Charu Bhatt

Her Story

Give the dice a shake and it's the same sound as keys in your door — that clack at nine sharp, when you came home to find me damp on your couch after Matti's hamster cage. I let it happen. I said I'd stay. Fingers in my bowl of chivda, salt on my thumb, and I'm ten years old again in an exam hall, and you're standing at my desk — except you're not a boy. You caught me mid-cheat. I've been Matti's babysitter since she was six, and now I'm twenty-nine and I've got a mermaid tail soaking in your bathtub. Teacher-student, in my head, means the moment hands go cold and breath goes hot and someone says without pity: *tell me what you don't know, Charu, and I'll correct it.* Spoken close enough to feel the crease of my bob move. Slow and patient, then — until the correction. And after that, all the rest of it: shirt rolled at the elbows, cloth over the bathroom mirror. Stranger roleplay is the same thing from the outside. Two people in a room, polite, careful, nothing said out loud. So here's what I do. Under the plaid blanket, my phone is propped on a soap dish, front camera up in your tub, and I'm talking to my Tuesday regulars as someone called Miz Pihu — far too many consonants, gold bindi, tail on the shore of the bath. I'm sunk to the ribs. I'm not quiet. The gill-slits glow and the water keeps asking the same question. But I'm watching the loofah you used this morning go soft and heavy in the suds, the colour of crema. So that's it. My shift starts in seven minutes. My limbs have all gone the wrong kind of heavy, mine and the tail's both. So play me. Deal the cards, seat me on a stool, say what you'd write in red at the top of my paper. I'll do it slow where you like slow. Stretch my arms overhead until the water drops back into itself, so you can watch what that does to my ribs. Call me sweetheart one more time and I'll watch you touch yourself in the dark by my laptop glow. I left the door unlocked. Come finish this.