Narcopolis

When he started the car again he was feeling better, a miracle actually, the way his mood lifted, Rumi told Dimple. He drove towards Khar with ‘Machine Gun’ turned up loud, the smack kicking in like Buddy Miles’s big bass drum, never mind the shitty car’s shitty speakers; and the feedback and weird radio interference, some kind of helicopter noise, GIs in Vietnam maybe, then Jimi again, doing his voodoo shit, the spaces between notes liquefied into scratchy slow-mo sound grabs, the guitar loud, beyond loud, like a car crash in slow motion, metal and flesh fused: gave him the shivers every time, made him want to crash the car, or drink till he died, or tattoo a motto on his chest with a rusty nail and industrial dye, Kill You Quick. And that, said Rumi, was when he saw the woman. She was standing at the turn from Khar Dhanda to the main Juhu Road. She turned into the headlights when she heard the car slow. Her dark skin was scarred with old smallpox and her hair was held in place with pins and she carried one of those striped shopping bags, like a housewife. She was looking right at him. He stopped the car and she put her head at the window. He saw a bunch of keys on an ornate silver ring hooked to the waist of her sari. Maybe she really was a housewife, doing some quick freelance on the side to supplement the family income. Should I get in? she said. He fixed the price and drove until he found a street that was dark enough and then he parked between two cars, backed into the space and turned the engine off. He told her to move to the back seat and climbed in beside her, already conscious of her stink, what was it, garlic? Asafoetida? She’d been cooking recently and she had a powerful body odour, which excited him. She smelled of food and sweat and faintly of cologne and she was rubbing two fingers against her thumb. He dug into his jeans and gave her a hundred-rupee note, telling her to use her mouth on him. She gave him a look, like she didn’t do that, like she was out on the street selling sex but only on her terms. No water in my mouth, okay? she said, and her voice was pure business: she could have been a hooker on Shuklaji Street. And when she’d been at it for a while, head bouncing like a toy, a spray of bobby pins holding the hair in place above her ears, and he maybe nodded off a little, a tiny teeny little bit, she goes, You slept off or what? Then she muttered something in Bambayya Hindi that he didn’t catch and she started to gather her things. Finish, he told her, his voice loud in the small car. She put her shopping bag down and shot him a look and went back to work. He was half erect, when all of a sudden she stopped. Her jaws hurt, she said. She asked him to fuck her, which he did, reluctantly, because this was not part of the deal: fucking was work. He slapped her lightly and she moaned. She liked it; she fucked him back. Then he hit her again. She grabbed his hand and he punched her on the head, fucking her hard, and when he came, for the first time in weeks, he did what he always did, he screamed words he didn’t know and by now she was screaming too, in fear, and so, to shut her up, he hit her in the mouth, drawing blood, and the sight of it pushed him over and he came again. He pulled out, still dripping, and opened the door. She was moaning but unconscious. He put her on the ground by an abandoned handcart, small piles of shit nearby, human, by the smell of it, and as an afterthought, he put his hand into her blouse, realizing that he hadn’t touched her breasts until then, a pity, because they were swollen and wet at the nipples. He fondled her briefly and took the wad of notes folded into the whore’s bra and drove away as slowly as he could.

And this was when Dimple tried not to show her surprise. She said You should have asked me. I have a friend who would have given you much better service.

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