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Our hosts, Victus and Annie, have ducked into their bedroom to do ecstasy, and I sprawl on the sofa, wishing I’d joined them. I ditch my wineglass. The wine’s excellent but I can’t stomach any more, still I’m not buzzed enough to dance, to fling last week into the void, to make room in my soul’s landfill for next week. Studying the paintings on the jewel-coloured walls, now a little faded, cobwebby, paintings by artists emerging and established, Indian and European, collected over Victus’s seven decades of travelling – I wonder whether artists get buzzed just from being geniuses, ignited just from other people’s ogling. Ha! It’s always the artists sniffing, mainlining. Victus and Annie return, eyes bright, Annie’s 42-inch waist bulging in her babydoll dress as she shimmies at us, Victus’s bass chain-smoker’s voice pitched alto as he says, clapping, “Let’s go!”

I’m lurking in a corner, hoping they’ll repeat their offer of ecstasy. They pull me up. I dance opposite Annie, who’s showing me moves, coaxing me loose. Annie’s my age, a copywriter. It’s her playlist playing on Victus’s soundsystem, with its knob-operated controlpanel, INXS, Rolling Stones, Queen. Annie’s cigarette-darkened lips are painted bloodred, her acne-splotched skin is caked in foundation, thick, sweat-dewy. I turn away. Tharki’s my age, too, a robotics engineer, tall, slender. Tharki’s lightbrown eyes are shining, too: maybe he’s swallowed some magic of his own. Coorgis can party. He downed two bottles of scotch this afternoon, whipped out a baggie, offered everyone cocaine, everyone declined. Tharki’s slow-dancing with Prasanna, who introduced me to this circle. Prasanna’s concave 68-year-old bottom judders rhythmlessly in her sequined miniskirt. Tharki’s peeking at me over Prasanna’s shoulder. Adjusting my eyeglasses, I check whether the low V of my wrapdress is still pinned close. I’ll have to snub Tharki, can’t risk offending Prasanna, with her fondness for toyboys, her artist’s temperament, her ex-fashion-model’s vanity. But it’s Tharki who snubs me.

I turn towards Paraast and Niraash, Victus’s hexagenerian friends, bachelors: Paraast thin, dark, hooknosed, Niraash plump, grizzled, bespectacled. Paraast hunches over his MacBook, deaf to Annie’s exhortations to come dance. Niraash dances at me, lightly fisting two imaginary giraffes straddling his shoulders. I turn away. He pretends he was dancing at nobody. Niraash woos his rum-and-Coke alone in a corner, shuffle-footed.

We fall off like brown leaves onto the sofas. Still earthbound, I confront the void of years gone, years to come, same old me, proudly drugfree, zombie-walking through life’s merry wasteland. Victus grinds into Annie’s back, Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned, chest dark and smooth. I recross my legs, refocus on the painting opposite me: Prasanna’s latest, a self-portrait like all her paintings, showing herself from 40 years ago: golden-skinned, nude, curves like a racingtrack. Fake. I’ve seen her model photos, pretty but curveless: slender, suiting the 70s. Now she’s busy selfying, scrawny neck lolling on Tharki’s broad shoulder, promenading on Facebook with this week’s armcandy.

Annie realises we’ve all fallen off, strides over in stilettoes, bends over us, breasts spilling out. She needs this party, she says, Covid’s been terrible, she mustn’t be the only one dancing, made up. She hauls Prasanna and me off to her bedroom.

Off comes Prasanna’s Gothic makeup. Annie gives her bruise-purple lips, toxic-green eyelids. My turn in the hotseat, judging protest futile, I endure, enjoying Annie’s ministrations, batting away her question – How come I never wear makeup? 

How d’you tell the acquaintance who’s making you up that it’s idiotic to care about appearances? I mutter gibberish through my teeth, self-conscious of halitosis. Always halitosis: warm and moist, my mouth must be, bacteria-friendly, the only part of me that isn’t cold, hard, dry. I am a living fossil. 

Shouldn’t’ve dumped Sushil. Sushil was dull, but nice. Nice is good. I keep forgetting.

“There!” Annie steps back. “What d’you think?”

I peer at the mirror, want my glasses back, they confiscate my glasses, lead me back. Ooh! someone says, Aah! I hug myself, peering into the dim drawingroom, disoriented, halfblind. They pull my arms open, tell me Stop peering, stop trying to see, relax, it’s just us. Someone stands behind me, posing me, turning me this way, bidding me look that way, relax. She looks totally different, someone whispers. I’m not the one who’s halfblind, then, I think, if it’s taken makeup for you to see me. Someone is photographing me, flash-flash, without asking, as if I were a celebrity. Public property.

“Here,” says Annie, bending over me, unpinning the neck of my wrapdress, “isn’t that better?”

“Much better.” 

It’s Victus’s voice, he’s bending over me, whispering, telling me – but Annie’s part of our circle, our little sudden circle of three – that I should stay back and we’ll do a photoshoot, nice and relaxed, just us three. I look up, struggling not to peer, self-conscious about my little squint, now that he’s so close, smelling of posh cologne and post-sex cigarettes. He’s Prasanna’s ex-husband, but if Prasanna’s fine with his dating Annie, why not me too. But no, that’s not what Victus means. Surely photoshoot means photoshoot. Annie’s close up against me, if I breathe too deeply I’ll breathe in the odour between her breasts, pushed up – a plungebra, she whispers, that’s what I need to really wear a wrapdress. I’m half-relieved, half-disappointed, that she doesn’t drag me back to her bedroom, hasn’t a 34D plungebra lying around.

“Let’s go!” says someone, clapping.

Paraast lids his MacBook, blasts his own playlist. EDM. Execrable taste. But I tear myself free from the mauling hands, the too-bright eyes, get the party started, dancing alone, away from the other wannabes and has-beens. Someone videos me from under the peepal-tree growing through the gap in the roof. Niraash dances at me, fisting his giraffes, frenetic, his giraffes close to climaxing. Tharki and Prasanna dance towards me, open-armed, another sad wanting circle of three. Beyond my eyelids, squeezed shut, the dim room blazes sun-bright with six pairs of ogling eyes, and, high at last, I leap moonwards, dancing like there’s no tomorrow.

END

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