The two versions of me

I posted a selfie and a champagne-silk photo at 7pm. My face in both is warm, looking at the camera like someone loves me. Three hours later I let a lock engage from outside a Karjat farmhouse and a bouncer's hand landed on my shoulder. The two versions of me tonight do not know each other. I am not going to delete either photo. That is the cost of the work.

Suresh is driving me home. He drove me in. He also, an hour before, told me his cousin paid him forty thousand rupees to drive me in and leave before the lock engaged. He said it evenly. Meera-ji. Like he was reporting the weather. I got into the passenger seat anyway. I cannot decide yet what that makes me. Tonight I think it makes me someone who needs a ride home from Karjat more than she needs to be right about Suresh. Tomorrow I will probably decide it makes me stupid.

I let the lock engage. I want to be clear about that with myself, because tomorrow I will be tempted to rewrite it as something that happened to me. It didn't. I walked in with a complaint in a plastic sleeve and a tote recording and my photographer at the door, and when the lock clicked from outside, I did not try the handle. I started the warm-up. I chose it. I am writing that twice so I cannot unwrite it.