Adultery Defeat of Poroma Continued

[shivanikaur2]

Chapter 42: Sutapa's Choice

I asked Sutapa to meet me at a coffee shop on Camac Street two days before the papers were served. She arrived looking as composed as always but her eyes were carrying something tired.

I did not take time getting to it.

"I am filing for divorce and full custody on Monday," I said. "I have the nanny cam footage, the Aya's diary, Mrs. Sharma's testimony, and Rashmi's statement. The custody case is strong. I want your written statement about the Holi party. What Rahul told you beforehand. The stopwatch. The bedroom preparation."

She wrapped both hands around her coffee cup.

"The photographs," she said.

"Fatima has already sent a legal notice under the IT Act to Rahul's address," I said. "Section 66E and 67A. Non consensual intimate imagery. If he uses, distributes, or threatens distribution of any such material he is facing criminal prosecution. The notice puts that formally on record. His lawyers will instruct him to destroy everything."

She was quiet. Outside on Camac Street the afternoon traffic went by.

"He told me he had a plan for your wife two days before the Holi party," she said finally. "He did not tell me the full details but he told me enough. He told me the story about the couple named Poroma and Ranjeet was not a coincidence, that he had written it himself using your names, that he had been sending it to Poroma for weeks to prime her and that the party would be when it came together." She paused. "He told me what he needed me to do with the stopwatch. He told me Dilip should have the camera ready. He told me the bedroom should be prepared." She looked down at the table. "He made it sound like a harmless adult game. He was very convincing. He always was."

"Sutapa," I said. "You knew it was not harmless."

She met my eyes. "Yes," she said. "I knew."

She reached into her bag and placed a folded paper on the table. Three pages of neat handwriting. She pushed it toward me.

"I wrote this the morning after," she said. "I kept it because I thought one day I would need it or someone would."

I picked it up.

"I am glad it is you," she said quietly.

She came to the flat in Ballygunge three evenings later. The children were in bed. The Aya was in her room. The flat was quiet in the particular way of places where children have recently been exhausted into sleep.

Sutapa walked through the rooms slowly, looking at the sparse furniture and the yellow curtains Nupur had chosen and the children's drawings stuck to the refrigerator with magnets. She turned to look at me in the kitchen doorway.

"How are you," she said. A real question.

"Better than I have been in a long time," I said. "Strangely."

She came toward me and stood close. She touched my face with one hand. It was not a seductive gesture. It was something gentler than that. A kind of taking stock.

"I have been tested," she said quietly. "I wanted you to know before anything else. After everything with Rahul I went to a private clinic three weeks ago. Full panel. I am completely clear." A pause. "I was always careful with him. And it had been months since."

I felt something unknot in my chest.

"Good," I said.

She moved closer and kissed me and it was nothing like performance. Direct and certain and with both hands on my face. I kissed her back the same way, my hands finding her waist and pulling her in.

She stepped back and looked at me for a moment. Then she took my hand and led me toward the bedroom with the directness of someone who has spent too long being indirect and has decided to stop.

In the bedroom she undressed quickly, unbuttoning her salwar kameez top and letting it drop and reaching behind herself for the bra clasp and getting it off without ceremony. She stood in the lamp light and let me look at her without pretense. She was beautiful, full-figured and warm-skinned, and there was nothing guarded about any of it.

She came to me before I had finished undressing and helped with the rest, her hands unhurried on the buttons. When she had me bare she stood looking at me with an expression that was not performance — just a woman taking stock of something she had decided she wanted and was no longer afraid to want.

I pulled her down onto the bed beside me and we lay facing each other in the lamp light. She put her hand on my chest. I covered it with mine. We stayed like that briefly, neither of us in any hurry.

Then I kissed her and she put both arms around my neck and came closer. She made a quiet sound against my mouth when I moved my hand along her side and pressed herself closer without thinking about it. I rolled her gently onto her back and she let me take my time, her hands in my hair, not directing, just present.

She pulled me in when she was ready and neither of us hurried anything. We moved together slowly and then not slowly, finding a rhythm that came more easily than I expected. She kept her face turned toward mine the whole time, watching me with the specific directness she had always had, except now it had warmth in it rather than assessment. She pressed her palm flat to my jaw once, just briefly, and I turned my face into it without thinking.

When she came it was quiet and sustained, her body tightening, her fingers gripping my shoulder. I followed a few moments later and held her through it.

She laughed softly afterward — the first time I had heard her laugh with nothing performed in it at all.

Afterward she lay with her head on my chest and we were both quiet for a long time. Outside the night city made its sounds. From down the hall came the small sleeping sounds of my children.

"I never thought," she began.

"No," I agreed.

Neither of us said anything else. There was nothing else needed.