"And then?"

"And then," she said slowly, "one day, I found myself on a plane, going to Singapore, and I met a businessman, an Indian businessman, and my life... just... changed, forever."

She let out a sighing gasp of air. I couldn't tell if it was despairing or simply exhausted.

"I'm glad you told me."

"Told you what?"

She was frowning, and her tone was sharp.

"About... your life," I answered.

She relaxed.

"Don't mention it," she said, allowing herself a little smile.

"No, I mean it. I'm glad, and I'm grateful, that you trusted me enough to... talk about yourself."

"And I meant it, too," she insisted, still smiling. "Don't mention it-any of it-to anyone. Okay?"

"Okay."

We were silent for a few moments. A baby was crying somewhere nearby, and I could hear its mother soothing it with a little spool of syllables that were tender and yet faintly annoyed at the same time.

"Why do you hang out at Leopold's?"

"What do you mean?" she asked sleepily.

"I don't know. I just wonder."

She laughed with her mouth closed, breathing through her nose.

Her head rested on my arm. In the darkness her face was a set of soft curves, and her eyes gleamed like black pearls.

"I mean, Didier and Modena and Ulla, even Lettie and Vikram, they all fit in there, somehow. But not you. You don't fit."

"I think... they fit in with me, even if I don't fit in with them," she sighed.

"Tell me about Ahmed," I asked. "Ahmed and Christina."

She was silent for so long, in response to the question, that I thought she must've fallen asleep. Then she spoke, quietly and steadily and evenly, as if she was giving testimony at a trial.

"Ahmed was a friend. He was my best friend, for a while, and kind of like the brother I never had. He came from Afghanistan, and was wounded in the war there. He came to Bombay to recover-in a way, we both did. His wounds were so bad that he never really did get his health back completely. Anyway, we kind of nursed each other, I guess, and we became very close friends. He was a science graduate, from Kabul University, and he spoke excellent English.

We used to talk about books and philosophy and music and art and food. He was a wonderful, gentle guy."

"And something happened to him," I prompted.

"Yeah," she replied, with a little laugh. "He met Christina.

That's what happened to him. She was working for Madame Zhou. She was an Italian girl-very dark and beautiful. I even introduced him to her, one night, when she came into Leopold's with Ulla.

They were both working at the Palace."

"Ulla worked at the Palace?"

"Ulla was one of the most popular girls Madame Zhou ever had.

Then she left the Palace. Maurizio had a contact at the German Consulate. He wanted to oil the wheels on some deal that he was working on with the German, and he discovered that the German was crazy about Ulla. With some heavy persuasion from the consulate officer, and all his own savings, Maurizio managed to buy Ulla free from the Palace. Maurizio got Ulla to twist the consulate guy until he did... whatever it was Maurizio wanted him to do.

Then he dumped him. The guy lost it, I heard. He put a bullet in his head. By then, Maurizio had put Ulla to work, to pay the debt she owed him."

"You know, I've been working up a healthy dislike for Maurizio."

"It was a shitty deal, true enough. But at least she was free from Madame Zhou and the Palace. I have to give Maurizio his due there-he proved it could be done. Before that, nobody ever got away-not without getting acid thrown in her face. When Ulla broke away from Madame Zhou, Christina wanted to break out as well. Madame Zhou was forced to let Ulla go, but she was damned if she was going to part with Christina as well. Ahmed was crazy in love with her, and he went to the Palace, late one night, to have it out with Madame Zhou. I was supposed to go with him. I did business with Madame Zhou-I brought businessmen there for my boss, and they spent a lot of money-you know that. I thought she'd listen to me. But then I got called away. I had a job... a job... it was... an important contact... I couldn't refuse. Ahmed went to the Palace alone. They found his body, and Christina's, the next day, in a car, a few blocks from the Palace. The cops... said that they both took poison, like Romeo and Juliet."

"You think she did it to them, Madame Zhou, and you blame yourself, is that it?"

"Something like that."

"Is that what she was talking about, that day, through the metal grille, when we got Lisa Carter out of there? Is that why you were crying?"

"If you must know," she said softly, her voice emptied of all its music and emotion, "she was telling me what she did to them, before she had them killed. She was telling me how she played with them, before they died."

I clamped my jaw shut, listening to the ruffle of air breathing in and out through my nose, until our two patterns of breath matched one another in rhythmic rise and fall.

"And what about you?" she asked, at last, her eyes closing more slowly and opening less often. "We've got my story. When are you going to tell me your story?"

I let the raining silence close her eyes for the last time. She slept. I knew we didn't have her story. Not the whole of it. I knew the small daubs of colour she'd excluded from her summary were at least as important as the broad strokes she'd included.

The devil, they say, is in the details, and I knew well the devils that lurked and skulked in the details of my own story.

But she had given me a hoard of new treasures. I'd learned more about her in that exhausted, murmuring hour than in all the many months before it. Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky.

Somewhere out there in the night, Jeetendra wept for his wife.

Prabaker mopped at Parvati's sweating face with his red scarf.

Heaped up on the blankets, our bodies bound by weariness and her deep slumber, surrounded by sickness and hope, death and defiance, I touched the soft surrendered curl of Karla's sleeping fingers to my lips, and I pledged my heart to her forever.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

We lost nine people in the cholera epidemic. Six of them were young children. Jeetendra's only son, Satish, survived, but two of the boy's closest friends died. Both of them had been enthusiastic students in my English class. The procession of children that ran with us behind the biers carrying those little bodies, garlanded with flowers, wailed their grief so piteously that many strangers on the busy streets paused in prayer, and felt the sudden burn and sting of tears. Parvati survived the sickness, and Prabaker nursed her for two weeks, sleeping outside her hut under a flap of plastic during the night. Sita took her sister Parvati's place at their father's chai shop; and, whenever Johnny Cigar entered or passed the shop, her eyes followed him as slowly and stealthily as a walking leopard's shadow.

Karla stayed for six days, the worst of it, and visited several times in the weeks that followed. When the infection rate dropped to zero, and the crisis had passed for the most serious cases, I took a three-bucket shower, changed into clean clothes, and headed for the tourist beat in search of business. I was almost broke. The rain had been heavy, and the flooding in many areas of the city was as hard on the touts, dealers, guides, acrobats, pimps, beggars, and black marketeers who made their living on the street as it was on the many businessmen whose shops were submerged.