Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

But he scanned every receipt and invoice for minute economies, and frequently found them, scraping pennies from accounts measured in thousands.

He refused to fund Gemini’s parties. Gemini told everyone to bring their own stimulants, and the parties rolled on. They were cheaper, and gaudier, and much more popular. The hotel became a place where famous people met infamous people, and every bar and restaurant was crowded.

Scorpio restricted Gemini to a limited expense account at the hotel, for food, drink, and services. He also gave him two hundred dollars in cash every week.

Gemini made two hundred dollars in cash every hour with us, in the game, and played in a trance of elegant dexterity. He was confident. He lost with a joke or a line from a song, and won without pride.

‘I thought of settin’ up a support group, a sort of AA, for people like me, who can’t stop cheatin’, Card Cheats Anonymous, you know, but the trouble is, you wouldn’t be able to trust no-one. Not when it actually came down to cards. Know what I mean?’

‘Come on, Gemini. A cynic is someone angry at his own soul, and you’re no cynic.’

He squinted on the thought.

‘I love you, mate,’ he said, smiling to himself.

‘Love you too, brother. And anyway, you did it, man. You cold-turkeyed cheating at cards, and you’re playing straight, and better than ever.’

‘Took some doin’, I tell ya,’ he shuddered. ‘I turned to books, at first. I hit Keats pretty hard and got very sad-trippy, then I got totally Kerouaced, as out of it as a drunken chimp and sayin’ the first thing that came into me addled mind. I stumbled into Fitzgerald, staggered out of Hemingway, got totally Deronda with George Eliot, stoned with Virginia Woolf, batty with Djuna Barnes and deranged with Durrell, but then I switched back to movies, and three days of Humphrey Bogart had me right as rain.’

‘Quite a support group, Gemini.’

‘Yeah. Nothin’ like writers and actors for company, is there, when you’re at the end of your rope.’

‘You got that right. I’m glad it worked out for you.’

He looked at me, lifting aside a curtain of reticence.

‘It’s a nice view, from the other side of the line, Lin. I never thought I’d say this, but it almost feels good not to cheat.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

‘You think so? It feels dodgy, sometimes, being straight. Know what I mean?’

‘Sure,’ I laughed. ‘Keep it up. You look great. An abundance of chance and a scarcity of sunlight wear very well on you, card champion. How’s it going, with Scorpio?’

‘I… ’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘He keeps to himself way too much, Lin. He’s all alone in the presidential suite, most of the time. I’m not allowed in.’

‘Not allowed in?’

‘Nobody is, except the staff. He eats most of his meals in there. I mean, if he had some lovely piece of womanhood in there with him, I’d be guardin’ the door. But he doesn’t, mate, and the two of us, Scorpio and me, we were never alone.’

‘Maybe, he just needs a time-out.’

‘We split everything, shared every mouthful of food, down to countin’ out the peanuts in a packet and sharin’ every one of ’em, even and fair. We argued about everything, all the time, but we never ate a thing without the other one there. We haven’t broke bread, so to speak, for three days. I’m worried about him, Lin.’

‘Gemini, has he thought about leaving Bombay?’

‘If he has, he doesn’t talk to me about it. Why?’

‘He’s nervous, being rich. He needs to move on, and he probably won’t move on, unless you move him on.’

‘Move him where?’

‘Anywhere that millionaires live. They tend to stick together, and they know how to look after themselves. He’ll be safe there, and you’ll get some peace of mind.’

‘I’m having enough trouble living with one millionaire. I couldn’t handle a whole suburb of them.’

‘Then take him to New Zealand. Buy a farm, near a forest.’

‘New Zealand?’

‘Beautiful country, beautiful people. Great place to vanish in.’

‘I’m so worried, Lin. You know, I actually lost a game that I should’ve won, yesterday.’

‘You played about three hundred games, yesterday.’

‘Yeah, but I’m afraid of losin’ my grip, you know? I feel so helpless to help him , and I love him, mate.’

I should’ve shut up. I couldn’t know what my suggestion would bring to the Zodiac Georges. If I had three wishes, one of them would be to know when to shut up.

‘Maybe, I don’t know, you should just get him outside. Take him for a walk around the hotel. It’d be just like old times, except with bodyguards. It might shake him awake.’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Gemini said thoughtfully. ‘I could trick him into it.’

‘Or invite him into it.’

‘No, I’ll have to trick him into it,’ he said. ‘I’d have to trick him into drinking water in the desert, because he’d think the CIA put it there. But I’ve got a plan.’

‘Please don’t tell me,’ I said, leaving my bundle of cash for the poker game bank, and heading for the door. ‘I’m allergic to plans.’

I should’ve worried, for my friends. I know that now. Like so many people in the city, I thought that Scorpio’s money solved all their problems. I was wrong. The money was a menace, as it often is, that threatened their friendship, and their lives.

I left the hotel and rode to the Starlight Restaurant, on Chowpatty Beach. The restaurant was an illegal pop-up on a small, appropriated stretch of beach near the beginning of the sea wall.

It had been running for three months. A movie star and a local entrepreneur had the idea to create a restaurant, as a gift to the city, on a derelict section of public beach, so they created a Goan fragment, complete with palm trees, thatched table umbrellas and sand for open toes.

The food was excellent, and the service was efficient and friendly. But the fact that it was completely illegal, and likely to close any time, added a zest so special to the flavour that the city officials charged with closing down the illegal structure waited days, for a table.

The local entrepreneur, whose eccentric, ephemeral gift to the city cost him a lot of money that he knew he’d never recover, was a friend of mine. Karla was waiting at a table he’d reserved for me.

She stood up. Light from a candle on the table lifted her face, as a gentle hand might’ve done. She kissed me, and hugged me.

She was dressed in a red cheongsam, split to the hip on one side. Her hair was pulled up in a shell of curves and waves, held in place by a poison dart from a blowgun, which she’d modified with a red jewel at the end. She was wearing red gloves. She was beautiful, and it was a beautiful night, until she said the name Concannon.

‘Come again?’

‘Concannon wrote me a letter,’ she repeated, four green queens on me.

‘And you tell me this now ?’

‘The other stuff we talked about was more important.’

‘I want to read it,’ I said.

It was the wrong approach, but I was angry. Concannon got me that way.

‘No.’

‘ No? ’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I burned it,’ she said. ‘Can we go somewhere where I can’t blow cigarette smoke on anybody but you?’

We rode to the top of Malabar Hill and a view of the restaurant we’d left, on the strip of coast below. Lights in the curve of Marine Drive garlanded the belly of the great ocean, the Mother of all.

She blew cigarette smoke on me, for a while, and then went easy on me with two green queens.

‘What’s going on?’