The Lilac House by Anita Nair Page A

days into their relationship and pulled down the careful coiffure. ‘I hate it,’ he said, running his fingers through her hair. ‘As for this,’ he continued, dropping the chopstick she used to hold her hair in place into her hands, ‘it belongs in a Chinese restaurant!’
    Vinnie smiled and popped it into her bag. Other women wore brooches and rings; Vinnie had her chopsticks. A whole tray of them to match her clothes and hold her knot in place. In jade, bone, horn, porcelain, wood, and even a couple of plastic ones. Needles to pierce the heart of all her surreptitious wayward longings and keep them coiled and in place.
    ‘Wanton, wanton,’ Arun murmured as he played with her, her nerve ends, her restraint.
    ‘Now this is you,’ he said, coiling a strand around a finger. And
Vinnie couldn’t speak a word. For the mere sight of him, her lover, opened a ravenous greed in her. His long musician’s fingers sang on her skin, his mouth feeding tickling licking sucking cupping, how could a pair of lips and tongue know so much, the smoothness, oh the smoothness of his skin, the ridges of muscle on his back, the mat of hair on his chest grazing her breasts, the back of her thighs, her nipples, her pubis, his to do as he pleased. And she could give as good as she got, reaching for his cock, the arc of his balls, hers, hers, hers, to do with as she pleased, her back arching in the pleasure that began at the curl of her toes, riding up through sinew and muscle into the cells of her brain – a thought: I could go on and on. As the thought turned back to her toes, enough, enough, enough, she thought as she collapsed in a heap of satiation, spent fluids and a deep deep sense of regret that it had to be like this. Frantic afternoon groping and fucking, noises escaping his mouth and hers but no words of love or forever. All of it a slaking of lust and loneliness. It was what he and every fortune cookie knew but her husband didn’t: a woman needs to be loved, not understood.
     
    Vinnie clutched her purse tight. In that older man, mature voice of his when he asked for the money – ‘Only a loan, you understand, I’ll return it as soon as my transfer comes through’ – she saw the deep clavicle that crested his mouth. And she thought of how he had picked from the floor her blouse which she had tossed away carelessly in her hurry to be in his arms and how he had ironed it carefully. Smoothening each wrinkle and crease with a housewifely hand so that when she put it on, she was Vinnie again. The hard, indestructible Vinnie only he could crumble with a tiny nip on her earlobe. She knew he enjoyed this power he had over her. And a tenderness welled up in her.
    Did she love him? She didn’t know. But she needed him and was petrified of losing him.
    And yet, to give him the money would be changing the trajectory of ‘this thing, whatever it is’ as he called their relationship.

    Would it bind him to her? Or, would it just make her his money-dispensing machine each time he fell short? An edge of a wheedle in that deep baritone voice, a hint of helplessness in those eyes. Would he think that was all it took to send Vinnie rushing to the nearest ATM?
    Vinnie didn’t know. She couldn’t decide what was right, what was wrong.
     
    She pushes her wandering thoughts away as she leads the woman towards another café a little further away. One of the coffee shop attendants saunters to their table. ‘Two filter coffees, please,’ Vinnie says.
    ‘We don’t have south Indian coffee.’
    ‘I don’t believe this.’ Vinnie’s mouth curls. ‘Here we are in Bangalore, south India and you have, what is that?’ she peers. ‘Colombian, Brazilian, Kenyan … and no good old south Indian filter coffee. Bring us two espressos and two glasses of ice water.’
    The woman is dabbing at her cheeks with a tissue. ‘I am sorry to have imposed,’ she says, a watery smile creasing her face.
    ‘Don’t. I am Vinnie. I am sure whatever is