"Yes, okay very much!" Tariq agreed, shaking my hand with gymnastic enthusiasm. "God help you, and me, all day, please!"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"When will she be back?"

"How should I know? Not long, maybe. She said to wait."

"I don't know. It's getting late. I gotta get this kid home to bed."

"Whatever. It's all the same to me, Jack. She said to wait, that's all."

I glanced at Tariq. He didn't look tired, but I knew he had to be getting sleepy. I decided that a rest was a good idea before the walk home. We kicked off our shoes and entered Karla's house, closing the street door behind us. I found some chilled water in the large, old-fashioned refrigerator. Tariq accepted a glass, and sat down on a pile of cushions to flip through a copy of India Today magazine.

Lisa was in Karla's bedroom, sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up. She was wearing a red silk pyjama jacket, and nothing else. A patch of her blonde pubic hair was visible, and I glimpsed reflexively over my shoulder to make sure that the boy couldn't see into the room. She cradled a bottle of Jack Daniels in her folded arms. Her long curly hair was tied up into a lopsided bun. She was staring at me with an expression of calculated appraisal, one eye almost closed. It reminded me of the look that marksmen concentrate on their targets in a firing range.

"So where'd ya get the kid?"

I sat on a straight-backed chair, straddling it, so that my forearms could rest on the back.

"I sort of inherited him. I'm doing someone a favour."

"A favour?" she asked, as if the word was a euphemism for some kind of infection.

"Yeah. A friend of mine asked me to teach the kid a little English."

"So, what's he doing here? Why isn't he at home?"

"I'm supposed to keep him with me. That's how he's supposed to learn."

"You mean keep him with you all the time? Everywhere you go?" "That's the deal. But I'm hoping to give him back after two days.

I don't know how I got talked into it in the first place, really."

She laughed out loud. It wasn't a pleasant sound. The state she was in gave it a forced and almost vicious edge. Still, the heart of it was rich and full, and I thought it might've been a nice laugh, once. She took a swig from the bottle, exposing one round breast with the movement.

"I don't like kids," she said proudly, as if she was announcing that she'd just received some distinguished award. She took another long drink. The bottle was half full. I realised that she was early drunk, in that squall of coherence before slurred speech and clumsiness and collapse.

"Look, I just want to get my clothes," I muttered, looking around the bedroom for them. "I'll pick them up, and come back and see Karla another time."

"I'll make you a deal, Gilbert."

"The name's Lin," I insisted, although that, too, was a false name.

"I'll make you a deal, Lin. I'll tell you where your clothes are, if you agree to put them on here, in front of me."

We didn't like each other. We stared across the kind of bristling hostility that's sometimes as good as, or better than, mutual attraction.

"Assuming you can handle it," I drawled, grinning in spite of myself, "what's in it for me?"

She laughed again, and it was stronger, and more honest.

"You're all right, Lin. Get me some water, will ya? The more of this stuff I drink, the goddamn thirstier I get."

On my way to the small kitchen, I checked on Tariq. The boy had fallen asleep. His head was tipped back onto the cushions, and his mouth was open. One hand was curled up under his chin, and the other still grasped weakly at the magazine. I removed it, and covered him with a light woollen shawl that was hanging from a set of hooks. He didn't stir, and seemed to be deep in sleep. In the kitchen I took a bottle of chilled water from the refrigerator, snatched up two tumblers, and returned to the bedroom.

"The kid's asleep," I said, handing her a glass. "I'll let him crash for a while. If he doesn't wake up by himself, I'll get him up later."

"Sit here," she commanded, patting at the bed beside her. I sat.

She watched me over the rim of her glass as I drank first one, then a second full glass of the iced water. "The water's good," she said, after a while. "Have you noticed that the water's good here? I mean, really good. You'd expect it to be fucking slime, I mean being Bombay and India and all.

People are so scared of the water, but it's really much better than the chemical-tasting horse-piss that comes outta the faucet back home."

"Where is home?"

"What the fuck difference does it make?" She watched me frown impatiently, and added quickly, "Don't get mad, keep your goddamn shirt on. I'm not tryin' to be a smart-ass. I really mean it- what difference does it make? I'll never go back there, and you'll never go there in the first place."

"I guess not."

"God it's hot! I hate this time of the year. It's always worst just before the monsoon. It makes me crazy. Doesn't this weather make you crazy? This is my fourth monsoon. You start to count in monsoons after you've been here a while. Didier is a nine-monsoon guy. Can you believe that? Nine fucking monsoons in Bombay. How about you?"

"This is my second. I'm looking forward to it. I love the rain, even if it does turn the slum into a swamp."

"Karla told me you live in one of the slums. I don't know how you can stand it-that stink, all those people living on top of each other. You'd never get me inside one of those places."

"Like most things, and most people, it's not as bad as it looks from the outside."

She let her head fall onto one shoulder, and looked at me. I couldn't read her expression. Her eyes glittered in a radiant, almost inviting smile, but her mouth was twisted in a disdainful sneer.

"You're a real funny guy, Lin. How did you really get hooked up with that kid?"

"I told you."

"So what's he like?"

"I thought you didn't like kids."

"I don't. They're so... innocent. Except that they're not. They know exactly what they want, and they don't stop till they get it. It's disgusting. All the worst people I know are just like big, grown-up children. It's so creepy it makes me sick to my stomach."

Children might've turned her stomach, but it seemed to be immune to the searing effects of the sour mash whisky. She tipped the bottle back and drank off a good quarter of it in long, slow swallows. That's the one, I thought. If she wasn't drunk before, she is now. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and smiled, but the expression was lopsided, and the focus was spilling from the bowls of her china blue eyes. Falling and fading as she was, the mask of her many abrasive attitudes began to slip, and she suddenly looked very young and vulnerable. The set of her jaw- angry, fearing, and dislikeable-relaxed into an expression that was surprisingly gentle and compassionate. Her cheeks were round and pink. The tip of her nose was turned-up slightly, and formed in soft contours. She was a twenty-four-year-old woman with the face of a girl, unmarked by the hollows of compromise or the deeply drawn lines of hard decisions. From the few things that Karla had told me about her, and what I'd seen at Madame Zhou's, her life had in fact been harder than most, but none of that showed in her face.

She offered me the bottle and I accepted it, taking a sip. I held on to it for a few moments, and when she wasn't looking I placed it on the floor beside the bed, discreetly out of her reach. She lit a cigarette and messed at her hair, spilling the loosely tied bun until the long curls fell over one shoulder. With her hand poised there, on top of her head, the wide sleeve of her silk jacket slipped past her elbow, and exposed the pale stubble of a shaved armpit.