Don't Let Him Know by Sandip Roy

is. He needs milk.’
    Now Avinash wished he had never taken off that shirt. He watched Aziz leave the shop, the swivel door swinging behind him. Sultan was standing beside him now his body turned towards him as he cut his hair. His chest was at the level of his eyes. Avinash could see every strand of black silky hair pushing past the confines of Sultan’s vest. Avinash wondered what it would be like to touch them. Would he get hair on his chest too? His fingers itched to play with Sultan’s chest hair. Avinash edged his hands forward so that his fingers were almost touching Sultan’s leg.
    Sultan moved forward and Avinash’s clenched knuckles grazed his pants. Sultan made no attempt to move his leg away. His heart beating with some delectable fear, Avinash left his hand there. As Sultan leaned in to trim his hair his legs pressed against Avinash’s knuckles. Avinash found himself wondering if his legs were hairy too. He felt he was sweating. And then he felt cold. Sultan raised his arm to hold his head firmly and Avinash could see the dark half moon of the shadow of his sweat in his armpit.
    ‘Oh, you are very fidgety,’ Sultan said.
    Avinash looked up and he was smiling. His teeth had tobacco stains. Avinash smiled back. He was so very close to him. His hand pressed even more firmly against his trousers. Sultan smiled and his hands rested lightly on his shoulders. Very gently he started pressing Avinash’s shoulders, kneading the muscles through the cloth.
    Then Avinash felt him go behind him and his hands unknotted the white sheet. It drifted down his body and settled on his lap.
    ‘Look at all the hair on your chest,’ Sultan laughed. ‘It’s almost as hairy as mine.’
    He was rubbing him with a towel now brushing away the hair.
    ‘Oh, it’s not as hairy as yours,’ Avinash protested. ‘How old were you when you got hair on your chest?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe seventeen or eighteen. But I don’t have that much – you should see my father.’
    ‘Really? It looks like a lot to me.’
    ‘No – see,’ Sultan said tugging his vest down with his finger.
    ‘I can’t see,’ Avinash complained.
    He unbuttoned the other buttons and pulled down his vest further, exposing his chest. He was right – his hair grew like a dark soft feathery fan in the middle of his chest. More than anything else Avinash wanted to touch that hair. He wanted to trace it like a river on an India map and follow it down his belly and then he wanted his finger to burrow under his pants and trace it all the way down. All the way. Avinash shut his eyes terrified about where this was leading.
    ‘Touch it,’ said Sultan, his voice as silky as his hair, his tone teasing, almost a dare. Avinash kept his eyes shut but his fingers reached out of their own accord. As they traced the silky roughness of Sultan’s hair he felt the room grow stiflingly small, his own clothes uncomfortably tight. Sultan was no longer humming anything. Instead he moved closer to Avinash, his trousers rubbing up against his legs, at first casual and then insistently. Avinash realized his fingers were a hair’s breadth away from the buckle on Sultan’s belt. Avinash touched Sultan’s crotch and jerked back as if he had touched something scalding because he knew that if he pulled that zipper down there was no going back.
    Just then Sultan laughed and said, ‘There, you are all done.’ He opened his eyes and saw the sheet still around him. Sultan was holding a little mirror behind him so Avinash could look at the back of his head.
    ‘Is that all right?’ he asked.
    Avinash nodded for his mouth was too dry and his tongue too thick and twisted to trust with words. Sultan took a small towel and vigorously rubbed him. The roughness of the old towel seemed to set off sparks on his skin. Then, too soon, he stopped and handed him his shirt. Avinash’s fingers were all thumbs as he buttoned it.
    As Avinash paid him, Sultan said ‘Wait, you’ve buttoned the