“It is ridiculous. That’s why it works.”
We climbed the stairs back to the room, our sandals making wet prints on the concrete. Inside, the fan chopped the damp air into pieces. The mirror had fogged slightly at the edges. Sanjana took out a comb and began fixing her hair. I sat on my bed and opened my makeup pouch, which was my preferred form of self-respect.
“You wear that much makeup every day?” she asked.
“Only when I intend to be noticed.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then I’d be wasting a face like this.”
She laughed, shook her head, and sat down on the other bed.
I caught her reflection in the mirror while I applied lipstick. She looked at my movements with the wary interest people reserve for knives and miracles. There was a silence between us then, not awkward, just new. The kind of silence that forms when two strangers have stopped pretending they are entirely separate.
She said, “You’re very certain of yourself.”
I capped the lipstick. “And you’re very committed to doubting certainty. It’s boring.”
“It keeps people alive.”
“No,” I said. “It keeps them small.”
She did not answer. Not because she had lost the point, but because she was not stupid enough to argue with a woman who had been born with a weaponized mouth and a god complex. She was learning me. I was learning her. We were both doing it badly and on purpose.
Later, while we sorted our things, she asked if I had eaten dinner. I told her yes, which was a lie. She looked at me like she knew and then set aside half the parathas from her tiffin without comment. That made me strangely angry. I did not like being seen through. It felt like theft. But I ate them anyway.
The room filled with the smells of rain-damp fabric, tea, soap, and the cheap floral powder I used on my neck because I liked the idea of leaving an impression before I left a room. Sanjana laid out her books on the table: a notebook, a small paperback on runway walks, another on English communication, and a workbook full of handwritten notes. I picked up the workbook and flipped through it.
“You actually study.”
She took it back from me. “Yes.”
“That’s very old-fashioned.”
“So is working.”
“I don’t mean work. I mean this obedience to process.”
She tucked the book back into place. “Process is how things get done.”
“Or how people get delayed.”
She looked at me, and this time there was no amusement in it. “You think shortcuts are intelligence.”
“They are.”
“They’re usually just panic with lipstick.”
That line hit harder than I wanted it to, which was exactly why I hated it. I laughed to cover the irritation.
“Listen to you,” I said. “You’ve been in Delhi five minutes and already you’re speaking in slogans.”
She shrugged. “You speak in slogans too. Yours are just more expensive.”
I should have been offended. Instead I admired the nerve. It was rare to meet a girl who could insult me without trembling.
The evening went on in that domestic, accidental way that makes strangers into roommates and roommates into witnesses. We argued over who would get the As the rain thinned, I realized the room no longer belonged only to me—and that bothered me more than I wanted to admit.
Sanjana had spread her things with the quiet authority of someone who believed a surface should tell the truth about the person using it. Her notebook lay open beside the lamp, its pages filled with neat, narrow handwriting. Her paperback was face down, as if even when she paused, she did not like to announce it. My own bag still sat half-unzipped by the wardrobe, careless and slouched, as though I had merely entered to borrow the air.
We argued over who would get the bed, which was really an argument over temperament.
“It’s my room,” I said.
“You said that like you expected it to win.”
“It should.”
She looked at the single bed, then at the mattress on the floor that someone had clearly intended as a temporary arrangement for a guest who would not stay long enough to matter. “You can have the bed if you need the symbolism.”
“I don’t need symbolism. I need comfort.”
“That’s not what you usually say.”
I lifted a shoulder. “Usually I’m not trapped in a room with someone who keeps score.”
“I’m not keeping score.”
“You are absolutely keeping score.”
“I’m observing,” she said.
“That’s worse.”
It was already dark outside. The rain had come down in sheets for nearly an hour, turning the window into a blurred silver panel. The building across the lane had gone soft around the edges. Somewhere below, a scooter rattled through water and disappeared. The room smelled faintly of damp paint, tea leaves, and the sweet, clean soap on her wrists when she moved her hands.
I watched her from the corner of my eye as she sat on the edge of the mattress on the floor, straight-backed, removing one sandal and then the other with complete indifference to the fact that she was making herself at home. That was what irritated me most. She was not apologetic. She was not eager to please. She had not asked my permission to occupy the space. She had simply entered it and begun to edit it.
“You always this difficult?” I asked.
“Only when I’m right.”
I laughed once, short and unwilling. “That must save you time.”
“It does.”
A silence opened between us, not awkward exactly, but alert. In that silence I became aware of things I had not noticed before: the way the room held two temperatures now, one from the damp air and one from our bodies; the way my own bag looked more exposed than it had a minute ago; the fact that I was sitting on the bed’s edge instead of the chair, as if the room had subtly rearranged my habits without asking.
Outside, the rain softened further. The hard drumming at the window turned to a thinner, more delicate tapping, like fingers losing patience.
Sanjana closed her notebook and set it beside her. “You’re staring.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I was thinking.”
“That’s another kind of staring.”
I leaned back on my hands. “Do you always correct people this much?”
“Only when they’re inaccurate.”
“And am I inaccurate?”
She considered that with an infuriating calm. “You’re theatrical.”
“That’s not inaccurate.”
“It’s not complete.”
Something in the way she said it made me look at her properly then. Not the quick glance I had been giving her all evening, measuring, dismissing, revising. Properly. Her face was not delicate in the way girls in magazines were delicate. It was sharper, steadier, more difficult to flatter. The line of her mouth held itself with practice. Her hair, which had been tied back earlier, had loosened slightly at the temples from the rain, and that small disorder made her seem less armored than before.
I did not like noticing that.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”