Narcopolis

And she woke beside Xavier, who was still asleep. She bathed, changed, ate breakfast and was at Rashid’s by noon. When Xavier came in around two, her station was busy and he went to Pagal Kutta’s. He acted like he didn’t know her. He smoked a pyali and ate lunch in the khana and then he went out for a haircut and a beard trim. The barber pointed out a hamam, a couple of cubicles set up by the side of the road, where they gave him a sliver of soap, a bucket of lukewarm water and a thin cotton towel. The bath cost him forty paisa and he emerged feeling clean despite the dirty clothes he was wearing. He felt good enough to take a little stroll. He thought of picking up a T-shirt and a pair of slacks in one of the shops on Grant Road and he turned right at the end of Shuklaji Street. Then, walking past Delhi Darbar, he smelled food and forgot about buying clothes: he wanted a drink. In a shop window he saw the reflection of a raggedy man in a dirty kurta and he stumbled lightly. He saw biryani cookpots and flies and piles of horse dung. A man approached with a double cross on which plastic sunglasses and hair-clips were arranged in the vague shape of a crucifix. He saw a man driving fast with his windows up and in the back of the car a little girl leaned her forehead against the glass. He saw men walking towards him with their hands around each other’s shoulders, and a man had collapsed on the street, his pockets turned inside out, and a group of boys panted in unison with a radio song in which the singer imitated a dog. A woman in a yellow blouse and petticoat made up her face in a splinter of glass. She held the jagged splinter like a knife. When he walked past her cage their eyes met in the mirror. She nodded to him and he went to the cage. She reached through the bars and grabbed his dick. Her hand was small, the grip very firm, and the bottle green bangles on her wrist chimed like small bells when she massaged him. He asked her where he might find a wine shop and she let go of him. ‘No wine. This is a Muslim locality, babuji, what do you expect?’ When he walked away she made a fist and grabbed herself by the elbow, gesturing to his dick with her lips. A man standing near her cage laughed. Xavier passed a movie theatre, its front wall streaked with piss. He bought a ticket and went in just as a song sequence began. A man in a matador’s costume gyrated in a giant birdcage. It was the tune he’d heard minutes earlier, in which a man panted like a dog. The matador took off his jacket and shouted: Monica! Xavier thought of saints and felt a powerful emotion, elation or fear, he wasn’t sure. A woman slid down a ramp to a dance floor. There was an artful shot of her figure framed between two bottles. She held the bottles up to her face and Xavier got up and went out into the sunlight and took a cab to Chowpatty. He found a permit room where a waitress served him whisky and poured him a beer. There were many tables and all the drinkers were men. On a tiny stage a woman in a chiffon sari danced to muddy music. He couldn’t tell if it was jazz or Hindustani classical. The woman moved her hips but not her feet. She held up her hands and gazed at the floor as if she was being robbed. Her expression said she was trying to remember something very important, something that could save her life. The drinkers gave her money but it wasn’t enough because she was still unable to remember the important thing. When the song ended she dropped her hands and walked offstage. Somebody clapped.

Late in the evening Xavier went back to 007, getting there before Dimple. He told the tai to send him the same girl dressed the same way and then he took a beer with him into the cubicle in which he’d spent the previous night. When Dimple came in, changed and washed, he fucked her standing up with her arms propped on the cot and her clothes pushed up around her waist. Later, he fucked her again and yelled something in a language no one could identify, French maybe, or Italian, some European language other than English, shouting the same two words again and again, Sa Crenaam. The cubicles next to theirs were occupied, the tai on one side and Lakshmi on the other. Lakshmi clapped her hands in the chakka salute when Xavier came, because it took him so long. She shouted her congratulations, to Dimple for her stamina and to Xavier for his technique.

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