The Mountain Shadow

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I was early, and so were the stars arriving at the Taj in limousines for a gala to promote a new movie. I parked the bike beneath a palm tree, across from the hotel, waiting for snail minutes to make the long creep to eight and my appointment with Karla.

Through the wide doors of the lobby I saw the sponsor wall, with special guests posing for photographs in front of brand names that had paid them by the second. Flash, flash, turn this way, turn that way: the mug shots of the privileged, caught in the act.

The limousines stopped, the photographers hurried to other headlines, and the sponsor wall was dismantled. The spacious, gracious lobby, where great thinkers had discussed great ideas on rainy Bombay afternoons, for rainy decades, was barren and businesslike again.

To hell with early. I walked around the hotel to a back door, guarded by a man I knew, and climbed the promenade stairs to Karla’s door. I knocked, and she opened it.

Her feet were bare. She wore a black silk lounging suit. It was trousers and top all in one, sleeveless, with zip pockets, and a zip front.

Her hair was tied up in a knot behind her head. There was a thin, silver letter opener, in the shape of a Damascan sword keeping the knot together. Karla.

‘You’re early,’ she said, smiling but not inviting me in.

‘I’m always early, or late.’

‘That’s a talent, for a man in your line of not-working. You wanna come in?’

‘Sure.’

‘Rish!’ she called, over her shoulder. ‘Our interview is over.’

She pushed the door wide, and I saw Rish, one of Lisa’s partners at the gallery. He rushed forward.

‘I’m so sorry, Lin,’ he said, holding my hand in both of his. ‘It’s a terrible shock. Dear Lisa. A terrible loss. I’m . . . I’m just beside myself with grief.’

He squeezed past Karla, sidestepped me and scuttled away down the corridor. It was a long corridor.

‘A man who’s beside himself,’ Karla said, as Rish scuttled, ‘usually has a fool for company. Come in, Shantaram. It’s been a long day.’

She walked back into the suite and sat on the window-seat couch.

‘Make me a drink, please,’ she said, when I’d closed and locked the door. ‘I love it when I don’t make the drink.’

‘What’ll it be?’

‘I’ll have a Happy Mary.’

‘A Happy Mary?’

‘It’s a Bloody Mary, without the red corpuscles. And rocks. Lots of rocks.’

I made the drinks and brought them to sit with her.

‘Shall we toast?’ she asked.

‘To running away angry?’ I suggested.

She laughed.

‘How about to old times, Shantaram?’

‘To fallen friends,’ I countered.

‘To fallen friends,’ she agreed, clashing glasses with me.

‘You’ve gotta snap out of it,’ she said, taking a long sip of her drink, before putting it down.

‘I’m okay.’

‘Bullshit. I just gave you four leads – fool, happy, blood, and rock – and you didn’t go for any of them. That’s not you. That’s not you and me.’

‘You and me?’

She saw my mind working, and smiled.

‘Why are you so determined to find out who gave Lisa the dope?’

‘Aren’t you?’

She picked up her glass again, studied it for a while, drank off a coalminer’s finger, and turned all the queens on me.

‘If I find out who did it, or if you do, I’ll probably want to kill whoever it is. It’s the kind of true that makes people kill people. You really wanna go there?’

‘I just want to find out what happened to Lisa, that’s all. I owe her that, Karla.’

She put her palms on her thighs, let out a gasp of air, and quickly stood up.

She crossed the room to the escritoire, opened her handbag, and took out a brass cigarette case exactly like Didier’s.

With her back to me she lit a joint, and smoked it doggedly.

‘I didn’t think I’d need this, tonight,’ she muttered, between deep breaths.

My eyes moved down her body, bowing to her. Her silhouette, wrapped in black: love was shouting inside me.

‘It was either this,’ Karla said, her back still turned to me, ‘or breaking a bottle over your head.’

‘Right . . . what was that?’

She stubbed out the joint, took two more joints from the case, snapped it shut, dropped it into her handbag and returned to the couch.

‘Here,’ she said, shoving the two joints at me. ‘Catch up.’

‘I’m kinda high already.’

‘Fuck you, Shantaram. Smoke the fucking joints.’

‘O . . . kay.’

I smoked. Every time I made to say something, she pushed the joint at me again gently.

‘You know,’ I said, when she let me, ‘that’s twice you’ve said Fuck you to me, in the same day.’

‘If it’ll make you feel any better,’ she drawled, ‘say Fuck you to me, right now.’

‘No, I –’

‘Come on, get it off your chest. You’ll feel better. Say Fuck you, Karla. Say Stop fucking with me, Karla. Go on. Try it. Fuck . . . you . . . Karla.’

I looked at her.

‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘I bet you can, if you try.’

‘Can I say Fuck you to a sunset? Can I say Fuck you to a galaxy?’

She smiled at me again, but her eyes were fierce. I had no idea what she was thinking.