The address was three lanes over, past the vegetable cart with the split melons, past the tailor's shutters, past the alley where she had once spent a whole afternoon learning to breathe around a hairbrush handle. She had walked it twice in her head before she left the house. In her head, she had worn the red dupatta. In her head, she had turned back at the corner. In her head, she had never gone at all.

What she had actually done was stand in front of her mother's wardrobe for eleven minutes, the phone in one hand, the address glowing on the screen. She had taken out the black salwar suit — the one her mother had worn to a wedding in another town, the one with the small silver thread at the cuff. She had drawn the sindur line herself, standing at the small mirror in the bathroom, her hand steady, because her hand was always steady when it mattered and always shook when it did not. She had folded the dupatta over her head and left the house through the back, past the courtyard where the light had gone gold, past the gate she had opened a thousand times as a boy and never once as a wife.

Now she stood at the stranger's gate.

It was iron, painted black, the paint flaking off the top rail in long curls. The handle was loose in its socket, and when she closed her fingers around it the metal was cool, cooler than the afternoon had any right to be, as if the gate had been holding its own private shade. She stood there long enough for a scooter to pass behind her and not slow down. Long enough for a woman with a plastic bag of okra to look at her and look away. Long enough to understand that the address in her pocket was real, that the house was real, that the gate was not going to open itself and no one was coming to open it for her.

She pushed it open before she could think.

The hinge groaned. The path beyond was short — four, maybe five steps of cracked concrete with moss in the seams, a tulsi plant gone woody and bare in a pot by the door. She walked it. The front door was wood, painted a dull green, and there was a brass knocker shaped like a parrot that she did not use. Her hand went flat against the panel instead. The wood was warm from the sun. She stood there with her palm against it and felt her own pulse in the heel of her hand, and she thought, very clearly, that she could still turn around, that nobody in this lane knew her, that she could be home before her husband was, and that she would never know what the inside of this house looked like or what the woman on the phone had meant when she said come as Nisha.

She turned the handle.

The door gave. The air inside hit her first — beeswax, and under it the stale sweetness of old cigar smoke, and under that the flat mineral smell of a room that had been closed all day. It was dim. It took her eyes a moment to find the shapes: a long low sofa with a worn velvet cover, a sideboard with a marble top, a ceiling fan turning slow and silent on its rod. The curtains were heavy, dark red, drawn against the afternoon, and the light that got through them came in thin dusty lines and lay across the carpet in stripes.

A man was sitting in an armchair at the far end of the room.

He was middle-aged. She saw the softness of him before she saw anything else — the soft hands folded on the armrest, the soft belly under the white kurta, the soft jaw gone a little slack with age. His hair was grey at the temples and oiled flat. He did not stand when she came in. He did not look surprised. He looked at her the way a man looks at a thing he has already paid for and has been waiting some time to receive, and there was a hunger in it that was not loud, not greedy, but quiet and settled, like a fire that had been burning in that chair for an hour before she arrived.

"Nisha," he said.

Not a greeting. Not a question, exactly. He said her name the way a man says a word in a language he has only just learned — carefully, tasting it, making sure he has the sound right.

"Yes," she said.

Her voice came out lower than she had meant it to. She had meant it to come out like the woman on the phone — flat, businesslike. It came out like her voice always came out, soft and melodic, and she heard it land in the dim room and she did not correct it.

He gestured with two fingers at the sofa. "Sit."

She crossed the room. The carpet was thick under her feet and she was aware, suddenly and sharply, of the sound her anklets made — the small silver chime of them, one step after another, in a room where nothing else was making noise except the fan. She had not worn anklets in the lane. She had put them on in the bathroom at home, standing at the mirror, and now they announced her across a stranger's floor and there was nothing to do about it. She sat where he had pointed. The sofa gave under her, softer than she expected, and her hips settled into it and her salwar rode up a fraction over her knee and she let it stay.

On the low table between them there was a glass of water, a folded newspaper, and a small stack of notes.

Five thousand rupees. She counted without counting — the green of the five-hundreds, ten of them, held down under the edge of an ashtray that had been cleaned so many times the brass had gone pale. The money was already there. It had been there before she walked in. He had set it out on the table the way a man sets out a plate for a guest he is certain will come.

She looked at it for a moment. Then she looked at him.

"You're the one who called," she said.

"My sister called." He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. "I don't use the phone for this."

"For what?"

He smiled. It was a small smile and it did not reach his eyes, which stayed on her, on her face, on the sindur line, on the dupatta folded over her hair. "For looking," he said. "That's all. That's what the money is for. An hour of looking."

"And if I don't want to be looked at?"

"Then you take the money anyway and you go." He said it without heat, as if he had said it before, to other women, in this same room. "I don't chase. I'm too old and too fat to chase."

She almost laughed. She did not. She sat with her hands in her lap and looked at the money and looked at the curtains and looked at the fan going around and around, and she thought about the four thousand her husband's shop brought in in a good week, and she thought about the two hundred she had spent on hormones last month, and she thought about the way her mother used to say a woman who can pay for her own bindi never has to ask a man for one, and she thought about none of it, really. She thought about the fact that she was sitting here, in a stranger's drawing room, wearing her mother's salwar, with a sindur line on her forehead, and no one in the world knew where she was.

"Lift your dupatta," he said.

The words came out flat, unhurried, the way he had said sit. He was not asking. He was not commanding, either. He was stating the first item on a list he had already written.

She did not move for a moment. She looked at him across the low table, at his soft hands, at the quiet hunger in his face, and she felt the small hot thing turn over in her chest — not fear, not shame, something closer to the feeling she got on the roof when the boy's book was upside down, the feeling of being seen and choosing to stay seen. She reached up. She took the edge of the dupatta between two fingers and drew it back off her hair, slow, and let it fall over her shoulder, down her arm, onto the velvet behind her.

Her breast was half-bared. The salwar's neck was deep, and the fabric had shifted when she sat, and the curve of her breast showed above it — heavy, full, the skin pale where the sun had not reached it, the dark edge of the nipple just caught under the cloth. She watched him look at it. She watched his breath change, the smallest catch, the way his hands on the armrest tightened by a degree no one would have noticed who was not watching for it.

She put her hand on the armrest of the sofa, steady, and left it there.

"You're younger than I thought," he said.

"I'm nineteen."

"That's what I mean." He tilted his head. "Nineteen. And already a wife."

"Yes."

"And your husband knows where you are?"

She held his eyes. "My husband is at his shop."

He smiled again, and this time it did reach his eyes, a little. "That's not what I asked."

"I know."

He laughed. It was a low, soft sound, and it seemed to please him. He leaned forward in the chair and reached across the low table and put his hand on her knee.

His palm was warm and dry and soft, softer than her husband's, softer than any hand that had ever touched her. It rested on the bare skin above her knee, where the salwar had ridden up, and it did not press. It just lay there, the way the money lay on the table, the way the fan turned, the way the light came through the curtains in stripes. His thumb moved once — a small, unhurried stroke against the inside of her knee — and then stopped.

She did not move.

The small hot thing turned over in her chest again, and this time it stayed turned, and she sat on the stranger's sofa with his hand on her knee and her breast half-bared and her dupatta on the velvet behind her, and she did not move, and she did not look away, and she waited to see what he would do with the hour he had paid for.

"You're not nervous," he said.

"Should I be?"

"Most of them are." His thumb moved again, that same slow stroke, and this time it went a little higher, an inch above her knee. "They sit where you're sitting and they hold their breath and they look at the money like it's going to bite them."

"I'm not most of them."

"No," he said. "You're not." He looked at her a long moment, and then he said, quieter, "The woman on the phone told me about you."

Something went still in her. Not cold. Just still. "What did she tell you?"

"That you're a real one." He said it plainly, without cruelty, without awe. "That you did it yourself. The whole thing. The pills, the body, the name. She said you'd been doing it since you were sixteen, in a house with a drunk father, and nobody helped you."

Nisha looked at him. Her hand was still on the armrest. Her pulse had gone loud in her ears, but her face had not changed, because her face never changed when it mattered — she had learned that at fourteen, standing in front of a mirror with a mistake in it, deciding what to do about the mistake.

"She talks too much," Nisha said.

"She does." He nodded, unbothered. "But she was right about one thing. You walked in here like you owned the room. I've had men in this chair who couldn't do that."

"I don't own your room."

"No," he said. "But you're not renting it either." His hand slid up her thigh, slow, and stopped where the salwar began. "Are you."

She held his eyes. The small hot thing in her chest had stopped turning over and had settled, and she recognized the feeling, and it was the same feeling she had had on the third step of her own staircase with a boy's fingers on her knuckles. The feeling of a door she had walked through and could not walk back through, and the strange calm that came after.

"No," she said. "I'm not."

He reached past her then, with his free hand, and picked up the folded newspaper from the table. He set it on the arm of his chair. Under it, where the newspaper had been, there was nothing — just the marble of the table, pale and clean. He had moved it to see her better. That was all. He wanted to see her without the newspaper in the way, and he had moved it, and now he sat back in his chair with his hand on her leg and looked at her, and the hour had begun.

"Take your time," he said. "We have until five."

She looked at the clock on the mantel — a small brass thing, ticking, its hands at ten past four. She had an hour. Her husband would not be home until six. The gate was closed behind her. The curtains were drawn. The money was on the table, and the man's hand was on her knee, and the small hot thing in her chest had settled into something she did not have a name for, and she did not stand up.

She reached down instead and covered his hand with her own.

His fingers were still. Hers were not — they moved, deliberate, and drew his hand up under the salwar, up the inside of her thigh, and she felt his breath catch for real this time, not the small catch from before but a real one, the sound of a man who had been waiting and had not quite believed the waiting would end. His palm was hot against her skin. Her own hand stayed on top of his, guiding, and she watched his face while she did it, watched the quiet hunger sharpen into something less quiet.

"You said looking," she said.

"I said that."

"You didn't say touching."

"No," he said. "I didn't." His fingers stayed where she had put them, high on her thigh, and he did not move them further, and she understood that he was waiting for her to decide, and that the deciding was the thing he had actually paid for. "But you're the one who put my hand there."

She was. She knew she was. She had walked into his house and sat on his sofa and lifted her dupatta and put his hand on her own thigh, and none of it had been the woman on the phone's idea, and none of it had been his. It had been hers. It had been hers the whole way, since the moment she stood at her mother's wardrobe and reached for the black salwar, and the knowing of it was the small hot thing in her chest, and it was not shame and it was not pride and it was both and neither, and she was tired of trying to name it.

"Then stop asking," she said.

He moved. His hand slid up the rest of the way and found her through the thin cloth of her salwar, and his thumb pressed once, slow, and she felt her own body answer — a slick heat that had been waiting under everything, a clench low in her belly, the sudden awareness of how wet she already was. She had not noticed until his hand was there. Her body had been deciding without her. It had been deciding since the gate.

She unbuttoned her salwar herself.

Her fingers did it without hurry, one button, then the next, down the side, and the fabric loosened and fell open over her hip. He watched her hands the whole time. He did not help. She pushed the salwar down off one shoulder and let the neck fall, and her breast came free — heavy, full, the nipple dark against the pale skin, and she watched him look at it and she felt it tighten under his gaze, the small ache of it, the same ache she got when her husband put his mouth there.

"Sit up," he said.

She sat up. He pulled the salwar the rest of the way down, over her hips, and she lifted herself off the sofa so he could draw it off her legs, and then she was sitting on the velvet in nothing but her blouse and her petticoat, the blouse open, her breasts bare, the sindur line still bright on her forehead, and the anklets chiming when she moved.

He looked at her for a long time. He looked at her the way a man reads a page he has been told is worth reading, all the way down, not skipping. His eyes went from her face to her throat to her breasts to the flat of her belly to the dark between her thighs, and he did not rush, and he did not speak, and the fan went around, and the clock ticked, and Nisha sat in the middle of it and let herself be looked at, and felt the small hot thing in her chest turn over one more time and settle, and understood that she was not going to stop.

"Come here," she said.

He stood. He was slower standing than she had expected, a heavy man, and he crossed the two steps between the chair and the sofa and stood over her, and she reached up and took his wrist and drew him down. He came down beside her and his hand found her breast and his mouth found her throat, and she leaned back into the velvet and let him, and the small brass clock on the mantel went on ticking, and the money sat on the table, and her dupatta lay in a heap on the floor.

"You're wet," he said against her skin. Not a question. He had his hand between her thighs and his fingers had found her, and he said it the way a man says a thing he has confirmed. "You came here already wet."

"I came here to be looked at," she said. Her voice was steady. Her breath was not. "The rest is your luck."

He laughed, low, into her throat. "Then I'll take my luck."

He pushed two fingers into her and she arched off the velvet — the stretch of it, the sudden fullness, the wet sound of it in the quiet room. Her hand went to the back of the sofa and gripped the fabric. He moved his fingers slow, curling, finding the place, and she heard herself make a sound she had not planned to make, and she did not take it back.

"There," she said. "There."

He worked her with his fingers until her thighs were shaking, until she was gripping the velvet with both hands, until the small brass clock had ticked its way through ten minutes she did not feel pass. Then he stopped. He drew his fingers out and she felt the loss of them, the sudden empty ache, and she opened her eyes and looked at him.

"Don't stop," she said.

"I'm not stopping." He was untying his kurta. His hands were not as steady as before. "I'm moving to the next thing."

He stood and shed the kurta and the pyjama and stood in front of her in the dim room, thick-bodied, soft-bellied, his cock standing up from the grey of his pubic hair, and she looked at it and felt the small hot thing turn over again, and she reached for him. She took him in her hand and he was hot and heavy and she felt his pulse under her palm, and she thought, absurdly, of the hairbrush handle, of Maya's room above the tailor's shop, of the whole long education that had led her to this stranger's sofa with her mother's blouse open and her sindur line bright and a man's cock in her hand.

"On your back," she said.

"You're giving the orders."

"You paid for an hour." She pushed him back onto the sofa with the flat of her hand on his chest. "I'm spending it my way."

He went. He lay back on the worn velvet and she climbed over him, knees on either side of his hips, and she reached down and took him and guided him to her, and she sank down onto him slow. The stretch of it made her gasp — full, deep, the wet slide of him into her, the way her body took him and clenched around him, the way his hands came up and gripped her hips hard enough to leave marks. She sat all the way down and stayed there a moment, breathing, feeling him throb inside her, and she looked down at his face.

"Say my name," she said.

"Nisha."

"Again."

"Nisha."

She moved. She rode him slow at first, long strokes, feeling every inch of him drag out of her and slide back in, the wet sound of it under the ticking of the clock. His hands went from her hips to her breasts, gripping them, his thumbs dragging over her nipples, and she leaned into his hands and kept moving, and the anklets chimed every time she came down on him. He watched her the whole time — she could feel his eyes on her face, on her breasts, on the place where they joined, and it was the looking that did it as much as the fucking, the fact that he could not stop looking, that he had paid five thousand rupees to look and was getting far more than he had bargained for and could not look away.

"Faster," he said.

"Say please."

"Please."

She went faster. Her thighs burned. The velvet was slick with her under her knees and she did not care. He was thrusting up into her now, meeting her, his hands bruising on her hips, and the sound of it — skin on skin, wet, the slap of him into her — filled the dim room and drowned out the clock. She braced one hand on his chest and one on the arm of the sofa and rode him hard, and she felt the ache building low and deep, the tightness gathering, and she chased it.

"Look at me," she said. "Keep looking at me."

He did. His eyes were on her face, on the sindur line, on the sweat coming up on her throat, and he was breathing hard and saying her name — Nisha, Nisha — and she felt the crest coming and she did not hold back. She came with her hand braced on his chest and her head thrown back, her cunt clenching hard around him, a long broken sound coming out of her that was not her usual soft voice at all, and she felt him feel it, felt him drive up into her once, twice, and then he was coming too, spilling into her with a groan that seemed to come from somewhere under the floor, and she stayed on him and took it, every pulse of it, and the small brass clock on the mantel went on ticking and the money sat on the table and the curtains held the afternoon out.

She stayed on him until he stopped moving. Then she lifted herself off, slow, and felt him slide out of her and felt the wet of him follow, and she sat back on the sofa beside him with her legs folded under her and her blouse open and her breath coming back to her in pieces. He lay there, spent, one arm over his eyes, his chest rising and falling. Neither of them said anything for a while.

The clock said twenty to five.

"You didn't have to do that," he said at last, from under his arm. "The hour was for looking."

"I know."

"Why did you?"

She looked at the money on the table. Five thousand rupees. She looked at her dupatta on the floor, and her salwar crumpled beside it, and her own bare feet with the silver anklets on them. She looked at the man's soft hand lying on the velvet between them, and she thought about the answer, and the answer was not one she was going to say out loud to a stranger in a drawing room three lanes from her house.

"Because I wanted to," she said. "That's all you get."

He took his arm off his eyes and looked at her, and there was something in his face she had not seen there before — not the hunger, not the quiet settled patience, but a kind of bafflement, as if the answer had been simple and he had been braced for something complicated. He did not say anything. He reached to the table instead and picked up the stack of notes and held it out to her.

"Take it," he said.

She took it. The notes were warm from lying in the dim room, and she folded them once and tucked them into the waist of her petticoat, against her skin, and she felt the paper press flat against her hip and it was the only thing about the last hour that had no feeling in it at all. She stood and pulled the salwar up her legs and buttoned it, her fingers quick and sure, and she found the blouse where it had fallen and drew it closed over her breasts and did the buttons one by one, and she picked up the dupatta and shook the dust from it and folded it over her head and pinned it at the shoulder with a motion her hands knew without her thinking about it.

He watched her dress from the sofa, not moving, one hand flat on his own thigh. When she was done she stood in front of him with the sindur line on her forehead and the money against her hip and her anklets quiet now that she had stopped moving, and she looked at him a last time.

"The gate sticks," she said. "You should oil the hinge."

He laughed — a real one this time, surprised out of him — and she turned and crossed the thick carpet and let herself out through the dull green door, and the hinge groaned behind her, and the afternoon came down on her shoulders all at once, hot and bright and ordinary, the tulsi plant still bare in its pot, the moss still in the seams of the path, the lane beyond the gate going on exactly as it had been going on before she walked into that house.