The Mountain Shadow (40 page)

‘
Do chai! Do chai lao!
No
bun musca
!
Repeating, no bun musca!
’

‘No
bun musca
?’ a voice called back from the kitchen.

I looked at Lisa, and then at Atif, then at Vishal the fast-food cook, glowering from the serving window. I raised my hand, one finger extended.

‘One
bun musca
!’ I shouted.

‘Yes!’ Atif shouted triumphantly. ‘
Ek bun musca, do chai!
’

Vishal wagged his head in the serving widow enthusiastically, his wide grin revealing pearl-white teeth.

‘
Ek bun musca, do chai!
’ he shouted happily, banging his saucepan of boiling chai on its gas-ring fire.

‘I’m glad we got that settled,’ I said, trying to shake Lisa happy.

It was the kind of silly, lovely thing that Bombay does every day, and normally we would’ve enjoyed it together.

‘You know, it’s kinda weird,’ Lisa said.

‘Not really. Atif is –’

‘I was here yesterday,’ she said. ‘With Karla.’

‘You . . . what?’

‘And exactly the same thing happened with that waiter.’

‘Wait a minute. You were here with Karla, yesterday, and you didn’t say anything?’

‘Why would I? Do you tell me who you see, and who you fight with?’

‘There’s a reason for that, and you know it.’

‘Anyway, when I was here with Karla, the same thing happened with that waiter –’

‘Atif?’

‘See? She knew his name, too.’

‘He’s my favourite waiter here. Not surprised she likes him. He should be running the place.’

‘No, you’re not getting me.’

‘Do we have to talk about Karla?’

‘Talk about her,’ she said quietly, ‘or think about her?’

‘Are
you
thinking about her? Because I’m not. I’m thinking about you, and us. What there is of us.’

She flicked a frown at me, and then went back to folding and refolding the napkin.

The
bun musca
and chai arrived at the table. I ignored it for a moment, but Atif lingered near my elbow, watching me, so I picked up a piece of the bread and took a bite. He wagged his head approvingly, and walked away.

‘I guess it’s just my busted-up life, you know?’ Lisa said, creasing lines in the napkin with her fingers.

I did know. I’d heard her story many times. It was always differently the same, and I always wanted her to tell it again.

‘I wasn’t, you know,
mistreated
, or anything. It wasn’t anything like that. My parents are kinda great, you know. They really are. The fault is in me. You know that.’

‘There’s no fault in you, Lisa.’

‘Yes, there is.’

‘Even if there was, there’s no fault that can’t be loved away.’

She paused, sipped at the chai, and found another way into whatever it was she was trying to tell me.

‘Did I ever tell you about the parade?’

‘Not at Kayani’s,’ I smiled. ‘Tell me again.’

‘We used to have this Founders’ Day Parade every year, right down the whole of Main Street. Everybody for fifty miles around got involved, or came to watch the show. My high school band marched in the parade, and we had this big barge –’

‘A float.’

‘Yeah, the school had this big float that the parents’ committee made, with a different theme every year. One year, they picked me to be the one sitting high up on a kind of throne, as the central attraction. The theme that year was
The Fruits of Liberty
, and the barge –’

‘The float.’

‘The float was filled with produce from the local farms. I was the
Liberty Belle
, get it?’

‘You must’ve looked damn cute.’

She smiled.

‘I had to sit on the top, while the whole mountain of fruit and potatoes and beets and all rolled along between the crowds. And I had to wave, regally, like this, all the way down Main Street.’

She waved her hand gently, palm upwards, her fingers curved around the majestic memory.

Atif cleared the table again. He looked at me, posing the question with one raised eyebrow. I held my hand over the table palm downwards, and gestured toward the table twice. It was the signal to wait for a time. He wagged his head from side to side, and checked on the neighbouring tables.

‘It was really something. Kind of a big honour, if you know what I mean. Everybody said so. Everybody kept on saying so, over and over again. You know how irritating it is, when people keep telling you how honoured you should be?’

‘I know the
dishonoured
version, but I get your drift.’

‘The thing was, I didn’t really
feel
honoured, you know? I was kinda glad, of course, when they picked
me
from all the other girls, some of them way prettier than me. And I didn’t even
do
anything to get picked. Some of the girls tried every devious trick they could think of. You don’t know how many tricks a girl can find up her sleeve, until you see a bunch of them trying to get picked to be on top of the truck in the Founders’ Day Parade.’

‘What kind of tricks?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Me, I didn’t do anything,’ she said. ‘And I was as surprised as anyone when the committee picked me. But . . . I didn’t really
feel
anything. I waved my hand, as regal as Marie Antoinette, getting a little drunk on the smell of those apples heating up in the sun, but I looked at all the faces smiling at me, and all those hands clapping me, and I didn’t feel anything at all.’

Shafts of sunlight pierced the subdued monsoon shade of Kayani’s. One ray of light crossed our table, striking her face and dividing it between the sky-blue eyes in shadow and the lips, wet with white light.

‘I just didn’t feel anything at all,’ the light-struck lips said. ‘And I never did. I never felt like I belonged there, in that town, or in that school, or even with my own family. I never did. I never have.’

‘Lisa –’

‘You don’t feel like that,’ she said flatly. ‘You and Karla. You belong where you are. I finally get it, and it took the waiter to show it to me. I finally get it.’

She looked up from the wrinkled napkin to stare into my eyes, her face emptied of expression.

‘I never do,’ she said flatly. ‘I never belong anywhere. Not even with you. I like you, Lin. I’ve had a thing for you for a long time. But I never felt anything more than that. Did you know that? I never felt anything for you.’

There’d always been a knife in my chest when I tried to love Lisa. The knife was those words, when she spoke them, because she spoke them for both of us.

‘People don’t belong to one another,’ I said softly. ‘They can’t. That’s the first rule of freedom.’

She tried to smile. She didn’t make it.

‘Why do people fall apart?’ she asked, frowning into a truth.

‘Why do people fall in?’

‘What are you, a psychiatrist now, answering a question with a question?’

‘Fair enough. Okay. If you really want me to say it, I think people fall apart when they weren’t really together in the first place.’

‘Well,’ she continued, her eyes drifting down to the table, ‘what if you’re afraid of being together with someone? Or with everyone?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Lately I feel like the committee picked me for the parade all over again, and I didn’t even try. Do you see?’

‘No, Lisa.’

‘You don’t?’

‘Whatever we are, or we’re not, all I know is that you beat the curse, and got back on your feet. That’s something to be proud of, Lisa. You’re doing what you love, working with artists you respect. And I’m your friend, no matter what happens. It’s good, Lisa. You’re good.’

She looked up again. She wanted to speak. Her mouth opened. Her lips twitched, tricked into movement by flickering thoughts.

‘I gotta go,’ she said quickly, standing to leave. ‘There’s a new show. A new artist. He’s . . . he’s pretty good. We’re mounting it in a couple of days.’

‘Okay. We’ll –’

‘No. I’ll get a cab.’

‘I’m faster than any cab in this city,’ I smiled.

‘That you are, and cheaper too, cowboy, but I’ll get a cab.’

I paid and walked out with her, descending to the sun-streaked street. There were taxis parked opposite, and we made for the first in line. She stooped to enter the cab, but I held her back.

She met my eyes for a moment, and then threw her glance away again.

‘Don’t wait up for me tonight,’ she said. ‘This new installation we’re setting up, it’s pretty complicated. We’re gonna work around the clock for a couple days, to –’

‘A couple of days?’

‘Yeah. I . . . I’ll probably sleep there tonight, and tomorrow, just . . . just to bring the show in on time, you know?’

‘What’s happening here, Lisa?’

‘Nothing’s happening here,’ she said, and got into the cab.

It took off at once. She turned to look at me as the taxi pulled away, staring back at me until I lost her.

The rapture, born in seconds, is a frail thing. And when rapture dies, no power can restore it to a lover’s eye. Lisa and I were staring at one another from a deeper place: the place where rapture lands when it falls.

A light had dimmed, and a shadow moved across the garden of what was. I waited on the footpath for half an hour, thinking hard.

I was missing something, a conflict more fundamental than Lisa’s objection to my life on the edge of the Sanjay Company, or even her desire to be with others. Something else was happening, and I couldn’t see it right or even feel it right, of course, because it was happening to me.

Chapter Twenty-Four

T
HE STREET WAS HAPPILY LARCENOUS
as I parked my bike outside Leopold’s beside a lounge of street touts, their salamander eyes roving for business. I looked left, slowly, and then right, taking in every threat or opportunity on the street around me. I’d begun to turn my thoughts away from that shadow, Lisa’s shadow, moving across the garden of what was, when I heard a voice.

‘Lin! This is
great
, man! I’ve been trying to find you.’

It was Stuart Vinson, and he was agitated. That was good. After the talk with Lisa that I didn’t understand, agitation from a man I almost never understood seemed like the right distraction.

‘Vinson. What’s up?’

‘There’s this girl. She’s . . . I need your help. You’ve got some pull with the Colaba cops, right?’

‘Define
pull
.’

‘You can get things done, man. That’s right?’

‘I know who’s first and last in line, if you’re handing out money.’

‘That’s it! That’s great! Can you come with me? Right now?’

‘I –’

‘Please, Lin. There’s this girl. She’s in a lotta trouble.’

He read my frown.

‘What? No!
She
hasn’t done anything wrong. Fact is, far as I can figure it, it’s just that her boyfriend’s dead. He OD’d, like, just last night, and –’

‘Wait a minute. Slow down. Who’s this girl?’

‘I . . . I don’t know her name.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I mean, I haven’t heard it yet. I haven’t seen her passport, either. I don’t even know where she comes from. But I know I’ve got to save her, and maybe I’m the only one who can, you know? She’s got these eyes, like, it’s too weird, man. I mean, it’s like the universe is tellin’ me to save her. It’s mystical. It’s magical. It’s fated, or something. But every time I ask the cops about her, they tell me to shut up.’

‘Shut up, Vinson, or talk sense.’

‘Wait! Let me explain. I was in the police station, paying a fine for my driver, you know, because he got in this fight with another driver, on Kemps Corner, near the Breach Candy turnoff, and he –’

‘Vinson. The girl.’

‘Yeah, man, I finished up with the cops, and I saw this girl sitting there. You gotta see her, man. Those eyes. Her eyes . . . they’re . . . they’re fire and ice at the same time. You’ve gotta see it to believe it. What
is
it about the eyes that gets you so fucked up, man?’

‘Connection. Back to the girl.’

‘Like I said, her boyfriend died of an overdose some time, like, last night or early this morning. Best as I can make out, she woke up and found him like that, stiff as a two-by-four, and long gone. She was stayin’ at the Frantic.’