Do I awaken lust, desire in men? I know their bodies so well now. I listen to romantic songs on cassettes. The garden with beautiful flowers. The hovering honey bees seeking nectar. Words that cloak the bare and necessary act of coition. Images flash on the TV screen of young girls decked in gold. Modest downcast gaze. Sweet-smelling soaps lather limbs that are already clean. My skin is still good. But withering gradually like the apples in the handcarts, growing crinkled in the sun.

I wondered whether the man would give me the amount he had promised. Sometimes my clients don’t. Since I am alone, I am afraid of coercing them. None of them ever remembers me or seeks me again. I am indifferent to whether they get pleasure out of me or not. We never have romantic background music to fill the senses. I sometimes feel more dead than alive. My emotions are never involved. What I do, I do impersonally.

Suduputha came back in a short while.

‘Mahatthaya, the bars are all closed. No arrack anywhere,’ he said

I needed a drink too. I would have liked some iced Fanta. The room was close. Hot. No fans in these rooms. Only a shut window. My reflection in the blurred mirror that hung on the wall stared back at me, surrounded by a nimbus of coloured light prisms. The ceiling bulb was dull and sticky with dead and crawling insects.

His chocolate brown shirt was draped on the back of the straight-backed chair. It was 12.30, past midnight. Four hours we lived in that room as man and wife. I couldn’t stay longer. I had to stretch the remaining hours until morning with new clients. My saree that had been carelessly tossed on the floor was draped once more on my body. I flicked a wingless meroe ant crawling on it with my finger. It wouldn’t last long, and soon the red ants would drag away its body.

We went down the stairs. A few stragglers were still eating hot hoppers with fish curry. The young man making the hoppers tapped an egg on the rim of the iron pan and tilted it into the soft hopper mixture. Sudu was running up and down with hot hoppers on a plastic plate and jugs of water. Fingers were wiped on squares of old newspaper.