Chapter 13 — Going Back In

November 10th. 2:30 AM.Poorvi had wanted to come.Tanvi had said no, and the no had been the first entirely Tanvi thing she had said in days — not the default response, not the managed response, but the sharp particular Tanvi who had an opinion and was not going to be argued out of it. The specific firmness of a woman who had been losing pieces of herself and had recognized, in the arguing, a piece returning."You can't be there," she said. "It will start learning you if you're in the room. Stay with Mrs. Rane. In the corridor. Outside the door."Poorvi had made the face she made when she disagreed but accepted a decision."Five minutes," she said. "Same deal as last time. Five minutes and I come in.""Longer than five," Tanvi said. "If it works it might take longer. Give me twenty. If you haven't heard from me in twenty, then come."She took the hand mirror from Mrs. Rane — a small oval thing, silver-backed, old but functional.She took the key from her bag. She had still had the key. She had not handed it back.She stood at the door of 14/C, Noor Chawl, at two thirty AM, and she thought about the things Poorvi had listed in the WhatsApp message. The laugh before the joke. The menu reading. The two sugars in the chai. She ran through them like a list, an inventory, the specific things that were still there and the ones she was less sure of.She thought: I need to go in and still be me when I come out. That's the entire requirement.She opened the door.* * *The flat was very still.Not empty — she felt immediately that it was not empty, in the same way you felt a room was occupied before you could see why. The specific quality of occupancy, of something present that was not furniture and not air.She did not turn on the light.She crossed the flat in the dark. She knew the layout — her layout, she had lived here for five weeks, she knew where the table was and the bed and the—The mirror.She could see it in the dark. Not illuminated — there was very little light, just the ambient glow from the courtyard through the window, the streetlight scattered and diffused. But the mirror was visible as a presence in the dark, a rectangle that was lighter than the wall around it, the way a window was lighter than the wall when there was light outside.Except there was no light source directly behind the mirror. The wall behind it was interior wall. The light in it was not reflected. It was generated.She stood five feet from it.