The Bandit Queens (81)

She couldn’t help her hyena guffaw.

His voice grew peeved. “What? You are.”

“Yeah, the one you abandoned five years ago. So why’re you really here?”

Perhaps he’d intuited she’d found another, moved on, and swooped back to stamp her as his. Not out of love or even desire, but simply as a landlord marks their property from encroachers. But that was paranoia; there was no possible way he knew about Karem. This was just life unfolding how it desired and, once again, completely and totally fucking her.

“I’ve missed you.”

Geeta stared at him. His eyes were open but unfocused. He tapped his cane to get a sense of her furniture. These were the words, in some form, from her fantasy. She wanted to ask how he’d become blind, but didn’t want to give him the impression that she cared. It was peculiar, but his diminished condition diluted her memories of terror. Or perhaps it was that he’d aged, or she’d aged and had faced problems more fearsome than him. Perhaps she was just too flabbergasted to be afraid. Whatever the reason, the result was that, at the moment, she was more annoyed than threatened.

“So you want money, then.”

“No! Listen, I know I fucked it all up. But I want to make it up to you. Please, let me.”

“Impossible.”

“Let me try.”

“You need to leave. But not now—at night when no one can see you.”

He tried to move toward her but didn’t check for clearance with his cane first, and tripped over a plastic chair. It clattered on its side, and Geeta lunged forward to steady him before she could remind herself that it didn’t matter to her if he fell and split his skull open. “Geeta, please. I have nowhere else to go. Look at me. It took me weeks just to find my way here.”

“And it took me five years to find my way here.”

“But I’m blind.” He wheedled, Geeta thought, just as Farah did.

“Easier to be a blind man than a dropped woman. You can’t just show up and ruin everything I’ve worked for.”

“I don’t want to ruin it.”

“But you will, that’s just what you do.”

“But I’m your husband.”

It was a long time before she was finished laughing. “You’d think it’d be less funny the second time,” she said, “but no.”

His voice was sour. “I get your point. But I meant what I said: I want to make it up to you. Let me, Geeta.” After a long pause, he asked, “What’re you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I liked it better when I was a widow.”

Except she wasn’t a widow. She was a murderess and—now her thoughts turned to Karem and their time together—technically an adulteress to boot.

Voices filled the room. Through the bars of her open window, Geeta saw people, mostly in white, walking toward Darshan’s house, where a professional mourner already sat, beating her chest and encouraging Preity to wail her sorrow. Meanwhile, though they didn’t know it, the girls in the south part of the village were safer than they’d been in a long while. After the priest led everyone in prayers, Khushi and her sons would take the body for cremation and Darshan’s son would light the pyre.

“What’s going on?” Ramesh asked, head cocking.

“They’re getting ready for last rites.”

“Whose?”

“Geeta?” someone called from outside her door.

“Shh!” Geeta hissed at Ramesh, though he hadn’t said anything. She recognized Farah’s voice. “Hide.”

“Huh?”

“I said shh! You need to hide. She can’t know you’re alive.”

“Why?” he whispered because she had.

“Because my life depends on her thinking you’re dead and that I killed you.”

“Come again?”

“Go out the back. No, wait, others might see you. Get in the armoire.”

“Geeta? I know you’re home, the padlock isn’t on.”

“One minute,” she called. “Armoire. Go.”

“But—”

She made her face spectacularly ferocious, though the effort was wasted. “You say you want to make it up to me? Get in.”

He felt his way inside, folding his body against her saris. She shoved his cane into his gut and shut the double doors on his oomph. She exhaled into the mirror, then turned to open the front door with a barked “What?”

Farah stood in pale clothing. “Charming. Aren’t you supposed to be in jail? Anyway, are you coming to Darshan’s? I can’t tell if it’s ruder if you attend or don’t, considering. They don’t really have an etiquette book on mur—”

“Why are you here?” Geeta interrupted, acutely aware of Ramesh, who could hear everything through the cotton swaddling him.

“Because your mutt is jumping everywhere. Some of us are trying to mourn, you know. Not you, obviously, but—”

“Bandit, come.” He bounded up the steps and licked her proffered hand. He froze then, immediately losing interest as he ran to yip at the armoire.

“What the hell?”

“He, uh, does that sometimes,” Geeta said. “I’ll see you at next week’s meeting.”