EPISODE 7 — “THE SUPPLIER”

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NAINA

Day eleven.

Two things had changed since Episode 6.

One — I knew who Aryan was.

Two — he came back the next night anyway.

Table seven. Keema tacos. Journal open. Like the confrontation had happened and settled something rather than complicated it.

I hadn’t decided what to do with that yet.

What I had decided was that the aperitivo momentum needed to become something structural — not just a Friday event but a permanent shift. New menu items bedding in. Supplier relationships reviewed. Cost margins tightened.

Which was why I was in the office at 6 AM going through supplier contracts when I found the letter.

Ghar’s main spice supplier.

The one who had been sourcing the specific cardamom, the particular dried mango powder, the fresh curry leaves that made the food taste like the food rather than a version of it.

Termination notice.

Contract dispute with the previous distributor.

Forty-eight hours.

Weekend service was in forty-eight hours.

I read it twice.

Then a third time because surely I was misunderstanding something.

I wasn’t.

NAINA (internal)

Without this supplier the menu changes.

Without the menu the concept changes.

Without the concept Ghar becomes exactly the generic thing it’s been trying not to become for twenty-three years.

Forty-eight hours.

Wonderful.

I called three suppliers in twenty minutes.

All unavailable, too expensive or unable to guarantee the specific quality I needed in time.

I put the phone down.

Looked at the ceiling.

The ceiling offered nothing.

It never does.

——

Papa was at table four when I brought the letter out.

His expression didn’t change.

That was how I knew it was bad — Dev Sharma’s face moved when things were manageable. When they were genuinely serious he went very still.

DEV “How long.”

NAINA “Forty-eight hours.”

DEV “Options.”

NAINA “Three calls. Nothing suitable.”

He picked up his coffee.

DEV “Find someone who knows the market.”

NAINA “Papa—”

DEV “Porta Genova. Saturday morning. Find someone who knows it.”

He went back to the kitchen.

I sat at table four staring at my phone.

Someone who knows the market.

I thought about that.

Then I thought about table seven.

Then I put my phone down and picked it up again three times before I sent the message.

——

NAINA (text) I need a favour.

Three minutes.

ARYAN (text) That already sounds expensive.

NAINA (text) It’s temporary.

ARYAN (text) That sounds worse.

NAINA (text) Our spice supplier terminated the contract. Forty-eight hours. Weekend service.

ARYAN (text) How specific do you need?

NAINA (text) Very.

ARYAN (text) Porta Genova. Tomorrow. Six AM.

NAINA (text) That’s very early.

ARYAN (text) Good suppliers go early.

NAINA (text) Fine. Six AM.

ARYAN (text) Bring the list.

NAINA (text) I have the list.

ARYAN (text) Of course you do.

I put the phone down.

I looked at it.

Picked it up again.

Didn’t type anything.

Put it back down.

——

ARYAN

She texted at 7 AM.

I had been awake since six.

Not because of anything specific.

Just — awake. The way you are when your brain has decided that whatever it’s processing requires consciousness and isn’t going to ask permission first.

I read the message twice.

I need a favour.

From Naina Sharma that was the equivalent of anyone else saying I have exhausted every other option and you are the last reasonable one.

Which was either insulting or a significant admission depending on how you looked at it.

I looked at it as the second one.

Porta Genova Saturday market at six AM was not a hardship.

I knew every supplier worth knowing there.

I also knew — and this was the part I didn’t examine too carefully — that I would have said yes regardless of whether I knew the market.

I closed my phone.

Opened it again.

Of course you do.

Too much.

I left it anyway.

——

NAINA

Porta Genova Saturday market at six AM was a different Milan entirely.

No aperitivo crowds. No Instagram phones. No one dressed like they were performing well.

Just suppliers and chefs and people with serious lists moving through stalls with the efficiency of people who knew exactly where they were going.

Aryan was already there when I arrived.

Dark coat. No journal — hands free, which was the first time I’d seen him without it and felt slightly like seeing someone missing a piece of themselves.

He was talking to a supplier when I found him.

Rapid Italian. Completely comfortable. The kind of fluency that meant he wasn’t translating in his head first — just speaking, the words arriving where they were supposed to without effort.

He noticed something about three dried chillies the supplier was holding. Picked one up. Broke it slightly. Smell it. Said something specific that made the supplier nod with the expression of someone who had just been understood correctly.

NAINA (internal)

He does that.

The stillness when something interests him — except here it’s not stillness, it’s precision.

Same quality. Different expressions.

I’m cataloguing again.

Stop cataloguing.

He turned.

Saw me.

ARYAN “You’re two minutes late.”

NAINA “It’s six AM.”

ARYAN “Good suppliers don’t wait.”

NAINA “I’m here aren’t I.”

ARYAN “Barely.”

I handed him the list.

He read it.

Looked up.

ARYAN “Kerala curry leaves. Not Tamil Nadu.”

NAINA “The flavour profile is different?”

ARYAN “Most people can’t tell.”

NAINA “Most people aren’t cooking what I’m cooking.”

He looked at the list again.

The noticing face. I recognised it immediately.

ARYAN “This way.”

——

They moved through the market together.

Aryan led.

He knew which stalls were worth stopping at and which ones looked good but weren’t. Knew the suppliers by name. Knew which ones responded to directness and which ones needed patience.

I followed.

Which I found slightly irritating and completely useful simultaneously.

The dynamic between us here was different from Ghar.

At Ghar he was at table seven and I was running the floor — a built-in distance between the person who made and the person who observed.

Here we were side by side.

Equally in our element.

Equally certain about what we were looking for.

That was its own kind of danger.

——

At the cardamom stall:

Three varieties.

I picked up all three.

Smelled each one.

Without looking at him —

NAINA “The middle one.”

ARYAN (who had already reached the same conclusion) “Yes.”

I looked at him.

NAINA “You were going to say that.”

ARYAN “I was.”

NAINA “How did you know?”

ARYAN “The same reason you knew. The green is more intense. Better for what you’re making.”

NAINA “You know what I’m making.”

ARYAN “I know what you’ve been building.”

I looked at him for a moment longer than necessary.

He looked back.

The supplier cleared his throat.

We both looked away.

——

At the curry leaf stall:

The supplier didn’t have Kerala curry leaves.

Only Tamil Nadu.

I knew the difference and needed to explain it in Italian.

Which I did.

Confidently.

Entirely in the wrong tense.

The supplier looked confused.

Aryan translated without comment.

The supplier nodded. Went to check the back.

NAINA “What did you say?”

ARYAN “What you said. Correctly.”

NAINA “My Italian is fine.”

ARYAN “You told him the leaves were disappointing him.”

NAINA “I was talking about the quality.”

ARYAN “He thought you were discussing his personal failures.”

NAINA “That explains the look he gave me.”

ARYAN “Which look?”

NAINA “The devastated one.”

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

The real smile.

Slow. One corner first. Then the rest.

ARYAN “Your Italian is confident.”

NAINA “That’s not the same as fine.”

ARYAN “No.”

NAINA “Honest.”

ARYAN “You asked.”

The supplier came back with Kerala curry leaves.

I examined them.

Nodded.

Aryan paid before I could argue.

NAINA “I can pay for my own suppliers.”

ARYAN “He likes me better right now.”

NAINA “Because you told him I was discussing his feelings.”

ARYAN “Because I apologised for you.”

NAINA “I didn’t need an apology.”

ARYAN “He did.”

I took a bag of curry leaves.

Started walking.

He fell into step beside me.

——

The drive back.

They found everything on the list.

Not easily. Not quickly. But completely.

The drive back was quieter than the drive out.

Not uncomfortably — the specific quiet of two people who had been working alongside each other and didn’t need to fill the space.

Milan moving past the window.

Market bags in the back seat.

The afternoon light doing that specific Milan thing — golden, deliberate, like the city was aware of itself.

I looked at his hands on the steering wheel.

Long fingers. The ink mark on his right index finger. Eyes on the road — steady, the same quality of attention he brought to everything.

I looked away.

NAINA “You didn’t have to come.”

ARYAN “I know.”

NAINA “You know every supplier in that market.”

ARYAN “Most of them.”

NAINA “Eight years.”

ARYAN “Eight years.”

NAINA “Is that what you did with Ghar. Went to the source.”

A pause.

ARYAN “What do you mean?”

NAINA “The review. You went before you wrote it.”

He glanced at me.

Just for a second.

ARYAN “I went eleven times. Before and after.”

NAINA “You went before and wrote what you wrote anyway.”

ARYAN “I wrote what was true.”

NAINA “And then kept going back.”

ARYAN “What was true then isn’t what’s true now.”

The car was very quiet.

I looked out the window.

Thought about that sentence.

Failed to stop thinking about it.

——

NAINA

Papa made dinner when we got back.

Without being asked.

Without announcement.

Two plates at table four appearing the way they always did when Dev Sharma decided someone needed feeding.

Aryan ate everything.

Papa watched him eat with the expression of a man filing something away.

The three of us at table four in the specific comfortable quiet of people still figuring out what they were to each other.

Papa left at six.

Kissed my forehead.

Looked at Aryan.

Nodded once.

Left.

I watched the door close behind him.

Papa didn’t nod at people.

——

ARYAN

I stayed later than I should have.

We were at the pass going through the market supplies — checking quantities, planning the weekend service, the practical work of turning a morning’s sourcing into something.

She handed me things without thinking about it.

I received them without thinking about it.

The kitchen at seven PM. Quiet. Warm. The problem was solved.

She was checking something on the list.

Hair in the bun that had been losing the argument since six AM.

A smudge of cardamom on her left forearm from the market.

She didn’t notice.

I didn’t say anything.

ARYAN “The cardamom.”

She looked up.

NAINA “What about it?”

ARYAN “You picked it up last.”

NAINA “So.”

ARYAN “You already knew which one before you smelled them.”

She stared at me.

NAINA “You noticed the order I picked them up.”

ARYAN “I notice things.”

NAINA “That’s what you said the first night.”

ARYAN “It’s still true.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

The kitchen was warm around us.

Market bags empty on the counter.

Weekend service saved.

NAINA “Thank you.”

ARYAN “For what.”

NAINA “The market. The Italian. The curry leaves.”

ARYAN “The curry leaves were yours.”

NAINA “The apology was yours.”

ARYAN “He needed it.”

NAINA “Still.”

A beat.

Neither of us moved.

The kitchen between us and also not between us.

She looked at me the way she had at the cardamom stall — that moment before she reached for the third one, when she already knew and was deciding whether to trust it.

The third face.

I could see her almost naming it.

She didn’t.

NAINA “Same time next week if we need to go back.”

ARYAN “I’ll be there.”

I left at eight.

——

NAINA

I stood at the pass for a moment after he was gone.

I looked at the market supplies lined up on the counter.

The cardamom.

The Kerala curry leaves.

The specific evidence of a morning spent solving a problem with someone who already knew the answer and let me get there myself.

I opened the notebook.

Wrote one line that wasn’t a recipe.

What was true then isn’t what’s true now.

Closed it.

Nineteen days.

——

Closing lines:

Day eleven.

The supplier terminated the contract.

We found everything on the list.

He apologised to a man I accidentally insulted in Italian.

He paid for the curry leaves.

He stayed for dinner.

Papa nodded at him when he left.

Papa doesn’t nod at people.

He noticed the order I picked up the cardamom.

What was true then isn’t what’s true now.

I wrote that down.

I don’t know what to do with it yet.

Nineteen days.

END OF EPISODE 7.