“Easier to be a blind man than a dropped woman. You can’t just show up and ruin everything I’ve worked for.”
“I don’t want to ruin it.”
“But you will, that’s just what you do.”
“But I’m your husband.”
It was a long time before she was finished laughing. “You’d think it’d be less funny the second time,” she said, “but no.”
His voice was sour. “I get your point. But I meant what I said: I want to make it up to you. Let me, Geeta.” After a long pause, he asked, “What’re you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I liked it better when I was a widow.”
Except she wasn’t a widow. She was a murderess and—now her thoughts turned to Karem and their time together—technically an adulteress to boot.
Voices filled the room. Through the bars of her open window, Geeta saw people, mostly in white, walking toward Darshan’s house, where a professional mourner already sat, beating her chest and encouraging Preity to wail her sorrow. Meanwhile, though they didn’t know it, the girls in the south part of the village were safer than they’d been in a long while. After the priest led everyone in prayers, Khushi and her sons would take the body for cremation and Darshan’s son would light the pyre.
“What’s going on?” Ramesh asked, head cocking.
“They’re getting ready for last rites.”
“Whose?”
“Geeta?” someone called from outside her door.
“Shh!” Geeta hissed at Ramesh, though he hadn’t said anything. She recognized Farah’s voice. “Hide.”
“Huh?”
“I said shh! You need to hide. She can’t know you’re alive.”
“Why?” he whispered because she had.
“Because my life depends on her thinking you’re dead and that I killed you.”
“Come again?”
“Go out the back. No, wait, others might see you. Get in the armoire.”
“Geeta? I know you’re home, the padlock isn’t on.”
“One minute,” she called. “Armoire. Go.”
“But—”
She made her face spectacularly ferocious, though the effort was wasted. “You say you want to make it up to me? Get in.”
He felt his way inside, folding his body against her saris. She shoved his cane into his gut and shut the double doors on his oomph. She exhaled into the mirror, then turned to open the front door with a barked “What?”
Farah stood in pale clothing. “Charming. Aren’t you supposed to be in jail? Anyway, are you coming to Darshan’s? I can’t tell if it’s ruder if you attend or don’t, considering. They don’t really have an etiquette book on mur—”
“Why are you here?” Geeta interrupted, acutely aware of Ramesh, who could hear everything through the cotton swaddling him.
“Because your mutt is jumping everywhere. Some of us are trying to mourn, you know. Not you, obviously, but—”
“Bandit, come.” He bounded up the steps and licked her proffered hand. He froze then, immediately losing interest as he ran to yip at the armoire.
“What the hell?”
“He, uh, does that sometimes,” Geeta said. “I’ll see you at next week’s meeting.”
“Wait, what happened at the station—”
She shut the door on Farah’s question.
“Bandit, quiet!” Even as she reached for the armoire door handle, she hesitated. It would be far easier if she could just keep Ramesh tucked away and out of her hair. Or if fiction turned to fact and Bandit extended her the ultimate favor by eating her husband.
“Geeta?” he called. “Is there, like, a dog in here?”
Ever the clever one, this man. She sighed, maneuvering Bandit out the back before releasing Ramesh, who spilled out of the closet, cane in hand.
“Did I hear right? Darshan’s dead?” Ramesh sighed. “O baap re. I used to drink with him.”
Geeta scowled. “You used to drink with everyone, gadheda.” She never would’ve dared speak to him this way before and pride swelled in her.
He took no offense. “That’s true. I’m dry now, though. Haven’t touched the stuff since…” He raised his arm to wave his hand in front of his eyes, and Geeta’s entire body panicked. Suddenly she was twenty-two again, curled on the kitchen floor, Ramesh’s foot burrowed in her gut, her back. She flinched, fumbling backward with a gasp, before she registered his movement as benign.
But it was too late. It was as though a switch had been flipped. She tumbled from secure in her power to having absolutely none. An awful fist squeezed her chest; she couldn’t speak. Looking at him was too troubling, so she did not, focusing instead on her trembling hands, how her left pinky wavered at an unnatural angle. She tried to breathe and found no air. Her only consolation was that he couldn’t see her sudden, volatile reaction.
“How?” She managed to push out the word without wavering.
“Tharra. Got a bad batch. Mixed with some poison or something.”
She didn’t have the will to mention Bandit or Bada-Bhai’s methanol. She limped to her desk and sat down, staring at the photograph of the Bandit Queen, trying to unknot the anxiety behind her sternum. There was no need to fear; she had a life and friends here, Ramesh didn’t. Even as she told herself that he couldn’t touch her anymore, she found she didn’t believe it.
“Why’d you leave?”
“I was shit to you, I know that. I was a coward: the loan sharks were coming for my head. They would’ve killed me. But I knew they wouldn’t hurt you—they knew you didn’t have anything valuable.”
He inspired about as much faith as a blind pilot. “You hurt me plenty.”
“Never again, Geeta. And I’m blind, yes, but I promise I’m no burden. I know how to live like this. There was this NGO in Ahmedabad—”
“So you’ve been in Ahmedabad for the past five years?”
“Not all that time. I was begging on the street for a while before the NGO found me. They taught me to work like this. I can still fix bicycles and cane chairs. I’m still good with my hands.”
“What about your parents? Your brother said they couldn’t find you.”
“I was too ashamed to see them, and I didn’t want to be a burden on my brother either—he already has to take care of our parents. I couldn’t bear their disappointment.”
He could be lying, but what was paramount, she knew, was making certain that Ramesh didn’t hear her fear. She kept her voice light as she said, “Well, at least you wouldn’t have to see it.”
He smiled. “Funny. You were always funny.” His brows knitted. “They really didn’t reach out to you? All these years?”
“Everyone thought I did something to you. Made you disappear.”
“Oh, Geeta.”
She cleared her throat. “It’s done. And so are we. Please leave.”
“At least let me stay through Diwali,” he said.
“That’s over two weeks! No!”
“But I haven’t been home in so long. Look, I’ll save up some money for my cane and if by then you still don’t want me around, I’ll go.” He pinched the skin of his throat. “Promise.”