Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

It was Stuart Vinson.

‘Lin!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Park the fucking noisy bike, man.’

‘Steady on, Vinson,’ I said, patting the gas tank of my bike. ‘Language, man.’

He blinked at me, and at the bike.

‘What?’

‘Calm down. You’re a one-man traffic jam.’

Cars were moving around us, and the Colaba police station wasn’t far enough away.

‘It’s serious, Lin! Please, meet me at Leopold’s. I’ll go there right now.’

He scampered away through the traffic toward Leopold’s, and I made the traffic scamper around me while I did an illegal turn, and parked the bike.

I found Vinson pestering Sweetie for a table. There was nothing at Didier’s table but a Reserved sign. I handed the sign to Sweetie, and sat down. Vinson joined me.

He didn’t look good. His surfer-healthy face was thinner than I’d seen it, and there were dark rings on the high cheekbones where optimism used to play.

‘Looks like beer,’ I said to Sweetie.

‘You think you’re the only customers I have to serve?’ Sweetie asked himself, walking back to the kitchen.

‘Do you wanna do this before the beer, or after ?’ I asked.

It seemed like a reasonable question, to me. I’ve seen both, and I know what it’s like: the same story, told by different maniacs.

‘She’s disappeared,’ he said.

‘Okay, before the beer. Are you talking about Rannveig?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Disappeared… how?’

‘She was there one minute, and gone the next. I’ve searched everywhere for her. I don’t know what to do. I was, like, hoping she might’ve contacted you.’

‘I haven’t seen her,’ I said. ‘And I have no idea where she is. When did this happen?’

‘Three days ago. I’ve been searching everywhere, but -’

‘Three days? What the fuck, man? Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘You’re my last resort,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried everything, and everyone else.’

The last resort: the last person who might help you. I’d never thought of myself as that. I’d never been that. I was always one of the first called, when someone needed help.

The beer arrived. Vinson drank it fast, but it didn’t help.

‘Oh, my God! Where is she?’ he wailed.

‘Look, Vinson, you could ask Naveen for help. It’s his job to find lost loves.’

‘Can you call him for me?’

‘I don’t use the phone,’ I said. ‘But I can take you there, if you like.’

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Anything. I’m so worried about her.’

We stood up to leave, my beer untouched. I left a tip for Sweetie. It wasn’t sweet enough.

‘Fuck you, Shantaram,’ he said, replacing the Reserved sign on the table. ‘Who’s going to drink your beer? Tell me that?’

I delivered lost-love Vinson to the Lost Love Bureau, two doors along from my own, and left him with Naveen.

Things had been cooler between Naveen and me. I’d hurt him, somehow, I was sure of it, but I had no idea how. I brought Vinson to the office because I trusted Naveen, and I hoped he saw that.

He smiled vacantly at me as I walked back to my room, then he turned to Vinson, serious questions writing themselves on his face.

I ate a can of cold baked beans, drank a pint of milk and settled the emergency ration lunch with half a glass of rum. I left the door open, and sat in my favourite chair. It was a curved captain’s chair, padded with faded, dark blue leather. It was the manager’s chair. Jaswant Singh had inherited it from the previous manager, who’d inherited it from someone with damn good taste in writer’s chairs. I’d bought it from Jaswant and replaced it for him with a shiny new manager’s chair.

Jaswant loved his new chair, and had put coloured lights around it. I put my old chair in a corner, where I had a view of the balcony, and a clear line of sight into the hallway, the manager’s desk and the stairs leading up to it. I did some of my best writing there.

I was doing some of my best writing, when Naveen tapped on the door.

‘Got a minute?’ he asked.

He was intelligent, brave and devoted. He was kind and honest. He was all the things we’d wish a son or a brother to be. But I was writing.

‘How many a minute?’

‘A couple.’

‘Sure,’ I said, putting my journal away. ‘Come in, and sit down.’

He sat on the couch, and looked around. There wasn’t much to see.

‘You always leave your door open?’

‘Only when I’m awake.’

‘Your place is… ’ he began, searching for a clue in a room that was packed for flight. ‘It’s kinda boot camp, if you know what I mean. I thought it would get warmer, you know, the longer you lived here. But… it didn’t.’

‘Karla calls it Fugitive Chic.’

‘Does she like it?’

‘No. What’s on your mind, Naveen?’

‘Diva,’ he said, sighing the name, his head sagging.

‘What about her?’

‘She offered me a job,’ he said, his face stretched and creased with distress. ‘That’s why I’ve been so touchy lately.’

‘Not such a bad thing, a job.’

‘You don’t understand. She called me to a meeting. One of her people took me all the way up to the roof of her building, on Worli Seaface. She has offices there. I hadn’t seen her for a while. She’s… we’ve both been busy.’

He pressed his mouth shut on whatever it was that he’d been about to say. I waited, and then nudged him.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘She… she looked amazing. She cut her hair. It looks great. She was wearing red. There was wind, on the roof. I looked at her. For a second I let myself believe that she’d called me there to tell me that she… ’

His head dropped, and he stared at his hands.

‘But she called you there to offer you a job, instead.’

‘Yeah.’

‘For a lot of money?’

‘Yeah. Too much, really.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘She’s trying to protect you. She’s kinda stuck on you. The two of you went through some stuff together. She’s worried, now that the Lost Love Bureau is putting you back on the street.’

‘You really think so?’

‘I think it’s her way of saying that she cares about you. It’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing.’

‘Maybe you’re right. She almost kissed me that night, remember?’

‘She told you to shut up, and kiss her. Maybe you should do that.’

‘You know,’ he mused, ‘the new Diva, man, she’s taking some getting used to. I always knew what the old Diva was thinking, and what she’d say. Happy, smiling Diva is impossible to read. It’s like snow on the radar. It’s like I have to fall in love with the same woman all over again.’

‘You know, I read a book once, called Women for Idiots .’

‘What did you find out?’

‘I couldn’t make head or tail of it. But it confirmed a point from my own messed-up experience, which is that you can’t know what’s in a woman’s mind, until she tells you. And to do that, you have to ask her. One of these days, you’ve gotta ask that girl if it’s a serious thing.’

‘You think I should take the job?’

‘Of course not. You worked for her father. Now, you’re on your own. She’ll respect a no more than a yes . She’ll probably find another way to keep you close.’

He stood to leave, offering to wash his glass. I put it back on the table.

‘You’re a good man, Naveen,’ I said. ‘And she knows how good you are.’

He turned to leave, but spun around quickly, boxer-ballet.

‘Hey, don’t forget the race tonight.’

‘What race?’

‘You haven’t heard? Charu and Pari went to the slum, and I challenged Benicia to race me. It’s all set.’