A taxi pulled up beside us. The passenger in the back seat waited in a band of shadow for a moment, and then slowly leaned closer to the window. It was Ulla.
‘Lin,’ she gasped, ‘I need your help.’
She was wearing black-framed sunglasses, and there was a scarf tied around her head, covering her ash-blonde hair. Her face was pale and drawn and thin.
‘This… has a vaguely familiar ring to it, Ulla,’ I replied, not moving toward the cab.
‘Please. I mean it. Please, get in. I have something to tell you… something you want to know.’
I didn’t move.
‘Please, Lin. I know where Karla is. I will tell you, if you help me.’
I turned and shook hands with the Georges. In the handshake with Scorpio, I passed over an American twenty-dollar bill. I’d taken it from my pocket when I first heard their voices, and I’d kept it ready to hand over when we parted. In their world, I knew, it was enough money-if their
I opened the door and got into the cab. The driver pulled away into the traffic, checking me out often in his rear vision mirror.
‘I don’t know why you’re angry with me,’ Ulla whined, removing her sunglasses and stealing glances at me. ‘Please don’t be angry, Lin. Please don’t be angry.’
I wasn’t angry. For the first time in too long, I wasn’t angry.
And then I knew, in the excited moment, what it was that had caused my desolate mood at Madjid’s, and put so much anger in me that day. I knew with perfect understanding that the momentary dream-the little boy’s wish that Khader really
She reached out to put a hand on my knee. The grip was strong, but her hand was shaking. I felt the scent-filled seconds expand around us. We were trapped, both of us, held fast, each in our different ways. And once again, we were about to set the web of our connection trembling.
‘Relax. I’ll help you if I can,’ I said, calmly and firmly. ‘Now, tell me about Karla.’
AT MIDNIGHT’S HORIZON the great milky wheel of stars rose wet and shivering from the waves, and the silver yellow light of a gibbous moon settled on the sea, glistening the tinsel-crested swell. It was a warm, still, and perfectly clear night. The deck of the Goa ferry was crowded, but I’d managed to stake out a clear space a little distance apart from a large group of young tourists. They were stoned, most of them, on grass, hash, and acid. Dance music thumped from the black, shouting mouths of a portable hi-fi. Sitting among their backpacks, they swayed and clapped in time, called out to one another over the music, and laughed, often. They were happy, on their way to Goa. The first-time tourists were moving toward a dream. The old hands were returning to the one place in the world where they felt truly free.
Sailing toward Karla, looking out at the stars, listening to the kids who’d bought spaces on the deck of the ferry, I understood their hopeful, innocent excitement, and in a small and distant way I even shared it. But my face was hard. My eyes were hard. And that hardness divided my feelings from theirs as cleanly and inviolably as the metre-wide space on the deck separated me from their tangled, high-spirited party. And as I sat there, on the swaying, gently plunging ferry, I thought about Ulla: I thought about the fear that had glittered in her sapphire-blue eyes when she’d talked to me in the back of the cab.
Ulla needed money that night, a thousand dollars, and I gave it to her. She needed me to accompany her to the hotel room where she’d left her clothes and personal belongings. We went there together and, despite her trembling fear, we collected her things and paid the bill without incident. She was in trouble, through some business deal involving Modena and Maurizio. The deal, like too many of Maurizio’s quick scams, had soured. The men who’d lost their money weren’t content, as others had been, to accept the loss and let the matter ride. They wanted their money, and they wanted someone to bleed, and not necessarily in that order.
