Almost Shut

Rao sent for her in the afternoon.

Rangaiah came to her door with the message and looked at the stone.

“Office,” he said. “He said Ravi.”

That was the leash. She went.

The fan clicked the same spot of ceiling. Banana in the drawer. Door not closed. Almost. A strip of corridor light. Enough for a clerk to be a reason. Enough for a hand to be denied.

She stood with no file.

He sat first, which put his face at the height of her breasts. He used that. He talked to the blouse.

“Line was worse last night. He said he misses the house.” Rao’s eyes on the unhooked gap, on the heavy fall of her. “He said he misses putting his hand here.”

A finger lifted. Did not touch yet. Pointed at her breasts, at the cotton cutting into them.

“That is what he said.”

“Word for word,” she said.

“Word for word.”

He stood.

The room got smaller. Oil. Yesterday’s drink. He came around the table as if to reach a paper. There was no paper. Both hands found her waist.

Then they did not stay at her waist.

One palm slid back, down, and took her ass. Full. Cotton and the heat under it. The other hand came up and covered her breast, over the blouse, thumb resting on the nipple the cloth already showed.

He held her like that.

Not a brush. A feel.

Ten breaths.

Her ass filled his right hand and spilled it. He squeezed and the flesh came back at him. He made a sound into her hair. The left hand weighed her breast, lifted it, let it sit again in the blouse, thumb rubbing once, twice, as if checking a fruit he had grown.

“Ravi said this is still his,” Rao murmured. “I am only keeping it warm.”

“Your hand,” she said.

He did not move it.

The almost-door had no clerk.

Rangaiah was in the yard with the jug. He could see a slice: her spine, Rao’s shoulder, the roll of Rao’s wrist at her backside. He did not enter. Furniture that enters becomes a witness, and witnesses get used.

Rao pulled her a half-step in. Her breasts hit his shirt. The hand on her ass shook her once, slow, the way a man shakes a branch. The shake went through her hips and through the saree and into his palm. He hissed.

“Empty cot,” he said into her temple. “A waste. Come here in the evenings. Eat. Bathe if your water is thin. This house already saw you wet.”

The last sentence was filthy in a quiet way.

His thumb on her nipple pressed through cotton until it hurt.

“Move your hand.”

He left it one extra second.

That second was the scene.

Then he took both hands off as if he were taking food off a plate he still owned. His palms stayed open a moment, empty, remembering the shape.

She stepped back. The blouse showed where he had been — a drag of cloth over the nipple, the saree twisted on her ass so one cheek sat plainer than the other.

“Contractor tomorrow,” he said, business voice, wet mouth. “You want channels, sit here and do channels. That boy from the steps does not walk behind you.”

“He walks in front.”

Rao smiled with gold.

“Feet come after eyes. I told the old man.”

She left.

In the corridor her legs were not honest. The saree kept the print of his hand. Anyone who knew that print could read it: four fingers in the cotton over her ass, a thumb-memory on her breast.

Rangaiah met her with water she did not take.

He looked at her face, not the print.

She said nothing.

Inside, Rao sat and put his palm over his mouth and smelled her blouse on his skin. Then he put the same hand under the table and stopped, angry, because the jug clicked in the yard on purpose.

“Tomorrow the contractor,” he said to the wood. “She leans, he signs. That is also government.”

Rangaiah stood with the jug.

He had seen the wrist work.

He had heard Ravi used like oil for a palm.

He went back to the height of Rao’s spine and found it uglier than in the morning.

Anasuya walked the red lane with her blouse still open and both of Rao’s hands still on her in the only place they now lived.

At her own door she stood with the latch and, for one cruel second, remembered different hands — Ravi’s, from behind, at a shelf, asking nothing from a President — and then she shut that, because mixing those hands with these hands made the empty house worse.

She shut the door.

The print faded from the cloth.

It did not fade from the afternoon.