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.

A quartet of men surround her and Divya, leaning in under guise of appreciation, corralling the two women in. Divya doesn’t seem to mind, intoxicated by the night and her successes.

Seema grips her by the shoulders. “Divya, chal,” she says, rough and urgent. “Bas, kahin aur chalen.”

“Chal?” Divya struggles to refocus attention on her. Her accent even on that simple word is Americanized. “Where to?”

The men around are nonplussed, eyes darting from one woman to the other and back.

Seema ignores them. “Hum in goray aadmiyon ke khilone nahin.” She’s quoting—or misquoting—some long-forgotten movie dialogue, echoing its outraged intonation accurately. The men boxing them in draw back instinctively, to her satisfaction.

Divya seems unsure how to respond. It’s even unclear if she’s comprehended what Seema means—they’ve never conversed in Hindi or Urdu before. She chuckles tentatively, seeking clarification from Seema, indulgence from the others.

Seema is unrelenting. “Aati ho kya, ya main jaoon?” Divya must leave with her, a victory snatched from these men. Her gaze holds Divya’s, boring into Divya as if to impel her to acquiescence.