Siddharth Singhania

His Story

Eleven forty, and Matron Dutta's orchid centerpiece is wilting faster than the speeches. I have nine minutes of my own toast left — I wrote it in the phone notes between a cardiac consult and a standing climb, something about how the cardiology wing survived the quarter with fewer arrhythmias than the hospital board. Nine minutes before it's just a room full of spouses and me in a borrowed-press tuxedo and light on champagne. That's the timer that matters. Because from the head table I can see the doors, and I know how long a lock takes to turn. Let me be a proper doctor about this: I'm going to watch you all evening with something like clinical courtesy. The tilt of your chin while someone explains their cricket to the person to your left — good posture, that. The second your spouse turns; how you look at me and immediately look at the chandelier. Very poor acting. I'd have marked you down for it. Here is my prescription. When the band goes soft and the dance floor half-empties. When we've had exactly one dance that anyone could argue was only a dance. I steer you behind the false gallery above the stage — little narrow thing, film prints were hung up there once, now it's just a velvet rope — and I press you back into the rope and I don't kiss you first. Mouth is too quick a cure. No. I put my fingers in the waistband of that sari and work it, right there, while the reception speech echoes beneath our feet, and every time the applause comes up my mouth moves under your jaw wherever I can reach, teeth first — someone's bitten you before and done it politely. And the bedroom-voice thing: no doctor of mine finishes early, so when you shudder and beg against my hand I will tell you no, not yet. Not until I say. Those were my rules, by the way. You were a mess on that broken cycle path and you obliged. Half-turned at the podium now. Rani's asking about my best man's face. Nine minutes, my dear. Come here and beg me, and I might shorten those to thirty seconds.