"It's pretty weird," I muttered, not really interested in Madame Zhou, but wanting Karla to go on talking. I watched her red-pink lips form each word-lips I'd kissed only days before-and her speaking mouth was a sublime performance of perfect flesh. She could've been reading from a month-old newspaper, and I would've been just as delighted to watch her face, her eyes, and her lips as she talked. "Why does she do it?"

"Do what?" she asked, her eyes narrowing with the question.

"Why does she hide herself away like that?"

"I don't think anyone knows." She took out two beedies, lit them, and gave me one. Her hands appeared to be trembling. "It's like I was saying before-there's so much crazy talk about her. I've heard people say she was horribly disfigured in an accident, and she hides her face because of it. They say the photos are retouched to cover up the scars. I've heard people say she has leprosy or some other disease. One friend of mine says she doesn't exist at all. He says it's just a lie, a kind of conspiracy, to hide who really runs the place and what goes on there."

"What do you think?"

"I... I've spoken to her, through the screen. I think she's so incredibly, psychopathically vain that she, she sort of hates herself for getting older. I think she can't bear to be less than perfect. A lot of people say she was beautiful. Really, you'd be surprised. A lot of people say that. In her photos she hasn't aged past twenty-seven or thirty. There aren't any lines or wrinkles. There's no shadows under the eyes. Every black hair is in its place. I think she's so in love with her own beauty, she'll never let anyone see her as she really is. I think she's ... it's like she's mad with love for herself. I think that even if she lives to be ninety, those monthly photos will still show that same thirty-year-old blank."

"How do you know so much about her?" I asked. "How did you meet her?"

"I'm a facilitator. It was part of my job."

"That doesn't tell me a lot."

"How much do you need to know?"

It was a simple question, and there was a simple answer-I love you, and I want to know everything-but there was a hard edge to her voice and a cold light in her eyes, and I faltered.

"I'm not trying to pry, Karla. I didn't know it was such a touchy area. I've known you for more than a year and, okay, I haven't seen you every day, or even every month, but I've never asked you what you do, or how you make your living. I don't think that qualifies me as the nosey type."

"I put people together," she said, relaxing a little, "and I make sure they're having the right amount of fun to seal a deal. I get paid to keep people in the deal-making mood, and give them what they want. Some of them-quite a few of them, as it happens-want to spend time at Madame Zhou's Palace. The real question is why people are so crazy about her. She's dangerous. I think she's completely insane. But people would do almost anything to meet her."

"What do you think?"

She sighed, exasperated.

"I can't tell you. It's not just the sex thing. Sure, the prettiest foreign girls in Bombay work for her, and she trains them in some very weird specialties, but people would still come to her even if there weren't any gorgeous girls there. I don't get it. I've done what people want, and I've taken them to the Palace. A few of them even got to meet her in person, like I did, through the screen, but I've never been able to figure it out. They come out of the Palace like they've had an audience with Joan of Arc.

They're high on it. But not me. She gives me the creeps, and she always has."

"You don't like her much, do you?"

"It's worse than that. I hate her, Lin. I hate her, and I wish she was dead."

It was my turn to withdraw. I wrapped the silence around myself like a scarf, and stared past her softly sculptured profile to the haphazard beauty of the street. In truth, Madame Zhou's mystery didn't matter to me. I had no interest in her, then, beyond the mission Karla had given me. I was in love with the beautiful Swiss woman sitting beside me in the cab, and she was mysterious enough. I wanted to know about her. I wanted to know how she came to live in Bombay, and what her connection was to the weirdness of Madame Zhou, and why she never talked about herself. But no matter how badly I wanted to know... everything ... everything about her, I couldn't press it. I had no right to ask for more because I'd kept all of my secrets from her. I'd lied to her, saying that I came from New Zealand, and that I had no family. I hadn't even told her my real name. And because I was in love with her, I felt trapped by those fictions. She'd kissed me, and it was good; honest and good. But I didn't know if the truth in that kiss was the beginning for us or the end. My strongest hope was that the mission would bring us together. I hoped it would be enough to break through both our walls of secrets and lies.

I didn't underestimate the task she'd set for me. I knew it might go wrong, and I might have to fight to bring Lisa out of the Palace. I was ready. There was a knife in a leather scabbard tucked into the waistband of my trousers under my shirt. It had a long, heavy, sharp blade. I knew that with a good knife I could handle two men. I'd fought men in knife fights before, in prison.

A knife, in the hand of a man who knows how to use it and isn't afraid to drive it into other human bodies, is still, despite its ancient origin, the most effective close-order weapon after the gun. Sitting there in the cab, silent and still, I prepared myself for the fight. A little movie, a preview of the bloodshed to come, played itself out in my mind. I would have to keep my left hand free, to lead or drag Lisa and Karla out of the Palace. My right hand would have to force a path through any resistance. I wasn't afraid. I knew that if the fighting started, when the fighting started, I would slash and punch and stab without thinking.

The cab had bluffed its way through the strangle of traffic, and we picked up speed on the wider streets near a steep overpass. A blessing of fresh wind cooled us, and hair that had been lank and wet with sweat was dry in seconds. Karla fidgeted, tossed her beedie cigarette out of the open window, and rifled through the contents of her patent-leather shoulder bag. She took out a cigarette packet. It contained thick, ready-made joints with tapered, twisted ends. She lit one.

"I need a kicker," she said, inhaling deeply. The flower-leaf scent of hashish blossomed in the cab. She took a few puffs, and then offered the joint to me.

"Do you think it'll help?"

"Probably not."

It was strong, Kashmiri hash. I felt the momentary loosening of stomach, neck, and shoulder muscles as the stone took hold. The driver sniffed loudly, theatrically, adjusting his mirror to see the back seat more clearly. I gave the joint back to Karla. She sucked at it a few more times, and then passed it to the driver.

"Charras pitta?" she asked. You smoke charras?

"Ha, munta!" he said, laughing and accepting it happily. Say yes!

He smoked it halfway down, and passed it back. "_Achaa _charras!

First number. I have it Am'rikan music, disco, very first number United States Am'rikan music disco. You like you hear."

He snapped a cassette into his dashboard player and threw the volume to maximum. Seconds later, the song We Are Family, by Sister Sledge, thumped out of the speakers behind our heads with numbing plangency. Karla whooped for joy. The driver switched the volume to zero, and asked if we liked it. Karla whooped again, and passed him the joint. He turned the music back to max. We smoked, and sang along, and drove past a thousand years of street, from barefoot peasant boys on bullock carts to businessmen buying computers.

Within sight of the Palace, the driver pulled over beside an open chai shop. He pointed to it, with a jerk of his thumb, and told Karla that he would wait for her there. I knew enough cab drivers, and had travelled enough in Bombay cabs, to know that the driver's offer to wait was a decent gesture of concern for her, and not just hunger for work or tips or something else. He liked her. I'd seen it before, that quirky and spontaneous infatuation. Karla was young and attractive, sure, but most of the driver's reaction was inspired by her fluency with his language, and the way she used it to deal with him. A German cab driver might be pleased that a foreigner had learned to speak German. He might even say that he was pleased. Or say nothing at all. The same might be true of a French cab driver, or an American, or an Australian.