The deck comes around to Karthik and he takes his time, thumbing the edges like a man dealing a hand he already knows. The gold chain sits in the hollow of his throat and catches the lamp every time he leans forward. He pulls one card, reads it, and his face does something slow — the corners of his mouth going up before he decides to let them.

"Meena," he says. He turns the card so the room can see it, though no one can read it from where they sit. Then he reads it out loud, loud, the way a man reads a verdict. "Sit on every male lap in the circle. Ten seconds each."

The room hoots. Vinoth slaps his knee. Ravi says something I do not catch but it makes Karthik laugh and Meena's mouth go flat. She is already standing — she stands before the laughter finishes, which is its own kind of answer — and her thumbnail finds her lip, the way it always does, the nail bitten down to a crescent. Her saree's edge drags the floor and picks up a thread of dust from the rug, and she does not look down at it.

"It's a game," Priya says, from the bed, and her voice is bright, too bright, the brightness of a hostess who has already decided that nothing that happens in her flat tonight is going to be her fault. "Meena, come on. It's a game."

Meena says nothing. She walks to Vinoth first because Vinoth is nearest, and the room turns to watch her the way a room turns to watch a thing fall. Vinoth spreads his knees wide and pats his thigh — twice, a little drummer's beat — and Meena lowers herself onto him with her spine straight and her hands folded in her lap, the way a girl sits in a temple, the way a girl sits in a photograph. Her lips move. I am close enough to see them move. One, two, three.

Vinoth's hands come up and hover at her waist, not touching, just hovering, and he grins at Karthik over her shoulder like a boy who has won something. The ten seconds take a long time. I count them myself, under my own breath, and they do not match hers — mine are faster, I think, because I am not the one being counted.

When she stands, Vinoth's hands fall. He says something to Ravi. Ravi laughs. Meena walks to Karthik.

Karthik is not Vinoth. Karthik does not spread his knees. He sits back on his heels and watches her come, and when she lowers herself onto his lap he does not move his hands at all — he keeps them on his own knees, palms up, like a man displaying that he has nothing in them. That is worse, I think. That is a man who knows that not touching is its own touch. Meena's thumbnail is back at her lip. Her lips move. Her eyes are fixed on a point on the far wall, above all our heads, somewhere near the crack where the plaster has gone the colour of old milk.

"Seven," Karthik says, out loud, counting for her, and Meena's jaw tightens. "Eight."

She stands before he reaches ten. He lets her. He is smiling. He reaches for his glass and takes a slow drink and does not watch her walk away, which is a kind of insult I do not have a name for.

Then it is Ravi's turn, and Ravi is drunk — the whole glass, he drank it, and now his eyes are wet and bright and his knees are already open before Meena reaches him. She sits. Ravi's hand comes down on her thigh, flat, the whole palm, and the room goes quiet for half a second and then somebody — Divya, I think, from the far side — says "Ay, Ravi," in a warning voice, and Ravi takes his hand off, but slowly, and puts it back on his own knee with his fingers spread, and Meena sits through it with her face doing the fixed smile, the smile that is not a smile, the smile that is a wall with a door painted on it.

"Ten," she says, herself, out loud, the first thing she has said since she stood up. She says it flat. She rises.

And then there is only one man left in the circle who has not had her, and it is Arun, and Arun is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall under the window, and Priya is on the bed behind him with her glass halfway to her lips, and I see the whole thing before it happens, the way you see a glass tip off a table before it lands.

Meena walks to Arun. Her thumbnail is at her lip again — she has bitten it now, I can see the wet shine of it — and she stands over him for one second, two, and the room is waiting, and the salt-crusted window rattles with a gust and the smell of mildew and stale perfume comes up off the rug, and she lowers herself onto his thighs.

Arun's thighs go tight under her weight — I can see it, the muscle jumping under the cotton of his trousers — and his hand comes up and hovers near her waist, not touching, the way Vinoth's did, the way every hand in this room hovers, and Meena settles with her spine straight and her hands in her lap and her eyes on the far wall.

Priya's laugh cuts off.

It cuts off mid-note, in the middle of a word I do not even catch, and the silence where the laugh was is the loudest thing in the room. Priya's glass is frozen halfway to her lips. I can see the rum in it, the level, the light coming through it, and I can see her knuckles around the glass, and they are white — not pale, white, the white of a fist closed on a rail — and she does not say anything. She does not say anything at all. It is just a game. Her own voice says it back to me from ten minutes ago, from the door, from the lock turning: it's just a game. And her knuckles stay white on the glass, and her eyes are on Meena's back, on the place where Meena's saree is pulled tight across her shoulders, and Meena does not look at her.

Meena's lips move. One.

Arun's hand is still hovering at her waist. He has not touched her. He has not looked at Priya either, and that is a thing I notice and file away, the way I file everything away now, the way the room has taught me to.

Two.

Karthik says something to Vinoth, low, and Vinoth snorts, and the room's noise comes back up around the silence like water closing over a stone. Ravi reaches for the bottle. Divya says something about the heat. The ordinary sound of a party resumes, and underneath it, on the bed, Priya's glass begins to lower, an inch, another inch, and her knuckles are still white, and I watch her watch Meena's back and I think: she is counting too. She is counting the same ten seconds I am counting, and hers are going slower than anyone's.

Three.

Meena's spine does not bend. Her hands do not move from her lap. She sits on Arun's thighs like a girl on a bench in a bus stand, waiting, and her eyes are on the far wall, and her lips move, and the count goes on, and nobody in this room is going to stop it, and I sit with my hands under my thighs and my mouth still tasting of Ravi and I do not stop it either.

Four.

Priya sets the glass down. She sets it down on the floor beside the bed, carefully, without a sound, which is worse than if she had slammed it. Her hand comes back empty and rests on her own knee, and she is smiling now, a small fixed smile, the kind Meena has been wearing all night, and I think — I think for the first time — that the two of them have the same smile, that it is a city smile, that every woman in this room has been issued one, and I have not been issued mine yet.

Five.

"Meena," Priya says. Just the name. Nothing after it. The room does not hear her — Karthik is telling something to Ravi, the bottle is going around, Vinoth is laughing — but I hear her, and Meena hears her, because Meena's shoulders move, just a fraction, the smallest flinch, and her lips stop moving for one second before they start again.

Six.

Arun's hand has not touched her. It hovers at her waist, and I watch it, and I think about the way his hand looked in the bathroom, gentle in Bhavani's hair, the way a hand can be gentle in one room and hover in another and mean the same thing both times. Meena's spine is straight. Her hands are in her lap. The sea is a black sound under the window and the curtain lifts and slaps and lifts and slaps, and the count goes on, and the room laughs around it, and Priya's smile holds, and I sit in the middle of it with my hands under my thighs and wait for the number to reach ten.

Seven.

Meena says it, and this time it is not only her lips — it is a sound, small, pushed out through her nose, and the room does not catch it but I do, and Priya does, because Priya's chin comes up an inch. The window rattles again. Somewhere below, on the road, a scooter coughs and dies and starts again, and the ordinary world goes on doing its ordinary things under a window where nothing ordinary is happening.

I look at Arun's face. I have been avoiding it — I have been looking at his hand, at Meena's spine, at Priya's knuckles, at anything but his face — and now I make myself look. He is not smiling. He is not looking at Meena either. He is looking at the wall behind her shoulder, at the same old-milk crack she is looking at, and his jaw is set the way it was set in the canteen the day his hand found my knee under the table, the day I did not move it, the day I learned that a man's face can stay perfectly still while his hand does something else entirely. His hand has still not touched her. It hovers, and hovers, and the hovering has become the whole act.

"Seven," Karthik says, from across the circle, because Karthik has been counting too, out loud, for the room, the way a man counts down a fight. "Eight."

Priya— no. Priya. I have to say her name right in my own head, because my own head is starting to slip. Priya does not look at Karthik. She does not look at the bottle going around, or at Divya, who has started telling some story about a wedding with her hands. Priya looks at the back of Meena's neck, at the small dark hollow where the saree's edge meets her hair, and I watch Priya's mouth move — not a word, not a smile, just the muscles under the skin, the way a mouth moves when a person is holding something in it.

Meena's lips are moving again. Eight. I can see the shape of it. Her thumbnail has come away from her mouth and is pressed now into her own palm, hard, the way you press a thumb into a coin to check if it is real.

Nine.

And then the thing I have been waiting for, the thing I did not know I was waiting for, happens in the half-second before ten. Meena's eyes come off the far wall. They come off the crack, off the old milk, off the place above all our heads, and they drop — not to Arun, not to her own hands — to Priya. On the bed. Just for one beat. One beat of eye contact across the whole room, across the rug, across the four men between them, and I cannot read it. I try. I am good at reading now; the room has made me good at reading. But I cannot tell if it is an apology or a dare or a question or a knife. It is there and then it is gone, and Meena's eyes go back up to the wall, and her lips finish the word.

"Ten."

She rises. She rises the way she has risen every time, spine first, hands still folded, no push off his knees, no hand on his shoulder for balance — she stands up out of a man's lap without touching him, which is a thing I did not know a body could do until tonight. Arun's hovering hand drops to his own thigh and stays there, flat, and he does not watch her go. He looks at the floor between his knees. He looks at the rug, at the thread of dust Meena's saree left, at nothing.

Priya claps.

She claps first — before Divya, before Vinoth, before Karthik even has his mouth open — and her claps are loud and even and they land in the room like coins on a table, and she is smiling her hostess smile, and she says, "Okay, okay, that's the game, next card," and her voice does not shake, and I hate her a little, and I understand her completely, and those two things are sitting in my chest at the same time and neither one will move over for the other.

The others clap too. Vinoth whistles through his teeth. Divya says something about Meena being a sport, a good sport, and Ravi laughs and reaches for the bottle and pours himself another without asking, and the bottle is getting low, and I notice that, the way I notice everything now, because a low bottle means the night is going somewhere and I do not know where.

Meena walks back to her place on the rug, between Divya and the wall, and she sits down the way she stood up — spine first, hands in her lap — and she does not look at Priya, and she does not look at Arun, and she picks up her own glass, the one she has not touched all night, and she takes a sip of it. The first sip. I watch her swallow. Her throat moves once, and her face does not change at all.

Karthik is already shuffling. The cards go around his hands and the gold chain swings and he is telling Ravi something about a bike, and the deck comes back to him and he fans it, and I sit with my hands under my thighs and my mouth tasting of Ravi and my eyes on Meena's glass, on the wet ring her lip has left on the rim, and I think about the fact that she has never drunk before either, that she told us that in the room, that we are all of us drinking our first drinks in this flat tonight and none of us are saying so, and the deck goes around the circle and I wait for it to come to me.