‘God?’
‘I worry, Lin. I worry about what will open, inside you, if you see her again. Some bridges, they should remain burned. Some rivers, they should not be crossed.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Perhaps, if I were to accompany you? I’m more than a match for her wit, as the world knows.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Then, if you are determined to see her, perhaps I should arrange a rather inconvenient accident for Ranjit? One that prevents him from attending?’
‘No accidents.’
‘An unfortunate delay, then?’
‘How about we let nature take its course, Didier.’
‘That is exactly my fear,’ he sighed, ‘if you see Karla again.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Well . . . ’ he murmured, lowering his eyes, and glancing at the watch I’d given him. ‘Thank you for the watch. I will always treasure it.’
‘Look after Abdullah, with that pretty girl in the corner.’
‘I know. We tough guys, we fall fast, and we fall hard. Alas, it is the story of my life. I remember the time –’
‘So do I, brother,’ I laughed, turning to leave. ‘So do I.’
I passed by the two thin backpackers, who were eating for four, with four hands. I put the camera on the table.
‘It’s worth a grand, US, in the stores here,’ I said, ‘and any street guy in Bombay will get six for it, and an honest one will give you five back.’
‘He gave us a hundred, and promised to get more,’ one of the men said.
‘He’ll be hanging around,’ I said. ‘And he’ll want his hundred back. There’s a waiter here, named Sweetie. He does a little on the side. He’s a surly motherfucker, but you can trust him. You can do the deal, give Saleh his money back, and be in front. Be safe.’
‘Thank you,’ they both said.
They looked like brothers, and wherever they’d been in India, it had hungered them.
‘Will you join us?’
‘I’m on my way to dinner,’ I smiled. ‘Thanks all the same.’
I walked outside to the bike. Abdullah and Didier raised their hands in farewell, Didier holding an imaginary camera, and sarcastically taking my photo, for helping out two strangers.
I turned away, watching the traffic shuffle beside the bullying shoulder of a bus. Didier and Abdullah: men so different, and yet brothers, in so many ways. I thought of the things we three unwise men had done, together and alone, since we’d met as exiles in the Island City. There were things we regretted, and things buried. But there were also things of triumph, and light. When love cut one of us, the others cauterised with sarcasm. When one had to become two, the others brought their guns. When hope faltered in one, the others filled the hollowness with loyalty. And I felt that loyalty like a hand on my chest, as I looked back at them, and I hoped hard for them, and for myself.
Fear is a wolf on a chain, only dangerous when you set it free. Sorrow exhausts itself in the net of forgetting. Anger, for all its fury, can be killed by a smile. Only hope goes on forever, because hope doesn’t belong to us: it belongs to our ancestors, the first of our kind, whose brave love for one another gave us most of the good that we are.
And hope, that ancient seed, redeems the heart it feeds. The heartbeat of any conscious now is poised on the same choice that hope gives all of us, between shadows of the past, and the bright, blank page of any new day.
Chapter Twenty
The past is a novel, written by Fate, weaving the same themes: love and its glory, hate and its prisoners, the soul and its price. Our decisions become narratives: fated choices that unknowably change the course of the living river. In the present, where decisions and connections are made, Fate waits on the riverbank of Story, leaving us to our mistakes and miracles, because it’s our will alone that leads us to one or the other.
Pausing beside my bike that day, I marked the faces on the street. One face held my eyes. It was a young woman, blonde, blue-eyed and nervous. She was standing on the footpath outside Leopold’s, waiting for someone. She was fearful but determined, somehow: brave and afraid, in equal measure.
I took out the locket that I’d bought from Billy Bhasu. Prising it open, I looked at the photograph. It was the same girl.
There are a hundred good girls on every bad street, waiting for a guy who usually isn’t worth it. The girl was waiting for her boyfriend to return with dope. She wasn’t a user: she was thin, but still too healthy, and too aware of the world. Her boyfriend was the user, I guessed, and she’d sold her locket to Billy Bhasu, a street tout, so that the boyfriend could buy drugs.
I’d been on the street long enough to know the signs of somebody’s desperate habit, even expressed second-hand. I’d been that habit myself, and I’d seen it in the eyes of everyone who loved me.
The fact that the girl in the locket was waiting outside Leopold’s, and not inside, meant that she and her boyfriend were past the early tourist phase, with cold drinks and hot food, and sitting in a restaurant all day long. The fact that she was on the street, and not in a hotel room, meant that they were probably behind on the rent.
She was waiting until the boyfriend came back with the drugs he’d bought with their love locket, and some change to spare for the room.
I’d seen girls like the girl in the locket leave the Island City as ashes, spilled from reluctant hands, not long after they arrived. They were beautiful, as every girl is, and there was always a not so beautiful guy who wrote that part of their story for them.
I could’ve ridden away without a word. I did it every day: rode past sadness, neglect and futility. You can’t jump through every hoop that Fate puts in front of you.
But the locket came to life on the street, imitating art, and I walked over to her.
‘I think this is yours,’ I said, holding the locket in my open palm.
She stared at it, her eyes wide with fear, but didn’t move.
‘Go ahead. Take it.’
Hesitantly, she reached out and scooped the locket and chain from my palm.
‘What . . . what do you –’
‘I don’t want anything,’ I said, cutting her off. ‘This came across my desk, so to speak. That’s all.’
The girl smiled awkwardly.
‘All the best,’ I said.
I turned to leave.
‘I must have lost it,’ she said quickly, defending herself with a lie.
I hesitated.
‘When my boyfriend comes back, we’ll give you a reward,’ she said, trying on a smile she hadn’t used in a while.
‘You didn’t lose it,’ I said. ‘You sold it.’
‘I what?’
‘And the fact that you sold it with your pictures still in it, means your boyfriend did it in a hurry. The fact he did it in a hurry means he did it under pressure. The only pressure that works on people like us, in this city, is drugs.’
She flinched, as if I’d threatened her.
‘People like us . . . ’ she said, a Scandinavian accent bumping the words from her lips with a pleasant little music that didn’t match the sadness in her eyes.
I walked away.
I looked back. She was still cringing in that shocked flinch, her shoulders curved inwards.
I went back.
‘Look,’ I said more softly, glancing around in both directions to check the street. ‘Forget it.’
I handed her a roll of notes, the profit I’d made that day, and began to leave, but she stopped me. She held the money in her closed hand.
‘What . . . what are you talking about?’
‘Forget it,’ I said again, taking a step backwards. ‘Keep the money. Forget I said anything.’
‘No!’ she pleaded, folding her arms in on herself protectively. ‘Tell me what you’re talking about.’
I stopped, and sighed again.
‘You have to leave this guy behind, whoever he is,’ I said at last. ‘I know how this plays out. I’ve seen it a hundred times. I don’t care how much you love him, or how nice a guy he is –’
‘You don’t know anything.’
What I knew was that the next picture she’d sell to someone would be the one in her passport. I knew she still had her passport, because it hadn’t come to me yet. But she’d sell it, I was pretty sure, if her boyfriend asked her to. She’d sell everything, and when there was nothing left to sell, she’ll sell herself.
And her boyfriend would feel bad, but he’d take the money she made from selling her body, and he’d buy dope with it. I knew that, just like every street tout, shopkeeper and pimp around us knew it. It was the truth of addiction, waiting to happen, and they were the truth of the street, waiting to use her.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything.’
I walked to the bike, and rode away. Sometimes you buy in, sometimes you don’t: sometimes you try, and sometimes you ride past. A gold chain and a photograph connected me to the girl, somehow, but there were too many girls, in too much trouble, waiting somewhere for troubled boyfriends. And anyway, I was a troubled boyfriend myself.
I wished the girl in the locket well, and stopped thinking about her by the time I parked my bike at home.
Lisa was preoccupied and quiet as I shaved, showered and dressed. I was glad. I didn’t want to talk. The dinner with Ranjit and Karla hadn’t been my idea.
Although we both lived in the narrow peninsula of the Island City, I hadn’t seen Karla in person since I’d been living with Lisa. I saw pictures of her and Ranjit from time to time, in Ranjit’s newspapers, but Fate never crossed our paths.
Karla haunts the mansion of my life, too, Lisa said. I understood what she meant, but Karla wasn’t a ghost. Karla was more dangerous.
‘How do I look?’ Lisa asked me, standing near the front door of the apartment.
She was wearing a very short, sleeveless blue silk dress. She had a shell necklace, the shell bracelet I’d given her, and her Roman-style sandals laced all the way up to the knees.
Her make-up was more elaborate than usual, but it suited her: sky-blue eyes in a black aurora. Her thick, blonde curls were as loose and free as ever, but she’d cut the fringe of her hair herself with a pair of kitchen scissors. It was irregular, haphazard, and brilliant.
‘You look great,’ I smiled. ‘Love what you did to your hair. Did you put my throwing knife back, when you were finished with it?’
‘Let me show you where to put your throwing knife, buster!’ she laughed, punching me hard in the chest.
‘Are you serious, about seeing other people?’ I seriously asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said quickly. ‘I am. And you should, too.’
‘Is that what this sudden dinner party is about?’
‘In a way. We can talk about it later.’
‘I think we should talk about it now. And about other things.’
‘First, talk to Karla.’
‘What?’
‘She’ll be there tonight. Talk to her. Find out what she’s thinking, and then we’ll talk about what you’re thinking.’
‘I don’t see –’
‘Exactly. Let’s ride, cowboy, or we’ll be late.’
We rode to the Mahesh hotel during a lull in the rain, arriving at the covered entrance just as a new shower began. I parked the bike in an alcove, away from the main entrance. It was strictly forbidden to park there, so it cost me fifty rupees.
At the bank of entry doors Lisa stopped me, her hand in mine.
‘Are you ready for this?’ she asked.
‘Ready for what?’
‘Karla,’ she said, her lips a bright, brave smile. ‘What else?’
We found Ranjit sitting at a table set for ten. Two mutual acquaintances, Cliff De Souza and Chandra Mehta, were with him. The men were partners in a Bollywood film production company. My association with them had begun a few years before, when they’d approached me to help them dump some of their undeclared, untaxed rupees, in exchange for black market dollars, with which they could bribe taxation department officials, because the taxmen only accepted dollars.
Lisa had worked with them for several months when she was running a small talent agency, sourcing foreigners to work as extras in Indian films. When she’d segued from the agency into work at the art gallery, she’d kept up contact with Cliff and Chandra.
Their films had been hits in recent years. The producers had established a banner that attracted some of the biggest stars in the city. It was a measure of their success that Chandra and Cliff, who’d always adorned themselves on public occasions with a young starlet, had four pretty girls with them for the dinner that night.
We greeted one another, met the four girls – Monica, Mallika, Simple, and Sneha – and took our seats at the table. Ranjit sat us on either side of him, Lisa on his right, and me on the left. There was no place set for Karla.
‘Isn’t Karla coming?’ Lisa asked.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Ranjit said, pressing his lips together in a rueful smile. ‘She’s . . . she’s not feeling a hundred per cent. She asks you all to excuse her, and she sends her best wishes.’
‘It’s nothing serious, I hope? Should I call her?’
‘No, she’s fine, Lisa,’ Ranjit said. ‘She’s just been overdoing it a bit lately. That’s all.’
‘Please be sure to give her my love.’
‘I will, Lisa. I will.’
Lisa glanced at me, but quickly turned away.
‘Are you all actresses, Mallika?’ Lisa asked, turning to the girl sitting nearest her.
The girls all giggled and nodded.
‘Yes, we are,’ Mallika said shyly.
‘It’s a hard crawl to the top,’ Cliff De Souza said, slurring his speech a little, beginning drunk. ‘We don’t know which one of you will make it to the next level, yaar, and which ones will fail, and never be seen again.’
The girls giggled nervously. Chandra Mehta moved in to mitigate.
‘You’ll all get your shot,’ he assured the girls. ‘You’ll all get face-on-screen. Guaranteed. In the bank. But like Cliff says, there’s no way to know which of you will have that special magic with the camera, the It factor that moves you onwards and upwards, so to speak.’
‘I’ll drink to that!’ Cliff shouted, raising his glass. ‘Onwards and upwards!’
‘Have you been acting long?’ Lisa asked Simple, when the glasses hit the table again.
‘Oh, yes,’ Simple replied.
‘We started months ago,’ Monica added.
‘Veterans already,’ Cliff slurred. ‘Another toast! To the business that makes us rich!’
‘To show business!’ Chandra agreed.
‘To creative accounting!’ Cliff corrected him.
‘I’ll certainly drink to that,’ Chandra laughed, clinking glasses.
Baskets of pakodas and narrow strips of Kashmiri parathas arrived at the table.
‘I took the liberty of ordering for us,’ Ranjit announced. ‘There’s some non-veg for Cliff, Lin and Lisa, and a wide selection of veg dishes for everybody else. Please, begin!’
‘Chandra,’ Ranjit continued, as we began to eat. ‘Did you happen to see the article in my paper last week? The one about the young gay dancer, who was murdered near your studio?’
‘He doesn’t read anything but contracts,’ Cliff replied, pouring another glass of red wine. ‘But I saw it. Actually, it was my secretary who saw it. She was blubbering like a baby, crying her eyes out, and when I asked her what was going on, she read the article out to me. What about it?’
‘I was thinking that it might make a good story line for a movie,’ Ranjit said, passing a basket of pak
odas to Lisa. ‘My paper would get behind it, if you did it. And I’d put money in it.’
‘Damn good idea!’ Lisa agreed.
‘So that’s what this dinner’s about,’ Chandra said.
‘And if it is?’ Ranjit asked, smiling charmingly.
‘Forget it!’ Chandra spluttered, gasping on a mouthful of food. ‘You think we’re crazy?’
‘Hear me out,’ Ranjit insisted. ‘One of my columnists, he’s a pretty fair writer, and he’s written a few screenplays already, for your competitors –’
‘We don’t have any competitors,’ Cliff cut in. ‘We’re at the top of the cinema food chain, hurling coconuts at the others far below!’
‘Anyway,’ Ranjit persisted, ‘this young writer is hot for the story. He’s already begun to write a screenplay.’
‘That dancer fellow was foolish,’ Cliff said.
‘That dancer fellow had a name,’ Lisa said quietly.
Her manner was calm, but I knew she was angry.
‘Yes, of course he –’
‘His name was Avinash. He was a brilliant dancer, before a mob of drunken thugs beat him unconscious, poured kerosene on him, and tossed matches at him.’
‘Like I said –’ Cliff began, but his production partner silenced him.
‘Look, Ranjit,’ Chandra said nervously. ‘You can play the hero in the pages of your newspapers, writing about that poor young fellow –’
‘Avinash,’ Lisa said.
‘Yes, yes, Avinash. You can write about him, and take the risks, and get away with it. But be realistic. If we put that story in a movie, they’d come after us. They’d close down the cinemas.’
‘They’d burn down the bloody cinemas,’ Cliff added. ‘And we’d lose buckets of money, for nothing at all.’
‘Some stories, it seems to me,’ Ranjit said gently, ‘are so important that we should take the risks involved in telling them.’
‘It’s not just the risks to ourselves,’ Chandra replied reasonably. ‘Think about it. If we did such a picture, there’d be riots. Cinemas could get attacked. As Cliff says, there could even be fires. People could die. Is it worth a risk like that, just to tell a story?’