Interpreter of Maladies

on top of it, and surveyed the narrow glass shelf over the sink which held Miranda's toothbrush and makeup. 
    "What's this for?" he asked, picking up the sample of eye gel she'd gotten the day she met Dev. 
    "Puffiness."
    "What's puffiness?"
    "Here," she explained, pointing. 
    "After you've been crying?"
    "I guess so." 
    Rohin opened the tube and smelled it. He squeezed a drop of it onto a finger, then rubbed it on his hand. "It stings." He inspected the back of his hand closely, as if expecting it to change color. "My mother has puffiness. She says it's a cold but really she cries, sometimes for hours. Sometimes straight through dinner. Sometimes she cries so hard her eyes puff up like bullfrogs." 
    Miranda wondered if she ought to feed him. In the kitchen she discovered a bag of rice cakes and some lettuce. She offered to go out, to buy something from the deli, but Rohin said he wasn't very hungry, and accepted one of the rice cakes. "You eat one too," he said. They sat at the table, the rice cakes between them. He turned to a fresh page in his sketch pad. "You draw." 
    She selected a blue crayon. "What should I draw?" 
    He thought for a moment. "I know," he said. He asked her to draw things in the living room: the sofa, the director's chairs, the television, the telephone. "This way I can memorize it."
    "Memorize what?"
    "Our day together." He reached for another rice cake. 
    "Why do you want to memorize it?"
    "Because we're never going to see each other, ever again." 
    The precision of the phrase startled her. She looked at him, feeling slightly depressed. Rohin didn't look depressed. He tapped the page. "Go on." 
    And so she drew the items as best as she could-the sofa, the director's chairs, the television, the telephone. He sidled up to her, so close that it was sometimes difficult to see what she was doing. He put his small brown hand over hers. "Now me." 
    She handed him the crayon. 
    He shook his head. "No, now draw me."
    "I can't," she said. "It won't look like you " 
    The brooding look began to spread across Robin's face again, just as it had when she'd refused him coffee. "Please?" 
    She drew his face, outlining his head and the thick fringe of hair. He sat perfectly still, with a formal, melancholy expression, his gaze fixed to one side. Miranda wished she could draw a good likeness. Her hand moved in conjunction with her eyes, in unknown ways, just as it had that day in the bookstore when she'd transcribed her name in Bengali letters. It looked nothing like him. She was in the middle of drawing his nose when he wriggled away from the table. 
    "I'm bored," he announced, heading toward her bedroom. She heard him opening the door, opening the drawres of her bureau and closing them. 
    When she joined him he was inside the closet. After a moment he emerged, his hair disheveled, holding the silver cocktail dress. "This was on the floor."
    "It falls off the hanger." 
    Rohin looked at the dress and then at Miranda's body, "Put it on."
    "Excuse me?"
    "Put it on." 
    There was no reason to put it on. Apart from in the fitting room at Filene's she had never worn it, and as long as she was with Dev she knew she never would. She knew they would never go to restaurants, where he would reach across a table and kiss her hand. They would meet in her apartment, on Sundays, he in his sweatpants, she in her jeans. She took the dress from Rohin and shook it out, even though the slinky fabric never wrinkled. She reached into the closet for a free hanger. 
    "Please put it on," Rohin asked, suddenly standing behind her. He pressed his face against her, clasping her waist with both his thin arms. "Please?"
    "All right," she said, surprised by the strength of his grip. 
    He smiled, satisfied, and sat on the edge of her bed. 
    "You have to wait out there," she said, pointing to the door. "I'll come out when I'm ready."
    "But my mother always takes her clothes off in front of me."
    "She does?" Rohin nodded. 
    "She doesn't even pick them up afterward. She leaves them all on the floor by the bed, all tangled."
    "One day she slept in my room," he continued. "She said it felt better than her bed, now that my father's gone."
    "I'm not your mother," Miranda said, lifting him by the armpits off her bed. When he refused to stand, she picked him up. He was heavier than she expected, and he clung to her, his legs wrapped firmly around her hips, his head resting against her chest. She set him down in the hallway and