“And yet you keep answering.”
“Because you are my friend.”
That word landed like a hand on a bruise. Friend. As if I had not spent years pretending to be above needing anybody. As if I had not loved her in the only way I knew how: by mocking her, protecting her when I could, and resenting the parts of her that reflected my own failures back at me.
Outside, a generator kicked in somewhere, and the corridor lights flickered once before stabilizing. The building exhaled. Power cut, restored, cut, restored. Delhi’s daily theology.
“I am not asking for permission,” I said.
“I know.”
“I am just telling you.”
“I know that too.”
For a moment neither of us spoke. Then she said, “Meet me tomorrow.”
I laughed softly. “For what? An intervention?”
“For tea,” she said. “And because I do not trust this.”
“You never trust anything.”
“No,” she said. “Only your taste in men.”
That almost made me smile for real. Almost.
After I hung up, I stood there longer than necessary, listening to the building settle around me. Someone in the room next door was arguing on speakerphone about money. Someone else was washing utensils with the sharp violence of resentment. A child cried and was hushed. The world kept its ugly, ordinary rhythm. It was strange how a life could be ending or beginning and the neighbors still cared only about rent and gas cylinders.
I took a long breath and opened my email.
I had already moved most of my important papers into a folder under a false name, because being dramatic was one thing and being stupid was another. The copies of my contract, old campaign releases, booking slips, bank transfers, screenshots of messages from men who had been too confident to imagine consequences — all of it sat in a cloud account Arnav had told me to use. He had not been sentimental about it. That was why I trusted him more than most people. He had the sober face of a man who had seen enough rot to stop being impressed by perfume.
He had met me three days earlier in a café near Hauz Khas, the kind with exposed brick and fake plants and prices that insulted the poor while pretending to admire them. He wore a plain shirt and the expression of someone permanently late to a funeral. He had slid into the chair opposite me and said, without greeting, “He has done this before.”
I had stirred my coffee though it did not need stirring. “You are telling me this like I am new.”
“I am telling you because he has documents. Some of them are ugly.”
“So am I.”
He had looked at me then, not with lust, which was unusual and therefore suspicious, but with the mild irritation of a man trying to stop a train from entering a tunnel. “You are better than your arrangement.”
That had made me laugh. “You say the funniest things.”
“I am serious.”
“Everyone serious men say that.”
He had not smiled. “If you leave, do it with proof.”
“I did not ask for advice.”
“I know. You asked for the meeting. That is how women like you ask for advice.”
I had leaned back and studied him. He was not handsome in any profitable way. The jaw was too earnest, the eyes too tired, the hands too clean. But he had that rare quality that makes dangerous people uncomfortable: he believed he might still be useful. Men like Khanna hated that in other men.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Truth, if possible. A story, if not.”
“There is always a story.”
“Yes,” he said. “But not always one the powerful expect to survive.”
I had laughed then too, because one does not survive Delhi without a sense of theater. But now, standing in Khanna’s bathroom with the mirror throwing my own face back at me, I thought of Arnav’s neat, unromantic caution. He had been right to sound tired. The city was full of men who mistook ownership for intimacy and women who mistook endurance for destiny.
I packed a small bag anyway. Not because I trusted the plan completely, but because action had become a habit stronger than prayer. Two dresses, one pair of jeans, my documents, charger, lipstick, a cheap watch, the blue shawl Sanjana had once lent me during a monsoon walk and never asked back. I folded it carefully and shoved it into the bag. Tiny sentimental objects were embarrassing, which was precisely why they mattered.
By the time I came out of the bathroom, Khanna was calling again.
I let it ring.
Then again.
Then again.
On the fourth call I answered, because I was brave in the stupid way that only the cornered can be.
“Where are you?” he asked immediately.
His voice was soft. That was always the worst sign. Men like him did not shout until they had exhausted the quieter methods of ownership.
“In the apartment.”
“Come downstairs.”
“I am tired.”
“I did not ask.”
I stared at the wall, at the framed print of a London street he had bought because he liked the idea of old money even when he could not pronounce half the names correctly. “I am not feeling well.”
“That is not my problem.”
“No,” I said. “It usually is.”
He laughed, but the sound had no humor in it. “Do not get clever with me tonight.”
“I am always clever.”
“Do not confuse that with safety.”
There was a small click on the line, as if he had turned away from the phone. I could hear music in the background, some old song with strings and regret. His parties were always more expensive than happy. The women at them wore diamonds borrowed from men who thought discretion was a form of virtue. I had learned that the rich were not happier than the poor; they were only better lit.
“Arnav has been asking questions,” I said.
He was quiet for a moment. “Who?”
“Do not insult me.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I thought you should know.”
Another silence, and this one had the weight of calculation in it. I could almost hear him rearranging his face into concern.
“You are making a mistake,” he said at last.
“I know.”
“No, you do not.”
I put the phone on speaker and set it on the bed while I pulled on my shoes. “I know enough.”
“You do not leave people like me by surprise.”
“People like you should have been less surprised by me in the beginning.”
That got him. I heard the little change in his breathing, the microscopic hardening in the line between his silence and his temper.
“You have forgotten who paid for what,” he said.
There it was. The ugly arithmetic under all male generosity.
I slipped the strap of my bag over one shoulder. “You paid for access. I provided entertainment. Do not make it sentimental now.”
“I gave you more than that.”
“You gave me a room, some clothes, and the delusion that you were generous.”
“You are very brave from a distance.”