The phone lay face-down on the bedsheet, and she had been looking at it for so long that the screen had gone dark twice and lit again with nothing on it. The contact name sat at the top of the message thread like a joke she had made and could not take back. Cal Center. She had saved it that way the night she came home with three thousand rupees folded in her waistband and her mother's bangles still clicking at her wrists, and she had told herself it was clever, a password, a lock on a door only she could open.

Outside, the lane had gone quiet the way it did after the nine o'clock news. Somewhere a scooter coughed and died. The fan turned its slow circle overhead, and the light from the streetlamp came through the window in a long yellow bar that lay across the floor and up the side of the almirah, and did not reach the bed.

She picked the phone up. Put it down. Picked it up again.

The thread was short. Shilpa did not waste words on the phone. Client. Wants a shemale. Come. And then the address, a street name Maya knew — two turns past the vegetable market, past the tailor who had taken her ten unstitched suits and not asked a single question — a street she had walked the edge of her whole life and never once turned down.

She had said yes before she had finished reading it. That was the part she kept coming back to. Not the number, not the word shemale sitting in her hand like a stone — the yes, out of her mouth before the offer had finished arriving. Shilpa had laughed at the yes. That laugh was the thing that had been turning with the fan, the way Shilpa's voice went up at the top. Ok ok madam has decided shemale only.

Fifty thousand.

She said it under her breath once, and it did not sound real, so she said it again, and it still did not sound real, and she looked at the number written in the message and it was real. Twenty thousand each, three of them, and Shilpa had taken the deal at fifty and said yes and then said like a college girl, jeans and top, as if that were the hard part, as if the clothes were the thing that needed arranging and not the fact that she was going to walk into a room with three men and be paid more money in one night than her father made in two months at the shop that had closed, and the shop before that.

Her father. The thought came in and sat down the way he sat down, heavily, in the chair at the kitchen table, and she did not want it there.

He had looked at the bags for a long time. He had looked at the dome at her throat and the ribbed shirt and he had not asked, and the not-asking had been louder than any question. There is dal, he had said. And she had said I know, and had not looked at him, and had carried the bags past him into the bedroom with the floorboard creaking under her, and she had stood with her back to the open door and her hand on the small bag, and she had heard the tap run and stop, and she had turned around, and he had been standing in the doorway with his hand still wet.

Neither of them had said anything. The light had gone the colour of sindur in her hair, and then it had gone dark, and he had gone back to the kitchen, and she had heard the plate scrape and the chair scrape and the television, and then the house had settled, and then the phone had rung.

She got up off the bed. The floorboard by the door did not creak this time because she stepped around it without thinking, which was a thing she had learned to do the way you learn to do anything when you have a secret in a small house. She went to the almirah and opened it and there was her mother's wardrobe in the dark, the saris folded with their edges lined up, the smell of old perfume and camphor and something sweet underneath that had never gone away, and she did not touch it. She reached past it to the back, where she had folded the new things, the things that were hers and not her mother's, and she pulled them out into the light of the yellow bar on the floor.

The jeans. Dark, narrow, no holes, the kind a college girl wears on a Wednesday. The top — a soft pale blue, short-sleeved, with a small round neckline, the kind of top a college girl wears to class, the kind of top that says I am a girl and this is my ordinary day. She held the top against herself, and it was still folded and stiff from the shop, and she could smell the plastic of the bag it had come in, and she held it against her chest and looked down at the way it lay over the breasts, and the breasts lifted the fabric the way a girl's breasts lift fabric, and she looked at the shape of herself in the top and something in her chest went tight and warm and did not go away.

She laid the top on the bed. She laid the jeans beside it and smoothed them with the flat of her hand, and the seam was cool under her fingers, and she traced the seam from the hip to the knee and back up, and her nail caught on the stitching and she stopped and looked at the nail. Painted. Long. Her own, from the bottle she had bought at the mall with the officer's money, the same money that had bought the top and the jeans and the bangles, and she closed the almirah and went back to the top of the small bag with the g-strings and the tissue, and she took out the makeup bag and set it on the bed and unzipped it.

Everything in there was new. The compact, the kajal, the lipstick in its red tube, the lip gloss, the blush, the small brush she had not learned to use properly yet, the mascara she was still afraid of, the kohl stick she was not afraid of. She had bought them all in one afternoon, in a shop with a girl at the counter who had called her madam and had not looked at her twice, and she had carried them home in a bag that said the shop's name on the side, and she had not thrown the bag away, and the bag was still in the drawer under the mirror with the receipt in it.

She picked up the lip gloss. It was half-used already — she had been wearing it to the market, to the tailor, to the corner where the rickshaws waited — and the label was peeling at the bottom where her thumb had worn it, and she held it in her palm and did not open it. Not yet. She sat down on the edge of the bed with the tube in her hand and the jeans and the top laid out beside her, and she looked at the phone again.

The message sat there. Address. Nine thirty. College girl.

Nine thirty. She looked at the clock on the wall and it was nine already, and the yes was already said, and the clothes were already on the bed, and the makeup bag was already out, and the only thing left undone was the thing that was always left undone until the last minute, which was the leaving.

She thought about her father's hand on the tap. Wet. Still wet when he stood in the doorway, which meant he had been standing there long enough for the water to dry except in the creases of his palm, which meant he had been watching her before she turned, which meant he had seen her hand on the small bag, which meant he knew something and had chosen not to know it, and the choosing not to know was a gift, and it was also a debt, and she did not know which one it was and she was not going to find out tonight.

She stood up. She pulled the ribbed shirt over her head and dropped it on the bed, and the air of the room came over her skin, and she stood in the yellow bar of light in her mother's black lace brassiere with the straps that had never fit and the cups that were too small and the hook that held anyway, and she looked at herself in the mirror on the almirah door.

The bruise was yellow at the edges now. Three nights old. It sat on her hip like a thumbprint left by a giant, and above it her breasts in the black lace, and below it the flat small soft thing between her thighs that she had stopped being angry at a long time ago. She turned sideways. The light came up the curve of her hip and over the swell of her breast and along the line of her throat, and she put her hand on the back of her own neck and lifted her hair off it, and the long weight of it slid over her shoulder and down her back and brushed her collarbone, and she let it fall and it fell.

She reached for the top. The blue one. She put it on and it went over the breasts and the lace showed at the waist and she tucked the straps of the top over the lace straps and it held, and she looked at herself and the top made her look younger than she was, and she was eighteen, and the top made her look sixteen, and she liked it.

The jeans. She stepped into them and pulled them up and the waist was loose and the hips held them, and she zipped them and buttoned them and the button was tight over the small soft thing between her thighs and she adjusted and it sat flat and she looked at herself again and there was a girl in the mirror in a blue top and dark jeans with a bruise on her hip and long hair down her back, and the girl looked like a girl who was going to a class, and the girl was going to a room with three men and fifty thousand rupees.

She sat back down on the edge of the bed and pulled the makeup bag into her lap.

The kajal first. She leaned toward the small mirror she had propped against the wall and drew the line under her eye, and the line went in one stroke and then wobbled at the corner, and she fixed it with the side of her little finger, and the black came off on her skin and she wiped it on the tissue and did the other eye. She was better at this than she had been. Two years of practice in a bathroom with the door bolted and the tap running so nobody would hear her open the compact. The line was clean now. The line was a girl's line. She looked at her eyes in the mirror and the kohl made them bigger and darker and made them look like someone else's eyes, someone's wife, someone's daughter, someone's — she stopped the thought before it finished.

She reached for the bangles. The new ones, the ones she had bought at the mall, thin gold-coloured metal, the kind that click and slide, not her mother's heavy ones with the engraving and the weight. She slid them up her left wrist one at a time, and each one clicked against the last, and the sound was a small bright thing in the quiet room, and she slid four on the left and four on the right, and she held her wrists out and turned them, and the bangles slid down to the top of the new bangles and clicked.

She put the earrings in. The new ones. Small gold hoops, the kind that are almost nothing, the kind a college girl wears. She put them in by feel, without the mirror, and her fingers knew the holes and the holes took them without any trouble, and the metal was cold against her jaw and then it was warm.

The lip gloss. She unscrewed the cap and the smell came up — strawberry, sweet, cheap, the smell of a shop and a counter and a girl who called her madam — and she put the wand to her mouth and drew it across her lower lip and then her upper lip, and the gloss went on wet and shiny and made her mouth look like a mouth, and she pressed her lips together and looked at the mirror and the girl looked back.

She stood up and went to the almirah and opened it and took out her mother's dupatta — the red one, the one she had worn down the lane — and she did not wear it. She only held it. She held it against her cheek for a moment, and it smelled like camphor and like the woman who had left, and then she folded it and put it back and closed the door.

She went to the shoe rack by the almirah and took out the heels. The new ones. The black ones with the small heel, the kind a girl wears to a wedding, the kind a girl wears to class if she is the kind of girl who wears heels to class, and she put them on and stood and looked at herself in the mirror and the extra height came up through her spine and she stood differently, longer, straighter, and she turned and the heels clicked on the floor and the bangles clicked at her wrists and the earrings moved at her jaw and everything clicked and moved together, and she was a girl.

She sat down again on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone.

The contact name glowed. Cal Center. She looked at it for a long moment, and her thumb hovered over it, and she did not press it. The address was in the thread. She knew the street. She had never turned down it. She looked at the street name and she read it twice and she put the phone down on the bed beside her and looked at the room.

The top and the jeans. The makeup bag open on the bed beside her. The gloss tube in her hand, cap off, the wand wet with strawberry. The bangles on her wrists. The heels on her feet. The girl in the mirror who was going to a class and was going to a room and was going to come home before the morning with money that was not her mother's and was not the officer's and was her own, and the girl in the mirror looked at her and did not blink, and Maya looked back and did not blink, and outside in the lane a dog barked twice and stopped.

She put the wand back in the tube and screwed the cap on, and the click of the cap was the last small sound in the room, and the room was quiet, and the fan turned, and the yellow bar of light from the streetlamp had moved up the almirah and was now on the mirror and on her face, and she looked at herself in the yellow light with the kohl and the gloss and the blue top and the jeans and the heels, and she breathed in, and the breath smelled like strawberry.

The phone lay on the bed beside her thigh, screen up, the contact name glowing, the address in the thread, the yes already said, and she had not yet picked it up to text Shilpa that she was coming.

She looked at the phone. She looked at the mirror. She looked at the phone.

Then she stood, and the heels clicked, and she went to the door of the bedroom, and she stood in the doorway, and she listened. The kitchen was quiet. The television was off. Her father's breathing came from the front room, slow and even, the breathing of a man asleep in his chair with the red scarf at his throat that he did not wear to bed.

She went back to the bed. She sat down. She picked up the phone.

She opened the thread. Her thumb found the letters, and she typed them slowly, one at a time, watching each one arrive on the screen.

Coming.

She looked at the word for a moment. Then she pressed send, and the word went, and the little mark under it turned from a clock into a tick, and the tick was grey and then it was blue, and Shilpa had read it, and Maya put the phone down on the bed and looked at the mirror, and the girl in the mirror looked back at her, kohl-rimmed, glossed, blue-topped, in the yellow light, and the room smelled like strawberry and old camphor and the small warm smell of her own skin.