The Mountain Shadow (85 page)

‘All correct,’ her assistant called out, putting my bundle of rupees in a metal bin, locking it, and logging the amount in his ledger.

‘You’re not the first to say such words,’ Half-Moon Auntie said. ‘But not many do. A few. Most of them beg for their free show, and create lies, as reasons to consult with me.’

‘To be fair to them, you put on a great show, Auntie.’

She laughed.

‘Thank you, Shantaram. That’s how the legend of my palm-reading skills began. An adulterous husband invented it, so that he could hold my hand, and watch the phases of the moon. Some of them sweat with how much they need it. Even people you know. Your friend Didier sits with me every week.’

‘I’ll bet he does,’ I laughed. ‘Why do you do it, Half-Moon Auntie?’

I suddenly realised that the question might hurt her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly. ‘It was a writer’s question, so, you know, probably unforgivably rude.’

She laughed again.

‘Shantaram, you can only ask that question, when you have the power to do it. So, when you have the power to do it, ask yourself.’

‘My girlfriend is gonna love that line.’

‘Bring her with you, next time,’ she threatened.

‘What if she crosses ten minutes, and proposes to you?’

‘Of course she will propose to me, and so will you, one day.’

‘I thought we covered that,’ I frowned, not understanding.

‘You write stories, Shantaram,’ she smiled. ‘One day you will write about me, and that will be a declaration of love. And this woman who has your heart will propose to me, out of happy love, nothing more.’

‘Isn’t every love happy love?’

‘No,’ she laughed. ‘There is your kind of love. You, and the few like you, who have become my dearest friends.’

‘I don’t want unhappiness in love,’ I said, frowning. ‘I don’t want unhappiness at all.’

‘I’m talking about the real thing,’ she replied. ‘The real thing is always more painful and more rewarding than anything less.’

‘That’s . . . very confusing,’ I said. ‘But I’m so glad we had this talk, Half-Moon Auntie. If I’ve been unwittingly rude, and you’re not gonna shoot me, please give me about two minutes’ head start. It’ll take me that long to get to the door, on this surface.’

‘Go, now, Shantaram,’ she laughed. ‘You are a VIP customer, from this day. May the Goddess keep your weapons sharp, and your enemies afraid.’

I slowly skated away from her, sliding and slipping my way across slaughter’s floor until I reached the golden arch of sunlight leading to the open market beyond.

While I scraped my boots dry, I looked back at her, doing yoga exercises on the bed.

One foot was raised high and enclosed in her palm, like a flame resting in the space above her head. Half-Moon Auntie: businesswoman, gangster and Mistress of Minutes. She was right, I thought. Karla probably would propose to her.

My third bank, my Didier reserve, was the floating poker game that Gemini George ran from their penthouse apartment.

Games that turn over a lot of money need a bank to fund the house. The house takes a percentage of the game, win or lose, but the house also plays, because the margin you win, if you play well, is always bigger than the vig paid for running the game.

The best way to keep a house bankable is to have a good dealer who knows when to fold, and another player in the game, who appears independent but is actually giving his winnings to the house.

Even with improved odds like that, it’s always possible for some golden child to walk in and break the bank. It happens. Sometimes, it happens three nights in a row.

But a golden child event is rare enough to make a well-run game pay off, five nights from seven, and Gemini George knew how to run a game.

I put money into the bank, with Didier and Gemini, and the three of us primed the pump for the poker games. My winnings, on a weekly basis, were about equal to the interest I would’ve earned on my money in a well-run fund.

Gemini had given up cheating. It was a mandatory requirement, mandated by Didier and me. We had to run a straight game, or there was no point.

And Gemini did it. He played every game for the house as straight as the bridge between fear and anger. His honesty and skill won him a lot of new friends, and won a lot of money for us.

Gemini needed the game, because his millionaire friend, as it turned out, was stingy with a dollar. Scorpio paid all the bills for the penthouse floor at the Mahesh, because it was the only place in Bombay that he felt safe, and he didn’t feel safe enough to leave the city and go somewhere else, where millionaires live in safety.

But he scanned every receipt and invoice for minute economies, and frequently found them, scraping pennies from accounts measured in thousands.

He refused to fund Gemini’s parties. Gemini told everyone to bring their own stimulants, and the parties rolled on. They were cheaper, and gaudier, and much more popular. The hotel became a place where famous people met infamous people, and every bar and restaurant was crowded.

Scorpio restricted Gemini to a limited expense account at the hotel, for food, drink, and services. He also gave him two hundred dollars in cash every week.

Gemini made two hundred dollars in cash every hour with us, in the game, and played in a trance of elegant dexterity. He was confident. He lost with a joke or a line from a song, and won without pride.

‘I thought of settin’ up a support group, a sort of AA, for people like me, who can’t stop cheatin’, Card Cheats Anonymous, you know, but the trouble is, you wouldn’t be able to trust no-one. Not when it actually came down to cards. Know what I mean?’

‘Come on, Gemini. A cynic is someone angry at his own soul, and you’re no cynic.’

He squinted on the thought.

‘I love you, mate,’ he said, smiling to himself.

‘Love you too, brother. And anyway, you did it, man. You cold-turkeyed cheating at cards, and you’re playing straight, and better than ever.’

‘Took some doin’, I tell ya,’ he shuddered. ‘I turned to books, at first. I hit Keats pretty hard and got very sad-trippy, then I got totally Kerouaced, as out of it as a drunken chimp and sayin’ the first thing that came into me addled mind. I stumbled into Fitzgerald, staggered out of Hemingway, got totally Deronda with George Eliot, stoned with Virginia Woolf, batty with Djuna Barnes and deranged with Durrell, but then I switched back to movies, and three days of Humphrey Bogart had me right as rain.’

‘Quite a support group, Gemini.’

‘Yeah. Nothin’ like writers and actors for company, is there, when you’re at the end of your rope.’

‘You got that right. I’m glad it worked out for you.’

He looked at me, lifting aside a curtain of reticence.

‘It’s a nice view, from the other side of the line, Lin. I never thought I’d say this, but it almost feels
good
not to cheat.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

‘You think so? It feels dodgy, sometimes, being straight. Know what I mean?’

‘Sure,’ I laughed. ‘Keep it up. You look great. An abundance of chance and a scarcity of sunlight wear very well on you, card champion. How’s it going, with Scorpio?’

‘I . . . ’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘He keeps to himself way too much, Lin. He’s all alone in the presidential suite, most of the time. I’m not allowed in.’

‘Not allowed in?’

‘Nobody is, except the staff. He eats most of his meals in there. I mean, if he had some lovely piece of womanhood in there with him, I’d be guardin’ the door. But he doesn’t, mate, and the two of us, Scorpio and me, we were never alone.’

‘Maybe, he just needs a time-out.’

‘We split everything, shared every mouthful of food, down to countin’ out the peanuts in a packet and sharin’ every one of ’em, even and fair. We argued about everything, all the time, but we never ate a thing without the other one there. We haven’t broke bread, so to speak, for three days. I’m worried about him, Lin.’

‘Gemini, has he thought about leaving Bombay?’

‘If he has, he doesn’t talk to me about it. Why?’

‘He’s nervous, being rich. He needs to move on, and he probably won’t move on, unless you move him on.’

‘Move him where?’

‘Anywhere that millionaires live. They tend to stick together, and they know how to look after themselves. He’ll be safe there, and you’ll get some peace of mind.’

‘I’m having enough trouble living with
one
millionaire. I couldn’t handle a whole suburb of them.’

‘Then take him to New Zealand. Buy a farm, near a forest.’

‘New Zealand?’

‘Beautiful country, beautiful people. Great place to vanish in.’

‘I’m so worried, Lin. You know, I actually lost a game that I should’ve won, yesterday.’

‘You played about three hundred games, yesterday.’

‘Yeah, but I’m afraid of losin’ my grip, you know? I feel so helpless to help
him
, and I love him, mate.’

I should’ve shut up. I couldn’t know what my suggestion would bring to the Zodiac Georges. If I had three wishes, one of them would be to know when to shut up.

‘Maybe, I don’t know, you should just get him outside. Take him for a walk around the hotel. It’d be just like old times, except with bodyguards. It might shake him awake.’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Gemini said thoughtfully. ‘I could trick him into it.’

‘Or invite him into it.’

‘No, I’ll have to trick him into it,’ he said. ‘I’d have to trick him into drinking water in the desert, because he’d think the CIA put it there. But I’ve got a plan.’

‘Please don’t tell me,’ I said, leaving my bundle of cash for the poker game bank, and heading for the door. ‘I’m allergic to plans.’

I should’ve worried, for my friends. I know that now. Like so many people in the city, I thought that Scorpio’s money solved all their problems. I was wrong. The money was a menace, as it often is, that threatened their friendship, and their lives.

Chapter Fifty-Three

I
LEFT THE HOTEL AND RODE TO THE
S
TARLIGHT
R
ESTAURANT,
on Chowpatty Beach. The restaurant was an illegal pop-up on a small, appropriated stretch of beach near the beginning of the sea wall.

It had been running for three months. A movie star and a local entrepreneur had the idea to create a restaurant, as a gift to the city, on a derelict section of public beach, so they created a Goan fragment, complete with palm trees, thatched table umbrellas and sand for open toes.

The food was excellent, and the service was efficient and friendly. But the fact that it was completely illegal, and likely to close any time, added a zest so special to the flavour that the city officials charged with closing down the illegal structure waited days, for a table.

The local entrepreneur, whose eccentric, ephemeral gift to the city cost him a lot of money that he knew he’d never recover, was a friend of mine. Karla was waiting at a table he’d reserved for me.

She stood up. Light from a candle on the table lifted her face, as a gentle hand might’ve done. She kissed me, and hugged me.

She was dressed in a red cheongsam, split to the hip on one side. Her hair was pulled up in a shell of curves and waves, held in place by a poison dart from a blowgun, which she’d modified with a red jewel at the end. She was wearing red gloves. She was beautiful, and it was a beautiful night, until she said the name Concannon.

‘Come again?’

‘Concannon wrote me a letter,’ she repeated, four green queens on me.

‘And you tell me this
now
?’

‘The other stuff we talked about was more important.’

‘I want to read it,’ I said.

It was the wrong approach, but I was angry. Concannon got me that way.

‘No.’

‘
No?
’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I burned it,’ she said. ‘Can we go somewhere where I can’t blow cigarette smoke on anybody but you?’

We rode to the top of Malabar Hill and a view of the restaurant we’d left, on the strip of coast below. Lights in the curve of Marine Drive garlanded the belly of the great ocean, the Mother of all.

She blew cigarette smoke on me, for a while, and then went easy on me with two green queens.

‘What’s going on?’

‘What
isn’t
going on, Karla?’

We were sitting on a stone monument, high enough for a view through trees to the sea. Another couple sat in the shadows a few metres away, murmuring quietly.

Cars and motorcycles passed slowly, preparing themselves for the long, curving road skirting the city zoo, and leading steeply to Kemps Corner junction. The smell of lions in cages followed that road, and the sound of their grieving roars.