Adultery Defeat of Poroma Continued

[shivanikaur2]

Chapter 43: Rashmi Crosses the Floor

The audit had been moving through the building for three weeks by then, quietly at first, the way these things do — a closed door here, a cancelled meeting there, a senior VP suddenly unreachable for calls he would previously have returned within the hour.

Sutapa had been coming to the flat on Tuesdays and sometimes Sundays. The children absorbed this with the matter-of-fact efficiency of the very young. Nupur asked once whether Sutapa-aunty would be there for dinner. I said probably yes. She nodded and went back to her drawing with the air of someone filing a piece of information she already considered settled.

I did not examine that too closely. There was enough else to examine.

Mohit had the instincts of a man who watched market movements for a living. By the time Rahul's audit had become office corridor knowledge Mohit had already reoriented himself completely. He no longer shared the coffee machine with Rahul. He developed useful memory lapses about certain events at the Holi party.

Rashmi had sharper instincts and more courage.

She called me on a Tuesday and asked to meet for lunch. Elgin Road, quiet restaurant, away from anyone. I agreed.

She arrived and sat down and looked at me with the direct uncomplicated gaze she had always had. Rashmi had never been subtle.

"I want to give a statement for the custody case," she said before the menus arrived.

"Why," I said.

"Because I have a daughter who is three years old," she said. "And when Fatima showed me that nanny cam footage of Poroma slapping Nupur I sat in Fatima's office and thought about my daughter's face for ten minutes before I could say anything." She paused.

"What else," I said.

She told me what Mohit had been told by Rahul. That before the Holi party Rahul had spoken to Mohit and told him he had a plan for Poroma. That it was not a spontaneous game. That Rahul had specifically selected the Holi party as the execution night.

"Mohit will not testify," she said. "He is afraid. But I will."

We ate lunch and she gave me everything in clean precise detail, the kind of testimony that a family court advocate would be very glad to receive.

I asked her why she was willing to put herself in this position.

"Because Mohit was part of it," she said simply. "He knew and he did nothing and that is something I have to live with and the least I can do is make it count for something now."

That afternoon she came to the flat. The Aya had taken the children to the park. The flat was quiet. She came in, looked at me once, and stopped in the middle of the sitting room and turned to face me.

"I want to say something before we talk about the paperwork," she said.

"Alright," I said.

"I have wanted you since before all of this happened," she said. "Since before the Holi party. For about a year actually." She held my gaze without any embarrassment whatsoever. "I want you to know that so you don't think any of this is sympathy or obligation."

I looked at her. Her directness was extraordinary. She had always had it. In social situations it had seemed like abrasiveness. Here it was simply honesty and it was refreshing beyond description.

"I have also tested," she said. "I was never with Rahul. Not once. I am completely clean." A pause. "Just so we have covered that."

She crossed the room to me and kissed me with complete confidence and put her arms around my neck. Her hands moved immediately, purposeful, working at my shirt buttons from the collar down.

She walked me to the bedroom with both hands and the ease of a woman who has decided on something and has no interest in indirection. She undressed quickly and without ceremony, tossed her things onto the chair, and stood in the afternoon light coming through the curtains with the unselfconsciousness of someone who has made peace with her body and expects it to be received well.

She was fiercely beautiful. Strong-shouldered, full-breasted, compact and powerful. She looked at me finishing undressing with frank appreciation and then stepped forward and pulled me in by the waist.

She pushed me back hard onto the bed and climbed up over me.

"You have been running on nothing for a year," she said. "I am going to fix that."

She was not wrong.

She took me in her hand and worked with her grip for a moment, watching my face with the clinical attention she brought to everything, checking results. Then she pulled me up to sitting, straddled my lap before I had fully registered the movement, reached down to position me, and dropped her weight down in one decisive stroke that drew a sound from both of us.

She braced both hands on my shoulders — not my chest, she wanted the height — and started moving immediately, no adjustment period, driving. Her thighs did all the work and she had strong thighs and she knew how to use them. She was simultaneously demanding and precise, adjusting the angle when she wanted depth and going short and hard when she wanted friction, and she reached down once and placed my hand exactly where she wanted it with the same brisk authority she applied to everything else and then put her hand back on my shoulder and kept going.

She came loudly and completely, her whole body clenching, her head back, no effort to manage the sound of it. I followed a few moments later with my hands locked onto her thighs.

She collapsed onto her back beside me and lay staring at the ceiling with a satisfied expression like a cat in a sunbeam.

"Better," she said.

I laughed. An actual laugh. I had not done that in a long time either.

She turned her head to look at me. She was grinning.

"There it is," she said. "That is the face you should have had this whole time."

She stayed and gave me the written statement in detailed clinical prose that Fatima would later describe as among the most useful witness statements she had received in a custody case. Then she kissed me once more at the door and left.

I stood in the quiet flat and felt, underneath everything, the specific warmth of being wanted and cared for by people who were choosing to be in my corner.

The bedroom door was still open. The afternoon light had shifted in the room, coming from a different angle now. A glass of water she had left on the bedside table.

I went in and opened the window. I straightened the coverlet. Both unnecessary. Both done anyway.

Then I sat at my desk and drafted the email to Fatima.