Ian McDonald - River of Gods

Tal can’t speak. Yt is paralysed by the presence of celebrity. All media pretensions and sophistications fly. Even before yt Stepped Away, Tal idolised YULI: Superstar as a construct, a manipulation like the cast of Town and Country . Now yt’s here, in flesh and clothes and Tal’s awestruck. Yt has to be near Yuli. Yt has to hear yt breathe and laugh and feel yts warmth. There are only two real objects in the temple tonight. Guests, nutes, staff, music, all are indeterminate, in the domain of Ardhanarisvara. Tal is behind Yuli now, close enough to reach and touch and reify. The angle of the cheekbone shifts. Yuli turns. Tal smiles, big dumb grin. Oh Gods, I look like a drooling celebrity idiot, what am I going to say? Ardhanarisvara god of the dilemma, help me. Gods; do I smell, I only had a half bottle of water to wash in. Yuli’s gaze washes over yt, looks right through yt, annihilates yt, swings to focus on a figure behind yt. Yuli smiles, opens yts arms.

“Darling!”

Yt sweeps past, a warm wash of fur and gold tan and cheekbones like razors. The entourage follows. A hip jostles Tal, knocks the glass from yts hand. It falls to the floor, teeters wildly before coming to centre, spinning on its point. Tal stands stunned, stone as any of the temple’s alien sex statues.

“Oh, you seem to have lost your drink.” The voice that breaks through the wall of chatter is neither man’s nor woman’s. “Can’t have that dear, can we? Come on, they’re a pack of bloody bitches, sib, and we’re just wallpaper.”

Yt’s a head shorter than Tal, dark skinned, a hint of epicanthine fold: Assam or Nepali genes down in the mix. Yt carries ytself with shy pride of those peoples. Yt’s dressed in simple, fashion-denying white, the shaved scalp dusted with gold-flecked mica the only concession to contemporary style. As with all yts kind, Tal can’t begin to guess yts age.

“Tranh.”

“Tal.”

They curtsey and kiss in greeting. Yts fingers are long and elegant, French manicured, unlike Tal’s stubby, nail-bitten keypad-stabbers.

“Bloody awful thing, isn’t it?” Tranh says. “Drink, dear. Here!” It raps the bar. “Enough of that Non-Russian piss. Give me gin. Chota peg, by two. Chin chin.” After the cloying, theatrical house cocktail, the pure clear glass with the twist of lemon is very good and very pure and very cold and Tal can feel it shooting up yts spinal column like cold fire straight to the brain.

“Bloody marvellous drink,” Tal says. “Built the Raj, it did. All that quinine. Here!” This to the bar avatar. “Actor wallah! Two more of these.”

“I really shouldn’t, I’ve got work in the morning and I’ve no idea how I’m even getting back,” Tal says but the nute slides the dew-slick glass into yts hand and the music hits that perfect beat and a flaw of wind runs through the half-ruined temple drawing flames and shadows in its wake and everyone looks up at its touch, wondering if it could be the first caress of the monsoon. It blows a touch of mad into the terrible party and in its wake Tal finds ytself dizzy and full of talk and life and wonder at finding ytself in a new town, in a new job, in the eye of the social vortex with a small and dark and beautiful nute.

It all runs like calligraphy in the rain then. Tal finds yt dancing with no memory of how yt got out on the floor and there are a lot more people standing around watching than dancing, in fact no one is dancing, only Tal, alone dancing wonderfully, flawlessly, like all the wind that blew through the temple gathered into one place and one restlessness; like unaccustomed chota pegs, like light, like night, like temptation, like a laser focused on Tranh, illuminating yt alone, saying I want I need I will, come on , beckoning, come on , drawing Tranh out, step by step, yt smiling and shaking yts head, I don’t do this sort of bloody thing dear , but yts being pulled into the circle by this play of shakti and purusha until Tal sees Tranh shiver, as if something has come out of the night and passed into yt, some possessing, abandoned thing, and Tranh smiles a little, mad smile, and they come together in the circle of music a hunter and the thing yt hunts and every eye is on them and from the corner of one eye Tal sees YULI, brightest star in heaven, stalking away with yts entourage. Upstaged.

The meeja all expect them to kiss and make the drama perfect, but, despite the cascade of erotic sculpture tumbling from every pillar and buttress, they are Indian nutes, and the time and place for the kiss is not here, not now.

Then they’re in a taxi and Tal doesn’t know how or where but the dark is very big and yts ears are humming from the music and yts head is thudding from the chota pegs but things are gradually becoming more broken up and discrete. Tal knows what yt wants now. Yt knows what’s going to happen. The certainty is a dull, crimson throb at the base of yts belly.

On the back seat of the jolting phatphat, Tal lets yts forearm fall, soft inner flesh upwards, on Tranh’s thigh. A moment’s hesitation, then Tranh’s fingers stroke yts sensitive, hairless flesh, seek out the buried studs of the hormone control system beneath the skin and delicately tap out the arousal codes. Almost immediately, Tal feels yts heart kick, yts breath catch, yts face flush. Sex strums yts body like a sitar, every cord and organ ringing in its harmonic. Tranh offers yts arm to Tal. Yt plays the subdermal inputs, tiny and sensitive as goose flesh. Yt feels Tranh stiffen as the hormone rush hits. They sit side by side in the back of the jolting taxi, not touching but shivering with lust, incapable of speech.

The hotel is by the airport, comfortable, anonymous, internationally discreet. The bored receptionist hardly looks up from her romantic magazine. The night porter stirs, then identifies these guests and hides behind the cricket highlights on the television. A glass elevator takes them up the side of the hotel to their fifteenth-floor room, the patterned airport lights spreading themselves ever wider around them, like jewelled skirts. The sky is mad with stars and the navigation lights of troopships, flying in to support the state of heightened vigilance. All in heaven and earth tonight is trembling.

They fall into the room. Tranh reaches for yt, but Tal slips away, teasing. There is one thing necessary; Tal finds the room system and plugs in a chip. FUCK MIX. Nina Chandra plays and Tal sways and closes yts eyes and melts. Tranh comes towards yt, moving into the rhythm, stepping out of the shoes, slipping off the pure white coat, the linen suit, the Big Name Label mesh underwear. Yt offers yts arm.

Tal runs yts fingers over the orgasm keys. Everything is soundtrack.

The ghost of departing chota pegs wakes Tal and sends yt to the bathroom for water. Yt stares, still drunk, vertiginous with what has happened, at the never-ending stream from the mixer tap. There is a grey predawn light in the room. Tranh looks so very small and breakable on the bed. The aircraft never stop. Something in this morning lights makes every surgical scar on Tranh’s body stand out. Tal shakes yts head, suddenly needing very much to cry, but slips in beside Tranh and shivers when yt feels the other nute move in yts sleep and fold an arm around yt. Tal dozes and only wakes to the chambermaid banging on the door wondering if she can service the room. It’s ten o’clock. Tal has a wretched hangover. Tranh is gone. Yts clothes, yts shoes, yts shredded underwear. Yts gloves. Gone. In yts place is a card, with a street name, an address and two words: non-scene.

The compere has the audience really laughing now. Down in the green room, Vishram can feel it like waves on a shore. Deep laughter. Laughter you can’t help, you can’t stop even though it hurts you. Best sound in the world. Hold that laugh for me, people. You can tell audience by the sound of its laugh. There are the thin laughs down south and the flat laughs from the Midlands and the resonant laughing that’s like church singing from way up in the islands, but that’s a good Glasgow laugh out there. A home crowd laugh. Vishram Ray taps his feet and puffs out his cheeks and reads the yellow reviews tacked to the green room wall. He’s within this of a cigarette.