Deeper

When I make a promise, I keep it.

“Get your fingers out of there.”

Krishna is bent over the mixing bowl, poking at the nine-grain bread dough. I take the towel out of my waistband and snap him across the back of the neck.

“Ow!”

“I said get your fingers out.”

He straightens and wipes his hand on his jeans. Flour released from the towel drifts in a cloud around him. “I just want to see if it feels like an ass.”

“That is some perverted shit.”

“You’re the one who told me.”

“No way did I say that. Wash your hands if you’re going to touch it. That’s all I ask.”

“I did before I came over here.”

“You did not.”

“I did too. I always wash my hands after.”

After, in this case, means After I roll out of her bed. Half the time Krishna crashes my night shift, he’s wasted. The other half the time, he’s just gotten laid.

Tonight, I’m pretty sure it’s both.

“Maybe you should wash your hands before, quit spreading scabies all over campus.”

“Scabies? Dude, that’s sick. My body is a fucking temple.”

“And I’m sure your women appreciate it, but I don’t know where those fingers have been, so you’re going to wash them again before you touch that dough or I’ll smack the shit out of you.”

He lifts both hands in surrender. “All right, Captain, all right. What crawled up your ass tonight?”

“Nothing.”

Krishna scrubs his hands. I clean the bowl of the mixer with a scraper and soapy water, then dry it and polish it until it shines.

I like working alone. There’s no one around to make a big fucking deal of what mood I’m in.

There’s no one to make me notice I’ve been in a bad mood for weeks, because every time I see Nate Hetherington, I want to punch him again.

I must not have hit him hard enough last time. He’s still smiling that smarmy fucking smile.

Krishna puts both hands in my nine-grain dough and starts massaging it with his eyes closed, his expression all blissed out. You’d never know he was some kind of math prodigy, he acts like such a dipshit.

“I’m not going to let you fuck it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Shh,” he says. “I’m comparing.”

“To who?”

“That girl I was with tonight. Penelope.”

“With the dark hair?” I ask. “Kind of big?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus.”

“Why, you like her? You know if you’d told me, I wouldn’t—”

“Nah, it’s fine. She’s my lab partner.”

“She’s got an ass on her,” he says.

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

It’s not that I care about Penelope one way or the other. I just don’t want to go to lab and have to think about Krishna bending her over a railing or whatever.

He’d tell me all the details if I didn’t forbid him to. Krishna will tell anybody any goddamn thing. Back home, a guy who bragged as much as he does would get his ass beat on a regular basis. When I met him last year, I thought I’d probably kill him inside of a week, and there goes my big chance.