Queen of Dreams (39 page)

Authors: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary

She doesn’t know how she finds herself inside the circle. Did she take the first step, or did someone nudge her in? In any case, she’s here now, turning around and around. Almost at once she feels dizzy, nauseous. What foolishness! She’s much too old for something like this, she’ll probably sprain an ankle any second. And as she thinks this she stumbles, her arms thrown out, rigid with fear, her eyes flying open. But someone’s caught her already. It’s a woman in a loose dress, flowers woven into her long brown braid. She’s wearing a coronet of feathers.
Eliana?
Rakhi whispers,
Is that you?
but the music erases her question. The woman winks at Rakhi (in assent, or merely goodwill?) and pirouettes away. Other hands hold Rakhi steady, then release her into the circle. Someone cries,
Go, girl!
She finds herself rotating, eyes closed, except this time she’s not so afraid. She spins to the circumference, is held and spun back, once, twice, three times. She’s astonished to feel herself smiling. With each revolution, she’s increasingly a part of the music, part of the scene, and as she dances to the darkness inside her eyelids and feels the sweat sprout on her skin and the beat throb through her, she’s suddenly, deeply grateful.

She dances her way toward the DJ area, pausing at the bar to pick up a drink, something sweet and strong she doesn’t recognize, but this doesn’t worry her. She’s beginning to understand, a little, what the club scene means to Sonny. It’s not just the excitement and glamour, the money and easy popularity, as she’d accusingly thought. But to make a roomful of people lose themselves to the mood and become one with the sound! To throw up their arms to the sky and never want it to stop—the music that you’ve created from random bits and castaway pieces and made it sound like no one thought it could. To make people shed suspicion and the memory of pain. Why, it was a little like being God!

She likes how the music surprises her as it moves from ethnic to techno to drums, drums, drums. It’s okay not to know what’s coming next; she trusts it’ll be good, or at least interesting. Small chunks of fear break off her and float away. There’s much more inside, but it’s a start. She’s lighter with each shrug of her shoulders, each swish of her hips. It’s like walking on the moon. All right, she admits it, some of it’s from the drink, which she’s holding out to Sonny, and that’s okay, too. He smiles at her, his teeth a neon flash in the black light, takes her glass and raises it in a wordless toast. A ray of light catches the liquid, flashes like strawberry satin. Dancing, she knows this can’t last. Tomorrow she’ll be back to her usual curmudgeony self. (She must be tipsy, even to think up such a word!) But she’s content to enjoy this moment, this transient mote of glitter-dust on the web of the world where Sonny and she have touched orbits once more. She dances back to the center of the room, its nexus of energy, feeling his gaze like a silk dupatta on her shoulders as she goes.

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee, 1956–
Queen of dreams: a novel / Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. East Indian American women—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction.
3. Divorced mothers—Fiction. 4. California—Fiction. 5. Dreams—Fiction.
6. India—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.I86Q44 2004
813’.54—dc22 2004043856

eISBN : 978-0-307-42739-7

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