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she commands. My heart reenters adagio. I hear the gentle rustle of silk being slipped off and imagine a lover’s notepaper emerging from a fragrant envelope.
    â€œI’m ready now,” she says in a low voice. I turn.
    She is lying on the dressing room bed, on her front. The kameez is the only garment she has taken off: she has folded it onto the solitary chair. Her face is turned toward me, one cheek on the pillow, but her eyes are closed.
    Bottle of cream in hand, I sit gingerly on the edge of the bed. I smear some of the cream on her back. The broad strap of her brassiere impedes my hand.
    â€œAre you sure you want to keep this on?” I ask, my voice thickening.
    â€œYes,” she replies shortly. “Let it be.”
    So much for the romance of the moment. I rub the cream into her skin, which is soft, smooth, devoid of lines: a young woman’s.
    â€œDoes Celestine do this for you usually?” I ask.
    â€œYes,” she says languorously. “But Celestine has short, stubby fingers. Not like yours.” And as I stroke her shoulder blades, she moans in pleasure. The moans are soft, low: the tranquilizer must be working at last.
    â€œWhere was it hurting, Abhaji?” I ask a little later. “I’ll rub a little more there.”
    Her voice is sleepy, the words almost a drawl. “Everywhere,” she whispers. “Just go on. I’m very tired …”
    I go on. So she really did want a massage: this was no camouflaged seduction. And I could imagine how tired she must have been, after all that cavorting in the wet, all those takes. And she isn’t all that young anymore. My fingers press and smooth and knead, tracing waves and semicircles and military steps on her flesh. She breathes evenly, her small soft back rising and falling as my fingers coax the fatigue out of them. I realize she is asleep.
    Damn! Here I am, sent to bring Abha out to film, and all I have succeeded in doing is putting her to sleep. I am annoyed with myself and even slightly with her. Perversely, to release my annoyance, I unhook her bra. It has left a pale discolored swath across her back. She must hardly ever take it off.
    I continue stroking her back, the whole of it this time, and find myself unable to resist the obvious temptation. Here I am, a normal, red-blooded sexually deprived twenty-five-year-old Indian male, in intimate proximity to the most famous bosom in India, with only an unhooked bra between me and a vision of paradise. And she is asleep, knocked out; she need never even know.
    Gently, I take her by the shoulder and turn her slightly. She does not awake. Emboldened, I turn her onto her back. She breathes sweetly, her nostrils widening slightly at each intake of air. I look at her for a moment: her face is still exquisite, but her skin is beginning to sag, folds are lining her neck, crow’s-feet are tiptoeing around her eyes. Abha Patel has built her career on looking cute, but to be cute you have to be young. Her looks are incompatible with middle age, and middle age is creeping up on her like the villain’s accomplice waylaying the filmi hero. Except that in the movies the hero could always escape the trap.
    She looks so peaceful in sleep. No animal magnetism here, just a woman in repose. Tired, chemically promoted repose, at that. But what a woman.
    What a woman. My eyes travel down her neck to the disarranged bra and narrow in puzzlement. I breathe more quickly, my heart pounding like the bongos on the playback track. My fingers, with a will of their own, reach for the cups and lift the brassiere gently off her torso.
    I stare in shock. For an instant, the air stops coming into my lungs. My fingers lose their will. The bra drops back into place. My hands are shaking as I turn Abha back and rehook her bra.
    I can’t believe what I have just seen: breasts so shriveled and empty they are like pockets of desiccated skin, their tips drooping in dismay. Abha’s bosom