“Does a farmer kill his best-producing hen?”
“He does if the hen pecks his eyes out.”
Ramesh appeared amused. “Oh? Is that what you’ll do, my little hen?”
“I asked Saloni to kill you; that was my mistake. I’ll do it myself. And I won’t stop trying until I watch your body burn.”
“You barely ever had brains, much less balls.”
“I’ve killed before. And I didn’t even hate them. Imagine what I’ll do to you.”
Ramesh scoffed. “Who? Who’d you kill?”
“Samir was first,” Farah said behind Ramesh. She’d abandoned her sandals and, like a specter, moved toward him. He whirled, wielding the knife. The moonshine had made him sloppy; Farah sidestepped easily.
“How’d you get free?” Ramesh demanded. “Sit back down. Right now.”
“No,” Saloni said, jumping to her feet. He turned again, swinging the knife between the two women. “It’s your turn to fucking take a seat.”
“I’ll cut you.”
Saloni pretended to consider that. “You’re going to cut all of us? Even if you could manage, think it through. BB will be furious with you. The council will banish you, and then how will you suck Geeta’s blood?”
“The panchayat? You mean four men and a token bitch?” Ramesh laughed. No longer taken off guard, his confidence returned. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Two token bitches,” Khushi corrected, carefully rising from the cot. Ramesh started. With blood staining the right half of her face, her hair in disarray, she looked every bit a churel. “And we don’t need the council to handle you.”
“You think I’m afraid of you, chuhra? Try it and see what happens. I’ll break her legs first.” He stroked Geeta’s split lip with his thumb before smudging the blood into her hairline like vermillion, the mark of a married woman. “But not her hands of course.”
“Where was this concern when you broke my fingers?”
“I did?” He seemed surprised. “When?”
She didn’t answer, stunned. Pain had defined her time with Ramesh, it had been her moon, her seasons. That he should regard her suffering as inconsequential was hardly news, but that he was capable of entirely forgetting baffled her.
“Do you know what happens when a man dies, Ramesh?” Saloni asked. All three women stepped closer, the circle tightening. “He pisses himself.”
“You’d be amazed how many shit themselves, too,” Khushi said.
Farah added, “Samir did. He also begged me to help him. I thought it would be difficult to watch him die, that I’d want to leave and not come back until it was done. But I stayed for every minute. Geeta will, too.”
“You’re bluffing,” Ramesh said, his back hitting the wall. His panic was a balm to Geeta. “BB! Chintu, get in here!”
“She’s not bluffing,” Khushi said, nodding toward Geeta. “We all killed Samir.”
“And Geeta killed Darshan all on her own,” Saloni said. She moved to untie Geeta. Ramesh, sweating and too confounded by the piling revelations, did not stop her. Once free, Geeta stood by Saloni.
“Darshan?” He reared back. His balance was unsteady.
“Yes,” Geeta said. “I beat his brains in. I wish they’d been yours.”
“Bitch!” He lunged forward sloppily, but forgot his leg, which gave out, and Geeta evaded his grip easily. With a flattened foot, she shoved his wound. As he fell, he yawped, half in pain, half in fury.
“He’s not answering,” BB said as he returned from the back door. “That Sinha bitch will probably be here in half an—” He halted upon surveying the tableau. “Are you fucking kidding me, Ramesh? Three tied, one half dead, and you still managed to fuck up?”
Ramesh was on the floor, cradling his injury. Between Geeta aggravating the wound and the alcohol thinning his blood, a fresh torrent quickly stained through the petticoat he’d tied as a tourniquet. “It’s not my fault! These bitches are murderers, BB.”
“Then maybe I should hire them instead!” BB hollered, lifting his gun. The women instinctively raised their hands. “You go on about being a man when you’re a quarter of a mard. Fuck! Look at them: they’re just women, not murderers.”
“Actually we are,” Geeta said. “It’s become sort of a side business. Wives who’d prefer to be widows.”
“You couldn’t,” he scoffed. “How would you even? You’re a bunch of housewives, not dons.”
His words roused her temper. “Exactly, we’re a bunch of housewives. We make your food, we watch your children, we hear your business. We know your lives well enough to ruin them. So I’d be careful.”
“My wife would never—”
“Would Lakha?”
BB’s face slackened. Geeta spoke over his sputtering. “I told you: I pay attention. You keep calling her your mistress, but she’s not, is she? More like your prisoner. Remember when she nearly ran away? No, no—don’t worry about how I know that. Worry about if she decides to take a different approach. You don’t think her life would be better without you and your shrew wife? You don’t think she wishes you were dead so she and her son could be free?”
“Are you threatening me?”
Geeta shook her head. “I don’t need to threaten you; there are four of us, BB. You can’t shoot us all. And despite what you think, I’m not your enemy.”
Saloni said, “None of us is. So be smart enough to listen when I say I know how to help you.”
BB snorted. “You think I trust you?”
“Geeta!” Ramesh ordered. “Come here.”
“The police are coming,” Saloni said. “You don’t have much of a choice.”
When BB’s face contorted, she added, “Listen, Chintu, you’re thinking one step ahead instead of ten. What if, by the time the cops come, it’s like you were never here in the first place?”
BB looked tempted, but he gestured to the room’s blood and disarray. “How?”
“If you leave, we’ll say this was a domestic dispute. You were home the entire night; your family will vouch for you. Ramesh hurt Geeta, we tried to stop him.”
BB frowned, still dubious, but he listened. “How will you explain how he got shot?”
“It’s just a flesh wound; we’ll say the dog bit him or whatever. But to be safe, we need to find the bullet. On C.I.D. they always trace it back to the gun.”
“Geeta!” Ramesh thundered. He clapped his hands twice for attention. “If you don’t get over here right now, I swear to Ram I’ll break your damn head.”
“But if we lie for you,” Geeta said, looking only at BB, “this is all over, Bada-Bhai. Swear on your son’s head: no more revenge, no more threats, no more. Otherwise, we’ll make your life hell. We’ll get Sinha crawling all over your business. We’ll help Lakha take your son. You think you have no peace now? Just wait.”
“What happened to not being my enemy?”
“Make the deal and I won’t be.”