Adultery Who Watches The Watchmen (continued)

[samgreenvalley]

Chapter Two: The Watchman's Watch
 
The two-room quarter behind the generator shed was modest but functional—a far cry from the shack Dara had shared with Banke in Mumbai. Menaka had insisted on buying curtains, a proper bedsheet, and a small refrigerator with her own money, though Dara had sulked for three days about "charity." That was the thing about their new arrangement. In Mumbai, he had been the predator, the conqueror, the man who bent the memsaab over her own dining table. In Delhi, he was just another watchman, and she was just another woman living in his quarter, and the role reversal chafed at him like cheap sandals.
 
"You're quiet tonight," Menaka said, slipping into bed beside him. The quarter's single window faced the complex's rear wall, and the only light came from the security lamp outside, casting long shadows across Dara's thin frame.
 
He grunted, turning away from her.
 
"Still upset about Sharma?"
 
Another grunt.
 
Menaka sighed and traced a finger down his bare back. "Dara, we've talked about this. What happened with Sharma was—"
 
"What happened is you spread your legs for a society member not fifty feet from where I was sitting at the gate." His voice was low, bitter. "Do you know how that makes me look?"
 
"It makes you look like a man whose woman is desired." She kissed his shoulder. "That's what you always said about Vimla, remember? How proud you were when other men wanted her?"
 
Dara turned over sharply, his eyes glinting in the dim light. "That was different. I was in control. I decided who, when, where. This—" He gestured vaguely toward the window, toward the complex beyond. "This man Sharma just walks up to you while I'm on duty, and you... you just..."
 
"I just what?" Menaka's voice carried a hint of steel now. "I just what, Dara? Said yes? Because that's what I do. That's what I've been doing since Mumbai. You knew this about me. You celebrated this about me when it was Banke and Muthu and Senthil and that postman. When it made you feel like a king because your memsaab was such a slut for you."
 
"That's not—"
 
"But now that we're here, in your world, suddenly the rules change? Suddenly I'm supposed to be your faithful little wife?" She laughed, not cruelly but with genuine bewilderment. "You wanted this, Dara. You begged for this. Two months of playing house, you said. Two months of being a real couple, you said. Well, this is what a real couple looks like. A real couple fights. A real couple has... complications."
 
Dara sat up, rubbing his face with both hands. The bruises from Muthu's beating had long faded, but something else had settled into his bones—a weariness, a recognition that the power he'd wielded in Mumbai had been borrowed all along. It had come from her willingness, her curiosity, her husband's strange blessing. Here, with no Prakash in the background, no Banke to boss around, no Vimla to triangulate against, he was just an aging Gurkha with a younger woman who happened to enjoy sex with other men.
 
"I don't like the way he looks at you," Dara finally said. "Like you're... like you're just something to be consumed."
 
"And how did you look at me in Mumbai? When you pushed me against the water tank? When you made me kneel on that dirty floor?"
 
He had no answer.
 
"Sharma is harmless," Menaka continued, her voice softening. "He's bored, his wife doesn't touch him, and he's got a crush. I let him fumble around for ten minutes, he felt like a king, and now he'll do anything we ask. That's called strategy, Dara. Something you used to be good at."
 
"What do you mean, anything we ask?"
 
Menaka smiled in the darkness. "Let me worry about that."