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ten

Lucky starts again with Rika, back to what he was trying to get at for Jin to hear. At the moment, however, Jin's refusing to even look in his direction.

"So tell me about your cat Rika, what was his name?"

She looks up and meets his eyes. "It was Lucky."

"Oh, like a lucky cat; a maneki-neko?"

She smiles and shakes her head. "No, not at all. It's funny, everybody always asks that but I never made the connection."

Jin is still feigning non-interest but Lucky can tell they have his attention now.

"Where did his name come from then?"

"Well," she begins, "actually it came from a Bollywood movie."

"A Bollywood movie? What the hell is that?" Jin snaps.

Corkle's hand goes to his forehead again.

Lucky asks, "A Bollywood movie?"

"It's kind of a long story. You'd probably find it boring or silly, or maybe even both." She smiles over at him.

"No, I wouldn't. I'd like to hear it, really. Will you tell me, please? I know I won't be bored."

"Okay," she says looking at him dubiously, "but, don't say I didn't warn you." She takes a deep breath before she begins again. "Well, the year Reema and I turned seven her grandfather died."

"Okay, so what does that have to do with your stupid name and who's Reema?" Jin fumes.

Lucky repeats the relevant part. "Who's Reema?" He asks.

"Oh sorry. Reema and her family lived next door to us. Actually it was just one large house that had been divided into two units long before we lived there.

Reema and I," she pauses smiling, "I think, were the closest thing to being twins that two non-biologically related people could be; we were even born two hours apart. Our parents had been friends for a long time, they all came to Japan at the same time, decided they wanted to stay here together, had a double wedding, and even died in the same accident." Her breath comes out as an unintentional sigh.

"WHAT?! Jin shouts.

Lucky ignores him, just letting her go on.

"We were really more like one big family than two separate ones." She smiles at the memory. "Anyway, the year we turned seven, Reema's grandfather died and her grandmother wasn't handling it very well. I don't remember the details of what was going on, but she was having a really hard time so it wound up that Reema's dad went back to India and brought her here to live with us."

"That must have been a big adjustment." Lucky says.

"I had never really thought about it from an adult perspective, but I guess you're right." she says contemplating the situation. "Not just for Gran but for our parents too. We knew it was a big change for her; she had never been more than a day's travel from the village she was born in let alone out of the country. She would go on sometimes about how she didn't like it here and wanted to go home, but I think actually she was really happy and liked it here living with all of us, she just didn't want to be a burden so that was her way of giving her family an out so to speak. At least that's what I think. The only thing she genuinely disliked was there were no theaters that played Bollywood films. And Gran was a huge Bollywood fan; she had been going to the movies every Saturday since she was a little girl, so not being able to see them any more was a big deal.

Well, after a couple months of listening to her go on about this 'not being a civilized country' because it didn't even have any 'decent culture or entertainment'," Rika laughs, "my dad found a rental place that carried Bollywood films. I remember him coming home one Friday night with this big elaborately wrapped box and giving it to her. When she opened it there was some old Amitabh Bachchan movie from the '70's in it and she started to cry.