Berth 6

The train left Delhi at six-twenty. By nine, most of the compartment was dark. Aryan was in berth 6, the lower one on the left, reading with a small torch. Berth 5, directly across, contained a woman who had been reading as well for the past two hours — he'd been peripherally aware of her: dark hair, the kind of face that was interesting rather than simply pretty, an absolute unselfconsciousness about the way she occupied her space. She'd folded her legs under her and propped her book against her knee. She was wearing a loose kurta and earrings, which struck him as an interesting choice for a twenty-hour train journey. He'd caught her eye twice. Both times she'd looked back without the reflexive glance-away that most people did with strangers. Around ten, she closed her book. "What are you reading?" she asked. He told her. She'd read it. They talked for an hour in low voices, the train moving through the dark plains of Rajasthan, the compartment quiet around them. Her name was Zara. She was going to Goa for a week alone, which she said with a quality of satisfaction, and he said he was doing the same, which was true. She had a directness to her that was unusual and attractive — she said what she meant, asked what she wanted to know, watched him with an unsettling, interested attention. "This is going to sound forward," Zara said, around eleven. "Tell me." "I was going to suggest we just sleep, but I don't particularly want to." Aryan looked at her across the narrow space between the berths. "Neither do I," he said. By midnight, with the curtain drawn around berth 5 and the train's movement making its steady rhythm through the darkness, they were pressed together in the narrow space of her berth with their voices kept low and their hands moving with the particular careful boldness of people who will not see each other after this. He learned her through touch and breath and sound — the places that made her gasp, the way she moved against him, the warm weight of her thigh over his. She was uninhibited and self-aware in equal measure, clearly comfortable with her own desires, telling him what felt good in a low direct voice that he found electric. He gave her everything he had — his hands, his mouth, slow and then urgent, until she was shaking and gripping his arm and coming apart in the narrow train berth with her face in his neck to stay quiet. They lay close together after, the train moving through the hot dark heart of the country, her back against his chest. Anonymous, unheld by history or expectation. Just two people in the night. "I don't usually do this," she said, not as apology but as information. "Neither do I," he said. She turned in the small space and looked at him. "Good," she said. And kissed him again.