Three weeks passed under the permanent unlocked door.

The monsoon did not break; it only changed its rhythm, sometimes falling in long silver sheets, sometimes thinning to a fine mist that kept the balcony tiles permanently dark. Inside the apartment the collection had become the new ordinary. Rajesh no longer needed to be told the door stayed open. He left it that way when he went to the bank. He checked it when he returned. He directed the sessions that required direction. He chose the nights the new colleague was allowed to return. He renewed the continuous dark map on his wife’s breasts with his own mouth whenever the color began to lighten under the attention of the others. He still took her himself every morning with the short, intense rhythm that belonged to both marriage and debt, and he still asked, voice rough with the conflict that had become a permanent low current rather than a storm, whether she already needed more.