The Clarity of Cold Steel

“I CAN SMELL their stink on you.” She says it calmly from the darkness.

I nearly jump as I’m fiddling with the knob on my office door. What is it with my family? Bunch of black cats prowling at midnight. Aashirya. She’s sitting in Kashmira’s chair in the corner, lost to the shadows, to the dime novels and penny dreadfuls stacked high atop her desk. Just a vague form behind a broken plateau of books. She’s wrapped in a deep brown sari. “Whose?” I ask stupidly.

“Prostitutes,” she answers. “Whores.” Even in this, she speaks with a careful lyrical grace, a song permeating her every word. “Whoever.”

“Ahem.” I don’t bother to explain to her that whoever is only the one whore, and that it was innocent this time — mostly cause she had pending clientele — but I have enough sense to button up, this once. “How’d you get in?”

“Despite all,” she brandishes a brass key, “I do still love you.” She slides it across the desk.

“Thanks.” I slide it back, offer a bow. “Keep it. Though you shouldn’t come to this side of town this late. Or anytime, really.”

She shrugs. “I’m a big girl.”

“That you are.” I unlock my office door. “Well,” the door swings inward and rebounds off the wall, “how ’bout a drink?”

“What happened to your head?” She asks as she rises from the chair.

“Business,” I wave a hand then cock it into a pistol, “it’s booming. Literally.” I shrug, step aside, hold out a hand and bow from the waist like the proper gentleman I’m most assuredly not. “After you, milady.”

She wraps her sari about her as she glides past me to my desk, around it, opens the bottom left drawer, pulls out a bottle of cheap whiskey and two mugs. They clack together as she sets them up. As she pours, lamplight from the streets swathes her in wavering blue. I can smell the whiskey from here. My mouth waters.

She holds out a mug.

I take it, raise it, “Cheers,” and knock back a slug.

“Was Nikunj with you?” She cradles her mug in her two hands.

“No.” I keep drinking, might very well need to if she keeps jawing on about him. “I’m screwing this up mostly on my lonesome.”

“You should bring him in.”

“I did. You know I did.”

“But you should bring him with you.”

“I’m a big girl, too.”

She stifles a smirk, raises her mug my way. “That you are.”

“Why’d you come?” I ask.

“I told you already.” She hazards a tentative sip, stiffening at the burn, but swallows. It’s strong stuff. “Besides, you can stalk me, but I can’t return the favor? Is it unbecoming?”

“By Brahma, there’s nothing about you that’s unbecoming.” I shake my head, serious. “I always knew I could fuck up a marriage, didn’t think even I could fuck up a divorce.”

“You’ve a gift for breaking things that don’t belong wholly to you.”

“We all gotta be good at something.”

“Nikunj and I have agreed not to take vows.” She stares at me dead straight in the eye, looking for a reaction.

I stiffen. “He’s living there, though.” In Sepoy, if you die, your brother takes on all your familial responsibilities. And though I’m not dead, I’m the next best thing.

“For propriety’s sake. You shouldn’t take it out on him.”

“Who then?”

“He saved you.”

“And got me black marked in the bloody process.” I spit too much acid on that one.

“It was that or death.”

I rub my neck, consider. “Still doesn’t change things.” I look down, away. “I can’t have you and the kids coming here with me.” I look around in despair. “This shit-hole. Can’t have you throwing everything away for me. Us. You deserve better. Hell, you deserve a guy like Nikunj.” It’s a sad truth but a truth nonetheless.

“He’s boring.”

I glance up sidelong. “You screwing with me?”

“Maybe a little.” A wry smile as she reaches out and places a hand on my cheek, “Look at the world,” rubbing my stubble, feeling the grit of it, “what’s left of it. It’s all rubble. All dregs. All broken.” She shakes her head, takes another sip, a bigger one. “So what does any of it matter now? Your parents are dead. And you never cared what mine thought, anyhow.”

“True.”

“And the old world? Propriety? The caste?” She stares out the window. “Its days are numbered, one way or the other. We might as well live happily.”

I take her hand in mine. “You have to go.”

She turns to me, breathtaking as always. “I was happy. You were happy.” She squeezes. “We were happy.”

I look away. “Go.”

“The curfew’s up. The plague-walls are blocked.” She shrugs. “I’m stranded.”

“I’ll get you through. Get you home.”

“Us together is home.”

“I have to be somewhere.”

“Somewhere can wait.” And then she kisses me.

And as usual, she’s right.