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inding you with fierce flares like exploding stars, the music pulling you this way and that like a doll as if it had rough arms and vice-like hands on your shoulders, a knee in your back making you spin like the others, dance like a mad dervish with the others all around you; the music, something foreign that just goes round in circles, with its bongo drumbeats and a salsa tip-tap tempo, melting into and leaving no trace but the gleaming sheen on your forehead, your lip, and you look over yet again and it’s like a film over her body as well, the space between her collar bones, the curve of her breasts, the naked slope of her neck and shoulders,but she’s dancing with someone else and not you, and this is jealousy you’re feeling, blunt and bludgeoning like a stone club in your chest, and it doesn’t matter if you’re standing still, if you’re obstructing the dancers, doesn’t really make a difference, but you’re part of the crowd, you have to be, otherwise you’re an outcast, a pariah in the dusty street outside the city walls; you’re a beggar with a wooden bowl, pleading, but just because you’ve all the money and all the toys in your huge house with its expensive paintings and rare statues and ancient artefacts doesn’t mean you have to be like all these others, spinning drunkenly, their hands sweaty and clasped together, their jaws slackly hanging in suspended laughter, the guffaw of the fool a stranger to sobriety; polished shoes tapping rhythms on the polished floor, silk-woven dinner jackets and trousers crisply pressed with force enough to make diamonds out of coal, white scarves and white gloves, short hair trimmed daily on every man there and jewels on the women discarded nightly and replaced every morning; and again you think how much you hate all this, this ghoulish decadence, horrifying in its superficiality and its ghastly impiety and perfect insincerity; staring you notice again that her dress is tight and it’s semi-transparent underneath the hot lights, and there’s no underwear, there’s no underwear; her string of pearls around her neck like eyes turned inwards as if even they can’t avoid staring, or like little round eggs waiting to be inseminated and hatched, bouncing as she dances, as she turns, and her hair splays outwards and your bruised heart trembles, staggering in your chest, battering your ribs from the inside; and it hurts, yes it hurts, but there’s nothing you can do about it, you just dance, you swill even more of your drink, a martini, Joe, set ‘em up, one for my baby and one for the road; but you’re going nowhere, you’re here forever, it seems, this nightmare will go on forever, and all you can think is that it’s eternal, this jealousy for the familiar angel dancing with the other men; last for all eternity like the universe will, like love and hate will, like all kinds of music will last forever as long as people keep whistling the tunes; so you dance and it doesn’t matter, you can change your mind, make your blood flow backwards and you’re heart will turn inside out and time will turn with it, and you’ll forget, or better still it won’t ever have happened and you can move on, wait for the next one to come along; except that you’re mind’s imagining she’s there in front of you, and she’s got her gloved hands around your neck, her sheathed fingers underneath your collar tugging at your bowtie, and she’s smiling and you’re smiling and then she’s close to you, body against yours, and with your hand you can feel she’s got not underwear and she’s probably feeling something of yours too but she doesn’t seem to mind; she’s smiling those gorgeous lips and those eyelashes are fluttering and with your fingers you trace the lines of her soft neck, you caress her cheek and hold her chin in your fingertips; you can each feel hot breath; a kiss, amidst the lights and the music and the dervishes; but she’s not really there, it’s in your head, and really she’s dancing with someone else the same time you were dreaming of your lips and hers touching, tongue heavy in your mouth; and that jealousy again, that anger, that undoubtable feeling of torment and anguish and heart-felt pain as the sand slips through your fingers, a torrent of gold dust disappearing into the carpet too small to retrieve; but it’s only wheels, you’re thinking, the turning of the wheels that mean this and that and everything else, but apparently not happiness for you, so you stagger backwards in the same old numbed stoic stupor, drunk and alone and afraid, but you can’t think about it because the lights are bl