Ishq Factors

by Suleikha Snyder

  His palms are flat against the door. His heart thuds when she puts her ear to his chest. Beating for her. Blood pounding the sand as the tide rolls in.

  A strangled sigh escapes his lips. Almost her name again. She wonders how many times he’s said it in the time they’ve been apart. Never? Or just enough? She’s traced his on every check. Memorized the hurried sweeps of his signature. Imagined him wielding the pen. His hands always undid her.

  Now it’s her turn.

  She works the buttons of his shirt, spreads the halves to reveal the equally white t-shirt beneath. It’s tight across his chest, hugging muscles where once there was only the potential for such strength. He’s grown harder everywhere she’s grown soft. Maybe he had to. Just like she had to shed her armor to flourish, to fly.

  She whips his belt through the loops and casts it aside. The zipper of his fly is a stubborn resistance against the swell of his cock. This, too, is harder. Though surely he was hard from the moment their gazes met across the room. Just like she was wet. She watched him walk up the aisle and, just for a second, allowed herself to imagine that it was to her. She listened to him practice the words “I do” and, just for an instant, wished it were to her.

  Their fantasies never did come cheap.

  But now, here, for a handful of hours, they’re free.

  He tastes like the champagne of too many toasts. The best man’s. The bride’s cousin’s. Even hers. She stood up on unsteady feet, fingers clenched around the base of the flute, as she shared her first memories of Kaitlin, spoke of how they grew up together. She grew up with him, too, of course.

  Christopher Alan Fenway, Jr. The boy everyone wanted, and only she got to have.

  She remembers the first time she took him out of his pants like it was yesterday. The first time they made love. Crushingly terrible and wonderful all at once. Maybe this will fall somewhere in between. Maybe it won’t fall it all. But he bucks up against her fingers, curses “Jesus!” into her mouth and bites back anything more. Quiet still. Hushed. No promises, no endearments, nothing but his tongue and her touch.

  They are not children now. They both know what they’re doing. Eyes wide open even as they shut. And she takes his hands and puts them on her hips, urging him to shove up the skirt of her bright, tangerine-orange dress. Vulgar for a sedate Christian wedding. But, then, she was always a little vulgar, wasn’t she? Always on the outside looking in. Now, she’s looked her fill. Now she gets to take.

  Her dress comes up and off. She slides down. Bare torso to bare torso, taking her time with the slow, sensual rub of their skin. His stomach is hard, hewn, and there are traces of silver threaded throughout the springy hairs at his groin. Conventional wisdom says that shouldn’t turn her on, but she’s never been conventional or wise. He’s aged. So has she. And it’s all the sweeter — no, the saltier — as she wraps her fingers around the length of his cock and puts her mouth to him.

  “Yours is the first I’ve ever touched. The first I’ve ever tasted.”

  “I know…Jesus, Piya…just don’t use your teeth…”

  This time she does. A gentle scrape along the tip. Enough to make him gasp, and knock his head back against the door. She kisses and licks and nips until the decades fall away and it’s just the two of them and his orgasm. His hoarse shouts echo in the nearly silent room. She swallows every sound, every drop.

  And then she lets him taste himself on her lips. He touches her without her urging, without her orders, strong hands threading through her hair and cradling the back of her head as they practically devour each other. They taught each other how to do this. How to angle their mouths. How to tangle tongues. How not to knock noses and clash teeth. And now they are old pros.

  She leads him away from the door, walking backward toward the suite’s single, absurdly large, bed. When she saw it after checking in, she thought it was too much. Now it is not enough. She wants to fuck him across continents.

  He strips off his shirts and steps out of his pants, leaning in to kiss her in tiny little apologies for the delay. She hooks her thumbs around the waistband of her panties and slides them down. He makes short work of her matching bra. Her breasts are fuller now, bigger thanks to childbirth and years and gravity. But his low groan tells her that he has no complaints about the disparity between memory and reality. He rubs his cheek against her nipples. His stubble, too. And she curses and clutches his head to her as he licks and bites. Paying her back for her blowjob with equal, if not greater, enthusiasm.

  He’s flipped the script on her with barely a word.

  It’s not the first time he’s done so. She’s not sure if it will be the last.

  So, she pulls away from the delicious friction, denies the shivers of pleasure spiraling out through her body, and chides him with a shake of her head. No. This is my show.

  He laughs and lets her knock him to the mattress. And she stares at him again. Looks not nearly her fill. Stripped bare, he’s everything. Stripped bare, he’s hers. She comes down over him, straddling his hips. He’s fully erect, cock so taut it’s practically bouncing against his stomach. She’s so damp for him and so choked and so keyed up that it borders on pain. They’re both more than ready. There’s a question in his eyes when she brushes her clit against the head of his cock. A question he always forgot to ask when they were stupid kids. And she answers him with another shake of her head. There’s nothing to worry about. The only thing that isn’t safe about this is what happens tomorrow. Besides, she wants to feel him, feel all of him, and she refuses to second-guess it, to regret it, tonight of all nights.

  She takes him inch by inch. Agonizingly slow and exquisite. Her breath is harsh in her ears. His heartbeat slams against the palms she steadies on his chest. He spreads her wide, spears her, and the slide of his length against her folds, against her clit, is just as gorgeous as the penetration. They fit. Not that she had any doubt. But, still, she cries out when he bottoms out inside her. And then they’re both lost in a chorus of guttural sounds, in the frenzied motion of their hips slapping together. She control the pace, riding him hard, harder than she’s used to. She’ll be uncomfortable while sitting near him at the head table in 24 hours, but right now it’s good. Right now it’s better. His fingertips dig into her thighs, her shoulders. He can’t stop gripping her, hanging on for dear life as they both moan and pant into wet, sloppy kisses.

  It’s both too slow and too fast. It goes on forever and then not long enough. He says “fuck” and she says “more” and he slams home one last time, rolling her beneath him as he sinks so deep she’ll feel it far beyond tomorrow.

  This is need. This is want. This was inevitable.

  Like him coming. Like her following. It’s not clean. It’s not neat. It’s not quiet. It’s the crash of the tide on the surf. Wet and all-consuming. Nature at its most wild, most free. Them at their most wild, most free.

  “I love you. Don’t ever leave me.”

  “Chris, I can’t. I have to go.”

  “You don’t. Marry me. Marry me, and we’ll make this work.”

  Afterward, as the sweat cools on their bodies and their heads meet on the pillows, she lets the real words loose. Finally. The acknowledgment of what brought them here to this night and this eventuality. The emails she never sent. The voicemails she dared not answer. The wedding she helped plan. Kaitlin will be a radiant bride, stunning on his arm. Eyes shining with promises of the life to come.

  She takes a breath. She lets it go. “Our baby girl’s getting married tomorrow. Tomorrow. How is that possible?”

  “Because you got her this far.” Chris missed her first steps, but he won’t miss her next ones. And he can’t keep the smile off his face. Or the wonder out of his voice. “Because we made her together. God, Piya. We made her.”

  “No. I can’t take credit for who she is. She made herself.” Their daughter is nineteen. Smarter, more certain, than they ever were at that age and definitely more cognizant than they were at sixteen. She knew what she w
anted and went after it — after him, the man she’ll make her vows to in the church at 2 p.m. A summer boy who stayed forever. “Will you ask me to dance at the reception?”

  “You know I will.” He strokes her cheek with the backs of his fingers. There is so much love in his eyes that it should hurt…but, instead, it heals. “All you’ve ever had to do is say ‘yes.’”

  It was never as simple as that. Not really. But she gives an inch. She tells him “maybe.” She gives him hope.

  Quake

  It is the third night. Even small children know that the stars and the earth are not ever meant to meet, and yet Bhoomi waits. She knows the knock will come. That her map of stars, her unwavering constellation, will come to her again.

  Tara is the strong one. The bold one. Even death cannot stop her.

  But, still, surprise ripples through Bhoomi like a current when the shutters bang with the sound. As though the rains have driven the aging wood against the bars, and the wind has fired a pistol, its bullet whistling through the dark. She jerks free from the tangle of her sheets and the mosquito netting. But once her feet touch the cool stone floor, they grow roots and she can’t seem to move.

  “Bhoomi…” Her name is a moan, a plea. A whisper. Like those exchanged, in haste and in heat, on so many other nights. “Bhoomi, Bhoomi, Bhoomi.”

  In the end, she goes to the window. Of course she goes to the window, unsteadily unhooking the latch and pulling back the faded blue doors. Instantly, the smell of the river envelops her. The smell of Tara. Wet and green and other.

  Tara’s brothers claimed that she fell. The newspapers called it a “tragic accident,” bemoaning a young MA student dying just days before her wedding. The local police didn’t dare drag the holy waters, and the elder priests mourned not being able to burn her body and set loose her soul. Bhoomi is both desperately afraid and desperately thankful of how whole that body is.

  Tara is bleached white, like bone. Paler than all the Fair & Lovely ads could ever dream of turning a woman. Only her eyes and her hair are still dark. Bhoomi always loved her hair. The way it trailed across her skin, wound around her fingers as she tugged and begged, “Aaro. Please.” It’s damp now. As are Tara’s eyes. Full of tears that never fall.

  There are names for what she is. Petni. Daini. Bhoot. Ghost. Zombie. Be they Bangla or English, Bhoomi knows them all. Her grandmother was full of tales of creatures that will come for your soul, tear you limb from limb and thirst on your marrow. “They’ll pull you into the river with them,” she would warn. “They will hang you from the trees.”

  Tara clutches the wrought-iron bars that separate them. Her pearl-gray lips only form a handful of words, but each one is precious. Each one is terrible. “Please.” And “I’m sorry.” And “Aasho.” Come.

  Bhoomi came a thousand times under her hands and her mouth. “Bhoomikompo,” Tara would tease as she shook into pieces. “My earthquake.”

  Earthquakes devastate. That is what they both forgot.

  Three nights now, Tara has knocked. Twice before, Bhoomi turned her away.

  For fear of whom? For what purpose? For the past three years, her doors and windows were wide open to Tara’s youth and her joy and her life. Bhoomi is beyond judgment now. Her almari is full of white saris that she never wears within the confines of these walls. A faded garland of marigolds hangs round the picture of a husband she does not grieve. She smokes cigarettes and writes leftist essays and worships only goddesses, not the parade of gods.

  There are names for what she is, too.

  It takes only minutes to go to the door and throw back the locks. Her house is small, modest. Hush money from the family who no longer wanted her once their son was ash on the wind. One hundred years ago they would’ve cast her into the flames to join him. Now, lifelong widowhood is her lot…and her blessing.

  “Aasho,” she says, pulling Tara over the threshold by one cool, clammy wrist.

  Water pools on the floor, leaving puddles in the wake of each of her steps. Her yellow sari is nearly orange from the weight of the damp, clinging to her slender form like a second skin. Underneath the scent of the river and the decaying algae, there is still the sharp tang of the turmeric the women of her household vigorously rubbed into her skin. To make her beautiful for the awkward engineer from Kharagpur she barely knew. To bless her and cleanse her for the ceremonies ahead. But Tara has been cleansed in a different way now. Scrubbed of humanity. Of society’s chains.

  Bhoomi stokes the fire in the hearth high enough to raise steam from Tara’s cold flesh and pulls pillows to the floor for their bed. They huddle close, like two gossiping old women, and Bhoomi wonders if she, too, could drown. Tara’s pupil-less eyes are endless and deep.

  If words have begun to fail her, surely memory has, too. So Bhoomi reminds her. How they met in a cinema hall during a Satyajit Ray retrospective. How they went to a phuchka stall afterward and downed countless crunchy pastries until tamarind water ran down their chins in rivulets. They laughed and laughed and laughed. And met for tea twice a week until Tara finally bent her head close and whispered, “I want to lick tamarind water from your skin.” Then, and only then, did they come back to Bhoomi’s modest house and her thoroughly immodest bed. And there they stayed for years.

  “You would come here after classes, claiming lectures or extra tuition, and linger late into the evening. Is that why you found your way back? Will you always find your way back to me?”

  Tara does not answer. Not with words. Just a soft, encouraging noise and a gentle brush of her mouth against the curve of Bhoomi’s neck. She does not draw blood. She could never draw blood. But she licks as though they’ve indulged in a dozen phuchka a piece, and the bittersweet sauce has run down the wide collar of Bhoomi’s maxi nightdress.

  Her mouth is wet, her skin still as cold and unforgiving as death, but to Bhoomi she feels like everything familiar. “Remember when we went to the Victoria Memorial, like all the lovers do? We held hands like sisters, but you wrote dirty poems on my palms.”

  She talks until her voice is raw and cool fingers still her lips and quell the stories. The poems Tara writes for her now are simple. Sharp, emphatic strokes that rhyme need with want and love with forever. Her nightdress slips from her shoulders. Tara’s sari unwinds in sodden loops of silk. They embrace in the firelight like nothing and no one can tear them apart. Tara shines brightly. Bhoomi’s plates shift and crash and re-align. And she tastes the river between her beloved’s thighs.

  They’ll pull you in with them. They’ll hang you from the trees.

  Her grandmother’s warnings are faint murmurs only — superstitions to scare unhappy women in terrible marriages so that they won’t follow the ghosts to freedom, so they’ll twist their own eternal curse and call it fidelity and faith. Bhoomi stopped believing in silly Bengali legends a long time ago…in all of them save one.

  And she clings tight to it, until dawn begins to break across the sky outside and the hearth sputters with the last flicks of flame. It is only then that she lets it slip loose. “Na,” Tara whispers, strident even in her goodbyes. “No. Won’t go.”

  “You have to. The men will come with the water and then old Mashi will bring the fish and eggs I am not supposed to eat. What happens if they find you here?”

  The moan of denial, of longing, makes Bhoomi catch her breath. But there is understanding in her fathomless eyes. Tara does not resist her blouse being refastened or her petticoat being retied. She lifts her paper-pale arms and turns in obliging circles as Bhoomi wraps the brightly colored sari that never really dried. It’s a shroud now. Bhoomi knows that. Just as she knows that the woman she loved is a dead thing, a shell and a shadow of the laughing girl from the cinema hall.

  But the knowledge makes no difference at all.

  She walks Tara to the threshold as she has so many times before, squeezing her hand and kissing her cheek. This time it is all new. A farewell that means so much more. She offers her own firm, “Na,” when her beautiful
petni, her daini, her bhoot, her ghost and her zombie begs her to come with her. “Tumi aasho,” she says in response to the broken throated plea. You come.

  Because there is no reason for her to go. She is not unhappy, and she is already free. She has made a home, and it is not in the murk and mire and mysticism of the Ganges River. If she were to follow Tara into its depths, she would simply sink, not surface in a tangle of white limbs and dripping dark hair.

  “You come,” she repeats, before bolting the door against so many different temptations. “You can always come.”

  When the sun rises over the slowly waking neighborhood and spreads across the water gently lapping at the shore, Bhoomi is again alone. She lights the gas for a pot of tea, gives the dour black-and-white photo of the stranger she once wed a wide berth and sits down to pen a blistering screed about the local treatment of marginalized women…that is to say all women, in Bengal and beyond.

  On the fourth night, Tara knocks. And the fifth. And the sixth. And so on.

  Children are taught wrong, Bhoomi thinks. There is a place where the earth and the stars collide. It’s called the horizon.

  And there they stay for years.

  Matinee

  The theater was dark, the rows and rows beneath the air-conditioned dress circle layering outwards like the flounces of a child’s frock. She was too old for those kinds of dresses now—too old to let her knees show, in case they inspired one of the men who loitered by the para tea shops to lustful frenzy. No, Shammoli was chastely covered from neck to ankle in a salwar kameez, the light cotton practically shrink-wrapped to her skin in the thick Calcutta heat. She had dozens of them, gifts from aunts and uncles she barely knew, in shades of blue and green and in orange-red combinations that she wouldn’t be caught dead wearing back home in the States.

  Somehow, without a single inch of skin showing except her sun-reddened, sweat-drenched face, she’d inspired Azad. Azad, so lean and tall and handsome…with striking hazel eyes that had stopped her in her tracks. She’d been in India all of a week when he trailed her and her cousins through the bajaar—all because their gazes had locked and lingered for a moment too long. In Bloomington, that was nothing. Totally not even flirting. In Calcutta, it was as blatant as a lewd pick up line, like putting her hand along the proud line of his jaw and whispering, “Follow me,” against his sexy mouth.