I have come to the meeting unprepared, without the document we are supposed to be reviewing. The annoyance flashes through her eyes, that spark of passion that I used to find so attractive in my wife, but it is replaced by a mothering instinct, a posessive mothering instinct, for she will have none of the girl next to me sharing her copy, insists on walking around the table and kneeling on my right side at the corner of the table, her computer open between us as she reads aloud to the room, almost too fast for anyone to offer feedback. She looks like my wife, who no longer kneels, small, round of face and body, with the same wide mouth and wide eyes, though of course with darker hair, eyes, and skin, being Indian, and today for the first time I have seen with henna on her left hand, on the back a vine with buds about to open, and I want to ask her the significance of the design and for what occasion she has had it applied, and I want to trace it with my fingers, not touching her high proud breasts or her soft neck, or her full shoulder length hair, or her strong broad back, just the hand, just the vine, just the buds, waiting to open.