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By Root 562 0

juice and angles his chair closer to mine. All along the left side of my body I feel the warmth of him, and I think I should move my chair a few inches away for the sake of decorum but I cannot bring myself to move at all. A slow number comes on, and the floor clears except for three or four brave couples. Tshewang explains that they are officially “paired up,” a fact which they must try to keep from the principal. “When he finds out, he’ll call them to his office and make them promise to break up.” His hand slides lightly down my forearm, pulling my hand out of my lap, and he holds my fingers in the tiny dark space between us. All I can think is: yes. I want only this moment, and nothing beyond matters. My body is a cold, dark shell except for my hand. Life begins at my wrist, my palm pulses gently, my fingertips glow like embers.

A strip of orange crepe paper unravels to the floor in front of us, bringing me out of my trance. I have no idea what Tshewang is thinking, if this is merely a flirtatious diversion for him or if his desires go farther, but I feel sure he would be shocked at the extent of mine. I am too old to be perched here with streamers coming down around me, listening to some sappy Air Supply number, aching to make love with someone who isn’t even allowed to date and who keeps calling me “miss.” I pull my hand back into my lap. “How old are you, Tshewang?” I blurt out. I had not planned to ask it aloud, but I hope he says seventeen. That’ll teach me.

“I’m twenty, miss.”

“Oh yes. I—I remember when I was twenty,” I say, putting a squint in my voice to make it sound like an event lost in the mists. “Well, I should find Dini. Thanks for the dance, Tshewang.”

He looks at me carefully, and then he leans very close and puts his mouth to my ear. “It’s up to you, miss,” he says, and his fingers brush my hair away from my earlobe, burning my skin.

It is me who is shocked. I stare at him, unable to think. “We can’t,” I say, panicking.

“I know,” he says automatically.

He is still close enough to kiss, and for a second, I think we will. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a couple watching us curiously. “Tshewang, people are looking at us.”

“I don’t care.”

“Then you have no more sense than a—a goose,” I say helplessly.

He laughs. I don’t know if I am thrilled or alarmed by his audacity.

“Let’s go find Dini,” I say, standing up. He walks with me across the floor to where Dini is sitting on a crate, trying to convince the DJ to change the music. “Thanks, Tshewang,” I say again. I dare not look at him.

“No, thank you, miss.”

The next day, I walk the nineteen kilometers into Tashigang, praying fervently that Lorna or Leon will be in for the weekend. I have to talk to them about this. It has gone too far, I know that, and yet my strongest regret is that I didn’t let it go farther. Tashigang is humid, and the sky is clotted with heavy grey cloud; the guest house smells of damp and insecticide, and there is no water. I have to haul buckets from the tap across the street for a bath and then I drink beer in the Puen Soom. Karma, the proprietor, stands at the door, watching the rain fall. “Today your friends not coming,” he says. “Too much rain maybe.”

The next morning I shoot out of bed, woken by a sound that I quickly identify as screaming. Leaping to the window, I see a wall of water and mud come roaring down the mountain, swallowing the bridge, uprooting trees, washing away latrines along the riverbank. Shopkeepers are fleeing up the hillside with their children and wooden cash boxes under their arms. I rush out, but the flood is already subsiding into a thick brown torrent. On the steps of a shop overlooking the river, a tearful mother is alternately scolding and kissing her drenched children. It is still raining, and I walk through mud and debris to the riverbank to watch the water churning mud and roots and leaves. Four students from the junior high school join me, pointing out the place where the barbershop used to be, now a wet muddy patch.

“Lucky the barber was out having tea,” one says. They tell