THE PRIVATE PARTY

35

You are sitting on a deep leather sofa, against silk cushions. You are separated from Vania by two men in uniforms. One looks like a police uniform – navy blue, with gold braid at his sleeve cuffs. The other is a military uniform, dark green with a chest full of coloured ribbons. there is gold braid all over him. You are guessing one is a police chief, the other a general. The police chief is talking to you, or at you, and laughing a lot. His friends, in suits, leaning in overt the glass table full of vodka bottles, are listening and laughing. Vania is doing the same for the general, who keeps trying to put his hand on her thigh. She keeps pushing it off.

You are high up here, in some kind of suspended room, with glass walls, looking down on the main dance floor, which is flashing with strobe and laser. There are dancers on plinths high up, too, girls in black thongs and body paint, ten metres up; you have no idea how they climbed these pillars. You can't believe they have no safety harnesses on: a plunge from the top of one of these would land on the concrete below. The urge to fly must be great for these wildly swinging girls. You wonder for a second how much they are paid.

There are other dancers in glass boxes studded to the wall, to the great concrete columns and steel girders that criss-cross this space. There are galleries around, with private rooms of apparently varying exclusivity. The only drink appears to be vodka: little trolleys of mix and ice and lime wedges sit by every table.

There are mostly men in there. They are all in suits, even the ice-faced security guys with their earpieces, standing on the catwalks. The women are, well, they all look like you and Vania, in the same clingy little dress, the same steep shoes. There are legs and necks and hair and breasts, sitting beside the men or on their laps. The men are not paying much attention to them, though, the way they would at a strip club. The men are talking to each other. Some of them stroke a thigh or a braid of glossy hair absently, the way you would a cat on your lap.

You saw a performance earlier, a circus thing. Naked acrobats on silks hanging from the ceiling. It was childish and sexy at the same time.

You passed a dark room, a room with naked bodies in it. You wanted to stop and watch but the guards kept you going towards this lounge. It had apparently been decided where you would go.

Across the table from you, the Owner is in conversation with some men with familiar faces; perhaps you have seen them on the news. He brings out his little oblong case, shows it to them. They nod. They confer with each other.

The Owner beckons you over.

You excuse yourself from the police chief and go and sit on his lap. you pretend to be a kitten.

He murmurs in your ear, "I will be moving into a VIP area soon. To meet with the mayor. he is interested in my product. You two won't be able to go in right away."

"You're leaving us here?"

"Only for a while. While we do business."