Smartystan

Ajay Kapoor stood at six feet two inches tall. His skin looked like burnt sienna. He held two cups of cappuccino in his hands. One was for him, the other for his fiancée Belinda.

“You work smart my dear,” he said as he placed a coaster by her virtual monitor.

“Maybe not smart enough…look at all of these figures. They’re supposed to be in descending order.”

“It’s alright. You’ll find a way. You always do,” Kapoor said. His comforting words still seemed to not penetrate the wall of uncertainty that fell over Belinda.

“Thank you for this. It’s great,” she said in between sips.

“I’m going to get the part today. It’s a two act play. I’m a world away from Bollywood. I could have made six times as much in an Indian production. So it is….” he said it in a forlorn way but layered with rational hope.

“No, that’s good. You’ll be able to make it in this country as well. I mean California hasn’t completely lost its way. You’ll be pulling in major figures faster than you can calculate,” Belinda reassured. Nothing but notes of hope sang in her response.

“Once we get married, we’ll be enabled to be the kind of couple who will make a drastic change in all of the ways we earn a living.”

Belinda sipped and nodded her head in agreement. “Of course. We'll have the temerity to step out on reason and craft a certain set of skills that will sustain us through whatever challenges there may be. Take these numbers for instance, the learned machines that I built should be crunching them, but they’re not. I can sit here and mope about it or I could do something to enhance the circumstances for the better.”

Kapoor didn’t say anything. He just looked at his bride-to-be and wondered how she could keep everything tight and in order in her life. There seemed to be a certain fascination with the way she conducted herself. He sipped, too.

“This is good coffee,” he said, a grin curled around his face.

“I know it. It came from a man with expert hands.”

“That I know you’re right about. That’s what’s going to keep us in good health. That’s what’s going to sustain this union.”

Belinda paused her work and looked into the eyes of her betrothed.

“I know the world is going to watch us with even greater scrutiny once we get hitched. There’s no telling what will happen with the press and how they’ve already shown how vicious they can be with their stories.”

“Let’em. I say if we are intertwined with the rest of the team, we should be shielded like a defense system,” Kapoor remarked.

“I say that we continue down this path of glory and wave the banner of the satisfied in our efforts,” Bellinda declared. Kapoor grew silent for a moment. He just absorbed the moment. It felt like a single frame from a roll of footage. The sepia kind that looked old-timey and gave you a mood of the past.

“I will ensure that our union and bond will be so profound in everything we do.”

“How can you be so sure of that? We’re living in a country in a country and we’re separate from all of the world. No one has ever tried our economic system before or the politics that go with it. You’re an artist. You should have the freedom to thrive and flourish without wondering from where that next deposit originated,” Belinda womansplained.

Kapoor listened to every word his wife spouted. Every word. It was like he had been entranced by her soft but direct voice. He kept open the idea of the two of them traveling outside of the country-state and just being amongst average people, that would make it all the better. Belinda sipped.

“Everytime I think about the two of us being wedded, I wonder how much happiness will burst through our souls once we are actually married,” she observed.

“Yes, but we have to take into account all of the different ways that you could be on a business trip for weeks and I’ll be shooting a movie here. Who is to tell what problems we’ll face?”

“Yes, but we’ll be able to face them together,” Belinda reminded him.

Kapoor leaned his head back against the door jamb. He exhaled like he expelled vapor from his lungs.

“Okay. I’m ready for the journey. I’m game. I just want you to realize that facing the issues of this world together will be a strong tower.”

Belinda raised from her chair, put down her cappuccino and walked towards Kapoor. He almost braced himself. He placed his coffee down, too.

“I don’t care at all what this world thinks of you and me. I’m too selfish for that.”

“That’s why I’m with you,” he said slowly.

“Look at our lives. We’ve been together for almost seven years and they’ve splashed all kinds of libel on magazine covers and slander on news programs. We, though, prevail. We continue. There’s no telling how far we can actually go.” She motioned her hand. “See this, we have an order of a thousand learned machines to be distributed over six months. That’s going to cost three hundred million dollars. Now, that could be a headache or it could mean something special. It could give me a chance to see if I’m built for expanding the operations or not. That could mean a major bonus for us. Or, we could falter and the whole company’s legacy will be forever tarnished.”

“Don’t even say that. Continue down the path you set for yourself when you dropped out of high school. Take that same conviction and use it for your chance to keep UltraMinds afloat.”

Belinda heard the words but sensed directly as if absorbing them through her skin. She walked even closer to Kapoor and kissed him. The soft caress of their embrace jolted them both and made them all the more powerful.