“You’ve done this a lot,” Anita said. It wasn’t a question. “Slept with someone quickly.”
“Quickly?”
“You know what I mean.”
I returned my nails to her back. “I find—found—it easier to sleep with someone when I didn’t know a whole story about them,” I said. “I’d start to feel entangled. The more you know, the more, I don’t know, narrative responsibility you have. You have to make sure you’re not one of those other terrible guys they tell you about.”
“Whereas if they hadn’t told you anything?”
“I wouldn’t have to think about what patterns they’re repeating or trying to correct with me.” I nuzzled her neck. “But that’s not an issue . . . here.” I waited to see if I would be bold enough to say more. “We’ve always known each other.”
She was silent for a beat too long. I heard only my own thumping pulse. I regretted that I’d spoken—maybe she fancied her inner self a mystery to me still, or wanted to maintain some psychic distance.
But: “Yeah,” she echoed eventually. “Yeah, I guess we have.”
She didn’t seem quite as relieved by that sentiment as I did.
* * *
? ? ?
Eight weeks till the expo, then six, then four. When we were talking, it was mostly about our unlikely jewelry heist. Anita had snagged a whiteboard from the events office and propped it between her kitchen and her hollow living room. Many evenings that early fall were like this one: I sat in my boxers on her leather sofa, shoving lukewarm takeout noodles into my mouth while she contorted herself on a yoga mat in a sports bra and tiny shorts. She talked, smacking Nicorette between clauses.
She tugged her foot up behind her, arch in elbow crease, her purple toenails touching the bottom of her bra. Her glutes flexed mightily. “Are you listening?” she said, her chin jutting toward the whiteboard—on it, a scribbled map of the planned plays, like a football coach’s blocking. “You don’t seem to be getting it.”
“I’m getting it.” I plopped to my knees on her yoga mat and pressed one side of my face to the rise of her thigh. My forehead lined up with the crease where her leg met her ass. I looked out the window to see the weird darkness of Palo Alto at the witching hour—the crisscross of the streets around University Avenue all dead by eleven p.m. How odd yet apposite to be back with Anita, brewing strange schemes in a suburb! With little to do, in nowhere-nothing places, you turn to queer, harebrained plans. . . .
“I heard you,” I said into her flesh. I was feeling slow; I’d popped Adderall all day as I plowed through work and had therefore forgotten to eat until just now. “The raffle. You’ve got it set up and the winner gets the designer whatsit, the gown, by Mani—erm. Manilala Megatron.”
“Not a gown,” she said. She did not tug her leg away from me, but pressed one too-cold palm against my exposed ear. “A lehenga. By Manish Motilal.”
“That.”
“And?”
“Annnnd . . .” She flicked the top of my ear, hard, the sound of her fingernail on my skin like a woodblock being banged. “Ow.”
“I’m going to put on real clothes. Sit up.”
“Please, god, don’t.”
“Pay attention, then.” She stood. Her body was ruddy from her stretches. She pointed to the whiteboard: beneath the column Tasks, squeezed into the right-hand side, her centipede-shaped girly handwriting read Prachi.
I had slacked. I had yet to invite my sister to the bridal expo, courtesy of Anita Dayal. （What! she would say. Anita-Anita? You guys are in touch?）
Prachi, our bride, was to win a rigged raffle. Was to step onto the runway where, moments before, girls would have just modeled the high, fine fashions of brown bridal couture. Prachi was to flutter her French-manicured hands in delight at winning. She was to receive as bounty a designer lehenga—heavy, it was to be heavy, can-can skirt, brocading on the silk. Prachi would watch the dress’s mirrorwork reflecting the light staggering out from the gaudy oversize chandeliers in the convention center. She would feel tizzies being pulled backstage. A tailor would measure her for alterations. Prachi was to feel （Anita promised all girls feel this way） the creep of recognition as the tailor fitted the cloth to her, that sense that the world wished you to look this way.
Prachi was never to know that her brother had come along to this menagerie in order to stuff golden chains and bangles and tikkas into loose folds and trick pockets in the liner of the skirt, already so hefty one would not notice the extra weight. Anita would tell her, Let Neil take it to the tailor. I would gather it up. Carry it to Anita’s green Subaru parked in the employee back lot, through the doors without metal detectors. I would drive with the windows down on the highway and listen to the airstream whooshes and make straight for Sunnyvale.