The Bandit Queens (88)

He grinned and tapped his nose. “I can smell as good as your dog now, I bet.”

So. Could suffering turn a rotten man good? Unlikely. But could it turn him less rotten? Evidently. While Geeta didn’t find herself liking Ramesh, she did find less to loathe about him, which, considering where they’d left off, was a minor miracle. But then: “I have to admit…the papad is not entirely free—I do have a favor to ask.”

Of course. “What?” she said flatly.

“Do you think I could start bathing inside?” He’d been washing at the circle near the well where men often lathered in their underwear and rinsed. “It’s just hard to figure out a time when no one’s around. And I keep losing the soap.”

She cracked the papadam in half and crunched loudly. Crumbs floated to her chest like ash. “Fine.”

A concession that led to him sitting on the floor cross-legged, drying his hair while he listened to the second half of her radio program with her. (Who knew killer whales were such mama’s boys? I bet they’re Indian.) Which in turn morphed into a shared meal one night when none of his bosses—one of whom usually provided food—had leftovers. (Are you sure there’s enough? I don’t want you to go hungry.) But offering food did not mean breaking bread; Geeta had him eat outside and rinse his utensils afterward. (Barely need to wash anything, Geeta. That was so delicious, I licked the thali clean.) The following afternoon Ramesh bought vegetables from the market. (A tiny thank-you for your feast last night.) Geeta found chopping a bit extra took little time, cooking a bit extra took none, and company afterward wasn’t painful, even if it was Ramesh’s. (Wanna know a secret? I actually don’t think I lost much. I was drunk, which is its own form of blindness. I’m sober now, which is its own form of sight.) Thus, they found themselves knee-deep in ersatz domesticity: Ramesh pleased with each minor victory, Geeta reassuring herself that she was not losing ground because she was in control of the privileges she’d extended and could withdraw them at any time. As she could with Karem, whose store she walked to one morning under the guise of due diligence.

“Hi,” she said. He looked well.

“Hey.”

“How’re the kids?”

“Rowdy. How’ve you been?”

On her exhale, she said, “Ramesh is back.”

“I heard.”

“Has he come to see you—to buy from you?”

Karem shook his head. “Nope.”

“I guess he really is sober, then,” she said.

“I wouldn’t be sure about that.”

She squinted. “Meaning?”

“I don’t trust him, Geeta.”

“But I should trust you?”

It was his turn to narrow his eyes. “Meaning?”

It wasn’t a simple matter of her transferring her faith in Karem into Ramesh. She didn’t trust either of them. But his light implication that she was being fooled or was capable of being fooled—hell, that she was a fool—smarted. That, coupled with the knowledge that Karem had kept secrets from her, made her feel doubly duped.

“You knew Ramesh was blind, you said as much—I just didn’t think anything of it then. Plus, you’ve always talked about him in the present tense; everyone else said ‘hato’ or ‘tha.’ Which means you knew he was alive. You knew where he was all this time and never said one word to me.”

From the other side of the counter, Karem sighed, his shoulders sinking, and she was forced to release her pocketed hope that she’d gotten it wrong.

“No. Geeta, I swear. Okay? I saw him once in Kohra, over a year ago. Bada-Bhai called all his men over because he thought Lakha—you remember the Rabari woman?” Geeta nodded; she doubted she’d ever forget seeing the woman be slapped in Bada-Bhai’s kitchen. “Well, she and their son had gone missing. We went looking for her and I saw Ramesh at the house.”

Which finally explained Bandit’s immediate and unequivocal distaste for Ramesh; he’d met him before.

Geeta asked, “Did she say why she ran away?”

Karem was surprised but answered readily, keen to return to her good graces. “Lakha? Bada-Bhai’s wife abused her. She said she wasn’t running, just hiding. Geeta, listen. I didn’t talk to Ramesh or anything, I just saw him and Bada-Bhai mentioned he’d gone blind. And then he was gone again, and didn’t say anything because Bada-Bhai’s pretty adamant about his workers keeping their mouths shut. And I swear, this was way before…us.”

Geeta shook her head at Karem. “Qualify it however you’d like, but you know you should’ve told me. Otherwise you wouldn’t need qualifiers in the first place.”

His sigh was heavy but he nodded. She noticed he wore his earring again. “Fair enough. Don’t trust me. Not until I’ve earned it back. But don’t trust Ramesh either, okay? He’s far from having earned it.”

What Karem and others—even Saloni—didn’t know was that she wasn’t a discarded wife tricked into forgiving her louse husband. She was just waiting for the right moment to play her hand. If she was civil to Ramesh in the meantime, it was only because, whatever else, she admired the discipline sobriety required.

“I don’t trust him,” she told Karem. “But it’s not like he can get up to much; he’s blind.”