# Chapter Fourteen: The Day She Named (Daylight)

Sneha: i woke up at 6.
Sneha: i have been lying here since 6 doing nothing and i am not going to tell u what i was doing
Sneha: come at 11. not noon. i cant wait until noon.
Sneha: dress code: whatever u dont mind me taking off u.
Sneha: dont shave. i like the rough part.
Sneha: vickey
Sneha: i am nervous. i have never been nervous before. this is ur fault.

Me: I'm leaving now.

Sneha: NO. 11.
Sneha: i need two hours. i have to do my hair and then undo my hair and then do it again.

Me: I'll be at your gate at 10:55.

Sneha: good boy 😌

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## The Door

Her building was the kind with a lift that smelled of phenyl and a staircase nobody used, and she'd told me flat 402 and told me not to ring the bell twice because the neighbour's dog lost its mind.

I stood outside her door at 10:54 with my hands in my pockets, and I could hear nothing. Then the latch turned.

She was in a thin black button-down shirt, tucked into a long grey skirt, hair loose and still faintly damp at the ends, no makeup except the mouth. Her cheeks were already pink. Lavender came off her the way heat comes off a road.

"You're early," she said.

"By one minute."

"One minute is the difference between a respectable woman and whatever I'm about to be." She stepped back and let me in. "Shoes off. Don't look at the kitchen, I didn't clean it."

I didn't look at the kitchen. I looked at her flat — small, tidy, one window with the curtain half-drawn, a sofa, a low table with two glasses on it and a jug of water and a bowl of something. Two glasses. She'd set the table for this like it was a dinner.

"Sit," she said.

"Where?"

"The sofa. That end." She pointed at the far end. "Sit down and put your hands on your knees and don't move them."

I sat. I put my hands on my knees.

She stood by the window for a moment with her back to me, and I watched her shoulders rise and fall twice. Then she turned around and looked at me across the room, and there was a version of her …