Some days I like to imagine that I'm Rapunzel, although not as pretty, locked up in an ivory tower - just switch those ivories with bricks and that tower with a whorehouse while you're at it. The setting's far from fairytale-like now, is it? Anyway, I wonder for a moment why protagonists in every fairy tale are exceedingly... beautiful.
Pinching my mouth to one corner in a travesty of a pout, I ponder the asinine question for a while but break into a snort as I discover its asininity.
Asininity. The word sounds funny. I almost say it out loud for a chuckle. Slippery syllables strung together like a garland of hyperbolic promises.
"Radha, a costumer. Report to the lobby."
My brain screeches, almost makes me jump. Savita Di, our curator's shadow darts across the corridor to summon other nymphets of the brothel.
A sluggish minute later, a panoply of nymphets gather around in the lobby, flavors of flowers for our nectar-fancying honeybee to choose from. He looks rich - gentleman-like, Savita Di would say - middle-aged, probably no more than thirty-five, and ever so slightly scruffy beneath his suit and tie. His gaze travels from one deflowered blossom to another before his eyes balk on mine, a mere bud amid the blossoms.
His mouth twitches; for a moment, I feel like he is repulsed by the mere sight of me. He nods towards me wordlessly. And just like that everybody around me dissipates to their rooftop quarters in this ivory tower.
In silence, I make my way to my room. The client follows me wordlessly as I ascend the stairs and walk through the door. A slice of light peers through the gap in the curtains and onto the edge of my bed, reminding me it's close on sunset. Close on the end of another day of accursed living. As a custom, I sit down at the edge of my under-stuffed bed - the one that has seen too many dances, the one that knows too much about me, more than I'd like anyone or anything to.
I let my eyes slowly fall on the face of my guest this evening. I used to imagine in the early days of mine that I wasn't looking at a client but an endearing husband who after having toiled tirelessly abroad for many years has finally returned and is seeking the warm love of his wife for this one gloriously awaited night. It made what followed easier. But after not few of some horrendous incidents from not-so-empathetic clients, I have learned to harden my resolve and not resort to fanciful reveries. But this evening that feeling somehow returns and trembles like a burgeoning fire inside my breast. My client's lips are disturbed in what I can only deduce is a smile. After a plateau of drawn-out hesitation, I reciprocate his gesture. He steps closer to my bed bathing in the crowning rays of the sunset. It makes him gleam; washed up in gold, he looks stately. My imagination runs amok once again. I picture him as my knight in shining armor, the savior who will whisk me away from this life fraught by iteration of countless death. Only his steely eyes betray the spell.
He takes a step forward into the unenchanted static light filling the rest of the room. And the moment is gone. With a curt gesture, he ensconces himself beside me on the bed. I trail my gaze from his eyes, down his torso, his leg up to my thigh where his bent knee slightly touches me. Leeching my momentary lack of repose to feed his dignified tranquility.
He takes my hand into his delicately like it was a withered peepal leaf that he found between the pages of an old book. My eyes trace traces of old wounds on his hands. White remnants of slits and cuts that gradually climb up his arms like mehandi on a bride's hands. He relinquishes my hands in favor of my chin so my deadpan gaze will find him. His face is unblemished, unlike his arms. Like he has nothing to hide, unlike me. Running his fingers along the contours of my cheek so lightly that my skin finds it difficult to register his touch, he lets his lips curve ever so slightly upwards.
"You're beautiful." he says. I want him to say more; delineate to me a beautifully poignant description of my lashes, my lips, my face but he says nothing else. He has that spark in his eyes that he lacked earlier but the rest of his body is incapable of following suit.
Dusk has made the ambience grainy when we are done with our performance. The voyeuristic light is gone, like me, courteously dying its ritualistic death.
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