The night unexpectedly fills with disco music playing from speakers on either end of the ferry. “The captain figures that once we cross under the sea link, we’re out of Mahim,” Zara says. A few of the passengers even begin to dance on the deck. Zara tugs at the burkha Sarita still has on. “When will you take this off?”

So Sarita works her body out of its purple cocoon. She emerges radiant, like a butterfly. More accurate, a radioactive butterfly: her sari glows a startling red as if steeped in uranium-spiked dye. She looks at herself in horror and amazement, smoothing down the folds, brushing at the electrified pleats with the back of her hand as if she can somehow calm the fabric. “The glowing sari,” she whispers. “This must be what Guddi meant.”

“That’s so cool!” Zara exclaims. “It reminds me of my friend Rashida. Her wedding headdress had a thousand tiny bulbs flashing on and off during the whole ceremony. But tell me, how does it work?—do you have batteries hidden somewhere in the petticoat?” Zara feels the material, then examines her fingertips as if to check whether the fluorescence has rubbed off. “I promised not to pry, so I won’t even ask why you’re dressed in this particular red.”

But she can’t quite shake off her curiosity. She keeps alternating her gaze between the two of us, commenting on what a “cosmopolitan” couple we make, how bride-like Sarita appears, in a “temple” sort of way. Finally she blurts it out. “You’re Hindu, aren’t you? And he’s Muslim! That’s why the Limbus were chasing you—they caught you in the middle of your elopement!”

Sarita starts to dispel this notion, but I smoothly cut her off. “It’s correct, more or less, what you’ve guessed. But promise not to tell anyone—we have to keep it a secret to be safe.”

Zara actually squeals in delight. “I knew it! And the sari? Don’t tell me you went and actually got married?”

“We did. Just this morning.” It’s too tempting an opportunity, too wicked a prospect—the Jazter and his lover’s wife, linked together in matrimony. Besides, it seems the perfect way to explain away Sarita’s flamboyant getup, not to mention our presence in Mahim. I proceed to weave such a rousing tale of childhood sweethearts yearning to unite across the religious divide that stars light up Zara’s face, tears tremble at the corners of her eyes. Sarita looks on in consternation as I describe risking life and limb to venture into the Hindu area where she lived. “If the bomb killed us, I wanted to at least die married. Even her mother melted when she saw our resolve—she found a last-minute priest to marry us in the temple downstairs.” My mistake, I said, was to sneak back into Mahim for my father’s blessing. “He was so outraged he set the local Limbus on our tail—we’ve been on the run ever since.” Our only hope now was to make it to Bandra, where Sarita’s brother might take us in.

“All we have is the clothes on our back. That, a little money, and a love no longer afraid to speak its name.” I take my sweetheart’s startled hand in mine and kiss it.

Zara wants to call her friends around so I can relate my story to them, but I remind her again about the need for discretion, for safety’s sake. “You’ll have to tell Sequeira, though,” she says. “He’ll be absolutely thrilled. He’s always trying to get different religions together—says it’s the very spirit of Bandra. Just ask him, and I’m sure he’ll personally take you to your brother’s in the morning.”

Once Zara shimmies away to the dance music, I apologize to Sarita. “I hope that didn’t upset you. It seemed the best way not to get her suspicious about your outfit.”

“It’s OK,” Sarita says, though the chagrin hasn’t quite cleared her face. “I wouldn’t have thought all those stories were necessary, but what difference does it make? We’ll all be going our separate ways soon enough anyway.”

The ferry docks beside a floating gangplank. The boatman collects the fares as we exit—a whopping two thousand per person, which includes entry to Sequeira’s. As I count out the money, I mentally give thanks to Auntie Rahim for the financial help.

Although we can hear the nightclub, feel the pulsing throb of its music through the air, we can’t see it. A man with a flashlight leads us along a path marked out with white rope. Sarita glides along at my side, casting a soft red radiance on the rocks, like a luminescent creature from the deep taking its first magical steps on land.

The club materializes from the darkness, a large, faceless structure with the looming air of a warehouse. “Sequeira used to have his disco right next to the water,” Zara explains. “But then Mehboob Studios down the road sold him this place. It might not look like much, but they filmed parts of Superdevi in it.” The cavernous space inside is broken up into a series of recycled movie sets. People sip drinks in the seats of an Air India plane, they climb the sweeping staircase of a palatial mansion, lounge around the gardens of a Mughal palace. In the center, I even see what looks like the surface of the moon. “Remember the famous scene from the movie? When Baby Rinky voyages to the moon to get the magic crystal from the goddess there and attain the powers of a devi?”

The lunar surface is actually a dance floor—about two hundred people, in their twenties and thirties, gyrate to the tune of a remixed disco version of “I am Superdevi.” As we watch, a woman takes off her top and dances in bra and shorts among a group of shirtless men. “It’s a rebellion against the burkha,” Zara says, as another woman, also down to her bra, joins in. “A few months ago, nobody would have dreamt of something like this. But now people just want to thumb their noses at the Limbus. And Bhim as well. If the younger set doesn’t do it, who will?”

The Air India bar has a price list—Zara notices me wince at the thousand-rupee beers, the fifteen-hundred-rupee martinis. “Sequeira’s been jacking up the tab every week. He thinks everyone our age must have made so much money in the boom years that he’s doing us a favor by giving us a chance to enjoy it before it gets too late.”

Just then, Sequeira himself appears in a spotlight on the balcony above the Mughal garden. He’s dressed in vintage Bollywood—silver suit and top hat, white gloves and a bejeweled cane—something Amitabh Bachchan might have worn in one of his potboiler films, circa the seventies. “Welcome to the end of the world,” Sequeira says, swinging and wheeling jauntily, like old people do to show they’re still spry. He raises his cane to acknowledge the catcalls and cheers that rise from the dance floor. “You’re the brave ones, the ones who haven’t abandoned Bombay despite the rumors, despite all the efforts to tear us apart. This evening, Sequeira’s is going to be your reward. Whether or not the bomb falls, the most important thing tonight, like every night this week, is to dance as if tomorrow will never dawn!”

The crowd roars, the spotlight goes off, and Sarita gets even brighter at my side as the club is plunged into darkness. A siren starts up and a rocket-shaped missile descends from the ceiling. Inscribed along the sides are the words ATOM BOMB, blinking red lights outline its tail and fins. As it touches down, the darkness erupts with blinding flashes and thunderous explosions. “Superdevi” starts up again, and a horde of onlookers swarm to the dance floor. Zara insists we accompany her. “Your duty as newlyweds. Plus you need to burn up the floor in that sexy sari!” She goes on without us only after extracting a promise that we’ll join in for a future song.

The dancing makes me morose, bringing up memories of the one time I managed to drag Karun to a Gay Bombay disco. It took a good deal of further cajoling to actually lure him onto the floor, where he remained stilted and self-conscious. And yet, I found the awkward little twists I was able to coax out, the unsure waggles and bobs, completely endearing. I never did fulfill my new year’s pledge that winter to teach him the moves.

Sarita seems lost in nostalgia as well—could she have had better luck? At teaching Karun something more staid, like the waltz or foxtrot? I imagine them swirling down a polished ballroom floor, smoldering in each other’s arms. A burst of jealousy lances me at the thought.

She glances up at me, suddenly alert to my presence. Does she suspect something amiss, now that she’s had a chance to slow down and cogitate? I brace myself for more questions about the newlywed charade I pulled on the ferry, but she’s honed in on a more perilous slip. “When Rahim asked you about his uncle and auntie—I thought you mentioned your father died early?”

So she did catch Rahim’s inconvenient little revelation back at the hotel. “You misunderstood. He was asking about my father’s sister and her husband, not my parents. They’re auntie and uncle to both of us—my poor cousin, stuck in that hotel, doesn’t get to see them as much.”

She narrows her eyes and knits her brow, but lapses into silence. Just when I think I might slide by with my response, she springs the question I’ve anticipated all along. “Were you and Rahim—together?”

Normally, the Jazter is militantly up-front in such matters, but this is hardly the shrewdest moment to promote gay visibility, to wave the rainbow flag in her face. “It happened a long time ago. Kids try out all sorts of things, you know.”

I think that should do the trick, convince her to drop it, but I’m wrong. “And now? Is that what—? Has that become your—preference?” She has trouble enunciating the word.

“You mean men? You’re asking if I sleep with men? Not that it’s any of your business, but no.” Twenty questions is the last game I want to play, so I vent the words with all the offended self-righteousness I can muster.