"I have to go," she repeated, walking briskly to the door. Nazeer waited for her there, his thick arms jutting out from the swollen trunk of his body. "I can't help it. I've got a lot of things to do before I leave."
"Leave? What do you mean, leave?"
"I'm leaving Bombay again. I've got some work. It's important, and I... well, I have to do it. I'll be back in about six or eight weeks.
I'll see you then, maybe."
"But this is crazy. I don't get it. You should've left me there, if you're only going to leave me now."
"Look," she said, smiling patiently, "I just got back yesterday, and I'm trying not to stay. I'm not even going back to Leopold's.
I saw Didier this morning-he says hello, by the way-but that's it. I'm not sticking around. I agreed to help get you out of that little suicide pact you had going with yourself at Gupta-ji's.
Now you're here, you're safe, and I have to go."
She turned and spoke to Nazeer. They were speaking Urdu, and I understood only every third or fourth word of their conversation.
He laughed, listening to her, and turned to look at me with his customary contempt.
"What did he say?" I asked her when they fell silent.
"You don't want to know."
"Yes I do."
"He doesn't think you'll make it," she replied. "I told him that you'll do cold turkey here, and be waiting for me when I come back in a couple of months. He doesn't think so. He says you'll run out of here to get a fix the first minute the turkey begins.
I made a bet with him that you'd make it."
"How much did you bet?"
"A thousand bucks."
"A thousand bucks," I mused. It was an impressive stake, against the odds.
"Yes. It's all the cash he has-a kind of nest egg. He's betting it all that you'll break down. He says you're a weak man. That's why you take drugs."
"What do you say?"
She laughed, and it was so rare to see and hear her laugh that I took those bright, round syllables of happiness into me like food, like drink, like the drug. Despite the stone and the sickness, I knew with perfect understanding that the greatest treasure and pleasure I would ever know was in that laugh; to make that woman laugh, and feel the laughter bubbling from her lips against my face, my skin.
"I told him," she said, "that a good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be." Then she was gone, and I closed my eyes, and an hour or a day later I opened them to find Khaderbhai sitting beside me.
"Utna hain," I heard Nazeer's voice say. He's awake.
I woke unwell. I woke alert and cold and needing heroin. My mouth was filthy and my body ached everywhere at once.
"Hmmm," Khader murmured. "You have the pain already."
I pulled myself up on the pillows and looked around the room. It was the beginning of evening, and night's long shadow was creeping across the sandy beach beyond the window. Nazeer sat on a piece of carpet near the entrance to the kitchen. Khader was dressed in the loose pantaloons, shirt, and tunic-vest of the Pathans. The clothes were green, the favourite colour of the Prophet. He looked older, somehow, after just those few months.
He also looked fitter, and more calm and determined than I'd ever seen him.
"Do you need food?" he asked when I stared at him without speaking. "Do you want to take your bath? There is everything here. You can bath as often as you like. You can eat food-there is plenty. You can put on new clothes. I have them for you."
"What happened to Abdullah?" I demanded.
"You must get well."
"What the fuck happened to Abdullah?" I shouted, my voice breaking.
Nazeer watched me. He was outwardly calm, but I knew that he was ready to spring.
"What do you want to know?" Khader asked gently, avoiding my eyes, and nodding his head slowly as he stared at the carpet between his crossed knees.
"Was he Sapna?"
"No," he replied, turning to meet my hard stare. "I know the people say this, but I give you my word that he was not Sapna."
I exhaled a full breath in an exhausted sigh of relief. I felt tears stinging my eyes, and I bit the inside of my cheek to kill them.
"Why did they say he was Sapna?"
"Abdullah's enemies made the police believe that he was."
"What enemies? Who are they?"
"Men from Iran. Enemies from his country."
I remembered the fight; the mysterious fight. Abdullah and I- we'd fought with a group of Iranian men on the street. I tried to remember other details from that day, but I couldn't think past the sharp, guilty twist of regret that I'd never asked Abdullah who the men were or why we'd fought them.
"Where's the real Sapna?"
"He is dead. I found the man-the real Sapna. Now he is dead.
That much is done, for Abdullah."
I relaxed against the cushions, and closed my eyes for a moment.
My nose was beginning to run, and my throat was clogged and sore.
I'd built up a big habit in those three months-three grams of pure Thai-white heroin every day. The turkey was coming on fast, and I knew that it would be two weeks in Hell's punishment unit.
"Why?" I asked him, after a time.
"What do you mean?"
"Why did you find me? Why did you have him-Nazeer-bring me here?"
