cooking.

  “Chicken in coconut sauce. Anyway, all she ate was the spinach I made to go with it.”

  Amira gentled her voice, knowing to tread lightly here. “She needs help, Reena. Did you mention that doctor to her?” Amira had done some research and found an Indo-Canadian therapist in Toronto who worked on a sliding scale. No way in hell Reena’s parents would pay for Saira to see a therapist, so Reena would have to cover the cost herself with her meagre finance clerk salary. Amira knew she was nowhere near qualified to diagnose Saira with anything, but having known the woman for as long as she had known Reena, she couldn’t ignore that something was up with her.

  “No. Not yet. I will, though. I know she won’t take it well. She’s getting nasty.”

  “What’d she do now?” Amira asked. She loved Reena to bits, but she would never understand how her otherwise strong friend continued to put up with the abuse her sister had been throwing her way since childhood. It had undoubtedly been worse since Saira moved in. Amira was so happy to be back in town, where she could support her friend better.

  Reena bit her lip, looking down. “She threw Bob out the window. He’s dead.”

  Amira froze in place. “She didn’t. Dead like . . . forever dead?”

  Reena nodded.

  “I’m sorry, Ree. God, how could she . . .”

  “It’s just a sourdough starter. I can start another one—”

  “No, Ree, that’s not the point. The rest of us may have thought you were whack-a-doo for the attention you paid to a blob of dough, but everyone knew Bob was important to you. You started that sourdough and took care of him for two years. I can’t help but think Saira’s obsession with health food has something to do with your baking and cooking hobby, but as your sister, she should respect what’s important to you, not throw it out the window.”

  “I know, but she’s going through a lot. She lost her job, and then her fiancé . . .”

  “What happened with her fiancé, anyway? What was the guy’s name . . . Jordan?”

  “Joran. He was Dutch. Assuming he still is. She caught him in bed with his cousin or something. Anyway, Saira’s been through a lot lately. I’m trying to cut her some slack.”

  “She moved into your apartment, insisted you buy organic kombucha crap for her, and now she throws away your sourdough starter? I don’t care if she caught her man with all his cousins and aunties, she can be having a rough time and still treat her sister like a human being! She’s always treated you horribly, Ree. This is nothing new.”

  Reena frowned. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, and Amira felt sure it wouldn’t be the last. But beating her best friend over the head with the truth hadn’t helped before. It would be awhile before Reena would be ready to stand up to her sister and the rest of her family. If she was ever ready at all.

  The subject needed to change. Amira smiled warmly at her friend. “Thanks for the offer of your place, though, but, we’ll see. Maybe the Merry Men rehearse somewhere else? Or maybe they’re quiet. How loud could a barbershop quartet be, anyway?”

  “Yeah. Who knows, they may be Canada’s first miming barbershop quartet.” Reena grinned. “Should be interesting at your place, though. How are things coming along on your paper?”

  “I’ve barely started. I have tons of notes from the work I did with my project supervisor, but I need to do loads of research on the applications of my findings. And I need to write it up into a readable state. Switching from computer integration to vibration and noise control meant so much more work.”

  “Damn. Maybe you should have stayed put.”

  “No. It’s fine. I’ll get it done.”

  After they chatted a bit longer, Amira said goodbye to Reena and walked home. The brisk spring chill was refreshing, and after talking it out with Reena, Amira was feeling better about the upcoming weeks. It felt so good to be home again that she wasn’t going to let a handful of whimsically singing hipster men steal her optimism.

  Chapter Five

  THE HOUSE WAS quiet when she let herself in the side door and made her way down to the basement kitchen. It was late, but Amira was used to chai and a snack before bed. She wasn’t sure how stocked the basement kitchen was, but chai fixings were a given—even by Indian standards, Amira’s family took their chai very seriously. She moved quietly—she didn’t want to attract the attention of the minstrels—as she filled a pot with water and put it on the stove. Peeking in the cupboards, she found loose tea, but only premixed chai spices. She preferred freshly ground spices in her chai but didn’t want to wake anyone by sneaking upstairs to raid her grandmother’s spice cupboard. She’d have to settle, for now.

  “Making tea or coffee?”

  Startled, she dropped the tea tin on the counter before turning around. Sameer. “Masala chai. Want some?”

  “Okay.”

  She poured a bit more water in the pot and left it to boil. Turning to face him, Amira tried to think of a non-threatening, supportive thing to say without letting on that she had been listening to gossip about him.

  Maybe she could compliment his . . . she looked at his head . . . hair? He frowned, running his hand through it, making a mess of the towering style. She bit her lip.

  This was why she usually avoided the grapevine. She hated that she knew his secrets—secrets he didn’t want known. She smiled, hoping her expression didn’t betray her discomfort.

  “I’m sorry, by the way,” he said, not meeting her eyes.

  “Sorry? Why?”

  “We kind of invaded your home. Your grandmother told us you were away.”

  “Yeah, it was a last-minute decision to come home. Wasn’t your fault.”

  He looked down at his feet.

  “You okay?” Amira asked.

  “Yeah, fine,” he said sharply. “I just . . . you know what? I’ll skip the tea. It might ke
ep me up. I’m just . . . I’m going to bed.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair one last time before leaving.

  Amira shrugged. Clearly something major was under that man’s skin. Probably worried she would discover he was gay and tell his family. Or maybe he was having relationship problems? Trouble in paradise with the garden gnome? It was possible he was just anti-social. Amira’s chai was boiling by that point, so she added milk to the pot, stirring it absentmindedly while thinking about this predicament.

  It was probably a good idea to speak to Sameer about how often the quartet would be rehearsing and how noisy they would be. But after that interaction, it was obvious he didn’t want to make friends. Figures. She had only met half of this quartet so far and neither of them seemed to care two straws for her. Not much of a shock there; first impressions were not her strong point. But finishing her report would be even more stressful if there was an engineer-versus-singer feud in the basement. She pulled down a mug for her chai.

  “That tea for the taking, Princess? Smells amazing.” It was Duncan who startled her this time.

  She spun to face him. “You keep calling me Princess and I’ll call you by my secret name for you.”

  He grinned as he leaned back on the counter behind him, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Oh, this’ll be good. What do you call me in your head?”

  “Lumberjack.”

  A furrow appeared between his brows. “That’s not very original. Big, bearded guy in flannel? Heard it lots of times. I expected more from you.”

  “Also . . .”

  One eyebrow raised. “Also, what?”

  She reddened. “Garden gnome.”

  His head tilted way back in laughter, and his beard almost glowed under the pot lights. The laugh was loud, reverberating deeply through the small room.

  Amira huffed as she fetched a second mug from the shelf. “Sugar?” she asked, once he stopped laughing.

  “Just one.”

  She poured his chai, added one teaspoon of sugar, and handed it to him before fixing hers with half a teaspoon.

  Duncan crossed his legs, grey socks barely peeking out under his jeans. He had removed the suspenders and unbuttoned the top of his plaid shirt, revealing a grey waffle-knit undershirt. He looked enormous in her small kitchen. The man took up space. Physical, even metaphysical, space. Like the energy of the whole house needed to reassemble itself due to his presence. Somehow, she had spent a large portion of her day with this odd man and she felt like she’d had to reassemble herself to fit him into her life. And he would continue to be in her life for two more weeks.

  She exhaled. They needed to find a way to get along; she didn’t want the stress of household tension to ruin her focus. And since Sameer didn’t seem to want to fraternize with her—probably for good reason—Duncan was the only one who could answer her questions about their group.

  “So, can I ask you something?” she said after gently blowing on her chai.

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “Um, this group of yours, it’s a barbershop quartet?”

  “Yeah, we’re entered into the Ontario regionals. There was an online voting process to get this far, and if we win, we go to Vegas for the finals.”

  Amira had no idea barbershop quartet competitions were a thing. Actually, she didn’t know barbershop quartets were still a thing, other than on The Simpsons.

  “And you sing . . . ?” she asked.

  “I’m the baritone. A barbershop group has four parts: a tenor, a lead, a baritone, and a bass.”

  “No. I mean, what type of music?”

  “Oh, the guys like to pick the songs. I’d be happy with more classic rock arrangements, but Barrington’s into Motown.”

  “Barrington?”

  “He’s the bass. Low notes. Sameer and Travis take turns singing lead or tenor. Tenor’s the highest notes, above lead. As the baritone, I sing above the bass and, sometimes, above the lead, too. The four pitches harmonize together to create an overtone unique to barbershop.”

  This was fascinating but not the information she needed from him. Duncan finished his musical theory lesson and sipped his chai. “Hey, you make a fine cuppa! My grandma would be proud, if she were alive. Now, that woman knew her tea. She would evangelize on the teachings of W.E. Gladstone while sipping: If you’re cold, tea will warm you; if you’re hot, it will cool you. If you’re sad, it will cheer you; if you’re excited, it will calm you the fuck down. Grams had a bit of a potty mouth.”

  Amira blinked. Was this man real? “Okay. Um, so you’ll be rehearsing here? Or do you have a rehearsal space somewhere?”

  He snorted. “Your family gave us a steal on the rent here, and we still could barely afford it. We don’t have another place. We’ll be rehearsing here, Princess. Often.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Sorry. Amira. I sincerely hope we don’t bother you too much, but it’s why we’re here. To work on arrangements and find our groove. We need to be perfect. I don’t know about the other guys, but I intend to win this thing.”

  Amira clenched her jaw. “I need to finish my report. It’s due in two weeks. I came here for quiet.”

  He stood straighter. “Well, you can go to a library. We can’t exactly take our song and dance routine on the road, can we?”

  “Yes, but this is my house!”

  He leaned forward, looming almost a head taller than her. “We’re paying rent. We have every right to be here. We were told the basement would be empty and we could make as much noise as we needed to. Maybe you should just go back to your fancy engineering school.”

  Amira clutched her chai tightly, knuckles whitening. She really, really did not like this man. Or this situation she was in. “Where the hell are the rest of you, anyway? Isn’t this supposed to be a quartet? I’ve only seen two. And how are four of you going to cram into only two rooms?”

  He smirked. “Don’t worry, we’ll manage our sleeping arrangements just fine. Two rooms are plenty.”

  Did that mean he and Sameer were a couple? Amira still couldn’t picture it. “Barrington and Travis went to see another barbershop group perform downtown,” he continued. “Scoping out the competition. Sameer stayed behind because he had to pick me up from the train station and then visit his grandmother.”

  “Shirin,” Amira said.

  “What?”

  “His grandmother is Shirin. She’s friends with my grandmother. Don’t you know your friends at all?”

  “Why the hell would I know what his grandmother’s name is? Look, are we done? I’d like to unpack my things.”

  She grimaced. “Yes. Go. Please.”

  He put his empty cup heavily in the sink and walked away without turning around.

  Stupid garden gnome.

  Chapter Six

  AMIRA WOKE TO find a meeting had been scheduled with Jim Prescott, her new manager at Hyde Industrial, for that morning. His assistant had emailed that Jim was eager to meet her and hammer out a return-to-work plan. A good sign. She made plans with Raymond for lunch afterwards to catch up.

  She showered and dressed carefully, trying her best to groom herself to look appropriate for re-entering the corporate world. She was out of practice at taming her wild hair and walking in heels, but she was glad to step into her professional persona again, even for just one morning. Comfort was fine, but Amira was looking forward to her power suits. She needed the fierce confidence her blazers and pencil skirts gave her, even when she had to pair them with steel-toe shoes at work sites and factories.

  Walking towards the basement kitchen, she heard unfamiliar voices speaking. Male voices.

  “I know we were thinking about ‘A Kind of Magic,’ but isn’t ‘The Show Must Go On’ a better Queen song? Is it too depressing? I mean, we’re hardly . . . oh, hello.” The speaker smiled when he noticed Amira. He had a voice that could almost be described as singsongy. Duncan and another unfamiliar man were standing next to him. These newcomers, she assumed, co
mpleted the missing half of the barbershop quartet. Sameer was nowhere to be seen.

  Duncan let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Ooh, look at the princess today. The devil really does wear Prada.”

  Amira raised one eyebrow at him. She checked out his outfit—jeans and plaid flannel, of course. “You wouldn’t know Prada from Wrangler if your life depended on it.”

  He didn’t skewer her with a smart comeback; he only stared at her, green eyes intense.

  Finally, he shook his head slowly and laughed. “Meet our other guys, Travis and Barrington. This is our incomparable host, Amira. Don’t call her princess, her highness doesn’t like that.”

  She glared briefly at Duncan again before turning to the two newcomers. Travis was the one who had said hello earlier. A handsome white man of average height, he had tanned freckled skin, floppy brown hair, and pale blue eyes. His wide smile beamed at Amira as he shook her hand.

  “Thrilled to finally meet you. I was telling Barrington how much I love this house. So rare to see intact mid-century features these days. Swirled ceilings and a wet bar in a basement! Most people prefer contemporary design nowadays, but where’s the personality in that, right?”

  “Thanks?”

  Clearly Travis was the quartet’s resident friendly guy. She was glad they had at least one.

  Travis reached out and touched the ends of Amira’s hair. She had left it down this morning, taking advantage of the fact that, even though she was going in to work, she would not be visiting a factory today. “I love your hair,” he said, running his fingers through the ends. “It’s very healthy. You have to let me give you a blowout one of these days.”

  A little forward, but he seemed non-threatening. And she had to agree with his assessment—her hair was her best feature. Long, midnight black, and wavy, it was probably way more work than it was worth. Not to mention that tying it up while in factories or shoving it under hard hats was a pain. But her hair was her security blanket.