Most of the people had left the window, but Karla and I remained as close together as we'd been in the push and shove of the crowd. My arm was around her shoulder. On the ground, twenty floors below, people began to pick through the rubble of their homes. Canvas and plastic shelters were already being erected for the elderly, the babies, and the smallest children. She turned to face me, and I kissed her.
The taut bow of her lips dissolved on mine in concessions of flesh to flesh. There was such sad tenderness in it that, for a second or two, I floated free, and was adrift in its inexpressible kindnesses. I'd thought of Karla as street-wise and tough and almost cold, but that kiss was pure, undisguised vulnerability. The gentle loveliness of it shocked me, and I was the first to pull away.
"I'm sorry. I didn't..." I faltered.
"It's okay," she smiled, leaning away from me with her hands on my chest. "But we might be making one of those pretty girls at the feast jealous."
"Who?"
"Are you saying you don't have a girl here?"
"No. Of course not." I frowned.
"I've got to stop listening to Didier," she sighed. "It was his idea. He thinks you must have a girlfriend here. He thinks that's the only reason you'd stay in the slum. He said that's the only reason any foreigner would stay in the slum."
"I don't have a girlfriend, Karla, not here or anywhere. I'm in love with you."
"No you're not!" she snapped, and it was like a slap.
"I can't help it. For a long time now I-"
"Stop it!" she interrupted me again. "You're not! You're not! Oh, God, how I hate love!"
"You can't hate love, Karla," I said, laughing gently, and trying to lighten her mood.
"Maybe not, but you sure as hell can be sick of it. It's such a huge arrogance, to love someone, and there's too much of it around. There's too much love in the world. Sometimes I think that's what heaven is-a place where everybody's happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever."
The wind lashed her hair into her face, and she pushed it back with both hands, holding it there with her fingers fanned out across her forehead. She was staring down at her feet.
"What the fuck ever happened to good, old, meaningless sex, without any strings attached?" she rasped, her lips drawn tightly over her teeth.
It wasn't a question, but I answered it anyway.
"I'm not ruling that out-as a fall-back position, so to speak."
"Look, I don't want to be in love," she stated, in a softer tone.
She raised her eyes to stare into mine. "I don't want anyone to be in love with me. It hasn't been good to me, the romance thing."
"I don't think it's kind to anyone, Karla."
"My point, exactly." "But when it happens, you haven't got a choice. I don't think it's something any of us do by choice. And... I don't want to put any pressure on you. I'm just in love with you, that's all.
I've been in love with you for a while, and I finally had to say it. It doesn't mean you have to do anything about it-or me either, for that matter."
"I'm still... I don't know. I'm just... Jesus! But I'm happy to _like you. I like you a lot. I'll be head over heels in like with you, Lin, if that's enough."
Her eyes were honest, and yet I knew there was a lot she wasn't telling me. Her eyes were brave, and yet she was afraid. When I relented, and smiled at her, she laughed. I laughed, too.
"Is it enough for now?"
"Sure," I lied. "Sure."
But already, like the people in the ghetto, hundreds of feet below, I was picking through the smashed houses in my heart, and rebuilding on the ruin.
Despite the fact that only a handful of people could claim to have seen Madame Zhou with their own eyes, she was the main attraction, Karla assured me, for many of those who visited the Palace. Her clients were rich men: executive-level businessmen, politicians, and gangsters. The Palace offered them foreign girls - exclusively, for no Indian girls ever worked there-and elaborate facilities for the realisation of their wildest sexual fantasies. The strangest of those illicit pleasures, devised by Madame Zhou personally, were the subject of shocked, breathless whispers throughout the city, but influential contacts and substantial bribes meant that the Palace was immune from raids or even close scrutiny. And although there were other places in Bombay that provided equal indulgence and security, none of them were as popular as Madame Zhou's because none had the Madame herself. In the end, what kept men coming to the Palace wasn't the skill and loveliness of the women they could have there; it was the mystery of the woman they couldn't have-the invisible beauty of Madame Zhou.
