“What kind of sex things?”
Ranjana set her cup aside, too. “Doesn’t matter. The point is—”
“Pussy licking? Anal?”
Ranjana almost vomited up her yogurt.
“Well, which is it?”
“Seema, you go too far.”
“You go too far. That’s what you always say. Now Mohan is going far into someone else.”
Ranjana started to get up.
“Ji, sit down. I’m sorry. Just because he looked those things up doesn’t mean that he’s sleeping with someone.”
“Seema. Come on. If you’re going to be blunt, at least be honest with me.”
“Well, true. Unless he’s tried those techniques on you…”
“Seema.”
“Fine, fine. The point is, you need to find out who this woman is and—wait. Do we know that it’s a woman?”
“Seema!”
“He did love Dostana. Didn’t he buy it on DVD?”
“Mohan is not gay.”
“Maybe he’s into Haritji!”
Ranjana started laughing in spite of herself. Seema was a certified lunatic, but at least she was entertaining.
“What am I going to do?”
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do: you’re going to buy lingerie.”
“Ji.”
“Let’s go.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I am totally serious.”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve bought lingerie before,” Ranjana said. “Please don’t tell me you have a ‘place’ where you buy lingerie.”
“I have, and I do. Let’s go.”
Seema pulled Ranjana into a store called Le Grand Finale. Lace glared at them from every angle; there were so many blond mannequins that it looked like a Hooters. Ranjana and Seema were the only ones in the store besides the saleswoman, who was wearing a suit but had her cleavage, lace-cupped, hanging out of the V of her jacket. “Can I help you?”
“We’re looking for a negligee for her. Something that will match her skin tone.”
The woman moved silently to a florid red number that had so many intricate bows and ruffles that it looked like three negligees sewn together. “This is the Parisian Fire.”
“I have the same in orange,” Seema said, as plainly as if they were picking out a cardigan.
“I can’t do this,” Ranjana said. She disagreed with this sentence as she said it. She could do this—indeed, she wanted to do this—but the store, the possibility of what Seema may tell their friends, the worry that Ranjana might look absolutely insane trying to pull this off installed indecision in her voice.
A switch flicked in the saleswoman, and her face glowed synthetically. “Of course you can, dear! We all have a vixen in us waiting to get out.”
Even Seema cringed at this statement. “She doesn’t want to be a vixen,” Seema said. “She wants to be sexual.”
The woman’s face fell, the switch flicking off. “Honestly, that’s a line that my manager wants me to use on people. I’d never say that in real life, I promise.” She was probably in her midtwenties. Along the curves of her ears, a series of piercings looked like additional confidantes watching this interaction. “You just need to find something that makes you comfortable.”
Seema clicked her tongue. “Don’t tell her that. She’ll end up picking a pair of sweatpants.”
“Arré,” Ranjana said, turning to Seema and clicking her tongue, too. “No need to be rude—to me or to her. She’s just trying to help.”
“Of course I am,” the woman said. She looked at Seema. “I appreciate you bringing your friend here and getting her to try something new. Let’s see if we can find her something good.”
They went through negligee after negligee—billowy silks and busy teddies, wrought bodices and garters that dangled seductively. There were pink ribbons and red buttons, black ropes and white frills. The garments all looked downright elegant on the mannequins, but when Ranjana imagined them on her own body, she wanted to rip them into tatters and go have another cup of frozen yogurt. How could she wrap these soft pieces over the striated dough of her thighs, the jiggly wideness of her breasts? How could she even entertain the sharp diagonals of these panty lines when she hadn’t trimmed for years? Worse yet, what was she to make of the quivering rope of flesh at her waist, which would have caused the silk to strain and fray like some alien baby trying to escape from her womb? Negligee was not the right word for these things; they weren’t for the negligent but for the willfully fit.
The phone rang, and the saleswoman went to answer it. Ranjana turned to Seema.
“I’m going to say something to you, Seema, and I want a helpful answer, not sarcasm.”
Seema was already formulating a giggle, but Ranjana gave her a grave look.
“I’m being serious, ji.”
“All right, all right. You’re the one who’s always sarcastic,” Seema said.
Ranjana decided to ignore this comment. She was too preoccupied with the shambles of her body to parse out who was more sarcastic between the two of them. (It was Seema by a long shot.)
“I would feel like a fool wearing any of these things,” Ranjana said. “I’m not fishing for compliments, but I do not have the body for any of this.”
“That may be true, but here’s what you do—”
Seema continued, giving some kind of pep talk, but Ranjana was already seizing upon these initial words—That may be true, but—and how unsupportive they were. Whether it was a lack of empathy or just general nonchalance that motivated Seema, she wasn’t a very good friend. She should have had the tact to treat this situation with the proper understanding, but she took Ranjana’s homeliness as a fact instead of trying to show Ranjana what could be beautiful about herself, what might actually cause Mohan to see her as someone worthy of being desired. Seema was picking up a cream-colored pile of silk that looked like a bakery cake, then holding it against her torso. Ranjana picked up a boxy but night-silken number and headed to the register, leaving Seema midsentence.
“Great choice. I have the same one,” the saleswoman said. She pulled back the frills at each of her cuffs, the navy tips of tattoos poking out, and she set to wrapping the garment in crispy papers in shades of black and pink.
As Ranjana thought of what it would take to have someone carve images into your flesh, she wanted to match this woman’s resolve with her own determination. Everything that she had experienced in the past few months—Prashant’s absence, whatever was going on with Mohan, Achyut’s proximity and his slinking-away, the harangues of her writing group and Harit’s devastating existence and Teddy’s nosiness and now the revelation, right here in this store, that her friendship with Seema was once again a flimsy thing—it had all seeped into her and forced itself into her bones. She could choose to be in control of her reactions and her decisions. She could create a sense of self as a writer and a wife and a woman to be desired. She could be what she wanted to be in this thin slip of sinuous stitches and threads. Just watch.