"You told me about it," I said gently.

"I told you?" "Yeah."

"I told you what?"

"You told me... a lot of it. The night I came around to get my clothes from Karla's. I went there with the kid, Tariq. You were very drunk, and very stoned."

"And I told you about that?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus! I don't remember that. I was starting to turkey. That was the first night, when I tried to get off the stuff-when I did get off the stuff. I remember the kid, though... and I remember you didn't want to have sex with me."

"Oh, I wanted it, alright."

She turned her head quickly and met my eye. Her expression smiled at the lips, but a tiny frown creased her forehead. She was wearing a red salwar kameez. The long, loose silk shirt clung to her breasts and the outline of her figure in the strong sea breeze. Her blue eyes glittered with courage and other mysteries.

She was brave and fragile and tough in the same instant. She'd dragged herself from the life that was drowning her at Madame Zhou's Palace, and she'd beaten heroin. In defence of her friend's life, and her own, she'd helped to kill a man. She'd lost her lover, Abdullah, my friend, his body torn and mutilated by bullets. And it was all there, in her eyes and her thin face, thinner than it should've been. It was all there, if you knew what to look for, and if you knew where to look.

"So, how did you end up at the Palace?" I asked, and she flinched a little as I changed the subject.

"I don't know," she sighed. "I ran away from home when I was a kid. I couldn't stand it at home. I got outta there as soon as I could. In a couple years I was a teenage junkie, working the beat in L.A. and getting beat up by that month's pimp. Then a guy came along, a nice, quiet, lonely, gentle guy, named Matt. I fell for him, hard. He was my first real love. He was a musician, and he'd been to India a couple times. He was sure we could make enough money for a new start, if we smuggled some shit from Bombay back home. He said that he'd pay for the tickets, if I agreed to carry the stuff. When we got here, he just took off with everything- all our money, and my passport, and everything. I don't know what happened. I don't know if he got cold feet or found someone else to do the job or just decided to do it himself. I don't know. The end of it was... that I got stuck in Bombay with a big, raging heroin habit, and no money, and no passport. I started working from a hotel room, turning tricks to keep going. After a couple months of that, a cop came into my room one day and told me I was busted. I was going to an Indian jail-unless I agreed to work for this friend of his."

"Madame Zhou."

"Yeah."

"Tell me, did you ever see her? Did you ever talk to her in person?"

"Nah. Almost no-one ever talks to her or sees her, except for Rajan and his brother. Karla met her in person. Karla hates her.

Karla hates her more than... I've never seen anything like it in my life. Karla hates her so much that she's a bit crazy with it, if you know what I mean. She thinks about Madame Zhou almost all the time, and she'll get her, sooner or later."

"The thing with her friend Ahmed, and Christine," I murmured.

"She thinks Madame Zhou had them killed, and she blames herself for it. She can't let it go."

"That's right!" she answered wonderingly, her face frowning and smiling in puzzlement. "Did she tell you about that?"

"Yeah."

"That's..." she laughed, "that's amazing! Karla never talks to anyone about that. I mean, anyone. But I guess it's not really so amazing. You really got under her skin. You know that time when the cholera was in the slum and all? She talked about that for weeks after. She talked about it like it was some kind of holy experience, some kind of transcendental high. And she talked about you a lot. I've never seen her so... inspired, I guess."

"When Karla got me to rescue you from the Palace," I asked, not looking at her, "was that for you, or was it just a way to score points against Madame Zhou?"

"You mean, were we just pawns in Karla's game, you and me? Is that what you're asking?"

"Something like that."

"I think I'd have to say yes, we were." She pulled her long scarf from her neck and drew it across an open palm, staring at it intently. "Oh, you know, Karla likes me and all, I'm sure about that. She's told me things that nobody knows-not even you. And I like her. And she lived in the States, you know. She grew up there, and she felt something about that. I think I was the only American girl who ever worked at the Palace. But the heart of it, deep down, was this war with Madame Zhou. I think we got used up, you and me. But it doesn't matter, you know? She got me out of there-you got me out of there, with her, and I'm damn glad. Whatever her reasons were, I don't hold it against her, and I don't think you should either."

"I don't," I sighed.

"But?"

"But... nothing. We didn't work out, Karla and me, but I..."

"You still love her?"

I turned my head to look at her, but when her blue eyes met mine I changed the subject.

"Have you heard anything from Madame Zhou?"

"Not a thing."

"Has she been asking questions about you? Anything at all?"

"Nothing, thank God. It's weird-I don't hate Madame Zhou. I don't feel anything for her, one way or the other, except that I never want to go anywhere near her again. But I do hate her servant, Rajan. If you worked at the Palace, he's the one you had to deal with and answer to. His brother takes care of the kitchen, but Rajan looks after the girls. And that's one spooky motherfucker, that Rajan. He gets around like a ghost. It's like he's got eyes in the back of his head. He's the scariest thing in the whole world, let me tell ya. Madame Zhou, I never even saw.

She talks to you through a metal grille. There's at least one in every room, so she can watch what's going on, and talk to the girls or the customers. It's a fuckin' creepy place, Lin. I'd rather die than go back to that."

There was another silence. Waves pushed at the shoreline of rocks and pebbles at the base of the wall. Seagulls hovered, prowling the wind for signs of things that slithered and scuttled among the rocks.

"How much money did he leave you?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "I never counted it. It's a lot.

Seventy, eighty grand-a lot more, you know, than Maurizio carved up Modena for, and got himself killed for. It's crazy, isn't it?"

"You should take it, and get the fuck out of here."

"That's funny-I thought we just signed a two-year contract with Mehta and his production company. You know, the let's-get-on with-our-_lives contract."

"Fuck the contract."

"Come on, Lin."

"Fuck the contract. You've gotta get out of this. We don't know what the fuck's going on. We don't know why Abdullah's dead. We don't know what he did do, or what he didn't do. If he wasn't Sapna, then things are bad. If he was Sapna, things are much worse. You should take the money and just... go."

"And go where?"

"Anywhere."

"Are you going?"

"No. I've got unfinished business here. And I'm... I'm finished myself, in a way. But you should go."

"You don't get it, do you?" she demanded. "It's not about the money. If I go back now, I'll put the lot of it in my arm. I've gotta have something more than money. I'm trying to _build something here with this business. And I can do it here. I'm something here. I'm somebody. The people look at me, when I just walk down the street, because I'm different."

"You'd be something, wherever you are," I said, grinning at her.

"Don't make fun of me, Lin."

"I'm not, Lisa. You're a beautiful girl, and you've got heart- that's why people stare at you."

"This can work," she insisted. "I can feel it in my bones. I don't have any education, Lin, and I'm not smart like you. I'm not trained to do anything. But this... this could be big. I could, I don't know... I could start producing movies, maybe, one day. I could... do something good."