We had another drink and had just started to move to the music when an arm snaked itself around my waist from behind, orange fingernails and dangling bracelets.

“I almost didn’t recognize you with that hair, handsome,” said a mouth by my ear.

It was Karolina. Lips the color of pomegranates, lashes large and thick and heavy with mascara like clotted spider legs.

“What are you doing here?” I pressed her against me, relieved to see a familiar face.

“I was invited, I swear!” she cried, taking my head in between her hands, kissing me on the mouth. I could feel her lipstick rubbing off, the petrol smell of her breath.

She laughed and held her outstretched hand toward you like a lady. “I don’t think we’ve ever properly met.”

You kissed the hand obligingly, playing her game.

I took her by the waist. “Are you drunk?”

“As a sailor. It would be stupid not to be.” She raised her glass, swayed on her heels.

And then the music stopped. The record had come to an end; the low crackle of the speakers could be heard between the suddenly naked chatter of the crowd. We looked at each other, bemused, in anticipation. A new record was placed on the deck by a gangly boy in green bell-bottoms. At once a string of quick, light beats prepared the room, gathered our attention, ecstatic, simple, and single-minded. And before we knew it, Blondie’s siren voice had filled the room, sending a rush through us. We didn’t know the words, not a single one, but we understood everything about “Heart of Glass”—all its elation, its decadence, the pleasure of self-indulgence. We made our way through the crowd to the middle of the room, where we dissolved ourselves in her voice, in its high flight, in the rising and falling melody, in the motif of the beat, the beat that was there from beginning to end and begged to be followed. Our heads spun along with the record. Our bodies became instruments of the song, extensions of it, and we formed as one, dancing in a triangle, swaying from side to side as if possessed. When the song ended, another one began to play, one just as good and catchy and seductive, and we gave ourselves to it. It was as if someone had taken us all and placed us on a platform on top of the world. We danced until sweat ran down our backs and foreheads and we could no longer catch our breath.