The night was too long that the stars went to sleep, leaving a sky devoid of light and beauty. Naina was so bored that she didn't bother to change out of her tattered clothes. Or more than boredom, she loved how the coat was big and smelled of safety, a smell that she was growing to love. As she sat sniffing the coat and gulping down alcohol without a care, people behind her moved in hushed voices. Somewhere, there was her husband whom she was too mad to look at.

"Hey, hey, hey! Wait!" Naina called out to the blurry figure of Ohas in the waiter's dress who stopped in his tracks. "Give me that entire bottle!" As Naina stretched out her arms to snatch the bottle of wine, Ohas put it away, sitting next to her. She pouted, "Awww, give that to me, please." Noticing that he was ignoring her, she leaned closer to his ear, "I promise you a teeny kiss if you give me that."

"You need to pull yourself together," he said, his voice serious and business-like. "We still have time tonight to kill him."

"Chillax, will you?" Naina rested her heavy head on the bar countertop, looking at Ohas with droopy eyes. The difference between drunk Naina and sober Naina was minuscule. The eyes of sober Naina were the windows to her soul, the mouth of drunk Naina led to the gutters of her mind. Wiggling her fingers towards him, asking him to come closer, she said in his ear, "You know, when you were kissing me earlier today, you were hot."

Ohas quickly leaned away from her, straightening on the stool as if someone had inappropriately touched him.

"Come on, you don't have to be shy. I bet I was hot too. You couldn't keep your hands away from my breasts . . ." Before Ohas could stop her train of thought, Naina herself digressed. "Too bad that I'm not in love with you."

"I don't love you too."

"Liar," she said without a second thought, her hand reaching toward his hair. "It would have been simpler if I was in love with you. Many days, whenever my husband isn't around, I feel so alone here. I can't believe I miss poverty." Ohas wanted to swat her hand away when her fingers caught hold of the black strands of his hair, but he was too stunned to move. Her tiniest movements could freeze him as if her body was made of a gun, holding herself against him. Frightening him. Why else would his heart beat so fast if he wasn't being held at gunpoint? Ohas knew what it felt like being at gunpoint and this feeling . . . It ticked all the symptoms.

"Which is why we need to save our home," Naina whispered, her eyes suddenly blazing and looking quite sober. "We can't let them have what little we have. They brand us as thieves, they put us in little ghettos so we don't pollute their fancy, big mansions and sleep with their children when they're the ones visiting the brothels and looting us by using our cheap labour and taking away our land in the name of progress and prosperity! How charitable of them when they spare a penny to get their names on billboards while-while . . ." The next string of words that she uttered was slurred and difficult to follow, but Ohas could see her spirit, the Goddess within her rise above the alcohol. It took an interruption from someone else to stop him from stealing her, to carry her away to their home.

"You," Priya said, her angelic eyes narrowing at Naina. Lucky for them that she didn't see Ohas or rather, she never saw men like Ohas. "Ahanay is waiting for you outside. He has something to say to you."

"Me?" Naina pointed at herself, glancing at a now rigid and cold Ohas with a wide grin. "What business does he have with me after all that he did . . ."

It was funny to see Priya's pretty features twisted in jealousy. "I don't know. Go and find out."

Sober Naina would have seen through the ruse, but drunk Naina was stupid and moody and any mention of Ahanay could make her kneel if needed. So she jumped from her stool, waving merrily at Ohas and Priya and leaving the hall, dragging her leftover dignity behind her. Once outside, the chilly air brought with it a suspicious-looking man dressed in all black and wearing a cap on his head. Before the man could find her and chase her till her death as per Priya's orders, Naina approached him. She tapped on his broad back and asked cheerfully, "Hey mister, why are you wearing a cap when it's not sunny?"

"Uh---" The man stood there, not knowing how to respond, his waist loaded with guns and grenades and different kinds of knives dangling from everywhere like jewellery.

"Oh, I see," Naina said aloud in realization, rubbing her eyes and squinting at those weapons in the dark. "You're here to kill someone." The man stilled, having never met a victim like this in twenty years of his murderous career. "I have a favour to ask . . . Can you help me kill my husband too? He's super annoying these days. He gets on my nerves all the time. You know, he has a secret child from a secret love affair and he's also scamming me of all my property. Huh! Can you believe that? My husband---"

"Get away from him, Naina!" Shouted her husband suddenly from the top of the stairs that led to his mansion, his face deathly pale. "Get away right now!"

"Why?!" Naina shouted back, her voice raw and rough. "He's not a bad person, you stupid---oooh, what is this? Ah. . ." Naina smiled in guilt as the man pressed a knife against her throat, holding her tightly. "Oops, I was wrong. Sorry, Ahanay!"

"Leave her!" Ahanay bellowed, walking so quickly down the stairs that the murderer couldn't threaten him. "Leave her or I won't spare you!"

"Hey! How violent of you!" Naina suddenly became furious, her chest heaving up and down. "You're not supposed to say that! Gandhi will be upset . . . If someone slaps you on one cheek, you should be polite enough to show your other cheek. That's how we won our independence or did we---"

"Shut up or I'll cut both your throats!" It was the murderer's chance to shout, his expert hand trembling so much in fear and irritation at the freak show unfolding in front of him that the knife slipped and fell down. Before Ahanay could pounce on him, he quickly retrieved a gun and thrust it against Naina's head, wrapping his burly arm around her neck and choking her. "I will kill her in an instant if you make another move!"

"H-Hey . . ." Naina struggled to express her uneasiness in his grasp, to express the fact that his strangling hold made the contents in her stomach dangerously volatile. Her stomach was protesting against all the junk and alcohol that she had dumped in her body and now was the time that it got an opportunity to let it all out. Before Naina could warn the man, all her dinners from the past week came spewing out, spilling and splashing over his arm like it was holi. It was too much for the poor man to take who recoiled from her in disgust, letting go of her as quickly as he had held her.

Thanking the Gods and more so her stomach, Ahanay quickly grabbed her, pushing her behind him before the murderer could dare to touch her again.

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