The Mountain Shadow (56 page)

‘No,
I
did,’ she frowned.

‘Was I there, when you did?’

‘Here it is. You can’t love two people, Lin. Not in the right way. Nobody can. She can’t do it, and neither can you. I get that. I really do. But sad and romantic and fucked up and thrilling and wonderful as all that is, it’s irrelevant. This isn’t about her, and it’s not about you. It’s my turn. It’s about me. It’s my shot at the mike, Lin.’

‘It’s
what
about you?’

‘It’s
all
about me.’

‘You think you could start this conversation again?’

She looked directly into my eyes, challenging me to stay with her.

‘See, women need to know, it’s that simple.’

‘I got that bit.’

‘And once they know, they can deal with anything.’

‘Deal with . . . what?’

‘Stop beating yourself up, Lin. You’re good at beating yourself up. You could get a prize, if they gave prizes for beating yourself up, and I kinda love that about you, but it’s not needed here. I’m breaking up with you, tonight, and I wanted to talk about it, because I thought you should know why.’

‘I . . . sure . . . of course.
What?
’

‘I really think you should know.’

‘Can I
pretend
to know?’

‘Stop kidding around, Lin.’

‘I’m not kidding, I’m just lost.’

‘Okay. It’s like this – I don’t want to explain you any more.’

‘Explain me to your friends, or my enemies?’

‘I don’t give a shit what anybody says about you,’ she said, burning blue into my eyes. ‘And I wouldn’t listen to it. You know that. What I don’t like about what you do is that
you
like it.’

‘Lisa –’

‘You like having two guns and six false passports and six currencies in the drawer. And you can’t say you do it to survive. You’re smarter than that. I’m smarter than that. The fact is, you like it. You like it a lot. And I don’t want to explain that to myself any more. I don’t like that you. I can’t like that you. I won’t like that you. I’m sorry.’

A man’s a prison. I should’ve told her that I’d quit the Sanjay Company, and the Sri Lanka run was my ticket home. I’d taken a step away from the me that she didn’t like. It wouldn’t have changed her mind, but it was something she had a right to hear. A man’s a prison. I didn’t speak.

‘Karla
likes
that you,’ she said casually. ‘I think she likes
that
you even more than
you
do.’

‘Where did you go, Lisa?’

She laughed, and pretty hard.

‘You really want to know?’

‘Enough with the wanting to know, Lisa.’

She sat up on the bed, her legs crossed. Her blonde hair was tied into a swallowtail, dipping and shaking as she spoke.

‘You know Rish, my partner in the gallery?’

‘How many partners have you got now?’

‘Six. Well –’

‘Six?’

‘So, anyway –’

‘Six?’

‘So, anyway, Rish has been doing a lot of meditation –’

‘Oh, no.’

‘And a lot of yoga studies –’

‘Okay, Lisa, stop. If you tell me there’s a guru behind all this, I’ll be obliged to slap him.’

‘He’s not
my
guru, he’s Rish’s guru, and that’s not the point. It wasn’t said by a guru, and Rish didn’t say it. A woman said it, I think. I don’t know who she is, actually. But Johnny Cigar gave me a self-help book, and Rish gave me exactly the same book, on the same day. And the quote was in that book – the thing she said.’

‘What thing?’

‘The thing that Rish heard from somewhere, and said to me.’

‘What thing?’

‘
Resentment is unmet need or desire
,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

I thought about it. A writer’s worst instinct, and too often the first, is to look for the flaw in any written or spoken thing that looks good. I didn’t find it.

‘That’s pretty good,’ I conceded.

‘Pretty
good
! She should get the Nobel Prize for Saying Cool Shit.’

‘Okay,’ I smiled.

‘It ripped my mind apart, Lin, I gotta tell ya. It made so much sense. I suddenly understood exactly why I was feeling so
resentful
, these last months. I was really out of it on resentment, you know? Like, when you get to the stage where you get irritated by things that used to be cute, only now they’re not cute any more?’

‘How much not cute are we talking about?’

‘A lot not cute.’

‘A lot?’

‘I was muttering,’ she confessed.

‘You were muttering?’

‘I was.’

‘Muttering?’

‘I thought you must’ve heard me, a couple times.’

‘About irritating things I did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, for starters –’

‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know.’

‘It might be helpful to your process,’ she suggested.

‘No, I’m good. I’ve already been processed. Go on. You were muttering.’

‘See,’ she said, smoothing out the bedcover in front of her folded legs, her feet asleep against her calves. ‘When I heard those words,
resentment is unmet need or desire
, I knew how to
think
about what I was
feeling
. Do you get that?’

‘Think-feeling. I . . . think I get it.’

‘I had a frame, you know, for the painting of me. I knew what my unmet need was. I knew what my unmet desire was. And when I knew that, I knew it all.’

‘Can you divulge the unmet need?’

‘I need to be free of you,’ she said flatly, her hands pressed into stars on the bed.

‘The new you gave up sugar.’

‘I don’t need it. Not any more,’ she said, tracing a circle on the bedcover with her finger. ‘I don’t have to sugar anything, especially not what I tell myself.’

‘And the unmet desire?’

‘I want to be one hundred per cent inside my own
now
. I want to
be
the moment, instead of just watching the moment pass. You know what I’m talking about, right? You get me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Now.
This
now.
My
now.
All
my nows. That’s what I want. Do you get that?’

‘You’re in the now. I get it. I swear, Leese, if there’s a guru involved in this –’

‘This is all me. This is all mine.’

‘And it’s what you want?’

‘It’s the beginning of what I want, and I’m completely sure of it.’

She was tough. She was superb.

‘Then, if it’s really what you want, I love it, Lisa.’

‘You do?’

‘Of course. You can do anything you put your heart into.’

‘You really think so?’

‘It’s great, Lisa.’

‘I knew you’d get it,’ she said, her eyes blue pools of relief. ‘It’s just that I want a special now, one that’s
mine
, instead of a constant now, that I constantly share with someone else’s now.’

A constant now, that you constantly share with someone else’s now.
It was a pretty good definition of prison.

‘I hear you.’

‘I want to know what it’s like to be me, when it’s just me.’

‘Go get ’em, Lisa.’

She smiled, and let out a weary sigh.

‘It sounds so selfish, but it wasn’t. It was generous, you know, not just to me, but to you and Karla, too. It let me see us all clearly, for the first time. It let me see how much you’re alike, you and her, and how different you both are than me. Do you understand that?’

In a damning way, in a kind and loving way, she was telling me that Karla and I were made for each other: Karla’s edges fitting my scars. True or not, strangely hurtful or not, it didn’t matter, because those minutes weren’t Karla’s or mine: they were hers.

The fall and summit within, what we do, and what we choose to become, are ours alone, as they should be, and must be. Lisa was deep in that serene, uncontradictable stillness born in resolution, and she was gloriously alone with it. She was clear, determined, brave and hopeful.

‘The new you is really something,’ I said quietly.

‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘And the new me, broken up with old you, and not sleeping in the same bed as the new you, needs to rent the guest bedroom to sleep in.’

‘Well,’ I laughed, ‘if your
now
isn’t too compromised by it, no problem.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said seriously, snuggling in beside me, her head on my chest. ‘But I do think, now that we’re separated under the same roof, we should have a few rules.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Like with sleepovers. We should have a sleepover rule.’

‘Sleepovers? Your
now
is getting more crowded by the minute.’

‘We could hang a sign on the front door.’

‘A
sign
?’

‘I mean, a sign that only we understand. Like a garden gnome, for example. If the garden gnome is on the left side of the door, one of us has a sleepover guest. If it’s on the right side of the door, no sleepovers.’

‘We don’t have a garden gnome. We don’t have a garden.’

‘We could use that cat statue you don’t like.’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I like it plenty. I said it didn’t seem to like me.’

‘And you’ll have to forgive the rent, for at least six months.’

‘Just to be clear on the sleepover cat signal,’ I asked. ‘Was it the left side of the door, or the right?’

‘The left. And you’ll have to forgive the rent.’

‘The rent’s already paid for a year, Lisa.’

‘No, I mean
my
rent, for the guest room. I’ll pay the market rate. I insist. But I put everything I have into the next show, and I’m skinned alive. I won’t be able to pay you for at least six months.’

‘Forget about it.’

‘No, really, I insist on paying,’ she said, punching me in the ribs.

‘Forget about it.’

She hit me again.

‘I give up. I’ll let you pay me back.’

‘And . . . I’ll need an advance,’ she added.

‘An advance?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t work for me, Lisa.’

‘Yes, but I hate the word
loan
. It sounds like the noise a dog makes, when it’s in pain. I’ve decided, from now on, that when I need a loan I’ll ask for an advance. It’s a much more inspiring word.’

‘Advanced thinking.’

‘But I won’t be able to pay for food, electricity, phone or laundry bills for a while. Every penny of my advance will be tied up.’

‘Covered.’

‘I insist on paying it, when I have enough to spare from my next advance.’

‘Right.’

‘And I’ll need a car, but we can talk about that when you get back.’

‘Sure. Is that it, with the house rules?’

‘There is one other thing.’

‘Let’s have it.’

‘I don’t know. I mean –’

‘Let’s have it.’

‘I’m not cooking any more,’ she said, pressing her lips together until the bottom lip pouted free.

She’d cooked three times, in two years, and it wasn’t pleasant eating.

‘Okay.’

‘To be brutally honest, I absolutely hate cooking. I can’t stand it. I only did it to please you. It was a living hell for me every time, from beginning to end. I’m not doing it any more. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is, even as a roommate.’

‘Okay.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t want you to get any expectations, either. I’m big into expectations at the moment, as part of my process, and I hose them down before they become –’

‘Resentments?’

‘Exactly! Oh, God, I feel so much better. Do you?’

‘I feel okay,’ I said.

‘You do? Really? It’s important to me. I don’t want to drag any guilt or shame into my
now
with me. It’s important to me that you care enough to let me do this, and that you feel good about it.’