Divya is giddy. She’s on her third glass of champagne, prattling away as she weaves through the crowd, dimpling as she greets the Silicon Valley movers and shakers. There are few Asians here, few technocrats, few women—the assembled are mostly venture capitalists and angel investors, the majority White, and almost all men. And Divya moves among them—in her midnight-blue mesh gown, with its silver-threaded spider web and its plunging V-neck—like a princess. No, a courtesan.

Seema had been in no mood to dress up in anything more fancy than a teal flared dress, and initially she’d felt self-conscious arriving at the party, although Divya assured her she looked gorgeous. Still, under the champagne’s influence, she finds herself slipping again into old habits of performing charm—easy laughter, rapt attention, the occasional admiring glance—as if competing with Divya for the approval of these men. If nothing else, the performance serves to take her mind off what awaits her in her own life.

She’d turned her cell phone off, vowing not to check her messages or the internet until she’s in a calmer frame of mind. But there’s a buzz building in the room that she can’t avoid hearing. Originating from the cluster of men by the piano, well-groomed and obviously gay, the bitter murmurs ripple through:

Prop 8 appears likely to pass, though the votes in urban areas like San Francisco have yet to be fully counted, and the result may not be known till the morning. The expanded turnout for Obama is surely to blame, for exit polls show that a majority of Black voters in California supported the ban on same-sex marriage.

What swirls through her?

It is cloying, vindicated disappointment: she’d expected this, had reason to expect this—to be disavowed and abandoned, like Prop 22 had done eight years earlier, like her father had done in the decade before that.

It is vindictive, expanding anger: Against Obama’s feckless expediency, Bill’s half-hearted support. The Black community’s betrayal, if that truly was the clincher—surely Blacks must know what it means to be discriminated against. The No-On-Prop-8’s myopic White leadership, fearful of airing ads with loving gay or lesbian couples in order to allay the fears of straight White people, while ignoring input from minority organizations and shunning outreach in minority communities. The whining gay White men here, conveniently forgetting the much larger numbers of Whites who must too have voted in favor of Prop 8 for it to pass.

And herself, for she’s been such a sellout, with nothing to show for it—

What swirls about her? The dazzling constellations of lights, the glass windows, the glowing marble floor. Or is it she who’s swirling, champagne-flushed, in this brilliant hall of glass and mirrors, with its thousand reflections, refractions, distortions, sipping Bollinger from crystal flutes, waited on by earnest tuxedoed attendants roving with platters of hors d’oeuvres? A veritable Sheesh Mahal—a flash of recollection—and she’s performing for their entertainment but without Anarkali’s audacity to challenge and subvert.