Chapter 78

Alan Mendes knew that the tickling was the key to the whole thing. He had suspected for several weeks that Madhu was stringing him along like a puppet on a string. Making him dance to her whims. Using him sexually as well as professionally. Yanking his chain.

The first changes he noticed in her were in bed. From a self-conscious, easily embarrassed housewife who clearly felt guilty about cheating on her husband, she had slowly shed her inhibitions, growing bolder and brasher.

Her self-confidence had increased noticeably. Instead of asking him to keep the lights off and curtains drawn when they had sex, she had begun to walk around his flat stark naked, tell him not to bother to draw the curtains -- even in broad daylight! -- and had grown far more sophisticated in the actual sexual act.

Her body had developed at the same time. Her visits to the gym and the aerobic classes became more frequent and more serious. The results showed. She looked almost good enough to audition for a veejay's job. He'd even mentioned the fact that Naomi, the head of a music channel, was looking for just her kind of person. Married housewife with a distinct ethnic look and accent but well-maintained and with some attitude. People were tired of seeing teenage pairs of walking sticks trying to act cool all the time, they wanted real people as veejays.

Of course, she had laughed at the idea. But it wasn't because she felt too shy about appearing on TV. It was because she had much bigger plans for herself. This was another change. When he first met her, all she had wanted (she said) was to get away from her abusive husband and to set up a new life for herself. Now, she was always talking about things like "projecting the right image" and "networking, because it's so important to meet the right people and then leverage them effectively".

Where had all this savvy self-promotional attitude come from? Perhaps it had always been there. Perhaps that was why Madhu had approached him, Alan Mendes, in the first place. Not because she found him attractive, or his columns sincere and heart-felt (as she claimed). But because he was a senior staffer with Mumbai Times, the city's widest read gossip rag. And because Mumbai Times was part of the whole TIE group, which was, let's face it, only the biggest, most powerful newspaper conglomerate in the country.

He knew what Madhu was after now. Not him, not his body or his sexual prowess. But the whole wide world of the media that he had access to. She never intended to have him publish a column about her husband's sordid rapes of high-society women. That was just a means of getting Alan's attention. Perhaps it wasn't even true. Although that last possibility was too humiliating to consider seriously.

What she really wanted was to use Alan to get to bigger fish. Which was why she had talked him into taking her along with him tomorrow night to the big bash. The Mumbai Times Anniversary Party. Not just the general party itself, but the very private, very exclusive after-dinner cocktail, which was just for a few select celebs and big shots, and of course, TIE's senior management.

She wanted to use Alan's position at the paper to meet the city's rich and powerful. And when he was done introducing her and recommending her, she would move on to a bigger fish. Like Evita in that song from the Alyque Padamsee musical play, moving from man to man until she worked her way all the way up the ladder to General Peron.