Chapter 17

Arif emerged from the door Lena had shown him to and found himself on a science fiction movie set. At least, that's what his first impression was. It was a scene straight out of some futuristic movie, probably Bladerunner, although he couldn't be sure. He was more a horror fan himself.

It was designed to look like a maze of narrow streets in a futuristic metropolis, part Hong Kong, part LA, part Bombay, adding up to a kind of ubiquitous Everyplace. An amalgam of every known style of architecture, all souped up and streamlined to look like some set designer's vision of the future. He was standing in a lane with a ground that seemed to be made up of cobblestones. Water dripped theatrically from the eave of a lamp post, pooling in the gutter. On either side of the lane were doors, some with realistically peeling signs like "Geisha Tea House", "Hot Java", "Chat Point," "I Sikh You", "A(W)OL", "Small Smoke-Filled Room", "Intimate Strangers" and so on.

It took him a moment to realize that he was in the section of Sin City called CYBERSINGLES. And each of these doors led to small booths which housed virtual terminals. It was the real-world equivalent of a chathouse on the Internet.

"Wow," he said softly.

A pair of young women passed him by, talking animatedly. They were scanning the doorsigns. Finding one they liked, they went inside. It was a door labelled "Wild Wild West". Unable to help himself, Arif peeped in through the glass window set in the door and saw the two girls seat themselves at a computer terminal with a massive 40" monitor. There was an adult movie playing on the monitor with a menu of options superimposed over the moving images: Edit Movie. Select Character. New Movie. Choose Rating. He saw the girls deftly click on Choose Rating which paused the movie and gave them a choice of PG, PG-13, R, and Unrated. They clicked on Unrated and returned to the main menu. As the movie began to play again, he realized with a shock that it was playing the same scene, but now it was showing the Unrated, completely explicit version!

He turned away, shaking his head. He marvelled at the mind that could envision this ... club was too old-fashioned a word for it. An adventure palace came closer to capturing its epic size and scale. He could imagine being twenty again, unattached and unfettered, and running wild here.

But he wasn't twenty anymore. And he was married.

And his wife was somewhere in this place, with another man.

He cleared his mind of all these distracting thoughts, of the memory of his accidental encounter with Lena Kapoor, and concentrated on searching for Sarla.

As he looked into one booth after another, he found himself wondering: What the hell would he do if he did find her? Create a scene? Demand to know why she had come with another guy behind his back? What exactly did he intend to accomplish?

He didn't know. But he had to find Sarla, to see for himself if she really was here, in this place of hedonistic excess. And who was the man accompanying her? All right, so their last conversation had turned into a telephone brawl. But he should have been able to read between the lines if she was hitting the town tonight. It must have been a last-minute decision.

At the same time, he realized that it was ridiculous of him to give a damn what she did and why. After all, this was the same woman who had disgusted him so much just hours ago, that he had made up his mind to end his own life, rather than continue living with her. He had set out to commit suicide this evening, not to end up in some sordid public fight with her.

So maybe he should just walk out of here, go to the Reay Road godown and do what he'd intended to do: Eat the gun.

As he scanned the seemingly endless rows of cubicles, chancing upon scenes and sights that could have been strung together to make up an entire x-rated movie on their own, he realized that somewhere behind those mirrored walls was Lena, watching. He found the thought oddly arousing.